Have you ever seen the Japanese art of Kintsugi? Kintsugi takes a broken piece of pottery and mends the pieces together using a lacquer mixed with a precious metal like gold, silver, or platinum. The result of this is an amazingly beautiful creation. You can see an example on the front of your bulletins. Kintsugi is part of a philosophy in Japanese culture that our brokenness, our suffering, is part of our larger story. And with Kintsugi, the mended places actually make the piece stronger. Does that mean we should break all of our pottery and repair it with gold lacquer? No! But what it means is that something good can come out of something bad or painful. Something good can blossom out of loss. When we talk about suffering in our lives and in our world, the art of Kintsugi, I believe, is a helpful metaphor. Author and abuse survivor Cheryl Rainfield once wrote, “My scars show pain and suffering, but they also show my will to survive. They’re part of my history that’ll always be there.”

Today, we look at the mystery of suffering. One of the most asked questions about God is “Why would a good God allow there to be suffering in the world?” And to be totally honest, there is no good answer to that question. And as humans with inquisitive minds, we don’t like that. We want a clear, reasonable answer. This is true for all of the mysteries of the faith we’ve been exploring over the past few weeks, but our desire for an answer to the question of suffering is definitely the one we wrestle with the most, primarily because suffering affects us all. None of us are immune to suffering. No matter how cautious we are in life, no matter what steps we take to protect ourselves, suffering finds us. And it changes our lives.

So what do we do with this question of suffering? How do we reconcile the presence of suffering in our world with a Creator and Sustainer God who we proclaim to be good? Perhaps our Scriptures for this morning can help us sort that question out. In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we read, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” I think this passage gives us an interesting, yet somewhat problematic, take on the question of suffering. While it doesn’t specifically use the word suffering, phrases like “pass through the waters…and through the rivers” and “walk through the fire…and the flame” certainly allude to times of struggle and suffering in our lives. And the response to that suffering is that God will be with us and will keep us from being overwhelmed by those sufferings.

Now, I don’t know about you, but there have been moments in my life where I felt like I was overwhelmed by suffering…like I was drowning in the waters. But I came through it. Is that what God is saying to us through Isaiah? Entrepreneur Andy Dunn once wrote, “Tenacity is not about avoiding being overwhelmed but being indomitable in the face of the overwhelming odds.” Now, if you are like me, you may be wondering what indomitable means. When something is indomitable it is unyielding, determined, unbreakable. If you’ve never seen the show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” it is a humorous yet poignant show about the life of a woman who had been kidnapped as a teen and forced to live in a bunker with her kidnapper and 3 other women for 15 years. The show depicts her struggling to rebuild her life. And despite her positive attitude and hard work, she still faces many difficulties. But at one point in the show she says something that I think is important for us as we think about suffering. She says, “Life beats you up. You can either curl up in a ball and die, or you can stand up and say, ‘We’re different and you can’t break us!’” I believe that part of what Isaiah is saying is that God helps us to do that, to stand up and say, “We’re different and you can’t break us.”

But is that the answer we want when it comes to suffering and God? Do we want to hear all the platitudes about God? Like: “God will not give you more than you can handle” or “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” or some variation of “Everything happens for a reason.” Do these phrases people use really provide us any comfort when we are facing tough times?

I read a book recently called Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow. I picked this book off the shelf of the Gering Public Library thinking that it looked like a nice light-hearted read. And for the first half of the book, it seemed to be exactly that. But then it was revealed that the main character, Simon, had been involved in a school shooting. He was the only survivor in his fifth grade classroom. The tone of the book completely changed at that point. Simon and his parents had moved away from Omaha to a small Nebraska town with no internet or microwaves or cell phones in order to escape the attention and just be themselves. Once their secret is revealed, the news spreads quickly around the town. Simon’s dad is a Catholic deacon and liturgical director at the local Catholic church. And he stands up on Sunday to deliver the sermon. And what he says cut me to the quick. And I want to share it with you.

In this sermon, he is talking about the Ascension of Jesus, which B.J. so wonderfully preached about last week for us. And he talks about how the disciples ask Jesus when God is coming. And Jesus says that no one knows. And this is what Simon’s dad says from there:

“We ask Jesus what will happen, and he doesn’t tell us. He won’t tell us. Maybe he can’t tell us. And then he leaves. My brothers and sisters, we are on our own… God loves us…But he sends us out into the world like a parent sending a child to school. We don’t know why. Maybe it’s because he wants us to be free to grow up. But he sends us out into the world, and anything can happen to us there. Anything! We pray but it happens anyway. We ask why and God doesn’t tell us. He won’t tell us. Maybe he can’t tell us. We only know he doesn’t stop it.” Then he takes a long pause before continuing. “It’s not a blessing that my son, Simon was spared…It’s not part of some plan. If I believed that, then I’d also have to believe there was a reason that the others were killed. That it was part of God’s plan to take them.” He pauses again. “God didn’t take them. God doesn’t shoot kids. He didn’t do that to them. There is no plan. Stop saying that.”

(pause to breathe)

Suffering is not God’s plan for us. In fact, God longs to heal us. God longs to make us whole. In the passage we read from 1 Peter, we read, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” The Greek word Peter uses that we translate as ‘anxiety’ is the word merimna. Merimna means the ‘fracturing of one’s being into parts.’ I like that so much. Cast all of your fractured parts on God, because God cares about you. We have so many fractured parts, so many scars, so much brokenness. And Peter says that we can cast those onto God. The word translated as ‘cast’ can also mean ‘pass on.’ We can pass-on our fractured parts to God. God accepts our brokenness because God cares and God passes on to us the restored holiness of the risen Christ. I’m reminded of Jesus’ words to his disciples, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.” Cast all of your fractured parts on God, for God cares about you.

Television personality, Linda Hogan, once said, “Some people see scars, and it is wounding they remember. To me they are proof of the fact that there is healing.” Why suffering exists is a mystery. Why God doesn’t just come in and remove the suffering is an even bigger mystery. There is no answer…at least no answer that is sufficient. April shared with me this week about a question she heard someone ask about suffering. If we were to ask God why suffering exists and why God doesn’t remove it, what answer could God give that would be satisfactory? What answer could God give that would comfort us? There isn’t one. All we know is that suffering exists. And we have to believe that God is good anyway. If God is not good, then what hope do we have for a better life?

I want to share with you a beautiful poem by James Raven entitled “A Fractured Rock.”

I feel but a fractured rock.
With all the hard edges and rigid pieces still weighted to the ground below. Yet with fissures running through so many parts.
Always told to be hard, strong, and unyielding the cracks have still appeared.

Drops of rain have fallen upon me and worked their magic by eating me away.
These drops of rain be they
life,
loss,
grief,
laughter all the moments of life that rest upon my spirit
subtly creating cracks.

I hope only that beauty still remains in the spiderweb of cracks upon me. That I can have the strength left for one more day to
See the sun rise and set
The moon in the night sky
The bird upon my hand

I can look at the rain on the horizon and see the beauty of the coming moments and the next crack in the rock.

We all have fractured parts. We’ve all experienced suffering. And we are certain to face more before our lives on this earth are over. And even though we don’t understand why that suffering exists, we know that God is good and that God cares for us. We know that God can knit our fractured parts back together. We will never be the same, but hopefully we will find ourselves to be a bit stronger. In the meantime, may we cast all our fractured parts on God for God truly cares for us. And may God’s love embrace and surround us through every struggle and painful time of our lives. Amen!