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[static] [music] Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a love can be? The sweetest story, nothing older than the sea.

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The sweetest story about the love I saw for you. Love Story, Part One. The Strength to Conquer Suffering. Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Paul's first letter to the Christians in Corinth.

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The 13th chapter, beginning with the verse numbered 1. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, both human and divine,

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and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." Love is patient and kind.

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Love is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable.

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It keeps no record of wrong. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

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As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophecy is imperfect.

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But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.

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When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part. Then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

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So faith, hope, love abide. These three. But the greatest of these is love. May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word.

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Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is self-evident, is it not, that we go through life wearing masks? I think one of the great masterpieces of American literature

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is the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne titled "The Minister's Black Veil." It's the story of a young New England clergyman who comes in to a Lord's Day worship service one morning wearing a black crate veil over his face.

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His people at first are curious and puzzled, but when he keeps it on through the reading of scripture and through the sermon, they begin to feel some awe and fear. And when he continues to keep it on, day after day after day, they feel dread.

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For all the rest of his life he wore a black veil. It separated him from the affections of men. It cut him off altogether from the love of women. Hawthorne says he was imprisoned in the saddest prison of all,

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the prison of his own heart. At the end of his life he lies dying. And to those who are gathered about his bed, he says from behind his black veil, "Why do you tremble at me?

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It is not my black veil that has kept people from me. It is what it stands for. For no one shows his inmost heart. To his friend or to his lover, we even vainly try to shrink from God.

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I look around me and lo, on every face, a black veil." It is true, isn't it? We all wear masks. Edna St. Vincent Millay says that we sit in the souls of one another.

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And that's a beautiful thought. But of course it isn't true. We rarely get into the vestibule of another person's heart. There are within our hearts corridors so long and dark

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in which we ourselves have not walked for so long a time. And there are doors locked which we ourselves do not fully understand what lurks behind. And this being so, we don't invite or even permit other people into these places. And that is very sad.

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And it is also very dangerous. For you see, this world is not the kind of place in which a jaunty tune is always appropriate. This isn't the kind of place where every story ends happily ever after. And no one of us is able to take every detail of our life

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and arrange it neatly and in good order upon the shelves of our experience. And this being that kind of world, it's dangerous to pretend by our masks that we live in some other world. You know, people, perhaps those who claim faith and assert,

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"Well, my faith has taken all the hurt out of my life. Everything for me is coming up roses." But if you talk to those who live with those people, these ones who wear a mask and try to pretend that their life has no suffering in it

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because their commitment is so deep, talk to those who live with them behind the front door of their house and you find their marriages on the rocks and their children out of relationship

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because you just can't live happily with a lie. These people are quick to call another a hypocrite or to attack the other who suffers in his faith with the blade of cynicism. And they do it with some sadistic joy.

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But their bitterness and brutality is only expression of the fact that they're suffocating behind their own mask. If they could only lift it for a little while so that other people could gently tiptoe in

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and maybe even Jesus tiptoeing in among them. For you see, they need Jesus. For only Jesus has the strength to conquer suffering. Twelve years ago, I preached on the text which is before us this morning for the first time

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about the conquest of suffering. And when I was done, one of the older saints in my congregation came to me and said, "Bruce, you are not old enough to have suffered enough to really know what you're talking about."

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And that was true. But it isn't so true anymore. For I, too, now know to some degree at least what it is to suffer. And so for the second time I come to this text.

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But I do not see it as I saw it before. I've learned, among other things, that it isn't enough to come to somebody who's suffering with clever arguments and theories and propositions and rationales designed to explain the why of what they are enduring.

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Some will say to the sufferer, "Well, you suffer because of natural law and also because of the impartiality of God." And both of those statements are true. The same law of gravity which keeps a train upon a track

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also pulls the little child who leans too far from the window so that the child falls and dies. And you would not do away with natural law. You would not do away with gravity.

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Or yes, but someone says, "Just do away with it for Christians in the moment of need. Let God be partial and take care of Christians so they're not called upon to suffer." But if that were true, if Christians never hurt,

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why would men become Christians? Because they love Jesus? Or because they wanted some kind of heavenly insurance policy to protect them against the hard places of life?

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You see, it is true that the inexorableness of natural law and the impartiality of God cost us in pain. But go to a woman who has just had her hideous, retarded child put into her arms for the first time,

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and try to say to her, "Praise God for natural law and divine impartiality." And the words turn to ashes in your throat, and your teeth clench so you cannot say them. And another comes and says, "Well, there is suffering in life

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because we need risk to give life adventure, and you are part of the providence of God." And that's true. But could you find it in you to say to a woman

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who catches her husband committing adultery again, could you find it in you to say to a man who comes home and finds his heart, his wife, in the arms of another, could you say to such a one, "Oh, well, remember,

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it takes things like this to give life risk, excitement, and adventure." Or can you say to the one suffering with some dread malignancy who's been cut at and radiated and promised and unpromised, can you blithely say to such a one,

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"God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform." He looks at you and says, "I wouldn't give anybody cancer to fulfill my will. Why then would God?

