I’m taking a class right now on African tribal religions and the impact that Christian missionary work had upon them. So far, this is one of the most interesting subjects that I’ve had the opportunity to study at Princeton. Our work has focused on one specific area of Africa and one specific people: the Ibo people of western Nigeria. We’ve been reading both historical fiction novels written by a descendant of an Ibo family as well as different academic articles and studies that try to explain why Christianity spread so quickly and so powerfully through these people and their tribes.
One of the most interesting things that I have learned so far in this class is that the Judeo-Christian God is the only deity from any area of the world that would allow suffering to happen to it’s people as a way to bring growth. A person’s hardship might not have been seen as a curse from God, but a gift from God that would bring about a blessing in the end. Now, this is not always the case in the Old and New Testaments. Sometimes we read about God unleashing his wrath upon the Israelites for turning against Him, or how God afflicted an entire nation with sores because they stole the Ark of the Covenant. These are hard stories to swallow a lot of the time, and they are stories we are not even able to begin to understand. That is all right, though. Sometimes, we are called to simply sit with these stories; hold them close to us and pray that God will some day help us understand them. There are other times in the Old and New Testaments, though, where we read that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that His glory might be known, or Jesus might say to His disciples that a man’s blindness was not due to a sin committed, but so that the glory of God might be known in the healing of his blindness. God is seemingly allowing hardship to happen out of love, not out of anger.
This does not happen with any other god of any other culture or people. In fact, most cultures and societies—like the Ibo people about whom I’m learning—will desert or banish a deity for bringing hardship upon a people. The job of the god is to protect and uplift a people, not allow suffering to happen. So why would our God be any different? Why have people continued to worship God even after He allows suffering to grip hold of the people? Why have the Jewish people continued to worship YHWH even after an event so terrible as the Holocaust?
The answer is simple, yet great in depth: because our God suffers with us. From as early as Adam all the way through to today, God has desired to walk with us through life and experience life alongside of His creation. In Exodus 3, we hear about a God who sees the misery of His people, who hears their cries of torment, and feels their sufferings. The psalmists expound on the wondrousness of a God who knows them completely and who walks with them in life. And in Matthew, we learn His name: Emmanuel. God with us. God who walks beside us. God who rejoices among us. God who suffers alongside us. Emmanuel.
And what is more, Emmanuel, God with us, suffers every kind of torment that we might suffer. He spends time alone in the wilderness, he is tempted by sin and pride, he is beaten, yelled at, and abused. And then he dies on a cross, one of the more horrible forms of death that humanity has ever beheld. And while on that cross, he experiences the suffering of feeling totally alone and completely abandoned. God with us, Jesus Christ, feels what it is like to be abandoned by God Himself. And so He cries out, “Eloi! Eloi, lama sabachthami!” My God! My God, why have You forsaken me? Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus Christ, knows our sufferings intimately because He suffered through them Himself and suffers through them with us.
I remember the first time that I truly began to grasp the enormity of this. The first time that my dad was deployed overseas for the war was the summer before my junior year of high school. I was at a two-week summer camp at TLU, where I would later complete my undergraduate work. Dad was supposed to leave on the last day of camp, so I was planning on returning home a couple daya early to see him off. The day before I was supposed to leave for home, Dad showed up on campus at dinnertime with a bag of ribs and two large sweet teas. We found a picnic table outside and ate dinner together, and as we finished up, Dad told me that he wanted me to stay at camp and enjoy my last couple days with my new friends. He said that all I’d be doing otherwise is riding in the car with him and driving away since they were leaving from a closed airport. He told me to stay here where I would be having fun and could be around happy people. I tried to tell him that I didn’t want to stay, that I wanted to be with him and the family, but he said that this was best and that he wanted me there at TLU.
I remember thinking that I was completely alone the next few days. I didn’t want to do anything or be around anybody as I sat there thinking about my dad and wondering if I’d ever see him again. He was going to war. People die in war. My dad could die! I was scared, I was lost, and I was alone.
Dad of course made it home no problem. The fool even came home a month early, and surprised my mom and us kids. I will never forget the day that he walked into my physics class, still wearing his dress uniform, and told my teacher that he needed to borrow me for a little bit. I didn’t even wait for a reply before grabbing all of my things and running to the door. The hug that we then shared held in it six months of fear, worry, and anxiety. It took away all of those feelings, leaving me feeling relieved and comforted.
When Dad told me he wanted me to stay at camp instead of coming to the airport to see him off, I felt alone and abandoned. I felt like he did not want me there, and I felt like I had been cast aside. When I saw him there in that school hallway, though, I realized that he probably felt just as alone and tormented because he had asked me to stay at camp and not send him off. I bet he wondered to himself if he had missed out on an opportunity to see his son one last time. I bet he wondered the entire time if he had made the right choice, or if he should have let me come with him.
Our Scripture lesson today is a psalm that I read over and over again while Dad was deployed. It is one that I read with tears in my eyes, and one that I read with anger in my heart. I felt like God had let this happen to me, God had allowed my dad to be taken away, and God had lowered me into this pit of despair. I have realized since, though, that this psalm only shows one side of the story. It only shows the pain, suffering, and torment that the person is fighting. It does not show the pain, suffering, and torment with which God is dealing. But, like I had to learn that my dad went through just as much as I did in his decision to make me stay at camp, we have to learn that God sees our pain, hears our cries, and shares in our sufferings.
Especially during this time of Lent, I hope that you can remember that our God is Emmanuel, God with us. Our God is a God that walks with us, rejoices when we rejoice, and suffers when we suffer. We are not alone in our sufferings. God is with us. You are not alone in your suffering. God is with you.
Let us pray.
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