Reimagining the Good Life with Amy Julia Becker

S2 Ep 104: COVID-19, Holy Week, and Preparing for Suffering with Love

April 07, 2020 Season 2 Episode 104
Reimagining the Good Life with Amy Julia Becker
S2 Ep 104: COVID-19, Holy Week, and Preparing for Suffering with Love
Show Notes Transcript

“Why does God allow the coronavirus to exist?” is the question my kids (and many of us) are asking this week. More generally, why does God allow suffering to happen? Why doesn’t God stop the suffering? I can’t offer any easy answers, but we will tackle this age-old question in today’s episode of the Love is Stronger Than Fear podcast. As we enter the Christian celebration of Holy Week, we’ll look at how Jesus faced his own suffering and death with love. We will also explore how Paul faced the prospect of his own death without fear and with love, and how we too can enter into a place of greater peace, hope, and love without denying our real fears and sorrows. 

Show Notes 

Philippians 1:19-30

Psalm 88

Psalm 63 

Blog post I wrote about how Psalm 63 moves us towards hope

Connect with me:

Thanks for listening!

Note: This transcript is generated using speech recognition software and does contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

1 (2s):
Hello. And welcome to season two of the love is stronger than fear podcast. I'm your host, Amy Julia Becker, and each week we're going to take a look at current events, AKA the Corona virus. And we're going to consider a small portion of Paul's letter to the Philippians. Paul wrote this letter under adverse circumstances, and he wrote about how to know joy, peace, hope, and love. Not by denying the hardship of the moment, but by knowing God in the midst of that hardship, I hope that reading the Bible in our current moment of uncertainty and turmoil will help us to turn away from fear and toward love.

1 (48s):
Thank you for joining me.

2 (53s):
So the other night at dinner, we were sitting around the table and I had listened to a podcast with Ruth Haley Barton, which I recommend she's a great speaker and teacher and writer. And she had said that it might be a good thing with children and with adults to just ask the question, what are you grateful for right now? What are you feeling sad about? And what are you afraid of? So we had this conversation and it was pretty interesting. One of the things that I was fascinated by was the way our kids said that they aren't actually feeling very afraid, but this is kind of a stressful time and how they each are dealing with that stress in very different ways.

2 (1m 32s):
This is a bit of an aside, but it was really fascinating to me to hear MaryLee say, yeah, I'm just sleeping, I'm sleeping more. And William was like, I'm thinking like, that's the way I'm dealing with stress. And so we turned to penny and we said, you know, penny, who's 14 now, how are you dealing with stress? And she said, Oh, I'm texting. So I'm curious to all of you who are listening, how are you dealing with the stress? And is it as clear as sleeping or thinking or texting? I had another friend who recently said, yeah, I just find myself eating more and more chocolate as if the chocolate is going to somehow make me feel so much better.

2 (2m 9s):
And it never does. You know, obviously, uh, serve some purpose for a small period of time, but we're all feeling stressed out. And some of us are feeling that because of fear. And some of us are feeling that because of just worry or the pressure of being under the same roof together, uh, in a way that we haven't been before. But regardless, there are some bigger questions at work here. And the other thing that came up in this dinner conversation was I said to our kids, guys, I'm curious if you have any questions about God during this time.

2 (2m 46s):
And they all said, yeah, why is God letting this happen? Why would God let there be a virus that is traveling around the globe? And that's hurting people, killing people, overwhelming our healthcare system. Why would God let this happen? And so Peter and I talked about, you know, the way in which sin means that we've got a broken and fallen world. And that includes the creation. When we talked about how we might come up with some answers to explain human suffering, we talked about the way love works.

2 (3m 24s):
Um, and I have to say it was not particularly satisfying to our kids. So I've been reflecting on this question of where is God in the midst of suffering? Why would God let things like a novel Corona virus sweep around the globe? What can we make of all of this? And I was running, actually took a run on Saturday morning and was thinking about this. And when I got back, I said to my kids, you know, we don't have neat and tidy answers to this question.

2 (3m 57s):
The Bible doesn't give us neat and tidy answers. And honestly, when people do try to give you answers that fit in a box, it really is trying to put God in a box. And if God fits into a box, God is not God. So I'm not going to try to do that. I'm not going to try to answer all your questions and I'm not going to try to make it all line up and all make sense, because there's a sense less ness to death and especially to death, like what we're seeing right now, which is so unexpected and seems like it could have been avoided if only we could have contained this virus more effectively.

