"THE AGONY, THEN THE ECSTASY"
John 16:16-24
Posted July 10, 1999
Preached August 30, 1992, morning service
First Baptist Church, Garrett, Indiana
During the past several weeks, we have been preaching on "When A Good God Lets Bad Things Happen". In the first week we studied "Why Did Snoopy's Doghouse Burn Down". The in the second week we discussed "Is Pain A Punishment?", the #3 was "Oh Man, Who Art Thou?". Then on August 16 we talked about "Creative Suffering" and that brought us to last week where we found out that "Pain -- God's Megaphone". This week we finish the series with "The Agony, Then the Ecstasy", based on John 16:16-24. Will you please turn in your Bible to John 16.
In his book, "Where Is God When It Hurts?", Philip Yancy tells the story of a conversation he had one time with Robin Graham, who is the youngest person in history to ever sail alone around the world.
As the story goes, Graham decided to try and sail around the world when he was only 16. But little did he know all he was getting into. In the 3 years that his voyage took, he was smashed broadside by ocean storms; one time his mast was snapped in 2 by a wave; another time he was almost totally destroyed by a waterspout.
He told of his most despairing moment when he was in the equator by the doldrums, that windless, currentless part of the ocean. He became so discouraged that he completely gave up. He covered his boat with kerosene and set it on fire right out in the middle of the ocean. He tells of how he quickly changed his mind, jumped back on board, and put out the fire with his bare hands.
After 3 years, Robin Graham sailed into a Los Angeles harbor as the youngest person to ever sail around the world alone. He was greeted by boats, banners, crowds, and newsmen. Cars honked and steam boats blasted their whistles as he came sailing thru the channel. The joy, the ecstasy of that moment was unlike any he had ever known. No return from another sail trip had ever been as glorious. But no other sailing trip had been so agonizing. It was the investment and the pain and the agony of this round-the-world trip that made possible the ecstasy of this dramatic return.
One of the great truths of the Scripture that I have come to appreciate in a new way thru my work on this sermon series is that PAIN IS AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT IN OUR RICHEST EXPERIENCES. There is no real ecstasy and joy without agony and investment (and even pain) on our part.
Jesus uses the metaphor of child-bearing to teach this truth. He says, "When a woman is in travail (in labor) she has sorrow, because her hour has come." All you women know what Jesus is talking about here. The process of bearing a child is a painful one. "But when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world."
I've managed to see many mothers of new-born babies in the hospital soon after their babies were born. And when I have gone in and asked how they are doing, not once has a mother ever replied, "Oh man, this is a bummer! You know how painful it is to have a kid!" No, as Jesus says, she no longer remembers the anguish.
That is immediately forgotten and in fact even becomes a mysterious ingredient of the joy she feels that a child, a person, has been brought into the world. (Jesus uses this metaphor to describe heaven, and how our suffering in this life will be transformed into joy when we see him again. And we'll talk about that transformation in a little while. But the principle also applies to life here and now.)
Many of you are parents of college students. Or many of yo have been college students yourself. The student works his way thru all kinds of obstacles before he finally gets his degree. He goes thru the sophomore slumps where he just wants to quit and get a job. And he changes majores. He drops courses. He loses a girl friend (and the $100 he spent on a Christmas present for her the week before.)
He has a scrape for tuition and for money for books.
But on that hot day in May when he finally stands in line to go up on the platform and get his diploma, even though it's not "cool" to be sentimental, his stomach leaps inside and cries, for he has finally made it. But at that moment, the anguish of 4 years (or 5 or 6) is an indispensable part of our joy. Our riches experiences are born of agonizing investments.
No, it's not true that our pain and suffering are all bad. It is the essential ingredient of fulfillment of any depth. Yes, life is bitter-sweet, but we need the bitter in order to taste and enjoy the sweet.
I have made a new discovery for myself from God's Word on the relationship between suffering and joy. I knew all those passages that say, "Hey, your suffering will soon be replaced by joy; hang in there." That's what I thought those passages said. But that's not quite it. That leaves our suffering and our joy basically unrelated; one just happens to follow upon the other.
But that's not what Scripture teaches. Paul and James tell us that our suffering is an essential element in our joy. Paul says in Romans 5 that "suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." And James says that the trials and agony of life are the indispensable building blocks of human character, the essential road to be traveled if we are to arrive at maturity and completeness.
Philip Yancy compares life to a symphony. It's not just the bright, beautiful, high notes that make a symphony beautiful. It's the dissonant chords, the deep, dark notes, and the long tiring passages that seem to have little movement that suddenly combine with everything else to make the total symphony beautiful. Our lives are like a symphony. When we trust God, our pain and suffering are only the early movement of a slow song, which God in His wisdom is pulling together into a beautiful symphony, which He is using to deepen you into a more beautiful person than you ever imagined.
