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From Paul's letter to the Romans, the eighth chapter, I begin at the verse which is numbered 31. What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us?

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He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn?

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Is it Christ Jesus who died? Yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

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Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, "For thy sake we are being killed all the day long, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, 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. And may God bless to us this reading from his word.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I wish to think with you today of only one of the many lessons that this day teaches us.

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It is a deep lesson, it is a hard lesson, and it will take our combined efforts to search it out. But it is worth our searching, for it is one of the most profound and blessed truths of our believing.

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It is a fact, of course, that most of us do not reveal much of ourselves to one another. We live, as it were, behind masks. You may be familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne's story, "The Minister's Black Veil," about a minister who one day appeared in the pulpit wearing a black veil across his face.

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Some were surprised, some were puzzled, some were angry. They became even more concerned when the veil was not removed at the end of the service but was worn all of that day and the next day and weeks and months. And the whole story concerns how across the entire life of this clergyman he wore that

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veil and how people responded to it. And the story ends when the minister is on his deathbed and someone asks him why it is that he has, across all of these years, worn this black veil. And he responds, "No one shows to others his inmost heart, not even to his friend or lover.

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We even try to shrink from God. I look around me, he says, and lo, I see on every face a black veil." Well, it's true, isn't it? We don't tell each other what's in our deepest insides.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote that we sit in one another's souls and that would be nice if it were true, but it isn't true. Or we might occasionally get into the vestibule, but behind the vestibule there are dark corridors and there are heavy closed doors.

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Most of us want to give the appearance that we go through life easily, that all of our stories turn out happily ever after, that our days are filled with the tunes of glory and that all the shelves in our inner lives are tidy and neatly organized. That's a pathetic attempt, of course.

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It is a pretense. Because no matter how much we strut and parade, no matter how much we wrap ourselves in the garments of godliness, the fact is that for many of us, inside is hell. And we suffocate because we do not want anyone else to know that this is so.

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It is very sad. For were we to reveal a little, then others might be able to walk into our lives, and as these others began to crowd into our lives, Christ might be able to slip in among them and he would bring peace.

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Because you see, it is only Jesus who has the answer to suffering. Most people, when they speak about suffering, speak of it in terms of the why of the matter. That is, they philosophize and theologize about the human experience. I remember just a few months after I was out of seminary preaching a sermon on suffering

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and going through all the reasons for suffering that I'd been taught in seminary. And when the sermon was over, a little older lady in the church, she was well into her eighties at that time, her name was Frazer, she came past me at the door and she said, "Preacher, that was a nice effort.

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The only trouble is you're not old enough to have suffered enough to know at all what you're talking about." And she was right. Because those philosophical rationalizations really don't mean anything, you've heard them,

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they've been gummed at you just as they've been gummed at me. We suffer because of natural law and because of divine impartiality. I mean, the universe is held together by gravity, a train stays on its tracks by gravity, but because there is a law of gravity, that means if a youngster leans too far out of a window,

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that youngster will fall to its death and you cannot have it any other way. The law must prevail. And then someone says, "But why doesn't God protect those who are Christian so that in the instances where they might be destroyed or wounded or hurt or crippled by natural

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law, this might be prevented?" And the answer to that, of course, is then why would people become Christian? Would it become a kind of insurance policy, a prudential act in order to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of life?

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Go to a mother who has just brought into the world a hideously deformed child and say to her, "Oh, it's just the process of natural law and this is done in order to show that God has no impartiality." Try to say those words to her, they'll turn to ashes in your mouth and your teeth will

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clench. Others will say, "Well, they're suffering in life because, well, risk is necessary to give life adventure. I mean, if you could never lose, then you could never win."

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And also we must remember that God has providential ways of dealing with the intercourse of men. In other words, we might say, and you've heard this said a thousand times, God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. Well, there's a lot of truth in that.

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If there were no risk, no possibility of loss, then there would be no victory in game. And it is true that God sometimes moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. We can all advance stories that demonstrate that. But say to some woman who has just discovered that her husband is an adulterer, or say to

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some mother and father who had just received word that their son was killed in war, or to say to some person who suffers from cancer and has been cut and radiated and still knows pain and anxiety and fear and possibly death, say to them, "God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform."

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And it seems to me they can answer, "God works in malicious ways, his wonders to perform." And if we really believe that these things are wonders being performed, then why do we fight cancer? And why do we try to stop wars?

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And why do we condemn adultery? And others try to explain suffering by saying, "Well, it builds character. It carves into your face the liniments of genuine concern." There's a lot of truth in that.

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I think I can speak more wisely about suffering now than I could when Mrs. Fraser hurled my sermon more than a quarter of a century ago, because I've suffered some in the meantime. But let's not delude ourselves into believing that everyone who suffers turns into some kind of saint.

