Pain-Embracing a path to Healing

Psalm Introduction:
The verse we look at today in the Psalm is verse 4a. We have heard it translated, “Even when I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, you are with me” Maybe a better translation is, “even when I walk through deep shadows or the darkest places you are with me.” What is interesting to me is that all the verses before this one have the shepherd, God doing the leading and guiding. “You make me lie down in green pastures, you lead me to the waters of rest and relaxation, you restore my soul. You lead me on the right paths.” But this verse changes. Last week we talked about how sheep have a tendency to meander, and get lost. It is when they stop following the shepherd that they can find themselves going places that get them in trouble. Yet, the implication is that it is then that God follows us. That God comes looking for us, even in the deepest and darkest places we may find ourselves.

Read Psalm 23:1-4a

SERMON:
Have any of you ever thought about pain, emotional pain, physical pain, spiritual pain, as a gift of grace. Really, have you ever thought about those deep places of hurt as an expression of God’s unconditional love, or at least a doorway to that love?

I must admit, that over the last four months, with my shoulder problems I have thought a lot about pain. As much as I have lamented the pain, I also know it has been my friend. No, I am not masochistic. I realize that my pain was the first step in my being healed. The pain alerted me to the fact that there was something wrong in my shoulder. And because of that, I was able to seek help before the bone spurs were able to do any further damage. My suspicion is that many of you are like me and have known people who have had cancer, but never had any accompanying pain with it. And because of that, they did not discover the cancer until it had reached a stage that it could not be healed. Even now, after the surgery, my pain reminds me that my shoulder is not yet ready to do some of what I ask it to do. It tells me very clearly, I have only healed this much, so take it slower so you do not undue the healing that has already taken place. Even now my pain protects me from myself. Again, my point being, as much as I cannot wait for this pain to go away, I realize it befriends me in my healing process.

But it is this understanding of pain that helps me see it as an act of grace, or maybe an indicator that I and we are in the need of grace, which is an act of grace in itself. That pain can indeed be our friend just as readily and importantly in our emotional and spiritual lives as it is in our physical lives. I believe this recognition is important as we have a tendency to label feelings as good and bad. Certainly we would label feelings such as loneliness, rejection, emptiness, meaninglessness as bad. Anything that brings us discomfort in our lives, we judge as being bad. And conversely, we would label such feelings as joy, happiness, love, and fulfillment as positive and good. The reality is feelings are neither good nor bad, they just are. They are simply indicators of what we may be experiencing in our present. And in those experiences, if we discover some that indicate something is not right, or we are not feeling fully alive, we can know there are places in our lives we need to seek some healing and maybe a new direction.

I suggested on Ash Wednesday that the season of Lent is a time for identifying those places we are separated from God. I also suggested that we do this, not so we can experience ourselves as bad, to give a negative label to who we are, but to see those places we are not fully connected to God, not fully connected to grace, so we may make new decisions and take new paths that bring us back into at-one-ment with God. Atonement or at-one-ment is our theological word for salvation, for understanding what it means to find healing and wholeness in our lives. The founder of our denomination, John Wesley called this feeling of separation “Prevenient Grace” which literally means that which comes before grace. Those feelings that let us know we are separated from the one who brings life.

What a totally different way of understanding the real feelings we have in our lives than what we are usually led to understand. So often we are told that we feel these pains of life as God’s punishment for doing wrong. The Letter of First John tells us, “God is love.” And it goes on to say, “There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out fear for fear has to do with punishment.” God is about entering into the places of hurt and pain and brokenness, so God may bring grace, and healing to our lives.

This is what the passage from the 23rd Psalm is saying to me today. Even when I walk through the darkest places, even when my journey leads me through the paths of shadows, indicating a path where the light is blocked, I know God is with me. And even more important God understands. The reason I put out the plea every year to not miss any of the Holy Week services, is because they are the services that truly help us to understand God’s amazing grace. On the cross of Good Friday, where Jesus has just been rejected, even by his closest friends and colleagues, who is killed as a criminal for simply loving the people the powers to be did not, who experiences the deepest parts of humanity’s inhumanity toward each other, Jesus still prays, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. There is no pain that we can experience that God has not felt first.

Who can possibly even begin to understand the depth of this kind of unconditional love? Yet, this is the love in our midst today, and everyday in our walk with God. This is the reason we celebrate this sacrament today we call Holy Communion. To remember and re-experience the grace of God for each and every one of us. We all face those times of shadow in our lives, but we are never alone. God is with us, and God seeks to guide us through, so we may again know the moments of green pastures, and the waters of rest and relaxation.

I know there is the tendency, if you have been hurt, to do all you can to protect yourself from hurting again. I understand if you have been raped or abused that you will put up all kinds of physical and emotional walls to protect yourself from experiencing the feelings again. But the reality is, feelings just are. To protect yourself from feeling one emotion, you numb yourself to all feelings. And no matter what you are trying to protect yourself from, can it ever be worth not feeling love and meaning and joy again. Can it be worth not being able to trust and feel comfort with another. The truth being, can it be worth not feeling the presence of God in your life.

If you are hurting somewhere, if you feel disjointed, if you are wandering without purpose, embrace what you feel, and know God is there with you. Open your heart, and know God seeks to lead you through and around those places where we fear and hurt so we can know the fullest presence of God’s love in our lives.

Come the table of grace is set, let us accept its gift of salvation for us all.

Sermon delived by Rev. George Cushman on March 2, 2008.