Fruit from Suffering
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“Fruit From Suffering”
April 17, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Our Scripture today comes from the Gospel of John, the 12th chapter. It is the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday and so we invite you to follow along as I read the Scripture for us today. (John 12:12-19)
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!’ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: ‘Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!’ His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him. The Pharisees then said to one another, ‘You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!’ (I love that line!)
Would you pray with me as we start our day today?
Lord that is our prayer that the whole world would continue to go after you, for as they do, they will find you worthy. So Lord we ask that you quicken our hearts to hear what your Spirit has for us this day. We ask it in your name. Amen.
Well, I start today with an installment from the annals of a former California beach bum turned youth pastor. A few years ago I was with a group of high school students and we went down to Florida for Spring Break. We were staying on the water and a storm had just gone through the area. So the waves were, how do I put it, more than docile. They were huge by Gulf standards. So we were going to spend the afternoon doing something that I had grown up doing. Because, you see, in generations past, in my formative years—when I was in high school, I lived about twenty minutes away from the beach in southern California called Newport beach, in particular, 56th Street was where we hung out. We would spend every day riding the waves. You see body surfing for me had become art. My body, becoming a surf board, becoming one with the curl of the wave, it was magic when I rode waves.
Well, this innate skill that I had honed over my many years of high school, I would soon find out it had lost its finer points. I raced into the water that day in Florida, diving through a wave, swimming out, looking forward to saying, “You know, it’s like riding a bike. Once you’ve done it, you always know how to do this.” So I swim out; I maneuver to find a wave; I catch it; and all of a sudden all the magic is back. I am in the curl of the wave, riding it; I stand up and go “Yaaaa!” It was great. So I swim back out there, get ready to catch another wave, and I realize I am too far out in front of the wave. At that point I know I am in trouble. See, that was my skills kicking in. The wave was about to have its way with me. So what I did was I knew that the wave was going to throw me into the sand under the water, so I simply put my hands out in front of me, went down; and as I hit the sand, I collapsed on my forearms. At that point, the power of the wave pushed me along the sand on my forearms underwater. I was like, I could feel the flesh tearing at that point. I knew I was in trouble and all I did was I rolled over and I allowed the wave just to wipe me out. I stood up and at that point I instantly switched from pro body surfer to youth minister. I stood up, my arms in the air to show everyone, and I said, “Yesss! I have been baptized in here.” While all inside I am going, “Oh man, this is killing me.”
One epilogue to the story however was that when I went back on the beach some of the guys were there and I showed them my arms and I made some points with them that day. And that was kind of nice.
You know, wouldn’t it be nice that when everything seems to be going right… it is one of those things where something happens, doesn’t it; and your whole world kind of comes crashing down around you. One minute I am body surfer extraordinaire, the next minute I am picking sand out of my teeth. You know, this idea of this joy and excitement, and then, boom, something happens; and all you can see is pain and suffering. Wouldn’t it be great if we knew when it was going to happen? You know, we could try to avoid it or we could to try to, at least, prepare ourselves for it; or maybe we could just simply enjoy the good stuff that much more before the pain and the suffering hits. But we all know that that is not the case, don’t we? We know that is not how it happens. We can’t see that pain and that suffering until it is on top of us. For, we don’t know the fear and the anguish of a cancer diagnosis until the doctor tells us that personally. We don’t know the pain and trouble a child can cause until we get that phone call in the middle of the night. We don’t know the loneliness of being by yourself until your spouse is gone.
I was thinking about that in relationship to our text today. We don’t know when pain and suffering is going to walk into our life. So more often than not we usually live like it never will—that it is not going to happen. We at least hope and pray that it doesn’t and yet we all know that it catches up with us at some point in our lives, don’t we. I think one of the differences that I see between my little body surfing experience and Jesus entering the city (I know that is a big leap…) but it was that Jesus knew what was coming. Jesus knew what was coming. He knew when it was coming and he knew it was going to be that week; and, yet, he walked in with all the fanfare, all the excitement.
