God's Suffering

2026-23
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Good Friday, April 3, 2026
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

Fifty-eight years ago tomorrow, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. In the aftermath, Senator Bobby Kennedy spoke, not knowing that he himself would be gunned down a mere two months later. In his speech he quoted this from Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Aeschylus wrote these words five centuries before Jesus. A couple centuries before that, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote about an unnamed, mysterious Suffering Servant:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases … he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

Aeschylus, an ancient Greek. Isaiah, an ancient Hebrew. Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King. The history of the world is the history of human suffering. We know it all too well.

Allow me to place another perspective alongside these: a present-day fictional character by the name of Eleanor Shellstrop. In the TV show The Good Place, which I’ll probably never stop referencing in sermons, the main character Eleanor is consoling a distraught demon who is coming to understand the human experience. She tells him:

“Do you know what’s really happening right now? You’re learning what it is like to be human. All humans are aware of death. So … we’re all a little bit sad, all the time. That’s just the deal.”

The demon grumbles, “Sounds like a crappy deal.”

Eleanor goes on: “Well, yeah, it is, but we don’t get offered any other ones. And if you try to ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. I’ve been there—everybody’s been there. So don’t fight it. And in the words of a very wise Bed, Bath and Beyond employee I once knew, ‘Go ahead and cry all you want, but you’re going to have to pay for that toilet plunger.’”[1]

On Sunday I talked about belief and the many off-ramps from belief that Jesus keeps providing for us, should we want to take an exit from a life of faith. Judas took the off-ramp of shortsightedness leading to betrayal. Peter took an off-ramp when he was questioned by strangers about whether he even knew Jesus. And how about us?

The dilemma of sadness, suffering, and despair is absolutely, positively, the number one off-ramp from faith for people in our time, and maybe in every time and place. It’s such a glaring, inviting off-ramp that most people don’t even investigate it very deeply. If God exists and is good, then suffering could not be allowed! We run from pain, avoid suffering, seek contentment and relaxation and perhaps even altered states—anything to keep the inherent sadness of human life at bay. But there’s nothing we can do to escape it, not really. The history of the world is the history of human suffering.

Even so … the degree to which a given person suffers in life is no indicator of their likelihood to leave faith behind. There’s just no correlation there. Some of the most God-trusting people in the world—some of the most joyful even in the face of adversity—are those who have suffered more than most. I wonder how that can be?

Last week I picked up a book I’ve been meaning to read for years: The Trinity and the Kingdom by German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who died only a couple years ago. In this book Moltmann writes, “The history of the world is the history of God’s suffering.”[2]

Not merely our suffering. God’s suffering. Because to live is to suffer, and we believe in the Living God. So what else could the history of the world be? Yet it’s unsettling, isn’t it?, to think that God could suffer. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian heresies were claims that God could not possibly experience suffering, because that would make God less than perfect. Therefore even Jesus could not have experienced pain—he only looked like he did.

Several schools of thought logicked their way in this direction to some degree, including Gnosticism, Docetism, and Theopaschitism. The early church decided they were all heretics. Jesus of Nazareth really, truly suffered, and Jesus of Nazareth was really, truly God.

Moltmann goes even further. He argues that if we look at Jesus on the cross and believe we see something of God there, we must then conclude that God is Trinitarian in nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One sermon is too brief to explain his thesis clearly. But I’ve actually thought this way for a long time.

See, if Jesus is not God, but merely a man anointed and sent by God, then a holy man suffers and dies, but we can’t get a read on how God feels about that. Some strains of Christianity will insist that Jesus came to earth specifically to be killed for us, as a sacrificial substitute, taking our rightful place in the machine of divine justice, to pacify a God who is constantly enraged by our sins.

Well, I do agree that Jesus had to die. Why? Because he was born. Did you ever think of that? Jesus was always going to die in one way or another, no matter the circumstances of his life.

But I don’t believe Jesus had to die in agony on a cross. This was not a necessary component of God’s plan. It was just very, very predictable, because of how we humans are. We’re all a little bit sad all the time, and we don’t like that feeling, so we make little safety bubbles for ourselves, and some of those bubbles are thin indeed and always ready to pop and expose us to all the pain the world can throw at us. When our bubbles are threatened, then, it doesn’t take much to convince us to kill our fellow humans.

That’s how humans are. I don’t believe that’s how God is. If God is Love, God cannot be Hate.

But if God is love, then God must know what it is to suffer.

If God allows all of us to be born, and to experience our share of joy but also suffering in uncontrollable measure, then it may appear that the will of the Lord is to crush us with pain, just like we hear of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. If this anonymous servant suffers on our behalf, but the servant cannot be identified with God who allowed it to happen, then what’s the point?

If Jesus is not himself God in the flesh, and God sends Jesus to be brutally murdered, then God is merely cruel and abusive.

Moltmann arrives at the same conclusion. If Jesus on the cross is not God, then our relationship with God is not repaired. It is only made worse.

But if Jesus is God, then we see God stepping right into our suffering alongside us. God says, “I know, I gave you a life with lots of pain in it. It would be unjust of me to do that if I weren’t willing to join you in it. So here I am, ready to share one short human life on your terms, and I have an urgent message for you: the only purpose of suffering is to ensure your freedom to love. It’s the only way it could ever work. That’s why mercy is the only justice I care about. Forgiveness is the only way to share abundance. And love is the very stuff I am made of.

“If, upon hearing this message, you welcome me and love me, great—we’ll all celebrate and party together. If you hate me—well, let me put it this way. I love you far more than you could ever hate me. I mean what I say about mercy and forgiveness and love, so I must willingly accept the suffering you inflict. If you kill me, you’ll just prove my point. And this, too, will be made right. You’ll see.”

God is not surprised by our hate. Hate is possible because we have choices, but habitual hate inevitably makes us miserable. When we use our freedom to hate, we cut ourselves off from the joy God has always intended for us. That joy can be possible even in a world of suffering and tragedy. The work of living is to stay tuned in to the joy and to share it with others instead of giving in to our worst fears. That’s some of the most difficult work there is.

But that which we cannot accomplish ourselves, God will ultimately see through to completion. How do we know this? Because even God became a victim of our hate … and endured it without ever seeking vengeance.

What we have, we Christians, is this persistent belief, recorded in ancient story, lived in actual human history, that all of this is going somewhere. That God is doing a new thing. That beyond the depths of our pain lies a resurrection we can only hope for. Do you hope for resurrection? Do you anticipate resurrection? Have you seen resurrection? Can you invite others into your belief? Can you allow others to help you believe?

There are always more off-ramps from a life of faith. You can leave anytime you like. But there are also more on-ramps, just around the corner, at the very next clover leaf. Our suffering need not lead us to an exit—most especially not if there are others to help carry it. Because a life of mercy, forgiveness, love … these are the only way to abundant joy, even alongside all that pain. And that’s exactly the life Jesus lived and showed us how to live. Amen.

[1] The Good Place, episode “Existential Crisis,” season 2, episode 4.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 4.