“GRIEF AND COMPASSION” Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8) June 28, 2015 Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT: The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. . . . Though He cause grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His steadfast love.
Lamentations 3:25; 32 (ESV)
When you think about God, what kind of image arises in your mind? There are a lot of different ways in which people look at God. Some people see Him as nothing more than a humorless morality monitor, just waiting for them to mess up so that He can let them have it with all the force of divine justice. Others think of God as a kindly old grandfather of sorts, who thinks that His creatures are irresistibly cute and who’s only half paying attention to them anyway, so He just smiles at everything that they do. And I suppose that there are still others (perhaps the great majority of people, in fact) who see in God an ever-present and ever-willing Helper who, like the fireman or the policeman, doesn’t have a whole lot of impact on their day-to-day living, but He sure comes in handy when they need Him.
This morning’s Old Testament Reading describes God as One who is “good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.” We have to be a little careful with that description, though. We are not being told here that the Lord’s favor is in any way earned or deserved by anything that we do. This passage is not prescribing to us how to go about persuading God to be good to us; it is merely describing what happens in the loving relationship that exists between a good God and His trusting people. God is, in fact, good to everyone; it’s just that most people don’t realize it. “Those who wait for Him,” and “the soul who seeks Him,” are the only ones who are aware of how good God is and who are therefore able to benefit anything at all from His goodness. Something else that we need to remember in this regard is that God’s goodness isn’t always manifested in the things that we think of as goodness. The text of Scripture before us this morning cites two specific examples of the Lord’s goodness: the grief that He brings to us and the compassion that He shows toward us.
The grief that is referred to here is undoubtedly the grief that we experience when we become aware of our sin and its horrible consequences. This happens whenever we come into contact with God’s Law. That is precisely what Jeremiah is referring to here when he speaks of the Lord bringing grief. It is the Law of God that exposes our sin for what it is. It is the Law that threatens us with the righteous anger of a just God. It is the Law that convicts us before God and all humanity. It is the Law that awakens within us the terrors of conscience--the fear and grief that we feel when we become mindful of how we--the very people of God--consistently fail to measure up to what God desires His people to be, thereby incurring His judgment. In our sanitized world of today we don’t hear a great deal about sin and the grief that it causes, but it is real just the same. If you ever have any doubts about that, just take a good look at our world and take note of how corrupt and sinful and broken it is.
The grief that is caused by our sin ought to be obvious. We can see the evidence of it all around us and we experience it in our own lives. But how could the Lord’s prophet possibly speak of this grief as an indication of how God is good to His people? What could possibly be good about the grief caused by sin? The grief that God brings to sinners through His Law is good for them because it drives them to repentance, just as the symptoms of illness or injury drive people to seek healing. You know, people can be very stubborn. They aren’t about to honestly examine themselves or the way that they live on their own, much less make any attempt to change. The late former first lady Betty Ford told about how her family, as difficult as it was for them, confronted her with the problem of her substance abuse. This confrontation caused a lot of grief, both for her and for them, but it was the starting point of turning her life around. People don’t look for help until they “hit rock bottom,” so to speak. God brings sinners to that point with the grief over their sin that He causes for them through His Law.
But the Lord who brings grief to us also shows compassion toward us. The wounds that are inflicted on us by the Law find healing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Gospel solves the problems that are presented by the Law (or, to be more accurate, by our violation of the Law). The Gospel is Good News for us, corresponding to the “bad news” that we receive in the Law. The Lord’s compassion for us can be seen in the great lengths that He was willing to go to in order to redeem us--to “buy us back,” as it were--from the grief of everlasting condemnation that we deserve because of our sin. So great is His compassion for us that it moved Him to lay aside His divine honor and glory and to become human in order to go to cross and the grave for us, only to emerge from it all victorious over sin and grief and even death itself, and to give us a share in that resurrection glory. The forgiveness of our sins through the blood of Christ is one manifestation of the Lord’s compassion toward us.
Together with the forgiveness of our sins, our Lord’s compassion for us also gives us hope--not only the sure and certain hope of everlasting life, which makes life and death bearable for us--but hope also for our situation in life right here and right now. It is the hope of the Gospel of Christ--the knowledge that we are acceptable to God in spite of our sin for the sake of Christ--that makes it possible for us to continue “fight[ing] the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) even when we fail over and over again. The Gospel motivates us and empowers us to be the people that we have been called to be because it assures us that the God and Judge of all sees in us not the rebellious sinners that we are but rather His “beloved [children], with whom [He is] well pleased” (Matthew 3:17)--all because of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ that is ours through faith in Him--faith given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.
Is God good to us? A lot of people wonder about that and agonize over it. They look around at the sorry state of affairs in our world and they just can’t see the goodness of God. They look at the grief in their own personal lives and they don’t see any evidence of the Lord’s goodness. It’s not that God isn’t good to them; it’s just that they have a different idea of what goodness is. God’s goodness gives us what we need the most: the grief instilled in us by His Law and the comfort extended to us in the Gospel of His Son. God is indeed good to us--better than we think and in more ways than we could possibly imagine. He does bring us grief when His Law confronts us with our sin, but that grief is for our own good because it sends us running to the Gospel for comfort and compassion and healing. In the midst of our grief over sin, His Spirit leads us and guides us to His Word--both the Law and the Gospel--to find His compassion in the One who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4).
Amen.
May the Lord bless your hearing of His Word, using it to accomplish in you those things for which He gave it. May you be enriched and strengthened in faith that you may leave here today to go out into our world armed with the whole armor of God, prepared to be able ambassadors of your Savior Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.