Bearing up

Text: John 16:12-15

Jesus said, I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now……. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago and it’s worth exploring more today, because this is a truth we cannot ignore:  people have to bear things they didn’t think they’d have to, and certainly didn’t want to. And this can be confusing to us as Christians.

Cultural Christianity says stuff like “God won’t give you more than you can handle” or “God won’t let bad things happen to you if you pray and are good.” But this is not what God is about. God is not up there sitting on a cloud with a plan to dole out tragedies to unsuspecting people, betting on just how much pain someone will be able to stand, plotting out suffering. God is not in the tragedy-handing-out business.

And these sayings are not helpful, either, although I know people mean well when they utter them. Because what ends up happening is that folks come to think they deserve the bad things that happen to them, that they aren’t good enough, that they didn’t pray hard enough or pray the right way. They ask why did God let this happen to me - or even worse, why did God do this to me? Why did God give my wife cancer, why didn’t God cure my son when I prayed every single day? Why does God let kids get shot in school? What about the Holocaust?

And they tempt us to blame people for their tragedies and sorrows, God help us.

These adages are pervasive in our society. Some years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book that everyone calls “Why bad things happen to good people.” The thing is, that’s not the title of the book. The book is actually entitled “WHEN bad things happen to good people.”

Because bad things do happen to good people. And not because they didn’t pray the right way or because they’re not good enough or because God is in the handing-out-bad-things business. And this is confusing to us because we want to know why, we want there to be a reason, and sometimes there just isn’t a reason. 

When Jesus said I have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now, he was also telling them about how the Spirit would come to be a guide and companion and advocate and comforter and urging them to stick together as a community in the wake of his death. Cultural Christianity seems to mimic the cultural myths of the rugged individualist, that we are all about going it alone. We all know folks who have disappeared for a while because something awful is going on with them and they feel that they have to hold it together, handle it, all alone, that it’s weak to share their pain. And maybe we’ve been those folks ourselves. 

But Biblical Christianity is about community and a willingness to be vulnerable. We bear things together. We bear one another’s burdens, as St. Paul reminded the Galatians. We get through things together and the Bible reminds us that God is always with us - not only in the good times but also, maybe especially, the difficult times, the rotten no good very bad terrible day times. There is no shame that needs to be hidden when bad things happen. Sharing our pain, confusion, sorrow is not just ok, it’s really essential for us to be healthy individuals and a healthy community.

And we do this together, this sharing and bearing, not so we can turn that frown upside down but because life is hard. Life is hard for individuals and life is hard for communities too, especially when bad things happen and when unwanted change is forced upon us. Life is hard and we have to bear things we don’t want to bear and didn’t think we’d ever have to bear. So God gave us the Spirit AND each other and Jesus said stick together, y’all.

This is important for us to consider again today because we are about to welcome six-month old Evelyn Christine Hacker into our community through her baptism. When her parents and godparents present her, I’m going to ask all of you if you will do all in your power to uphold her in her life in Christ. In other words, I will be asking you to commit to being Evelyn’s community, and her parents’ community, too. I will be asking you to be ready to support Evelyn and her family if they have to bear something they didn’t think they were going to have to bear, to support them through the changes that will inevitably happen in their family as Evelyn grows and she and her parents journey through life together. This is what Christian community is all about. 

And yes, it is different than what our fractured “my team versus your team pull yourself up by your bootstraps rugged individualist” culture prizes. We Christians are called to be different, and sometimes we get confused about that because we think it means we’re not supposed to accept things in our society like same-sex marriage or interracial relationships or the ordination of women or LGBTQ folks. 

But what it really means, this being called to be different, is that we are about love, not judgment. We are about welcome, not exclusion. We are about community, not individualism. We are about bearing one another’s burdens just as we share one another’s joys, not following the get-ahead advice that proudly proclaims every man for himself and you’d better look out for number one. We are called to be better than that - but not holier than thou. We are called to these things as a model for Evelyn and for everyone who is trying to grow up in faith or who is just trying to get through another day.

It would be lovely if we did not have to bear difficult things. It would be great to understand why things turn out the way they do so that we are not so confused by life and its difficulties and hardships. But it is even better to know that we are never alone. Because through the Spirit God is always with us, and we are surrounded by a community of love that will see us through anything, together.

So let’s baptize Evelyn and welcome her into the loving, welcoming, sharing and baring together household of God!