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God moves in malicious ways his wonders to perform." And if that's the kind of thing we've said to the suffering, that's the kind of response that we deserve. And of course what you hear most often is this,

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"Your suffering will strengthen your character. It will make you more tender and sensitive. It will make you more gracious in your dealings with others." That's true, too.

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I have now suffered some, so I am more sensitive. But it is not so with most men. I see suffering in someone every day of my life. And I tell you that most people who hurt

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do not become more gracious, more tender. They inflict agony upon others. You see, you just can't come to the suffering with clever arguments and propositions,

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with theories and rationales. Whether suffering gives you character or not, whether suffering involves you in providence or not, whether suffering builds you up or tears you down,

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whether you say yes to it or no to it, doesn't depend upon an argument. It depends upon whether you have Jesus and his cross within your heart.

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See, I am back to where I first began. Jesus is the only one who has the strength to conquer suffering. Jesus and his cross.

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When our building committee made plans for the new building, they were determined that the cross should be evident outside of it and inside of it, and it will be. But why?

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Why that grisly instrument so prominently displayed? We sing, "In the cross of Christ I glory, towering over the wrecks of time." And we do.

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But why do we glory in a gibbet and in an instrument of death? It is because at the cross, God most magnificently intersected history.

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It's because there at the cross, on two rude boards, two rude, bloodied boards, God himself

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immersed himself in every tear of men and took within himself all the hurts and the sorrow and the agony that has ever been.

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Oh, all of it. How do you illustrate that? One preacher does it by referring to that great scene in Dickens' Tale of Two Cities where the cart is rolling to the guillotine

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and in the cart there is a young man who is dying in the place of his friend and there is a young girl and she is afraid. And seeing the calmness and the strength in the face of the young man, she says, "Give to me your hand that I may have some of your strength."

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And he gives her his hand. And when they get to the place where the ugly thing is, she says to him, "I think that you were sent to me by heaven."

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And then this preacher says, "That is what the cross is like. It is God leaning from heaven. It is God coming from forever into the now and saying, 'Right here in the midst of suffering, you have my hand.'"

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And that's very good as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. God on the cross does not come to stand beside us like some friend who sympathizes or agonizes with us

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but is always separated and apart, touching perhaps only hand to hand. God does not stand beside us but is on the cross within us so that the pain we feel, God feels as we feel it. And the heartbreak we know, God knows as our heart breaks.

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And the loneliness which tears us up into little pieces, God feels in his heart tearing him up into little pieces. And not only so with you and me but with everyone who has ever lived. Now get hold of that, that the heart of God is so vast

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that he can encompass within it every agony that any living creature has ever known. And when you see that and know that, you never again will shake your fist in God's face and accuse him of causing suffering.

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. You will advance yourself into some argument with the Almighty in which you blame him for the world's pain. He bears the world's pain.

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See the immeasurable agony in the heart of God. The immeasurable agony in the heart of God. That is Jesus on his cross suffering with us. After the First World War, a young French soldier

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complained that he had never seen his commander-in-chief, Marshal Fauche. He had never encountered him. He was his leader but just a name. He had been wounded in the war and still had never, with his own eyes,

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looked upon the man he followed. He had in fact left his two legs in a battlefield operating room. But never saw the one in whose service he lost his limbs. And then he heard there would be a great victory parade in Paris

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and that Marshal Fauche would be in the parade. And so he rented a hotel room with a window that looked out upon the route of the parade. And resting upon his bed, he placed his crutches next to his bed so that he could reach them when he heard the music of the approaching procession.

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And the music came and in his excitement he reached out and the crutches fell and fell beneath the bed so that he could not reach them. And so he lowered himself from the bed upon those hurting stumps of his. And with the Marshal music filling the air,

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he crawled an inch at a time across the room to the window. And then with his elbows, he pulled himself up on bleeding stumps to the sill and looked out. And was too late for the Marshal had already passed by.

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And you see the cross says that Jesus, our leader, the one we follow, is right in the trenches with us. And no part of our suffering, our separation, our hurt is outside of him. He knows and has experienced it all with us.

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So that all I can say to the one who knows crippling infirmity is, "Jesus." All I can say to the one whose memories are too heavy to be born is, "Jesus." All I can say to those who are up against the wall and have no strength and are surrounded by ones who would use them and persuade them to their point of view,

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who would argue with them and debate with them, trying to make them instruments of thy will, protecting their thing and never showing any sensitivity for the one who is so hurting against that wall. All I can say to those people is, "Jesus."

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And when the shadows of death come, Jesus. And when remorse weighs you down, Jesus. And when the whole world goes mad in war, Jesus. The cross, you see, says that the love of God is not some silly, unreasonable fancy.

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It's not something that looks pretty no matter how ugly the world is. The cross is the testimony that the very beating heart of God beats next to your heart. And you can feel it there in Jesus. And as you feel it, you know He is as low down under the burden of life as you are.

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Every bit as low as you are. With you. And that's where you start to conquer suffering. By knowing that He's with you.

