Christ, Burden Bearer

Lee So-hee, a 30-year-old office worker, used to live alone in Seoul. That changed in November when a friend gave her a rock. “If you really think of your rock as a pet, I do think it makes things a bit less lonely and more fun,” she said.

Pet rocks, a kooky and best-forgotten fad of 1970s America, are resurfacing in South Korea.

South Koreans, who endure one of the industrialized world’s longest workweeks, have a tradition of unwinding in unusual ways. They have lain in coffins for their own mock funerals, checked into prison to meditate, and gathered in a Seoul park each year for a “space-out” contest.

Pet rocks are the latest new thing. Lee, a 30-year-old researcher at a pharmaceutical company, made her pet rock a winter blanket from an old towel. It came into her life during a demanding stretch at work when she was working long hours in the lab, often late into the night.

“I’d occasionally complain to my rock about what a tiresome day I had at work,” she said. “Of course, it’s an inanimate object that can’t understand you. But it’s kind of like talking to your dog, and can feel relaxing in some ways.”

Choi Hye-jin, a 39-year-old Seoul homemaker, picked up a stuffed cloth trinket in the shape of a rock at a tourist shop next to one of South Korea’s famed rock formations. She takes pictures of it when traveling and has brought it to concerts and autograph-signing events of her favorite singer, who now recognizes her because of it, she said.

The sun rises over the bay in Vinoy Park in St. Petersburg, Florida. Lounging on a bench near the sea wall—his bench—is Al Nixon. “Hi Al!” say the passers-by. “Have a good day!” says Al. For park regulars between 6am and 8am, he’s as reliable as the squirrels or the water fountains. Many who pass stop to chat. Many just give and receive a little wave. Day after day. Al has watched the sunrise from his bench, seven days a week, for years. Everyone seems to know him.

About seven years ago, Al needed to clear his head. Trouble at work, mostly. He found the perfect bench near the sea wall and watched the sun come up. It worked, and he started showing up for sunrise three or four days a week.

One day a complete stranger came up and told Al something he’ll never forget. “I know, when I see you sitting there, that everything is going to be alright.” Al said, “For the first time, I knew there was more of a purpose to me being out here than just soothing my own woes. We have an impact on other people.” Not only did he keep coming, but it became every day, even weekends. He had to do his duty.

Something else happened when he showed up every day. People started confiding in him. They told him about their children, their own childhoods, their finances, and their marriages. At the height of the pandemic, people told Al about loved ones they lost. Al said, “Mostly people just want to be heard. I’ve heard a thousand stories. I don’t consider myself all that smart, or debonair, but I’m a good listener.”

Then at 8am sharp, an alarm sounded on his phone. Al stood up, and walked off. He headed to work, feeling like his job was already done.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Encouragement; Friendship; Listening – One of the greatest gifts we can give to others is to listen, to care, and encourage them. 2) Christ, burden bearer; Love of Christ – The greatest Friend we have loves us (Eph 3:18-19), prays for us (Heb. 7:25), and will never forsake us (Heb. 13:5).

In her book Ten Fingers for God, Dorothy Clarke Wilson writes about Dr. Paul Brand who worked with leprosy patients in India.

Sometimes they would all gather together in fellowship. One evening, Paul joined them, and they asked him to speak.

Dr. Brand had nothing prepared, yet he willingly stood up, paused for a moment and looked at their hands, some with no fingers, and some with only a few stumps. Then he spoke: "I am a hand surgeon, so when I meet people, I can't help looking at their hands. I would like to have examined Christ's hands. With the nails driven through, they must have appeared twisted and crippled. Remember, Jesus, at the end, was crippled too."

The patients, on hearing this, suddenly lifted their poor hands towards heaven. Hearing of God's response to suffering had made their suffering easier.

So many of us do it: You get into bed, turn off the lights, and look at your phone to check Twitter one more time. The economy is cratering. Still, you incessantly scroll though bottomless doom-and-gloom news for hours as you sink into a pool of despair.

This habit has become known as doomscrolling--the act of consuming an endless procession of negative online news. With protests over racial injustice and police brutality, it’s only gotten more intense. The constant stream of news and social media never ends. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, 66% of Americans feel worn out by the amount of news available.

Recently, Dictionary.com named doomscrolling one of its “New Words We Created Because of Coronavirus.” There’s something else in the etymology, though. Particularly in the word doom. The act of doomscrolling, then, is to roll toward annihilation. Taken biblically, it has a Revelation tone. Simultaneously, each person watches the demise of so much, while also slowly destroying themselves.