As I try to picture what that was like in my mind, for me I go back to the old movie Star Wars 1 (the first prequel). At the end of that movie there was a scene of the planet of Naboo, where the people of Naboo and the Gungans have come together to overturn the Trade Federation and there is this great celebration as the King rolls into the city square. Everyone is all smiles. There is great joy and there is excitement in the air about what is going to happen next. It is a wonderful scene. That is kind of how I picture what happens as Jesus is riding the donkey into Jerusalem that day. One of the other versions of this text says “the news swept through the city.” There was great excitement and the electricity was kind of in the air and I can just imagine Jesus and his disciples laughing and getting swept up in the moment of this parade. And the disciples, I’m sure, are thinking “O.K., now is our time. All the things Jesus is going to talk about, they are going to happen now; it is going to come to fruition.” And Jesus, Jesus is probably enjoying this time immensely as well. He is enjoying the praises of the people. He is knowing that all of creation is joining with him in this celebration. Other versions of the Gospel says “the rocks would cry out if the people weren’t” because of the praise that is going before Jesus. It is a grand procession on a glorious scale that would make any movie director envious.
And yet in the midst of all that good stuff, Jesus knows what is coming. Jesus knows the week that is ahead of him, the pain and the suffering and even the eventual difficult death that was right around the corner.
I think about how Jesus endured that last week. Think about it: He was betrayed by his disciples; he was arrested by a battalion of Roman soldiers and temple guards; he was being chased as he was arrested. (I think of like a scene of chasing Frankenstein.) Then his hands and his feet are nailed after he has been beaten and spit on and mocked throughout the whole week; and eventually his hands and feet are pierced as he makes his way to Calvary’s hill. That was just the physical stuff. Think about what was happening emotionally for Jesus this week. The one who he said he would build his church on denies ever even knowing him. He prays to the point of sweating blood probably because of the stress he was under. And the One who he said would never leave him, does, as he hangs on the cross and he says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All of that is banging around in his head as he is riding the donkey in that day. And my question is, why? Why? Why would Jesus be so excited, so enjoying the moment when he knew the other shoe was about to drop and drop hard? I think if it was me I think it is the last thing I would be doing. I wouldn’t be enjoying that moment. I would be preparing for what is coming. It’s like the hurricane warning has sounded. It is time to go buy water and board up your house. It is not time to lay out and get the last minutes of the sun.
If I knew the trouble was coming I would do everything to try and minimize that trouble, try to reduce that pain and suffering to as little as possible; and I don’t think I am the only one that would respond that way. I’m guessing that probably most of us would, as well. But not Jesus, why not? Why not? Well as one of the things that stands out, as you read the narratives of Jesus with his disciples in this last time from the other gospels, is the amount of time that he spends with his disciples. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus spends almost half his time in this last week with his disciples teaching them. In the book of John it is almost the whole time, in his narrative, he spent teaching his disciples. What does that say? Jesus spent that time teaching his disciples, teaching them about himself, teaching them about the future, teaching about the Holy Spirit, the Church, what true servanthood looks like. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, this entrance into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday day was also meant to be a teaching moment for his disciples? But if it was, what would he be trying to teach them?
I think a hint comes if you read a little bit further in John, in verses 23 and 24—we stopped at verse 19—it says this:
Jesus replied, ‘The time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. The truth is a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil. Unless it dies, it will be alone, a single seed; but its death produces many kernels, a plentiful harvest of new lives.’
And Peter caught on to that as he was reflecting on Jesus’ life many years after Jesus had died when he was writing his letters. He says in 1 Peter, 4:
Friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead be very glad because these trials will make you partners with Christ in his suffering. And afterwards, you will have the wonderful joy of sharing his glory when it is displayed to all the world.
Perhaps what Jesus is doing here is he is trying to teach his disciples that suffering is part of being a disciple of Christ. Suffering, in other words, goes with naming Jesus as Lord. Our vision says that we are “to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior;” part of following means that we are to use suffering to grow fruit. Jesus might even go so far as if to say “a life without suffering is not worth living.” Suffering is part of the price we pay to grow spiritually, to become more mature. So there is something special that comes out of suffering and I think it is its fruit, the fruit that comes out of that. Think about it. There is no fruit without the pain and the hurt of suffering. I think Jesus wanted to make sure his disciples understood that very clearly because they were “fruit” to Jesus. They were those new kernels that he was referring to. They were the new lives. They also died, didn’t they? And there were people that followed them that became their fruit. We can follow that from generation to generation to the point where, you know what? We are the fruit of someone else. We have the opportunity to be the fruit for people who follow us. Jesus was the first fruits of the Resurrection. Maybe we are now, fruit. And we are the kernel. That is part of what suffering and pain is about.
