Worship Focus for the Eighth Week after Pentecost: To Feel Pain is to Be Alive

Scriptures for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67, Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Some may know that I have been helping my brother in law as he struggles to overcome a narcotics addiction. This past Saturday I took him to a hospital to begin a detox regimen. I have been talking to him or visiting with him each day. Today when he called me I could tell that he was not a happy camper. He was angry and agitated and complained about how the hospital personnel were not adequately responding to his many discomforts due to withdrawal. I called the hospital to get a progress report. They explained that they were doing everything possible to safely make him comfortable but that they could not just keep pumping meds into him that would “mask” the realities of his condition.

My brother in law was complaining about pain in his joints and throughout his body. He desperately wanted some meds to take away the pain. As I thought about this, I came to a weirdly encouraging thought. For the first time in a long time, he was feeling pain. In a sense to feel pain is a strong indicator that one is alive. For the last four years my brother in law has been avoiding physical and emotional pain by deadening it with narcotics. As a result he has become a shell of himself; sort of a walking zombie. Now he is in a place where they are slowly “unmasking” the pain. In a sense my brother in law is coming to life. No doubt he still has a long way to go. When he completes detox, he will be tempted to bolt and go back to self medicating the pain away. So if he happens to come to mind, please keep him in your prayers. He desperately needs prayer in order to complete this “resurrection” from a dead state.

Most of us may never deal with the slow death that comes from alcoholism or drug addiction, but all of us in some way contend with this same death power. To feel pain means that we are alive. But it is natural to avoid pain. All of us carry deep emotional wounds inflicted through this process we call life. Some have deeper wounds than others but we all carry them. In our quest to avoid pain, we find ways to mask it. Being overly busy, relentlessly striving for success, workaholism, shopping sprees, running up debt, eating disorders, gambling, pornography, promiscuity, unhealthy and abusive relationships, escape activities (being consumed by entertainment and video games), isolation, religious fanaticism and legalism, and on and on are all ways that we try to deaden pain. All of these things kill us slowly as they take more and more control over our ability to freely love God and others. To be alive is to love and to love is to risk pain. So you can see how easy it is to get sucked in by the heavy yoke of death.

Like my brother in law, we all need a resurrection from our pain numbing addictions of choice. But to experience a resurrection we have to overcome our fear of pain. To be fully alive is to feel pain. God in no way is a sadist, but pain can be His gift. If we feel pain it tells us that something is wrong or out of balance in our lives. Pain helps to keep us alive by warning us. The challenge is to deal with the root cause of the pain rather than constantly trying to mask it.

In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

We find comfort in this scripture and we should. But let’s think about it a bit. First of all Jesus does not say that if we come to Him that we will have no yoke at all. He says that His yoke is easy and burden is light. I’m afraid that our natural interpretation is that Jesus is saying that he will alleviate all pain. But I don’t think that is what he is saying. Jesus says, “For I am gentle and humble of heart.” To take on Jesus’ yoke means that we become inseparably linked to Him. We are to learn from Him. We are to take on His gentleness (in Greek, meekness), and humility. It was precisely those two characteristics which allowed Jesus to accept the pain of the cross.

Philippians 2:5-8 says, Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, *did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!

*This line well describes the idea of meekness. Jesus did not inappropriately exploit his power.

When we “learn of Him” and take on these same characteristics of meekness and humility we will also suffer as Christ did. In a sense Jesus calls us to come alive to His pain. In order to do that, we must first recognize the pain in our own lives. We must realize that our pain avoidance behaviors are indeed heavy and burdensome yokes that drive us and choke the life out of us. In order to lose that yoke of burden, we must come to Christ honestly by acknowledging our pain. We must honestly confess that our pain numbing activities are cutting us off from Christ, our source of real life. In a sense Jesus calls us to come and die to death and come alive to life in Him. It is ironic that many of the things that consume us and that deceptively make us feel that we are living, are really the things that are killing us spiritually (and sometimes, like with my brother in law, also physically).

We must also be careful that our worship and prayer activities don’t just become another exercise in numbing pain. Many people constantly seek emotional “highs” in worship and mountain top prayer experiences. Yes, God can touch our emotions deeply during worship and prayer. But true worship and contemplation are not emotional escapes from pain. Worship and prayer should bring us into the light of God’s presence. That can often be a painful experience because we are then forced to see ourselves and this world in the light of God’s truth. In that sense worship and prayer can be both hard and painful and yet healing and transformative. It is in worship and prayer that we are able to “come to Him” and trade our death yokes for Christ’s yoke of life and peace. As we often sing in our church, “In the safety of this place, I’m longing to pour out my heart.” Worship and prayer should create a safe place for us to go deep into the pain of our hearts and pour them out before God. Worship and prayer create a place where we begin to discover that the pain in our own hearts is the same pain and woundedness that is experienced by all of humanity. It is that pain which Jesus accepted on the cross and it is the pain that we accept when we take on God’s heart of love and compassion for this world. It is through coming to terms with our own wounds that we can truly minister to others. I believe this is Christ’s yoke that we take on. It is a yoke of pain. But more importantly it is the only yoke of peace and healing rest.