Doomscrolling will never actually stop the doom itself. Amidst all of the pain, isolation, and destruction of the past six months, it’s not worth it to add on to the strain with two hours of excess Twitter every night. Try these things instead: Put down your phone, turn off your news notifications, and focus on good news to lift your spirits.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The gospel literally means “Good News” and it is what people desperately need right now. Become a testimony of hope (1 Pet. 3:15), light (Matt. 5:14), and the good news of a Savior (Luke 2:10) whom we proclaim (Acts 8:35).

An article in Christianity Today traces how early African American Christianity proved the power of the Resurrection against oppression.

In their book The Genesis of Liberation, scholars Emerson Powery and Rodney Sadler Jr. explore what they call the "miracle" of how many African American slaves came to faith in Christ. For most of them, Jesus was the "White Man's Savior." They used Jesus and the Bible to pacify slaves and justify their enslavement.

Miraculously, many African Americans, though not all, became Christians and attributed authority to the Bible. The question that remains is why. Why did enslaved Africans embrace the religion of their captors, who used the Bible to justify the brutal trans-Atlantic slave trade?

Here is their simple answer: "They fell in love with the God of Scripture … In Christ they found salvation from their sins and reconciliation." They write that in the Bible they found not just an otherworldly God offering spiritual blessings, but a here-and-now God who cared principally for the oppressed, acting to deliver the downtrodden from their abusers. They also found Jesus, a suffering Savior whose life and struggles paralleled their own struggles.

As they came in contact with this God, they found a different reality in him: the reality of Resurrection power. It was the reality of Jesus' death and resurrection that created a community of faith and … provided slaves with a theology of "resistance." The Resurrection had proved its power; there are Christians—even among African Americans.

In 1943, 230 women were arrested as members of the French Resistance and sent to Birkenau concentration camp. Only 49 survived, but this in itself is remarkable. These women were as diverse a group as could be imagined—Jews and Christians, aristocrats and working class, young and old. Yet they were united by their commitment to the French Resistance and to one another. In her book A Train in Winter, Caroline Moorhead reconstructs the story of these women through the journals and memoirs of survivors. The solidarity of these women sustained them through unspeakable horror and torture.

In contrast, many Holocaust survivors hoarded whatever meager resources they could save for themselves. And how could they be blamed? Survival became the only goal—no matter what the cost, even to others. Yet, in most of the cases with these French women in Birkenau, their solidarity toward each other trumped the selfishness that engulfed so many others. As Moorhead writes, "Knowing that the fate of each depended on the others … egotism seemed to vanish and that, stripped back to the bare edge of survival, each rose to behavior few would have believed themselves capable of." Moorhead recounts that when unrelieved thirst threatened to engulf one of their members in utter madness, the women pooled together their own meager rations to get her a whole bucket of water.

This kind of love is very rare. Putting one's own needs first is as natural as breathing, and just as unconscious. Yet the women of the French Resistance provide a contemporary model of what Christ has done for us. But there are two big differences: first Jesus willingly chose to stand in solidarity with us in our suffering. Second, he stood in solidarity with his enemies. He walked among humans including the very least of these, and chose to share the horror of human death. Even after the victory of his resurrection from death, this One still bore in his body the wounds of his earthly suffering. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. This is solidarity for life.

London witnessed a spectacular scene when a giant wooden replica of the city ignited and burned brilliantly to the ground. The conflagration was planned, however, in honor of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. The original fire began on September 2, 1666, in the early morning at a bakery on Pudding Lane. The surrounding structures were soon engulfed, and the fire spread to the rest of the city, lasting four entire days. The modern-day festival to remember the disaster is known as "London's Burning" and contains four days of free art events, concluding this year with the grand burning of the replica of medieval London.

At first glance, it seems a bit odd to celebrate such a catastrophe-especially with another fire. However, as gruesome as the Great Fire may have been, it now has its place firmly etched into the city's history as a turning point: the beginning of a time of regrowth and resurgence for London.

Christians arguably perform the same "odd" type of ritual when we take communion and decorate our homes and sacred buildings with crosses. We not only commemorate the brutal murder of Jesus, but we adorn our worship with the murder weapon: the cross, one of the most widely known torture devices of that time period. And yet it doesn't seem strange to us—because we know that what Satan intended to be the ultimate act of evil, God turned around to be the ultimate act of love.