So what do we do with that? Do we wallow in our own self-pity when we experience pain, when we experience suffering? Do we run from it? Do we try to cover it up with our busyness or try to medicate it with alcohol or pills? Or do we count it all joy? Do we count it all joy because we know that God is working on us? God is working on us to refine us, preparing us to bear fruit. “All things work for good for those that love Christ,” Paul tells us. All things? —Even pain? Even suffering?—can work for good? Do you believe that? Do you believe that in your own life? your friend’s life? a life of a church?
I think God wants to use the pain and the suffering that we all experience in our lives to bear fruit. If we embrace that pain and that suffering, then what kind of fruit might God begin to bring into your own lives, into perhaps your families’ lives, and to the life of this church, even? What could be the possibilities? It could be staggering. Are you willing to take a flying leap, to trust the God who raised Jesus from the dead, to lock arms with the hard times in your life, to see what kind of fruit God might bear out of that?
Mabel lived in a state-run nursing home many years ago. It was not one of those pleasant places you wanted to be. It was overfilled and understaffed with people who were helpless and lonely and for the most part just waiting to die. A man started visiting that nursing home once or twice a week; he never really wanted to go there. The truth is that he was relieved when he left; it was not one of those places you get used to. On one particular day he was walking down the hallway looking for someone who was at least alive enough to be able to receive a flower and a little bit of encouragement from him. He began to walk down a hallway that he had not been before. In the distance he could see a woman who was strapped into a wheelchair. As he got a little closer to her he could see the kind of empty stare in her eyes; her pupils were white, so he could tell that she was blind. She had a large hearing aid so she was almost deaf. As he got close enough to her, he could see that her face had been deformed, (he would find out later on from cancer) so that she was drooling constantly. This was Mabel.
The guy who tells the story says “I don’t know really why I spoke to her, but I did.” He kind of put a flower into her hand and said, “Happy Mother’s Day.” She held the flower and she tried to smell it and then she spoke. As she spoke, her words were garbled and kind of hard to understand; and; as a result; she drooled all the time. But the words that she put together were obvious that they came from a clear mind. She said, “Thank you. It is lovely, but can I give it to someone else? You know, I can’t see, I am blind.” The man said, “Of course.” So he pushed her down the hallway to find some more alert people. They found someone and Mabel held out the flower at that point and said, “Here, this is from Jesus.”
At that point the man knew that this was no ordinary woman and they became fast friends. As they visited over the time that went on from there, she would many times offer him candy that was in a tissue box by her bed. He would read her bible to her; and, as he was reading and he would stop, she would continue reciting that Scripture on from memory. He would take the old hymnal and would sing the songs with her, the ones that she knew by heart, all the old standards. It wasn’t long before the man’s sense of trying to be helpful turned to a sense of wonder. So now he would come with paper and pen and he would write down the things she would say. He honestly would kick himself later on that he didn’t collect them sooner, that he could have put together a book of the things that she said.
One of the stories that he tells is he said, “During one particular hectic week in his life he was in the middle of finals. He was being pulled in ten different directions all at the same time. He really had a hard time trying to keep his mind focused on what was going on; and the thought dawned on him, what does Mabel think about? So the next time he went to see her he asked, “Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here in bed all day?” And she said, “I think about my Jesus.” He thought at that point, he said, “You know, I have a hard time thinking about Jesus for five minutes.” Then he said, “Well, what do you think about Jesus, Mabel?” She said, “I think about how good he has been to me. He has been awfully good to me, you know,” she said, “I am one of those people that is mostly kind and mostly satisfied. A lot of folks really don’t care much what I think, and lots of folks actually think I am kind of old fashioned; but I really don’t care. I would rather have Jesus. He is the whole world to me.”
Mabel had embraced her pain and the suffering that she obviously experienced in her life and was bearing fruit through it. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday to embrace the suffering that awaited him, as well, knowing the fruit that would follow. Jesus is ready to take your pain, your hurt, your suffering and turn it into fruit. Will you let him?
Let’s pray.
Lord God, thank you, that you are a God who uses the things of our lives to produce a life that reflects you. So Lord we ask that you would do that with our hurts, with our pains, the things that we suffer from, knowing Lord that you are a God who can turn it into something beyond our wildest imagination for good. To that end we say thank you, thank you Jesus. Amen.