As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. God of hope, you break any boundary. As we experience life, the good times and the bad times, we ask that you use our experiences to produce within us the characteristics that mean life better lived; endurance, character, and hope. Speak Lord, your servants are listening. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

Sometimes a sermon title fits the sermon perfectly. It happens about once a year, but it does happen. More often, like today, the sermon and the title don’t really come that easy. So that you don’t sit there wondering, “What is a produce aisle of death, and how will it preach?” I’ll let you know why this particular title. The first half of today’s passage is about sufferings. And Paul writes it like this, “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope…” Lots of produce, thus the Produce Aisle line. And after that, Paul writes about someone dying for someone else. Thus the Death part of the title. And now, you have seen the wizard behind the curtain, and will surely be just as disappointed as Dorothy, as you realize, “Hey, these sermon titles don’t come to him on his weekly trip to the top of the mountain. Jesus isn’t transfigured in front of him, and then doesn’t give him the sermon and a catchy title.” Sorry folks, but that’s the truth.

Anyway, hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Listen. Romans 5.1-11. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

This section in chapter 5 is a wonderful section, for those of us who aren’t now, or maybe never have, endured real tragedy. For folks who have been touched by divorce, this is a good passage. For while divorce is difficult, it is still common enough to find support groups, common enough to where when you tell someone, they don’t look at you with that look of, “Oh my gosh, I have no idea what that is like or what to say.” For people whose parents or grandparents have recently died of natural causes, this is a good passage. Death, after all, is a part of life. When it comes, sure it is difficult, there is suffering for the one deceased as well as the family and friends of the departed. So, this passage about how suffering produces endurance, character and hope, it is indeed good news. For people who have become unexpectedly unemployed, it is a good passage. While the stress and worry over the future and bills met is real, it is not even life threatening tragedy. What all of these, and the numberless tribulations that we all go through have in common is this; while they are serious, the emotional recovery rate is excellent. After all, things like divorce, death, and job transition are a part of the human experience, and many folks go through the same situations. But what about the real tragedies? What about the parents who lose a child? What about someone who suffers child abuse, or sexual abuse? What about someone who is in an accident and loses some function? What about the tragedies from which the emotional recovery rate is much less than excellent? When someone goes through said kind of experience, even if you come through to the other side, no small if, you are forever changed. There are sufferings that we don’t rejoice in, from which the good that comes is so much less than the price paid. What about those? For those, verses 1 - 5 are triteness intensified, and it makes trivial the real pain out from which it can be impossible to escape.

I suppose you could say that tragedy is not what Paul is writing about here. He is writing about suffering. We are all prone to suffering. Many of us, thanks be to God, aren’t subject to much real tragedy. But suffering is a part of life, almost a daily part of life. If you look back at a year, you will undoubtedly find a series of stressful situations, either from home, or from the office, or from family, or from friends, or from any number of other situations and relationships in your life. Suffering and stress are part of the human experience; we all go through it, and pretty regularly at that.

Paul, as writer of this, was certainly no stranger to stress-filled suffering. He had, after all, been once thrown off his horse by a blinding light, been blinded for days, and then sent on mission trips by God. He lived day to day, upon the gifts of others. That ought to be taken as the serious stress it must have been, never knowing where next week’s meals were coming from. He then went out on these mission trips, and because of his zeal for spreading the good news of Christ, was thrown into jail…repeatedly. He suffered through a severe case of arthritis. Last we heard of him, he was being carted off to Rome, invited to the emperor’s place. We don’t have stories of his death, but all the stories about him stop after his trip to Rome, so we presume the emperor made him less than totally welcome.

So, Paul knew regular suffering, up until his end, when he finally knew tragedy. I think it is important that we recognize the difference, and that we don’t try to lump them together. Sufferings are a part of the natural order. We all have our own brand of suffering. We all have a string of them every year. But tragedy is different. And we ought not to look at tragedy and trivialize it by saying, “Oh well, I’m sure God has good reasons for this.” Sufferings are part of the natural order, and can be accounted for. Tragedies are not. They are not God’s will, not something God causes to make sure that we grow into how God wants us to be. Can good come out of them? Surely it can. But the price is too high to think that the purpose of tragedy is to learn from it. And for folks who have suffered tragedy, there is grace in that statement. For what kind of God would take a mother’s baby from her, just to teach something. God cares for our whole being, and when we suffer, God suffers. God doesn’t make the tragedy, or even the suffering, but provides for us in our times of despair. When one knows that God does not make these things so that they can produce endurance, character and hope, that God’s place is in comfort when we need it most, one can again proclaim that God is good, All the time.

The second half of today’s passage, verses 6 – 11 point to grace. Maybe for someone righteous, for someone good, for someone worthy, someone might dare to die. But the unstoppable grace of God does not need us to be worthy. God’s love for us is so great, that even though we are not good enough, God still dies for us in the person of the Son. And there is something to that. Paul describes this not as one person sacrificing another. This is God’s very own self doing self sacrifice, in order to win us from the power of evil and death. Self sacrifice is good, sacrificing others is less so, and is not what is going on here. Which is to say, I love you all in here. There isn’t much I wouldn’t do for you, either individually or collectively as a group. But if one of you was in grave danger, and I could save you by sacrificing either Kayla or Murphy, I wouldn’t do it. Not in a million years. If all of you were in grave danger, and each and every one of your lives depended upon my decision to sacrifice Kayla or Murphy for you, I wouldn’t do that either. Not in a million years. That is not what is going on here. God proves love for us by coming to earth in self form, not just sending someone else to do it. You see, God is good…Amen.