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             Our contemporary theology class just completed many months of study of Karen Armstrong’s book The Great Transformation, the Beginning of our Religious Traditions. It is an investigation of what is called “The Axial Age” – a time in the first century before Christ in which many great world religions took shape. She says that they all shared a core of three spiritual qualities: introspection, ethical behavior, and compassion. And the key to discovering these truths was the individual’s capacity to face personal suffering.

            It goes without saying that, as human beings, our experience of life is that when things go well, we are happy. When things go badly, we are unhappy. When our lives are without pain, we rejoice. When pain enters our lives we suffer. But sages in many different times and places made a similar spiritual discovery: recognizing and facing pain, struggling to understand it, can be the door opening into a deeper spirituality. All these faith traditions seem to be saying that pain can be one of our best teachers.

            In our Western cultural and philosophical tradition, the Golden Age of Athens is often lifted up as the high-water mark for philosophy, with Socrates as the exemplar of a rigorous and unflinching intellectual integrity – with his fierce insistence on examining the underlying assumptions in our everyday thinking. His student, Plato, established a school to enshrine such rigor – called the Academy. Plato’s student, Aristotle, later established his own school, stressing science and empirical observation, called the Lyceum. But Karen Armstrong argues that with the decline of Athens, the energy went out of Greek philosophy. Instead of the idealistic zeal of Plato, or the rigorous empiricism of Aristotle, later philosophers, like Epicurus, settled for a view of life based on comfort and happiness. Epicurus established his school and called it the Grove. Here the ideal was to dwell in a leafy bower, enjoy the simple pleasures, and avoid conflict.

            So what was the difference between the Golden Age of Athens and the later ages of Epicureanism and stoicism? The difference lay in the fact that understanding suffering and how suffering could be a teacher was lost. Suffering was simply something to be avoided.  But what’s wrong with that, one may ask. Today, I wonder why so many retirement community advertisements stress the appeal of endless sitting by the side of the pool, golf, strolls through lovely glades, bridge, and daily cocktail hours, all within a secure perimeter? (I confess, at my time of life, that has a certain appeal! – if it’s true.) But the axial sages taught that the problem is  - without pain, we stop learning. Stop growing.

            Now if we fast-forward several hundred years to the time of St. Paul, we can see why within the Roman world of his time, a world that had adopted late Greek philosophy as its own, Paul’s words about suffering would have been so electrifying. Paul said he “boasted in his suffering.” Why? Because suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. Paul says to face and embrace one’s experience of suffering. And why do that? Because what begins in pain, which is very worldly, can end in hope, which is deeply spiritual. And suffusing it all is love. The ultimate value produced by the Axial Age, one that can have come only from suffering, is empathy with the suffering of others; that is, compassion.

            So why am I talking about this on an Annual Meeting Sunday – one that includes electing leadership and debating a budget. Well, because both of those are about pain, agony as well as ecstasy. Being a lay leader at CCC is a lot of hard work. It brings pain as well as joy. And nothing is harder in a church than the struggle to establish priorities that deliberating on a budget entails. Wouldn’t it be nice if being a lay leader at CCC meant simply prestige and acclaim and pleasant parties? And wouldn’t it be nice if budget debates were characterized by how to allocate an overflowing surplus?

            Well, it is rarely that way - usually not a picnic. Why? Because, the church really isn’t about happy and contented folks contemplating matters in a shady grove. Instead it is about the energy it takes to run God’s frontier outpost in a dangerous world. But yet, according to the heart of the Christian message, the pain of such a struggle can be seen as the church’s best possible teacher. What do we learn through this pain? What do you think? I think we learn the importance of priority setting. I think we learn to speak up and listen. We discover what really matters to us. I think we learn how much we care and value each other, even in the midst of struggle and disagreement. And most important, we learn anew that the deliberative struggle here, at its heart, is different from what goes on in the world. Because somehow here, we come to recognize that it is not simply our priorities we are arguing about, it is God’s priorities. And it is not just about our leadership as it arises – it is about God’s leadership of this community.

            What better Sunday to have an annual congregational meeting, than a Sunday when we celebrate the Sacrament of Holy Communion? For in this sacred meal – what God values most becomes what we value most. God’s suffering becomes our suffering. And God’s hope becomes our hope. In the life and teachings and presence of Jesus, God shows us suffering, endurance, character, and hope. All suffused with love. AMEN.

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