God doesn’t require suffering: a message for St Patrick’s Day

This is a sermon I preached at Inclusive Gathering Birmingham on Sunday 17 March 2024.

Patrick lived in the 5^th century, and there are lots of fun and interesting legends told about him. There’s the story of him using a shamrock, a three-leafed clover, to teach the Irish pagans about the Christianity Trinity. He banished all the snakes from Ireland. There’s also the story of Patrick encouraging a stingy innkeeper to be more generous with their whisky, in order to starve a demon living in their cellar, hence why whisky should be drunk on St Patrick’s day.

All of these lively stories about Patrick probably have no basis in fact. There’s no evidence of there ever being any snakes in Ireland, unless Patrick did such a good job that he managed to banish the fossil record. Even the idea that Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland isn’t necessarily true, as there were probably already Christians in Ireland when Patrick arrived. Patrick, a quintessential Irish figure, wasn’t himself Irish. He came from somewhere in the northwest of Britain, maybe West Scotland or Cumbria. Patrick is an unusual Celtic saint in that we can read his autobiography, which is much less sensational than all the legends written about him later. Even so, it’s still a dramatic tale. Patrick tells us that he was born into a British Christian family, and at the age of 16 was captured by Irish pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland as a shepherd. After six years of enslavement he managed to escape, and made his way back to his family in Britain. Later, he received a calling from God to return to Ireland, the land of his captivity, as a Christian missionary.

Patrick is an old man when he comes to write about his life. And when he looks back on his younger years he sees patterns that he maybe didn’t see at the time. You might have had this experience, reflecting on things that happened to you years ago, and finding new meaning and significance in those events. Reading Patrick’s reflections, I was pulled up short by how he interprets his being sold into slavery. He writes:

“I was then ignorant of the true God and, along with thousands upon thousands of others, was taken into captivity in Ireland. This occurred according to our merits for we had pulled back from God… And ‘so’ the Lord ‘poured upon’ us ‘the heat of his anger’ and dispersed us among many peoples, right ‘out to the very ends of the earth,’ where now my smallness is seen among these men of an alien land.”

from Patrick’s “Declaration of the Great Works of God,” translated by Oliver Davies (“Celtic Spirituality,” Paulist Press, 1999).

Patrick is saying that he deserved what he got for his unbelief, and that God caused him to be enslaved and separated from his family for his own good. I have some problems with this. Christianity often has a very weird relationship with suffering, and I’ve met a lot of Christians who feel that, in order to make sense of their lives, they have to believe that everything that happens to them, no matter how traumatic or painful, has some deeper meaning. It’s all part of God’s plan, they might say. I guess this is a way of interpreting Romans 8.28, that “all things work together for good for those who love God.” Is this what Patrick is doing? Do we need to believe that God would use something as awful as enslavement to bring about something good?

I believe that God can bring good out of evil. God can take the worst things and grow something good from that soil. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us finding meaning and hope in our suffering. But that’s a different thing entirely to saying that God requires evil and suffering in order to bring about good. That isn’t the God I worship. The God of Jesus Christ wants us to have abundant life and wipe away every tear from our eyes. This God doesn’t hurt us and tell us it’s for our own good. We live in a sinful world where terrible things happen. God’s good creation has been distorted and damaged, and we’re part of that distortion. Christians are allowed to have regrets. We’re allowed to wish some things had never happened. We’re allowed to say “Nothing good can come of that. Better it had never been.” We don’t have to tie ourselves in knots trying to squeeze meaning out of our pain. Sin and evil are not part of God’s good creation. They have no legitimate foothold here, and so can never truly “make sense.”

St Patrick’s Day occurs during Lent, and soon we’ll be entering Holy Week. This is the time of year when suffering and struggle is at the forefront of many Christians’ liturgical life. When I say God doesn’t require suffering, you might say “Well what about Jesus? He suffered temptation in the wilderness and then suffered death on the cross. Surely that has some meaning? Surely Jesus’ death is part of God’s plan?” I think it’s important to say that Lent is a struggle that we choose. Jesus freely chose to go into the wilderness, to face his demons and prepare himself for what was to come. There’s a big difference between suffering we choose and suffering that is forced on us. We also read in the gospels that Jesus chose the cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said to God, “Your will be done.” But we’re still left with the sticky problem of whether God required the crucifixion of Jesus. Christians through the ages have offered lots of different theories of the cross, all with their pros and cons. I personally see the cross as inevitable rather than necessary. In a sinful world like ours, someone like Jesus was going to end up dead. It was the system of Roman imperial violence that required Jesus’ death, not God. Some theologians have gone even further. Delores Williams, an African-American theologian, came to the conclusion that there was nothing about Jesus’ death that saves us. Jesus’ life offers us a way out of the mess we’re in, not his death (Sisters in the Wilderness, Orbis Books, 1993). Williams is writing from the perspective of the suffering of black women. Black women have suffered so much, and they have often been told by the church that their suffering is somehow virtuous. When talking about God, suffering and the cross, we have to ask who is talking to whom about suffering. Who has the right to tell whom to take up their cross? Do men have the right to tell women what it means to take up the cross? Do white people have the right to tell black and brown people the meaning of their suffering? Do straight Christians have the right to tell queer Christians to take up a cross of celibacy and denial?

As we move towards Good Friday, and reflect on Jesus as a Suffering Servant, we have the option to say “Jesus suffers with us” and leave it at that. We don’t have to believe that God requires us to suffer. When we try to make sense of our own suffering, we have the option to not make any sense out of it. I want to say to Patrick, my brother in Christ, “God didn’t require your enslavement. God was with you in your captivity, and God spoke to you through your experiences, but it could have happened otherwise. You’re allowed to regret being taken from your family. You’re allowed to condemn your enslavers. The Love of God is graciously given to us, and we don’t need to earn it with sweat and tears. I look forward to feasting with you in the New Heaven and New Earth, when all wounds will be healed, and the only tears are tears of joy.”

[Featured image photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash]