Courtenay Evans, “Just Like the Mountain, You Stay”

Firstly, a very happy Father’s Day to all the Father’s out there on this beautiful Sunday morning. Father’s Day can be quite a joyful day, but it can also be quite a sorrowful day. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, welcome.

I am going to begin this sermon in a contemplative way. As we take this short journey together, you may close your eyes, or maybe gently gaze at the pew in front of you, or if you’d prefer, just listen.

In your mind’s eye begin to see the image of a mountain. Using your imagination, imagine that you are hiking towards this mountain. You see that it is summer. The sun is hot and high, other people are swimming in rivers and lakes, you hear laughter and feel joy. Yet mosquitos swarm and afternoon thunderstorms loom, and the joy is now met with discomfort and trepidation.

And through it all, like the mountain, you stay.

As you continue walking towards the mountain, Summer begins to shift into Fall and the air around you cools, fewer people are hiking the trails and swimming in the waters. The beauty of Fall ebbs as the leaves begin to fade and fall and die away. A sense of sadness arises but also relief, as the wintering season of slowing down approaches.

And through it all, like the mountain, you stay.

You turn a bend, and Fall begins to shift to winter, the clouds darken the sky, the light begins to fade, the snows come, the ground freezes, the animals hibernate. A longing for the light and warmth to return arises. Loneliness sets in.

And through it all, like the mountain, you stay.

And lucky, as we’re leaving winter and we all know what comes next. As you reach the mountain, Spring begins, the sun returns, the air becomes warmer, the snow melts and the rivers broaden and flow, the flowers bloom, the leaves turn green, all the people return to the trails. And hope fills your heart with the new season up ahead.

And through it all, like the mountain, you stay.

Now gradually opening your eyes if they are closed. And collectively taking a big inhale together! You might not have seen any of these images or felt any of these emotions and that’s totally okay. Maybe it was simply an opportunity for quiet and stillness amid the hurried and busyness of your day. Whatever the case, as we move through this sermon, and as we think of the various seasons that this mountain endures, I invite you to think of this contemplation as a metaphor for the various seasons of our lives. And as an invitation to stay.

In our reading today, St. Paul exclaims that we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Suffering is a commonality that is shared amongst all of humanity. We’ve all experienced disappointment, loss and broken hearts. We also all share in the tension that adversity is not evenly distributed— “I shouldn’t be in misery, as he’s experienced much more hardship than I.” Or the opposite, “she shouldn’t be sorrowful considering all the sadness in the world right now.” We’ve all said this to ourselves. Many also see suffering as those acute times in our lives of deep darkness, pain, loss and failure that change our geography; we aren’t left the same afterwards; yet somehow, life has returned.

And endurance. If St. Paul is correct that suffering produces endurance, then what is endurance? Endurance is the capacity to withstand wear and tear; or the capacity to withstand hardship. The capacity, like the mountain, to stay and face both the adverse and abundant seasons of our lives.

In general, we tend to want to completely escape and run from our suffering. Understandably. I include myself in this generalization! We tend to think that when we suffer, all of life is misery and suffering. We also tend to think that only when we remove all suffering can we be happy. Both these viewpoints are mistaken. C Fitzsimons Allison, a retired Anglican Bishop wrote: “while the desire to escape suffering is understandable, to do so, leaves us bereft of true life, peace, fellowship, endurance, character, hope and most of all, God’s Comforter.”

God is our Comforter, and God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. One definition of the Holy Spirit literally means, “called alongside,” to help. To walk alongside us in our suffering; to give us the endurance to stay amid the sorrow; and to grant us new eyes to see in the dark…and to know confusion, frustration, loss and doubt. Yet, through faith, we trust that the comfort our souls seek, but cannot find, will eventually come. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin reminds us, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.”

The lotus flower is a beautiful white and pink flower that emerges only from the mud. Evening primrose and moonflower blooms can only be seen at night. The last place and hour one would think that beauty and growth could be found. Yet, strikingly, in both the mud and in the darkness, here these flowers thrive.

Suffering is a place of deep pain, but we are able to stay and to endure these seasons of suffering knowing that these seasons are the places where we encounter God the most. We look to the cross knowing that God is most present in the darkest moments of our lives. Jesus is very present amid our suffering.

We also often believe that suffering only happens to us, but we forget that suffering also works in us…. producing the character that St. Paul mentions. Producing a hope within us. Producing a hope that will not disappoint.

Jesus takes our suffering, transforming it into the very path by which we learn to love God and by which we allow ourselves to be loved by him. We are stripped away of self through our suffering, producing a character with a different geography.

Antithesis to the old saying of “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger,” Tish Harrison Warren, the author of Prayer in the Night, humbly writes “what doesn’t kill me makes me weaker, not stronger. And she continues by saying, and maybe that is the point-that the way of glory is discovered through, and only through the cross. In life’s school of love, suffering, what doesn’t kill us—makes us more alive to our need and helplessness and, therefore, more able to give and receive love….making us more open to our Beloved Ness in God, to our own vulnerability and to the vulnerability of others. Endurance gives us an impenetrable toughness but does not harden us but rather softens our character to the great love of God.”

So, like the mountain, we stay.

We stay, knowing that Jesus wept and expressed his pain on the cross; he cried out to God in total anguish and unbelief; he, being fully human, understands and feels our suffering.

We stay, because we have hope in the Cross, we have hope in the promise of the forgiveness of our sins and of our salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection. And while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, and we have been justified by his blood.

We stay because as St. Paul writes in Romans 8: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We stay because we know that we are never alone in our suffering. We trust that in the darkness, Jesus is with us, and through faith we trust that life is renewing, that somehow, beauty and joy can and will be found in the mud and in the darkness.

We stay because we build endurance through our suffering, and character in our hope in Christ, more alive in our need and helplessness, and more able to give love and receive the great love of God. A hope that does not, and will never disappoint.

And as Tish Harrison Warren noted, those whom she knows who have faced their suffering, “in the process, they have become beautifully weak, not tough as nails, not bitter or rigid, but men and women who bear vulnerability with joy and trust. They are almost luminescent, like a paper lantern, weak enough that their light shines through.

Amen.