2 (4m 37s):
So I don't have an answer to that. And I don't think the Bible gives us an answer to that, but I do think the Bible gives us a different type of answer. And this is what I said to my kids that love is the answer. Love is the answer that the Bible gives us. And the way that we know the love of God is by looking at the person of Jesus. We look at how Jesus lived. We look at how and why and what Jesus said about how he died.

2 (5m 11s):
And we look at the love of God and that's where we say, okay, I don't understand all the suffering in the world. I don't understand why things happen the way they do. I don't understand the way sin works. And I don't really understand the way human goodness works because we see a lot of human goodness, not just human sin whenever we come upon a crisis. But what I do see in the person of Jesus and in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus is what love looks like.

2 (5m 45s):
And I don't have all the answers, but I know I want to be a part of that. I want to place my life in the hands of the God who is love and who is love even, and always in the face of suffering, not just in the midst of glory, I'm not sure my kids are satisfied with that answer. Uh, when I was putting them to bed that night, Marilee continued to ask some questions and we were singing a song about how God heals our hearts. And she said, let me be clear.

2 (6m 16s):
God has not healed my heart. I am still upset about all of this. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who are listening to this podcast who are still saying, yeah, I still have my questions. I still have my confusion, my doubt, my despair, even. And I hope it's not an completely unsatisfying answer to say, look at Jesus. But I do believe that's the invitation that we are given Christians throughout the ages have said, this is how we know what God looks like is by looking to this person, God, in the flesh.

2 (6m 52s):
And so it's an invitation for all of us, especially as we enter into this week in the Christian year. It's Holy week, it's the end of lent. We're approaching good Friday. The day when Christians Mark the death of Jesus and Easter, the day the Christian celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. And as we do that, that's what I really want to talk about today in conversation with the beginning of this letter, to the Philippians, we're talking about suffering, we're talking about death and we're talking about where to find love and how to root ourselves in love in the midst of suffering and death.

2 (7m 30s):
We here in America, especially in recent years, have been able to avoid a lot of suffering and death. And we've done that through modern medicine, which I'm grateful for, but we've also just pushed death to the margins of our society. We see that with like where cemeteries are built and the way in which we even push off aging. It's pretty funny right now. I've got a lot of friends who are sending me photos of their lines, because what once was blonde now is gray or what once was Brown now is much darker Brown or whatever it is.

2 (8m 7s):
Lots of people who are recognizing that. Yeah. When I can't have the beauty treatments that I'm used to, I look a lot older. So we're doing in kind of superficial and more profound ways. We push death. We push aging to the margins of our society and we are now being forced to confront it. And that is again in these kinds of silly ways, like with our hair color, but also with reports that if a hundred thousand people die in America, as a result of the coronavirus, that's on the good side of this scenario.

2 (8m 43s):
We got report that 10 million jobs have been lost, or at least there are 10 million claims for unemployment. I don't know that I totally understand how the job claims and unemployment numbers work. So all this is to say millions of people out of work. You're in suffering as a result of that. So in the midst of all of that, we are being forced to confront suffering. We're being forced to confront death. And I want to say, it's not new. It feels new. It feels new to me, but it's not new to most humans and it's not new to the church.

2 (9m 15s):
And in fact, this season of lent is meant to be a time of preparation for suffering. And usually the way Christians have practiced, lent and prepared for suffering is through voluntary. Self-discipline so giving up alcohol, giving up, cursing, giving up, shopping, giving something up, doing something voluntary that allows their hearts and minds to be more focused on the ways that God has given up his life for us.

2 (9m 52s):
So there's this degree of like spiritual strength training that's happening. When we voluntarily practice something like giving up alcohol or even something like taking up prayer multiple times a day, any of those things can be forms of voluntary. Self-discipline that li are some sort of like spiritual strength training so that when a time of trial comes, I'm prepared for it. I'm more ready for that. But in some ways I think for me anyway, American life has led to strength training with no race to run, which honestly, I have been a runner for many years and it took a long time for me to ever decide to actually run a race.

2 (10m 36s):
So I am one of the people who does strength training without a race to run, or I have for many, many years, but it did change the running. When I was actually trying to run in a half marathon, it changed the training. It changed the way I thought about it. It changed my devotion to it. It changed my desires. And I think the same is true right now that we are in a time of training, perhaps for a, Hmm. How do I say this?

