What God Gives

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/083026.cfm 

In today’s first reading, we hear the prophet Jeremiah complain that he is suffering beyond what he can bear.  In response to his preaching, his audience called him “a madman who poses as a prophet.”  They whipped Jeremiah 39 times and publicly humiliated him, locking him up in stocks where he was abused by passersby.   As Jeremiah says, “All day long I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.”  He curses the day that he was born, and asks, “Why did I come forth from the womb, to see sorrow and pain, to end my days in shame?”  

Sometimes, when people are suffering, we say the expression, “God will never give you more than you can handle.”  These words are meant to bring comfort and are said with good intentions.  Jeremiah reminds us today, however, that there are times when people do, in fact, experience more pain than they can handle.  Being told otherwise can backfire by downplaying their experience.  I don’t mean to embarrass you if you have ever said these words as they come from a place of love.  In today’s homily, I am going to suggest an alternate phrase and explore the question of how we should respond to suffering.   

Following God is not a guarantee of happiness, wealth, and avoiding conflict.  If anything, it is more likely that we do NOT experience those things in this world.  Jesus says, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  

Jeremiah protests the suffering that he experiences from following God to God himself, saying, “You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped; you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.” Jeremiah is far from the only religious person to complain like this to God.  St. Teresa of Avila was thrown from a wagon into mud and nearly drowned while trying to found a new Carmelite mission.  She told God, “If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few of them.”

When people are in deep pain, it is natural to be angry with God, yet it is worth asking what role God plays.  Revisiting the expression, “God never gives us more than we can handle,” we should revisit the first clause: “God never gives.”  Is God truly responsible when we suffer? Does God cause it?  If God does cause us to suffer, then we do not have a God of love, but a monster who enjoys torturing and tormenting us.    

Catholic theology addresses this problem by identifying God as the first cause of existence.  The world was created by God and is always sustained by him.  All things are ultimately moving to fulfill His plan for Creation.   Yet, God does not cause everything that happens in the world.   The world is full of so-called second causes.  

For example, God created the natural laws of the universe, like gravity.  When an object falls to the ground, God did not directly cause it, though he created the conditions and rules that govern its motion.  The free actions of human beings are another secondary cause.  When a person acts in a way that directly harms themselves or someone else, we should not attribute it to God.  God gives us freedom and the agency to help or hurt each other. To follow his covenant or to break it.  We are not controlled like puppets.  

Events also occur because of chance or randomness, meaning a kind of built-in unpredictably to reality.  And some events happen because of the reality of evil.  The world is broken, and bad things happen to good people.  Sometimes this evil is attributable to supernatural causes, like the demonic, other times to human or natural causes.  [Finally, God does sometimes miraculously intervene in the world.  These interventions can be big or small, but they are usually very subtle.]  

God does permit evil in this world, but God does not cause evil.  And God does not want us to suffer.  Suffering and evil are not good.  The good news is this: God is with us in the midst of our suffering.  God took on the form of a human being, becoming incarnate as Jesus, to suffer with us, and to announce the ultimate defeat of death and evil.  For reasons unknown to us, our experience of suffering did not immediately end with the resurrection.  People continue to hurt and to die, and evil continues.   In fact, suffering is an unavoidable part of our lives.  Theologians call this the problem of evil and we don’t have an answer to it.  

What we do have is a call to care for each other, to alleviate the suffering of those around us, to resist evil, and to labor to undo the brokenness of the world.  Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow him.  Trying to avoid the cross results in Jesus’ rebuke to Peter.  He tells him to stop thinking like human beings do and to think as God does.  

In this homily, I made two objections to the phrase, “God will never give you more than you can handle.”  I promised a recommendation for what to replace it with.  Here it is: “Sometimes life gives us more than we can handle, but God will never leave us alone.  He walks with us, helps us to carry our cross, and leads us to our new birth in the world to come.  And he commands us to help others with their burdens along the road. “