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Some people in the face of suffering turn into devils. Intellectual propositions like these, you see, arguments advanced, philosophizing about suffering just will not do it. I sit in an orchard about 70 miles north of Pittsburgh just this time of year, a little

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later, and the apple blossoms are out and the scent is heavy on the wind and there are daffodils and tulips within sight and the ground is soft and the sky is blue with white cumulus clouds and I can hear the song of a thrush. And the bird hops out to where I can see it.

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And as I see the bird and hear it singing, I also see a cat coming stealthily behind it. And before I can call out and frighten the bird so that it will move away, the cat leaps and kills the bird and leaves its head at my feet.

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And I had been enjoying it all and wanting to say yes to it all and suddenly no wins the race to my lips. And no philosophical argument, no theological proposition is ever going to change that. There's a lot of hurt and pain and brutality and suffering in life.

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And arguments won't answer. There's only one who answers suffering. And that's Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ on a cross. You see, the strength to conquer suffering comes from him.

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Have you ever contemplated the strange power of the cross? Here it is 2,000 years later and we have filled this house of God's people to remember those hours then. We sing a song, "In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o'er the wrecks of time."

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And it does, "Tower over the wrecks of time." Why? Because we know, however dimly, that somehow on the cross God came into history. On two slabs of rough and bloody wood, God came right down into the midst of the darkest

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valleys that anyone can be called upon to walk. He came there out of love. Now I do not expect the skeptic to understand that. Albert Camus, the French existentialist and atheist, saw a baby killed by a car and he

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said, "I will never love any scheme of things which permits that." Well, let's take that sentence of his and put it in a different context. Let's put it into the Gospels. And when they were come to the place called Golgotha, there they crucified him.

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And the malefactors, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Now let's try it. "I will never love any scheme of things which permits that." The point is, you see, Christians aren't in love with a scheme of things.

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We're not talking about a scheme of things. We're talking about God. We're talking about one who in infinite love comes down into the midst of the human experience. You remember in the end of the tale of two cities, where one man is taking the place

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of another man, is going to the guillotine for him, is offering his life for him. And as he rides along in the cart, there's a little girl, she's also going to her death, and she is frightened and she says, "May I hold your hand?" And he says, "Yes."

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And at last they come into sight of that terrible instrument of death. And as she sees it, she holds his hand very tightly and she says, "I think you were sent to me by heaven." Well the cross, you see, and God's coming down upon it and absorbing it into himself

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is God taking our hands. But we've got to go deeper than that. It's not only God with us, you see. It's God in Christ in us.

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It's not just that in the cross God feels the things that we feel, our pain and our hurt and our loss and our fear. It is that he actually absorbs into himself all of the hideous hurt of the human experience. Now think about that for a moment.

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Think of how much your heart hurts when you suffer and then contemplate a God so great and so loving that he receives into his one heart all the hurt of history. Think of the immeasurable agony of God, not just with us, but feeling it in his own heart as we feel it.

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When the First World War was over, a victory parade was being held in Paris, 1918. And a Frenchman who had fought in the war for four years and been grievously wounded, he lost both of his legs, heard about this parade. Now he deeply admired Marshal Fauche who led the French forces.

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He had served under Fauche for four years, but he had never seen him, only pictures in the paper. And he heard that Fauche was going to lead the parade, and so he rented a hotel room from which he could look out on the line of march.

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At last he was going to see this one, for whom he had fought and for whom he had paid a terrible price. And he was there in the hotel room, and he heard the bands off in the distance. And as he heard them, he reached out for his crutches, but in his excitement, he knocked

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them in such a way that they fell away from him. And now the bands were getting closer, and the choice was to go for the crutches or to try to scramble to the window on his own. So he threw himself on the floor, and he crawled across that floor, and when he got to the

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windowsill, he pulled himself up with his hands and put his weight on his hands and on his still agonizingly painful stumps. And he looked out, and he saw the bands, but Marshal Fauche, who was leading the parade, had already passed beyond his sight.

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What the cross says is that God is not leading any parade, but that he's in the trench with us. He's there so that he hurts and he understands. How else can I say that?

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I know a man named Bert who sells cars, and he was trying to sell a car to a man named Alan, and Alan did not come in to pick up the car. He called and discovered that Alan was in the hospital, and he went to the hospital to see him, and in the hospital he found that Alan had a terminal illness.

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He visited with him for a while, and then as he turned to go, he said to him, just before leaving the room, "May the peace of the Lord be with you." And Alan said, "Come, come back." And taking him by the hand, he said, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord?"

