Apostles Anglican Church
Fr. John A. Roop

The Problem of Suffering: A Reflection on 1 Peter 5
(1 Peter 5, Ps 18:1-20, Luke 6:1-19)

1 Peter 4:16 (ESV): 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The problem of suffering is often presented as a particularly Christian problem, and I suppose it is in this limited sense: if you are not a Christian you do not have to explain the presence of suffering or find meaning in it or justify how belief in an all-powerful, all-good, all-loving God is consistent with the presence of almost unimaginable suffering in the world. Suffering is just part of life — natural — and while you have to learn to manage it, there really is nothing to explain, no meaning to be found, and no god to justify in the face of painful evidence to the contrary. The world manages, but doesn’t explain suffering.

If you are a hedonist, your management philosophy is straightforward: maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. There is nothing good in suffering and nothing noble in bearing up under it. Avoidance is the ideal. The only problem with that approach is its impossibility. Sooner or later, suffering comes for us all, and we can no longer avoid it. Ironically, the very act of seeking to maximize pleasure often produces the very suffering it seeks to avoid. Seek the pleasant oblivion of alcohol and wake up with a hangover. Do that often, and become enslaved to drink.

The stoics among us have another approach, along the lines of Bobby McFerrin’s song Don’t Worry Be Happy. Since you have no control over when, where, and how suffering might come, there is no use in worrying about it. Live life to the full, put suffering out of mind, and deal with suffering if and as it comes. And, when it comes, the best approach is the classic British “stiff upper lip” or “Keep calm and carry on.” The way to manage suffering is to put it out of mind until it comes, and to bear it with dignity when it comes.

Another option, this one characteristic of Buddhism, is simply to deny the objective/external reality of suffering. Suffering is not “out there;” instead, suffering is an internal problem, an illusion born of human attachments. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, realized this in his moment of enlightenment and expressed it his Four Noble Truths:

1. All of life is suffering.

2. The cause of suffering is craving.

3. The end of suffering is getting rid of craving and grasping.

4. The method to use in overcoming suffering is the Eightfold Path.

We need not seriously consider the Eightfold Path; unless you are a Buddhist the notion that suffering is merely an illusion is all blue smoke and mirrors, nice on paper, but useless where the rubber meets the road. That said, I would not want to dismiss too quickly the Buddha’s conviction that the end of suffering is getting rid of craving and grasping. I would want to baptize the idea, to infuse it with Christian meaning, but I would not want to dismiss it out of hand. Clinging to the wrong things can produce a kind of suffering.

I am certain that I have caricatured all these non-Christian suffering management strategies. Since I don’t share them, I am not expert on them, and I don’t have much sympathy for them. Even though we do not fully understand or share them, modern Christianity sometimes does have leanings toward each of these errant views. Like hedonists, we often try to avoid suffering or at least to minimize it, and I suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But, it must not be avoided at all costs. And, sometimes, it must be positively embraced. Like stoics, we too often put suffering out of sight and out of mind until it hits us like a ton of bricks and we find ourselves unprepared for it. We shouldn’t borrow trouble; Jesus tells us not to be anxious about tomorrow. But, we also should not be spiritually unprepared for suffering when it comes. Like Buddhists, we sometimes very piously pretend that suffering is an illusion. In the face of real tragedy we smile and say, or someone smiles at us and says, “God is good, all the time. And all the time, God is good.” And while that is true in some sense, it is hard to mouth it through tears.

Suffering is a human reality common to us all, Christians and non-Christians alike. But, there is a uniquely Christian way of understanding it. And, there is also a kind of suffering that is uniquely Christian, a suffering that comes to us by virtue of being Christian: forgiving instead of taking revenge, sharing the burden of the world in prayer and service, ridicule or rejection for bearing the name of Christ, alienation from friends and family, financial or physical hardships. It wasn’t hyperbole when Jesus said that whoever would be his disciple must take up his cross daily and follow him. The cross, as a Christian symbol, doesn’t just point backward to Jesus, but proclaims an ever-present reality for all who bear his name, and that reality includes suffering.

So, how do — or how should — Christians deal with suffering? That question is implicit throughout St. Peter’s first letter, not least in the immediate prologue to the text appointed for us in the Daily Office and then throughout the appointed text itself.

1 Peter 4:12 (ESV): 12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

One of the great differences between first century and twenty-first century Christianity is the expectation of suffering: they did; we seem not to. The early Christians seemed to take suffering — and especially suffering for being a Christian — as a given; it was almost certain to happen sooner or later. We, in the West, think of suffering for being a Christian as an aberration, as something that may happen elsewhere or in another time, but not here, not now, not to us. So, we are shocked when it comes and uncertain how to handle it theologically and practically. We have lost the emphasis that, in baptism, the Church is making not just saints, but martyrs. So, Peter reminds us that suffering is nothing surprising; the near exemption from Christian suffering that we have had historically in the modern Western world is the exception, not the norm. Don’t be surprised; suffering as a Christian is nothing strange. Don’t be surprised; be prepared.

1 Peter 4:1-16 (ESV): 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

St. Peter also insists that the suffering we bear for Christ is the suffering we bear with Christ; it is our share, our portion, our participation in Christ’s sufferings. And Christ’s suffering was redemptive. It was the prelude to glory. Even more than that, in a great paradox and mystery, Christ was glorified in and through his suffering. His glory was not just on the far side of suffering, though it certainly was there, too; it was also manifest in his suffering. On the night of Jesus’ betrayal, just after Judas had left the Upper Room to arrange for Jesus’ arrest:

John 13:31 (ESV): 31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.

In and through betrayal, arrest, denials, trials, beatings, mocking, crucifixion, and death, Jesus was manifesting the glory of God. Amidst shame, Jesus was glorified. You know that one of the characteristics of crucifixion — and a source of great suffering in it — was the shame heaped upon the victim: paraded through the streets as a criminal, stripped naked, staked out on a cross for public viewing, body left to decay on the cross and to feed the scavengers. It was shameful to the victim, to the family, to the community. The same is true with all our suffering for Christ; it is an attempt by the powers to shame the one who bears the name of Christ. St. Peter absolutely rejects that notion and turns it on its head.

1 Peter 4:16 (ESV): 16 Yet is anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.

And then this:

1 Peter 4:19 (ESV): 19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

If you are suffering for Christ, it is not that God has forgotten or abandoned you, but rather that you are fully embraced in the will of God. This is difficult to understand and perhaps to accept, but it is essential. If it was the will of God to save the world by entering into its suffering in the person of Jesus Christ, then it is also his will to continue, to work out, the redemption of the world through the suffering of those who bear the name of Christ. Trust that. Trust God. And keep doing good.

Then, St. Peter turns his attention to his fellow elders: bishops, priests:

1 Peter 5:1-5 (ESV): 1 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. 5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

Why single out the elders in a discussion of suffering? If you want to kill a snake, so the saying goes, you cut off its head. If you want to eradicate a movement, you kill its leaders. In times of persecution, the elders — bishops and priests — were the most likely targets, the ones most most likely to suffer. And that may be why St. Peter here reminds them of the gravitas of their office, of the need to be examples to the flock as Christ was an example to them, and of the reality that an unfading crown of glory lies on the far side of suffering.

And then to everyone, St. Peter says:

1 Peter 5:6-11 (ESV): 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

There are three agents in this mystery of suffering: God, who allows suffering and who will bring you through it, and who will restore, strengthen, establish, and exalt you; you, the one who is suffering and who must be sober-minded and watchful; and the devil who seeks to exploit the suffering to your destruction. We have already spoken a bit about God, so let’s address the other spiritual agent, the devil. What is his role or purpose in suffering? He prowls around, looking for chinks in your armor, looking for breaches in the wall of faith, practice, and trust that he can exploit. He intimidates and frightens — or at least tries to — with his roaring. And the third agent — us: how are we to respond? Not by cowering or hunkering down, but by resisting in all the ways the Spirit enables and the Church gives us: by prayer and fasting, by repentance and confession, by Scripture and liturgy and psalmody, by the Sacraments, by the cultivation of the virtues, by assembling with the saints and by remembering and praying for those saints far from us who are experiencing the same — and often greater — suffering. There is great comfort, I think, in knowing that we are not alone in suffering.

And then St. Peter assures us of the one truth above all others that makes us able to endure suffering: God is sovereign now and ever. Our suffering is not outside the bounds of God’s will or dominion, which means that it has purpose and meaning and that it is intended for and will redound to our good.

There is really no place in our secular Western culture for suffering. Our goal is to avoid it, put it out of sight and mind, and eliminate it. As Orthodox priest Fr. Stephen Freeman says, the ultimate way to eliminate suffering is to eliminate the one suffering. This elderly person is suffering; in our mercy we will euthanize him. This baby will be born with a mental or physical disability that will include a certain amount of suffering — as we envision it — not just for the child but for the parents whose lives this child will complicate; in our mercy we will abort the baby. Death is preferable to suffering, particularly if the suffering is mine and the death is someone else’s. So our culture believes.

But that is not the mind and example of Christ, nor the way of the Church, as St. Peter knew it and taught it:

1 Peter 4:12–13 (ESV): 12 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, who willingly embraced the shame and suffering of the cross for our sake and for our salvation: Grant us so faithfully to follow you that, when by God’s providence we, too, endure suffering for your Name’s sake, we may rejoice to share your sufferings, and endure with hope until your glory is revealed; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.