2 (11m 7s):
We're in a time of training for a time of trial. And what we are going to be called upon to do is to face a reality. We haven't faced for many of us when it comes to suffering and when it comes to death. And I think that if we look to the life of Jesus, especially in the final week of his life, he knew where he was headed. He knew he was heading to the cross to a brutal form of torture and the way he prepared for that is instructive and telling for us in this time, the way he prepared for that.

2 (11m 47s):
Again, it's a simple answer, but it's not an easy one. The way he prepared for suffering and even for death was to purposefully enter into love again and again and again. And if we look at the last supper, the meal he had the night before he died, we see his love. We also see his spiritual practices. We see that he gathered friends together in order to celebrate, we see that he spoke honestly, that he prayed that they had fellowship.

2 (12m 22s):
And what we now call communion with one another, that there was forgiveness offered that there was honest conversation. He predicted Judases betrayal and Peter's denial. He served his disciples. There's also this beautiful little aside in the gospel records of the last supper that after they finished dinner, they sang a song. So there were singing in the midst of this time when Jesus was preparing for death.

2 (12m 55s):
And that all happened in the context of being together. Then he went by himself to a solitary place in order to pray. So he also had a personal and independent, intimate relationship with his father. We too can prepare for suffering and for death, with love. I talked a minute ago about spiritual strength training, and that might sound intimidating. It might sound like a workout, like a list of things that you're supposed to do in order to get ready.

2 (13m 30s):
But the invitation, when it comes to spiritual strength training is simply to enter into the reality that undergirds the universe. The reality of God's love. I talked about this more last week, about what it looks like for us to receive God's love and how we can do that. How we can be the disciples, where Jesus is washing our feet and offering us his love. But I also want to say that we can prepare for suffering and we can participate with love asking the question of what is the work of love that God invites us into today.

2 (14m 9s):
It might be very simple writing a note to someone who is alone or scared. Prayer is an act of love. And by which we are connecting ourselves to other people and to their needs, it might be running errands for an elderly neighbor. It might be sending money to an organization or an individual who needs help right now. What is the work of love that God invites you into today?

2 (14m 41s):
Where are you also in this podcast? I've been reading from the book of Philippians. It's a letter that Paul wrote to a church, a young church, and it's a letter that Paul wrote from prison. And the passage I'm going to read today is a passage in which Paul talks about suffering and he talks about dying. So again, these are not exciting topics. These are not things that are we run to talk about or listen to, but they're really important for us to understand what it means to live in love and to continue to experience joy, purpose, connection, hope in the midst of a really trying time.

2 (15m 22s):
So this is Philippians chapter one verses 19 through 30. I'm reading from the new revised standard version, and certainly feel free to read along or just to listen. Paul writes, I know that through your prayers and the help of the spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance. It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death, for, to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.

2 (16m 5s):
If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. And I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ for that as far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you. Since I'm convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy and faith so that I may share abundantly in your boasting in Christ Jesus. When I come to you again, only live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or I'm absent and hear about you, I will know that you were standing firm in one spirit striving side by side, with one mind for the faith of the gospel and are in no way intimidated by your opponents for them.

2 (16m 56s):
This is evidence of their destruction, but of your salvation. And this is God's doing for, he has graciously granted you the privilege, not only of believing in Christ, but of suffering for him as well, since you are having the same struggle that you saw I had. And now hear that I still have, there are a couple of lines in that passage that might blow our minds a little bit. There's this one for me, living is Christ and dying is gain.

2 (17m 28s):
Most of us do not look upon death as a gain, but that is what Paul is saying here. He also says it's a privilege to suffer for Christ, which again is not the way that we, even people who are followers of Jesus, tend to think about suffering. I do think Paul here is talking a specific experience of suffering. He is in jail because he is proclaiming the gospel of Jesus. Whereas the suffering that many of us are experiencing right now is not explicitly tied to talking about Jesus or to believing in Jesus.

2 (18m 6s):
So it's a different kind of suffering than what Paul is talking about here. Nevertheless, I think what we see here is that Paul was prepared for suffering and for death and the way he was prepared, I think is twofold. And that's what I want to just finish up by talking about. He has a confidence in God's eternal purpose, and he has a confidence that he is a part of that. He's a part of that purpose. So Paul loves life, right? He is excited to be alive.

2 (18m 38s):
He can't wait to tell more people about Jesus. He loves being connected to the Philippians. It grieves him to be in jail in the sense that he's apart from these people that he loves, but he also is not afraid of death. And the reason he's not afraid of death is that he believes that God's love is eternal. The God's salvific work in and through. Jesus is eternal. That Christ will be exalted now as always whether by life or by death, that there's an eternal purpose.

