On Making Sense of Suffering

I had high hopes for this sermon. My task was to bring together three things. First, a suggestion from one of you to deal with the topic of suffering and pain based on an op/ed that recently appeared in The New York Times. Second, to talk about The Trinity, as the Christian way of saying God is love. That God is not just a unitary being, out there somewhere, but rather relationship at the heart and ground of reality; a kind of relationship we symbolize by naming it Father, Son and Holy Spirit; a kind of relationship that makes it possible for us to say that God, at the beginning, and from the beginning is love. Finally, I wanted to talk about the second reading (Romans 5: 1 – 5), where Paul discusses his experience of suffering -- not that God wants suffering, or that suffering is somehow pleasing to God, but rather that God, particularly as seen in retrospect, works through suffering, and when it doesn't destroy the person, can in some cases be redemptive insofar as it produces endurance, character and hope. Those three points -- the article, and its topic of suffering; the Holy Trinity; and Paul's experience of suffering, and what he gained in and through it -- are not going to be explicitly stated in the sermon, but they will inform it. So, listen carefully.