Potential Preaching Angles: Redemption; Cross; Crucifixion; Easter; Communion

There is a Japanese word, kintsukuroi, that means "golden repair." It is the art of restoring broken pottery with gold so the fractures are literally illuminated—a kind of physical expression of its spirit. As a philosophy, kintsukuroi celebrates imperfection as an integral part of the story, not something to be disguised. The artists believe that when something has suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful.

In kintsukuroi, the true life of an object (or a person) begins the moment it breaks and reveals that it is vulnerable. The gap between once pristine appearance and its visible imperfection deepens its appeal.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Christ, power and grace of—Jesus is the ultimate Kintsukuroi artist. He takes our broken lives and makes them new. (2) Suffering—We probably shouldn't take this idea of beautiful brokenness as a symbol of how suffering makes us better. In the face of serious life damage, some tragedies are not "for the better" but are just that: tragedies, for the worse, which we would have been better off without. But kintsukuroi nevertheless remains a wonderful illustration for the Christian life, which holds symbols of both life and death in one ruddy old jug.

On his 39th birthday, poet Christian Wiman was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer. He wrote frankly about the agonizing effects of his illness and the treatments.

I have had bones die and bowels fail; joints lock in my face and arms and legs, so that I could not eat, could not walk … I have passed through pain I could never have imagined, pain that seemed to incinerate all my thoughts of God and to leave me sitting there in the ashes, alone.

When the diagnosis came, Wiman was a rising star in the literary world and the editor of a prestigious poetry publication. Though Wiman confessed his Christian faith had "evaporated in the blast of modernism and secularism to which I was exposed in college," the diagnosis started a journey that ultimately led him back to God. It wasn't a particular doctrine that drew him back to the faith, but Wiman found a friend in the suffering Messiah.

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, "My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me." … The point is that God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering. I am a Christian because I understand that moment of Christ's passion to have meaning in my own life, and what it means is that the absolute solitary and singular nature of extreme human pain is an illusion. I'm not suggesting that ministering angels are going to come down and comfort you as you die. I'm suggesting that Christ's suffering shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering.

In the face of brutal, isolating pain we don't really want answers. We want a person. At such times there is simply no substitute for the presence of Christ.

No greater pain has ever been experienced on any level than the hell of Christ suffering in this moment. But why? Because he carried all of that pain, sin, guilt, and shame in that moment. Yet on a far deeper level he was forsaken and punished for us to reconcile us to God (2 Cor. 5:18).

Tim Keller illustrates it this way:

If after a service some Sunday morning one of the members of my church comes to me and says, "I never want to see you or talk to you again," I will feel pretty bad. But if today my wife comes up to me and says, "I never want to see you or talk to you again," that's a lot worse. The longer the love, the deeper the love, the greater the torment of its loss.

But this forsakenness, this loss, was between the Father and the Son, who had loved each other from all eternity. … Jesus, the Maker of the world, was being unmade. Why? Jesus was experiencing Judgment Day. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. And the answer is: For you, for me, for us. Jesus was forsaken by God so that we would never have to be. The judgment that should have fallen on us fell instead on Jesus.

This quote highlights how Jesus, in his suffering and death, stands in solidarity with any human being who suffers, especially the poor, the forgotten, and the powerless:

It's important to note that [according to the world's standards] Jesus' death was an obscure one … [In the world's eyes] Jesus dies like a migrant worker who suffocates in a freight container, like a garbage-picker caught in a slide, like a child with an infected finger, like a beggar the bus reverses over. Or, of course, like all the other slaves ever punished by crucifixion, a fate so low, said [the Roman philosopher] Cicero, that no well-bred person should ever even mention it. Some people ask nowadays what kind of a religion it is that chooses an instrument of torture for its symbol … The answer is: one that takes the existence of suffering seriously.

Editor's Note: Christ's death was completely planned and purposeful, not random or accidental. This quote merely highlights that at the Cross, Jesus completely identifies with the agony of the migrant worker, the garbage-picker, the unknown child, the beggar, the slave, and every other human being who has ever lived.

In January 1999 the North Atlantic commercial fishing industry saw a deadly string of accidents. In a 13-day span, the Cape Fear, the Adriatic, and the Beth Dee Bob were lost at sea off the coast of New Jersey. In all, 10 men died, five never to be found. Commercial fishing is dangerous way to make a living, but even so three ships lost in such a short period of time is extraordinarily rare, particularly when all three were from the same docks.