We are in process. We are not finished products. We are in the process of becoming what God, the great artist, has in mind for us to be. And if we yield ourselves to God, in the faith and conviction that He knows what He is doing (even when our feelings tells us that our suffering cannot possibly be for any good), then God can do miraculous things with us. He can transform our agony into ecstasy.
This movement from agony to ecstasy, and the interrelationship between the two is a reality here on earth, within this life. But that is only a faint shadow of another movement from agony to ecstasy that one day we who are in Christ will experience, THE MOVEMENT FROM THIS LIFE TO THE NEXT.
This is the specific reference of Jesus in John 16. He says, "So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." Our whole life here is the birthpangs before we are born into the ecstasy of heaven, where there will be no pain, no hurt, no loneliness, no fear of rejection, no sense of failure and worthlessness, no guilt, no hatred, no regrets.
It's important that we understand our pain is temporary, not to minimize our pain, but to put fences around it. As much as God can even use our pain in creative ways now, we still look forward to the day when there will be no pain.
And that must control how we view the pain of life and also death, for life and death then become the painful process of birth into heaven. Philip Yancy expands on this metaphor of child-birth which Jesus uses. He says,
"Each of our individual deaths can be seen as a birth. Imagine what it would be like (to be born, that is) ...One day you feel a tug. The walls are falling in on you. Those soft cushions are now pulsing and beating against you, crushing you downwards. Your body is bent double, your limbs twisted and wrenched. You're falling, upside down. For the first time in your life, you feel pain.
You're in a sea of roiling matter. There is more pressure, almost too intense to bear. Your head is squeezed flat, and you are pushed harder, harder into a dark tunnel. Oh, the pain. Noise. More pressure.
You hurt all over. You hear a groaning sound and an awful, sudden fear rushes in on you. It is happening -- your world is collapsing. You are sure it's the end. You see a piercing, blinding light. Cold, rough hands pull at you. A painful slap. Waaaaahhhh! Congratulations, you have just been born.
Our life and death are like that. On this end of the birth canal, it sometimes seems fierce, scary and full of pain. But we know that beyond the darkness and pain of this life and of death itself is a whole new world for us. And when we are born up into it, our tears and hurts will be faint memories, as the joy of the mother who has forgotten her anguish.
We must never forget that our pain is temporary. The symphony will one day be complete! One day, every bruise, every cancer cell, every hurt and every tear will be set right. And all of our grim moments of hoping against hope will be rewarded. Our anguish will be smothered as we stand in the presence of God.
With us who in our suffering ask, "Where is God when it hurts?" God pleads, "Let history finish! Let the symphony scratch out its last mournful note of discord before it bursts into song!" Believe! Hope against hope, everyday of your lives, knowing that one day we will be complete. God will have finished His handiwork. And pain, instead of being a problem, will be no more than a flickering memory.
John says, "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away" (Rev. 21:2-4)
Nearly a year ago, on a weekday night, I stayed late into the night with Gene at the bedside of his wife Pat. About 1:00 or so, I got up from where we were sitting and took a walk thru the wing where we were -- the oncology wing, for cancer patients -- not a pleasant wing.
During the day, one walks thru a hospital and sees all kinds of busy, healthy people. One sees masses of professionals doing their job and doing it well. But at night it's dark, and quiet. The halls are empty and your attention shifts from the halls to the rooms. And you see people, sick, hurting, sometimes dying people. During the day, one hears the sounds of doctors and family and friends and food-service & cleaning-service. Those are not the sounds of the night.
The more I walked, I became overwhelmed at what I saw and what I heard. I finally dropped into a chair at the end of a long dark hall, conveniently set under a dimly lit exit sign, and pulled out my Bible and turned to these words, "And God will be with them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be morning nor crying nor pain anymore."
I tell that story for 2 reasons: FIRST, and more obviously, because it underscores the point I've been trying to make this morning (and really thru this whole sermon series) about agony and ecstasy: in one sense that was an agonizing walk; but I came away overwhelmed with ecstasy at a vision of life and healing and wholeness that we will one day experience, a vision I would have never appreciated in the same way without that agonizing walk.
And so it is for all of us. We can walk thru the hallways of life and avoid its pain. And we will miss life. Or we can lean into our pain and find the fullness of life in God.
God's word tells us this morning that the mother forgets her anguish at the sight of her new child.
I close this message (and this series) with the words of our master, "So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.."
Dear Lord, thank you for a hope and vision of life that transcends all human pain and suffering. Thank you that one day our anguish will be smothered with joy.
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