Praying in times of suffering

My topic today will be praying in times of suffering. I will look at the situations of four people who were suffering: Elijah, Job, Peter and Jesus.

850 years before Jesus was born, Elijah was the leading prophet for the People of God. He was their spiritual leader; but he was also in trouble because Jezebel, the queen, was trying to kill him. Why? Because she was worshipping a false god and Elijah had demonstrated to a large crowd on Mt. Carmel that her god was totally powerless. Queen Jezebel was deeply embarrassed and she said to the crowd, “I will kill him and nothing will stop me.”

That meant that Elijah had to run for his life. In fact, he ran 70 miles from the Northern Kingdom to the Southern Kingdom. He collapsed under a broom tree and slept for several days. Then an angel woke him up and gave him a loaf of bread and a jar of water. Then he fell back to sleep. Then the angel woke him up and pointed toward Mount Horeb as we heard in today’s First Reading.

So Elijah went to Mount Horeb and said to God, “I am suffering from exhaustion and I’m so miserable and I need you to speak to me. Tell me what comes next.” God said to him, “Listen carefully and you will hear my message.” But Elijah found it difficult to hear God’s voice. He listened to the sound of the mighty wind, but that was not the Voice of God. He listened to the powerful earthquake crushing the rocks on the mountainside. But the Lord’s voice was not in the earthquake.

He stayed focused on his goal and finally he heard the voice of God in a tiny whispering sound. The voice of God was not in the loud noises. Rather it was in the tiny whispering sound. Now what was the message that Elijah received from God? He heard God calling him to go back to the Northern Kingdom and challenge the people to turn away from the Canaanite fertility gods and come back to the one true God.

Elijah was afraid to go back to the Northern Kingdom until he heard that someone had killed Jezebel by pushing her out of a window. Horses came by and trampled her body and dogs came along and ate everything except her skull and her feet. Then Elijah went to the Northern Kingdom and delivered the message that God had given him.

This is the lesson that I take from Elijah during his time of suffering: He confronted God. He challenged God. Like Jacob at the foot of the ladder, he wrestled with God. He demanded a message from God and it came to him in a tiny whispering sound.

We move on to the story of Job and the many sufferings that he was living with. A cyclone had killed his seven sons and three daughters and hundreds of his cattle, sheep and goats. His skin was infected with painful sores and boils that extended from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Job kept asking God for an explanation for his suffering. And his friends were trying to find an explanation for his suffering. They decide that Job is being punished because he has committed many sins. Job says, “No. This is not true. I have kept all of the commandments. It’s a case of bad things happening to a good person.”

Our next stop is at the feet of Saint Peter. In today’s gospel his feet are in the water and he is beginning to sink. His suffering is emotional. He is anxious and fearful. He is afraid that he will drown and he cries out, “Lord save me.” Jesus reached out and caught Peter before he sank. How did Peter handle his suffering? He swallowed his pride and asked for help. Hopefully, we will do the same. When we are hurting we can swallow our pride and ask for help.

We move forward now to Jesus and his most painful time of suffering, his time on the cross. Before he died Jesus said some prayers and one prayer was a prayer of lamentation. Jesus prayed the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?” Those words and that prayer remind us that Lamentation is a perfectly valid form of prayer. Why? Because lamentations keep us in a close relationship with God when we are hurting the most. His lamentation kept Jesus in close relationship with his Heavenly Father.

Before he died Jesus offered Psalm 31 as his closing prayer: “Father, I place my life into your hands.” That shows us how trusting he was. Jesus trusted that God would do something good with his life after he died. And his trust paid off because God lifted him up and gave him a New Life, the life that we call Resurrection….. a life with no more tears, no more suffering and no more sadness. A life with the fullness of joy and peace.

The bottom line is this: Jesus was praying when he was suffering the crucifixion, the most pain that a person could ever suffer. He was offering prayers of lamentation and prayers of trust in God.

I will close with a short summary of the ways that we can deal with suffering, with the understanding that each response to suffering is valid. We can confront God and wrestle with God, as Elijah did. We can be humble and admit that God knows more than we do, as Job did. We can swallow our pride and ask for help as Peter did. Or we can offer prayers of lamentation and trust as Jesus did.