Investigations revealed the following facts about the three separate tragedies:

1. None involved a hull breach.
2. All three ships were piloted by veteran captains with 10 years or more in the wheelhouse.
3. All three ships were near the end of their journey, less than 15 miles from home.

So what happened? Two of the three ships were carrying too much weight, and the thirdwas carrying its weight improperly. Commercial vessels on the water in early January are mostly clam boats, as were the Cape Fear, the Adriatic, and the Beth Dee Bob. A commercial clam trap is 3' x 3' x 4' and weighs 300 pounds empty. Laden with quahogs, they weigh in at between 1 and 1.5 tons apiece! The Cape Fear and the Adriatic each had 10 extra traps on board. That's 10-15 tons of excess weight!

Interviewers later asked other boat captains who fished these waters the following question: Why would a veteran boat captain completely ignore the papers on his boat and attempt to carry 10-15 tons more than was safe? Time after time, the answer came in the form of a quizzical look and a shrug. Simply put, the behavior was common practice. These captains didn't perceive themselves to be in danger. They were simply doing what was normal in their industry.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Busyness; Rest; Sabbath; Success; Simplicity—This could apply to our schedules and commitments, which like these commercial fishermen get overloaded with too much cargo. (2) Greed; Anxiety; Stress; Burdens; Legalism; Resentment—What extra burdens or weights (greed, anxiety, stress, legalism) are we carrying that we need to give to Christ?

In 1875 a British poet named William Ernest Henley published a short poem that expressed one way to cope with life's circumstances. The poem, called "Invictus," ended with these famous lines: "I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul."

In popular culture, those last two lines usually represent some kind of heroic and self-sufficient stand against evil and injustice without submitting to God. The journalist Danniel Hannan called the poem "a final and terrible act of defiance. The Horror might indeed have awaited [Henley], but he would go there on his own terms, leaving the spittle sliding down his Maker's face."

For over a hundred years, Henley's poem has inspired many people. In the 1980s, the poem encouraged former South African president Nelson Mandala throughout the dark days of his imprisonment. Years later, Clint Eastwood used it as the title for his popular film about the South African rugby team.

Sadly, it was also a great influence on Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was responsible for the deaths of 168 men, women, and children, and the injuries of 800 more. He scribbled out the words of "Invictus" and handed it to authorities as his last words before his execution.

Sixteen years after Henley first published "Invictus," the British preacher Charles Spurgeon offered another philosophy of life. On June 7, 1891, in the closing words of his final sermon, Spurgeon urged people to submit to a better "Captain" for our soul. Spurgeon said:

Every [person] must serve somebody: we have no choice as to that fact. Those who have no master are slaves to themselves. Depend upon it, you will either serve Satan or Christ. Either self or the Savior. You will find sin, self, Satan, and the world to be hard masters; but if you wear the uniform of Christ, you will find him so meek and lowly of heart that you will find rest unto your souls …. If you could see our Captain, you would go down on your knees and beg him to let you enter the ranks of those who follow him. It is heaven to serve Jesus.

We've all heard jokes about the average guy's unwillingness to ask for directions, but compared to women, are men really less likely to ask for help? Or is that just a stereotype? Psychologists Michael E. Addis and James R. Mahalik cite numerous studies over the past three decades that confirm what we've often assumed: men are much less likely than women to seek help for a number of health issues. Addis and Mahalik conclude:

The findings have been strikingly consistent and have shown that, as a group, men of different ages, nationalities, and ethnic and racial backgrounds seek professional help less frequently than do women. Several studies have found that men less frequently visit primary care physicians and other medical health specialists. When men do seek help, they ask fewer questions than women. Moreover, although men report higher levels of substance abuse and are more likely than women to have experienced [problems] resulting from [addictions], they are less likely to seek help for alcohol and cocaine abuse.

Several studies have confirmed that men also seek psychiatric services … and counseling less often than women …. With regard specifically to depression, men have reported that they would be more reluctant to seek help, even informally from friends, and more likely to report that they would never seek [counseling] for depression.

Addis and Mahalik also warn that the average man's unwillingness to seek help has negative consequences:

Men's reluctance to seek help stands in stark contrast to the range and severity of the problems that affect them. For example, men in the United States die, on average, close to seven years younger than women and have higher rates of 15 leading causes of death.

In his book Invisible Men, Dr. Michael E. Addis tells the story about meeting a middle-aged man named Patrick. Although by all accounts Patrick was an easygoing, happily-married family man who ran a successful business, he had just tried to take his own life. After some prodding from Dr. Addis, Patrick finally divulged the events that led to his suicide attempt. His business had steadily slowed until he was unable to make the mortgage payment on their new house. Things went downhill financially from there. Then the economy crashed.