2 (19m 13s):
That he's a part of, but there's an eternal love that he's a part of that. There is life beyond death and it's the new life. It's the good life. It's the life that God offers us eternally in knowing the love of Jesus. So Paul has a confidence in God's eternal purpose that we see here that allows him to love life without fearing death. But I also want to remember and remind ourselves that Paul has a background as a Jewish man in experiences of suffering and bringing those experiences before God.

2 (19m 58s):
The prayer book that both Paul and Jesus would have known is the Psalms. And the Psalms are filled with prayers where people express their suffering and they don't do it through what I heard one person last week called toxic positivity or relentless positivity. So the Psalms are not expressions of God is good all the time. And there's nothing else to say. They're not expressions of, I know it's all gonna work out.

2 (20m 30s):
Everything happens for a reason when God closes a door, he opens a window. Those things may be true on some level, but they often fail to bring comfort. And they often just paper over the gaping wounds that we are experiencing when we suffer. Well, the Psalms do instead. And what we even see in other places in Paul's writing is they express honestly, whatever the current state is of the speaker.

2 (21m 3s):
So the Psalms say, darkness is my closest friend. The psalmists say my soul is so thirsty. I think I'm going to die. And I'm not sure God is here. And I'm, I don't know what to think. The Psalms express joy for sure. But they express grief. They express deep anger. They express all of these things with honesty. I've been so comforted by the invitation to honesty before God that the Psalms offer to us.

2 (21m 41s):
Many of you know that our daughter, penny who's 14 has down syndrome. And when she was first born, I had a really, really hard time just accepting the fact that she might suffer from this condition as it happens. She has not, but there was a lot of fear in me and I wanted to express that to God. And honestly, I couldn't pray for a very long time, but I remember when I finally started to pray again, I pulled out my journal and I still have it. There's a full page. And the only thing on that page, this was my prayer for the day.

2 (22m 15s):
It says, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit. And it keeps going to the end of the page. And then I'm in, I was given permission to pray that way by reading the Psalms. So let me begin by saying, Paul knew that an utterly honest expression of your current state of mind, state of heart is acceptable to God, but then what the Psalms often do.

2 (22m 46s):
And what we certainly see Paul doing is they take this present moment of despair or hopelessness or suffering or grief. And they, they anchor it. They tether it. And the first place they tether it is to the past, to the experience of God's faithfulness in the past and whether or not we have that personally, we have the stories of God's faithfulness in the past, in the scriptures.

2 (23m 21s):
So we have the stories of God's faithfulness in the past, and we can go back and we can hold on to times when God has shown up. When we have known the love of God, when we have known the faithfulness of God. So that's one tether. And then what the Psalmist often do is they go to the future and they say, here's what I hope for. And we see this in this passage where Paul is writing with hopefulness. Yes, but he's suffering. And he knows the Philippians are suffering, but he is looking to the faithfulness of God that he has known in the past.

2 (23m 56s):
And his expectation of continued love and faithfulness in the future. And that is what brings him hope. That is what anchors him. And doesn't set him free, floating into despair. So as we enter into this Holy week, as we look ahead to good Friday and Easter, and as we look at news reports of death, tolls that are rising and of suffering, that is going to continue around the globe for quite some time.

2 (24m 29s):
We're not going to answer the question of where is God when we suffer in some two plus two equals four kind of way. But we are invited to pay attention, to love, to the love of Jesus in his life and in his death to the love of other people, to acts of kindness and patience and self sacrifice, Two moments of connection. We're invited to look to the love that is all around us.

2 (24m 59s):
And we were invited to anchor ourselves to root ourselves. As I talked about last week in the love of God, the eternal love that promises to carry us and to hold us now. And for all eternity, it is that love that Rose Jesus from the grave. It is that love that conquered death. And it is that love that we celebrate on Easter. So wherever you are right now, but especially if you are in a time of suffering, I invite you to be honest with me,

1 (25m 35s):
Scott, about exactly where you are. And when you're able to look back to stories of God's faithfulness in your own life or in those around you or in the Bible, and to look forward to a day when love is all that remains. Thanks again for tuning in to the love is stronger than fear podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more resources at my website, Amy, Julia, becker.com.

1 (26m 8s):
And if you found today's episode helpful, please share it with friends and take a minute to rate and review it wherever you find your podcasts, see you next week.