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And Bert said, "I do." He said, "Then let me tell you what happened last night. I fell asleep and I dreamed a dream, and in that dream I saw Jesus, and I saw people walking up to Jesus, and they were taking out their hearts, and they were putting their hearts

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into his heart. And then he looked at me, and in my dream I got up and I walked over and I put my heart into his heart, so that my hurting and lonely and dying heart became part of his heart, and I still hurt, and I am still dying.

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But now I know it is not alone. Now I know it is with him." That's what it is, you see. The best thing I can say to a crippled person is Jesus.

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The best thing I can say to a person who knows intense pain is Jesus. The best and most wonderful thing I can say to someone who has memories of which they are ashamed is Jesus. The most I can say to a person who walks through the valley of the shadow of death is Jesus.

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It's not that God's love is some kind of silly fantasy, but that his heart beats with ours. And is it one with us? But there is still more. One last thing, and this the deepest and most profound.

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Stay with me. If Christ is in us, if his heart beats with ours, then we are in Christ. If his pain can be absorbed by us, it will be just like he absorbs our pain. Now we're on the threshold here of a great mystery, but the truth is this, that when

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Christ takes our pain, he says to us as his disciples, "I ask you to with your pain bear some of the suffering of the world. And as I triumphed over pain, so you will triumph over pain." Think of Christ and that cross.

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He did not approach it as one timid and afraid. He approached it boldly. He said to his disciples, "No one takes my life. I lay it down of myself."

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He said on the night before the cross, "These things have I said unto you that my joy might be in you and your joy might be full." He stands before Caiaphas and Pilate and silences them with his silence. There is in all of it a magnificent serenity.

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When they offered him a drug to drink to make the pain somehow less, he spurned it and pushed it aside. And when it was all done, he said in a magnificent affirmation of victory and completion, "It is finished."

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There was a defeat on Calvary, but it was not the defeat of Christ. It was the defeat of hurt and hell and of suffering. For God took it all up in his Son and he won the battle of the ages. And what he did for the ages there, he can do in each one of our hearts now.

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You see, the game is won. The victory is assured. Oh yes, there are cleaning up operations to be conducted. There are stains of sin still to be taken away.

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But if we are in him as he is in us, then he not only bears our pain, but gives to us the privilege of helping to bear his. It is as if he comes to us and says, "As I help you, so you must help me. As I lift up your hurt and a whole world's hurt, so I ask you now in your pain to bear

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part of that burden. And the victory which is mine will be yours." That's the reason when the Father came to visit the Son and the Son was dying and the Father said to his Son, "Son, I wish I could bear some of your pain for you."

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The boy, a Christian lad, replied, "Father, I have not a single pain to spare." You see, Christian autobiography should always be written from the end of life, not from the beginning. That's the way God always writes, from the end, not from the beginning.

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In the book of Genesis, the principal theme is not on the beginning. The principal theme is of the end. And the end is glory. The end, for all those who believe, is to go through life never alone, to go through

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life with Christ in us and ourselves in Christ, and to go through life knowing that in the end victory is assured. You know, in India they have the Atlas moth. It's the largest moth in the world.

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It comes out of an ugly little cocoon, two inches long, twisted, brown. And when it emerges, the moth has a wing spread of ten inches, and it's crimson and pink and brown and green and old gold. It's a spectacular thing to see.

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And the beauty of that comes forth out of an ugly cocoon of suffering. When we come forth out of that cocoon of suffering, we will have that kind of splendor. And we will see Christ, the light of the world. And as moths are drawn to a flame, so we will come closer and closer to him until one moment

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of indescribable ecstatic glory will lead us to merge with him. And in that instant, we will be more than conquerors. Let me sum it like this. A young man, a convert to Christianity in India, lay dying.

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His father, still an unbeliever, was at his side. The father was seeking to pull the son out of Christianity and into darkness again. He said to his boy, "Where will you go when you die?" And the boy replied, "I will go to heaven to be with Jesus."

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And the father said, "And what if when you get to heaven, Jesus is not there? Jesus is gone." And the boy replied, "Then I will go wherever Jesus is." And the father said, "And suppose that Jesus has gone to hell?"

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And the boy replied, "Why, father, there is no hell where Jesus is." What the cross says to us, my friends, is that God is with us in our suffering, that his heart beats with ours, that he calls us to bear some of the world's burden of hurt for him, and that in that cross we will find our victory, the strength to conquer suffering.

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We call it Good Friday because it is the day that guaranteed we shall be more than conquerors. Let us pray. O God, life is filled with new Calvaries raised up over this aching earth. And sometimes, like new Christ, we hang.

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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, and sorrow bloom like sunrise. Down on the hills where we suffer and die, make us more than conquerors through Jesus

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Christ, in whom, for whom, and by whom we pray. Amen. Thank you