Dr. Addis writes:

[But] it was Patrick's response to these events that really struck me. Rather than letting his wife and close friends know about the struggles he was facing, Patrick kept it all to himself. Over time, the gap between what people thought was going on in his life and what was actually going on grew larger, and Patrick became profoundly depressed. He couldn't face working, but he also couldn't face telling people how bad things had gotten …. Eventually the depression became so overwhelming that he saw no other way out.

"How could I face them?" he asked. "What would they think of me? In their eyes I'd look like a has-been, somebody whose time had come and gone, only because he couldn't handle it."

"But those were extremely difficult experiences you had," I said. "Nobody could have foreseen the financial difficulties."

"I should have been able to. Besides, that's not what I'm talking about. I should have been able to handle it emotionally. Instead, I fell apart and turned into a sniveling little boy. What was I going to say, 'Oh, Mommy, please help me?' I couldn't let people see me like that."

On the one hand, it seemed obvious to me that no man would want to see himself like a little boy asking for Mommy's help. But then if you stopped and thought about it, is asking for help worse than dying? How far will a man go to hide his shame? How many Patricks are there who would rather [suffer alone] than try to break through the gauntlet of silence and invisibility that prevents them from finding the support they so desperately need?

Eleanor Turnbull, a veteran missionary to Haiti, collected and translated the prayers of the Christians who lived in the mountains of Haiti. These profound and child-like prayers are recorded in the book God Is No Stranger. Here are four prayers about God's grace and protection.

Lord,
All my life, I have been just a weed;
I became a flower.
I am young and I want to grow and be cultivated
so I can become more beautiful.

Lord,
In Christ, we are a grain of corn in a clear bottle.
Satan comes like a chicken and pecks for the corn, but never reaches it.

Lord,
How glad we are that we don't hold you,
you hold us.

Lord,
Don't let us put our load of trouble in a basket on our head.
Help us put them on Jesus' head.
Then we won't have headaches.

In October 2011, hall of fame basketball player Jerry West released a book called West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life . Instead of using this platform to catalogue his various achievements (of which there were many), West decided to write about his struggles with anxiety and depression. It turns out the man who earned the nickname "Mr. Clutch" because of his outstanding performances under pressure and who inspired the official NBA logo was also debilitated by such high levels of game-day tension that life became almost unbearable for him. One of his biographers, Roland Lazenby describes West's early days on the court:

As he gained more confidence and took on more responsibility, West became wracked by incredible game-day tension. He would become a pacing nervous animal each game day, with the tension building moment by moment until he was absolutely beside himself with anxiety over his coming performance. It was a condition that threatened to take down his legacy before it ever got started. "I've always been a nervous person," West admitted many times.

Like Jerry West, millions of people struggle with anxiety issues, and sometimes they're the people we assume would never struggle with anxiety (like a former basketball star nicknamed "Mr. Clutch"). So if you're secretly struggling with anxiety or depression, you certainly aren't alone.

In many fictional tales, characters die after suffering a devastating loss. The Bible often refers to the anguish of the "broken-hearted." But has anyone really died or suffered physical harm from a "broken heart"?

Surprisingly, medical researchers at Johns Hopkins University have now identified a medical condition called stress cardiomyopathy, also called "broken heart syndrome." This new research shows that tragic or shocking life events—including loss of a loved one, a car accident, armed robbery, a fierce argument—can cause a sudden surge in adrenaline that weakens heart muscles. According to the lead author of the John Hopkins study, "It looked like a heart attack in the sense that the EKGs were abnormal, the blood work was abnormal, but when you went to the [lab], the arteries had no blockages." The patients had very few or none of the typical risk factors for heart disease. But the emotional pain they experienced had literally stunned their heart, making it feel like they were having classic heart attack symptoms, including chest pain, fluid in the lungs, and shortness of breath.

In some cases, broken heart syndrome can be as dangerous as a real heart attack, although after treatment, most patients quickly recover. But in all cases, broken heart syndrome hurts just as much as a real heart attack. Research has also shown that the same regions of the brain that signal physical pain are also activated when we feel emotional pain, such as grief or rejection.

So when the Bible talks about the anguish of the broken-hearted, it's describing real hurt and real pain. As one of the doctors said about patients with this condition, "We'll definitely be paying more attention now than before to patients who are grieving."