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But you don't stop there. There's one other thing. You have to understand that if Jesus is with you, then you are very really with Him. That if He is living in you, then you are living in Him.

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And you see what that means. That means that the victory which He won on the cross will be your victory, too. Never forget that Jesus took the cross and triumphed over it. He said, "I lay down my life of myself. No man takes it from me.

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And if I wish to take it up again, I will take it up again." He said that to Caiaphas, who thought he was the master of the situation. And all the time it was Jesus who was in control. He sets His face like a flint to go to Jerusalem.

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He stands tall and unafraid in the courtyard of Pilate. He pushes aside the drug drink so that He can experience that cross in every atom of its anguish. All of it. And on that cross, He cries out at last, "It is finished!"

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And is that the cry of defeat? Yes, it is. But not the defeat of Jesus. It is the defeat of suffering.

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Here on the cross, evil was as evil as evil could be. And God, in this one moment, put His hands down and on the baffling hurt and suffering and twistedness and brokenness that are part of the world. He put His hands into it, bloody hands.

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Put His bloody hands into it and wrestled with it there and outed it. He brought resurrection and life and victory for the whole creation. He wrestled with evil on cosmic scale and defeated it. And if He on the cross defeated it cosmically, then, then you see,

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He can and will defeat it on the very small scale of your own life. He redeemed and is redeemed. And we must take our agony and put them on the altar of this One whose only passion it is to rid the world of agony. And as we do so, we hear Him say, "My child, this is your part of my burden,

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but as you take it up, take it up knowing that I am with you and that the victory will be ours." You have to understand that to know why the Father answered His Son like He did. The Father dying and in pain, the Son says, "Dad, I wish I could bear some of your pain for you." And the Father answers, "My son, I don't have a single pain to spare.

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I will carry all of my burden that I might know all of the victory." See, a man's biography should never begin with his birth, but with the end of his life. For it's only the goal and the end of a man's life that gives it any meaning at all. This is the testimony of Scripture.

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Genesis is important not because it tells us where man came from, but where man is going. And every page of Scripture, every paragraph, every one of the books of Scripture must be read in the light of the magnificent affirmation with which the Testament concludes when ten thousand harpers are harping on their harps and the trumpeters trumpet and the angels cry out, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain."

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You see, you don't understand it until you understand it all in terms of the victory. So that when heart attack comes upon you and you're so in pain that you cannot speak or even think right then, Jesus says, "Praise for you. I am there. I feel what you're feeling. And as I won on my cross, so we will win over yours."

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And if your burden is not the instantaneous hurt of heart attack, but instead an agony you bear for years and years, so that you cry out to die, Jesus says, "I am there, and as I won over my cross, so we will win over yours." In India, in some places, you can find a little cocoon about two inches long, wrinkled and twisted and bent it is, an ugly thing. But if you watch that cocoon, there comes out of it, in God's time, a glorious thing.

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It is the Atlas Moth. Its wings are pink and gentlest green, shading off into terracotta and browns and golds. It is ten inches from wingtip to wingtip. In each wing there is a transparent window, and about that window, designed so intricate, you cannot measure it all. One of God's most spectacular miracles.

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Well, that's what suffering is like. It's like that ugly brown cocoon. But you can stand the cocoon if you know for sure that after it, one of God's magnificent miracles. There is no darkness so dark that the white wings of angels cannot pierce it. There is no chain so heavy that the hand of God cannot make it light.

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And there is no flame so intense that Jesus cannot stand in the midst of it. He does so stand, and in the midst of flame, this one who is the light of the world, becomes himself the flame. And we, like great moths, fly about the flame that is Jesus, until in one ecstatic moment, we touch his fiery person, and we die. And as we die, he comes to life in us.

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And it is no longer we who live, but Jesus. So you see, you must take Jesus into your heart. If you are suffering now, he will give you strength to conquer. If your suffering is still out ahead somewhere, he will give you strength to conquer.

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But you must take Jesus. He wants you to say with his servant Paul, "In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." On the mission field, a little Christian boy lay dying, and his pagan father sought, even in the boy's death, to win him back to a pagan faith. "When you die, where will you go?" he said.

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The boy replied, "I will go to heaven to be with Jesus." "And suppose Jesus is not there?" "Then I will go wherever Jesus is." "Well, suppose Jesus is in hell?"

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The father boy said, smiling, "There can be no hell where Jesus is." That's what God's trying to say through me to you today. I'm trying to lift up my mask a little, and hoping you will lift yours, so that you can hear Jesus say, "I love you." "Is that okay?"

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Your answer to that question will determine whether suffering conquers you, or you conquer suffering. Let us pray. O God, life is filled with new calvaries raised over this sinful earth. We hang like new Christs.

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May our veins run red with thee. Hear our confession. Receive us and enter in. Let our pain take glory on.

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And sorrow bloom like sunrise on the hills where we suffer and die. And the grace, mercy, and peace of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with you all. Now may the Lord, that on his birth our God our Lord, shine in our hearts and mind's eye in gladness burn.

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And may the radiance with faith and hope be born. Be and abide with us, both now and evermore. [BLANK_AUDIO]