In this together. March 24, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

“God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  It’s one of those sayings that floats around in Christian circles.  Perhaps you’re familiar with it?  Maybe you’ve said it to someone or someone has said it to you?   The intent behind it is well-meaning.  To send a message that whatever is going on won’t overwhelm you, won’t defeat you.  That God is in control.  Sometimes that message provides comfort.  Other times, not so much.  More than once I’ve heard someone who’s suffering confide that they wished that God didn’t think they were so strong.  The implication being, that if they were weaker then maybe they wouldn’t have to go through whatever hardship they were facing.  Which always makes my heart sink because that is not the way God works - God doesn’t dole out hardships and suffering to anyone.  Let alone to those who are deemed “stronger” than others. 

“God won’t give you more than you can handle” may sound like a pious verse found somewhere in the Bible, but it’s not.  The closest thing to it comes from the last sentence in our reading today in 1 Corinthians where the apostle Paul writes, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength.”  Which kind of sounds like “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”   But an important difference here is that Paul is not talking about being tested by hardships, but by temptation.  Just as the Israelites were tempted, as Paul points out earlier in our reading, so too are the Corinthians - and, really, all of us.  Even Jesus was not immune to temptation because temptation is about being drawn to something that we perceive as being good on some level.  That’s what makes it tempting.  Outright evil has little power to tempt.  In fact, for most of us, it repels.  Instead, it’s when we are presented with something that is partially good - like the feeling of power that anger provides or the satisfaction of judging another person or the immediate pleasure when giving into an addiction or the perks that come with maintaining the status quo - when we are faced with things that seem to have shades of good to them that’s temptation.  That’s when most of us really struggle.  But Paul reassures us, “God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” 

Yet when we examine our lives and see that there are certain temptations that we fall prey to over and over again we may wonder, where is this way out that Paul claims God will provide?  Well, one big way out is right there in the text which gets lost in translation.  Not to get too much into the weeds here, but in the original Greek the “you” is plural.  And to my mind, that changes everything, as in, “God will not let you all be tested beyond your strength… [but] will provide a way out so that you all may be able to endure it.”   Dealing with temptation is not an individual project, but a communal effort.  It’s not an “every man for himself” mentality, but a “we’re all in this together” way of being in this world.  God is faithful and one of the primary ways God provides a way out for us from any temptation is through the presence of other people in our lives and for asking them for help.  Because, truly, we all are in this together. 

And although Paul is only talking here about temptation, other scriptures tell us that this applies to all aspects of life, that our lives are joined together in Christ - especially during the most difficult times.  The idea that God won’t give you more than you can handle springs from the desire to make sense of the world.  In this case to address the question that most of us ask at least once in our lives, why?  Why do bad things happen?  Why do people suffer?  If God only gives you what you can handle, it may not bring much comfort and often produces a feeling of isolation, but at least it offers some kind of reason for why things are happening when times get tough.   

During Jesus’ time (and in our time as well) the way that many people made sense of tragedy was by believing that God gave people what they deserved.  Jesus addresses this in our reading from Luke when he speaks of two recent tragedies - a state-sanctioned massacre of a group of Galilean pilgrims in Jerusalem and a fluke accident where eighteen people died when a wall collapsed upon them.  “Do you think these people did something to deserve this?”  Jesus asks and then emphatically answers, “No.”  Jesus does not blame the victim nor does he attempt to defend God.  And that’s it.  That’s all he says about it.  We are not given the answer to why such things happen.  But really, would any reason suffice?  We ask the question, why? often believing that answer will provide us with some kind of deep soul satisfaction.  But I wonder.

Perhaps Jesus doesn’t give us an answer because it’s not the answer that we really need.  For ultimately what satisfies the soul is not a rationale, but a relationship.  And that is what Jesus calls us to when he says repent - which, on the surface, I admit, doesn’t sound so warm and inviting.  But in Jesus’ call to repent, he is urging us to change our minds and turn more fully to God for that is what truly satisfies.  Repent and know in the deepest parts of our being the abundance of God’s love and life and grace and mercy.  To repent is to live more fully into relationship with God and God’s people which brings healing and wholeness no matter what is going on in our world. 

Because the fact is that life is difficult.  We all experience hardships, struggles, temptations, disappointments.  If we are like most people, at some point, we will absolutely face things that are more than we can handle.  There is no shame in that.  The promise of God is not that we won’t go through hard times.  God’s promise is that at all times, both in the good and the bad, God is with us - in the spirit of God and in the flesh of God’s people.  It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle.  The good news is that whatever life gives you God and God’s people are always with you to help you handle it.  And because that is so we will never be overcome, we will never be defeated for God is faithful.