You’re a toddler.  You’ve just finally gotten your legs under you and now you’re beginning to toddle all over the house.  You’re cruising around, head flying by things like a spaceship flying through an asteroid field…and all of a sudden… BUMP!  You slam your head right into the corner of the coffee table.  Ouch!  Tears flow.  Loud sobs are sent forth.  But it isn’t long before Mom is at your side.  She takes you in her arms.  And gives you a kiss.  All better.

A little older now, you are playing outside.  What’s better than street hockey on a warm spring day?  But, going for a shot Sidney Crosby should, and you shouldn’t, you slip and scrape your knee.  Tears flow.  Loud sobs are sent forth.  And you go running inside, pointing to your knee.  Dad calms you down, says it’s gonna be OK, and puts a Band-aid on.  All better.

Later that winter, the newest flu bug is going around, and you get a fever.  You feel miserable.  Everything aches.  You’re crabby, and you can’t get to sleep.  Mom gives you some Tylenol to reduce the pain.  Ahhhh.  You drift off to sleep.

You grow up learning: When I get hurt, as soon as possible, I need something to take that pain away.  So now you are an adult, right in the middle of a rough day at work.  And your head starts throbbing.  From your temples to the top of your forehead, one of those awful headaches settles in.  Your natural reaction is to grab the bottle of aspirin in your desk drawer and throw two of them down with a glass of water.  And soon enough, ahhhh… the pressure goes away.

We grow up learning and believing that pain is something to be avoided and dealt with as soon as possible.  If you feel a slight headache, dull it immediately with the newest extra-strength pain reliever.  If your nose drips more than a drop, by all means reach for the latest sinus decongestant.  At the slightest cramp of constipation, visit a drugstore and select from the dazzling display of candies, liquids, pills, and enemas!  So many of our habits, from the things we eat to the temps we keep our homes at even to the kind of shoes we wear… are to avoid pain.

But if it’s available, why not?  Let’s say you’re going into surgery.  They used to give you a piece of leather to put between your teeth.  Now, they, and I must say I am glad they do, have something called anesthesia.  Who would want to go under the knife without some form of pain relief?

And women, those of you who have given birth, which they say is one of the most painful experiences human beings have been known to endure, some of you are probably more than happy that you got into the delivery room in time to receive something called an epidural.  And if not that, maybe a little Demerol or laughing gas.  And believe me, not one man in this room would fault you for choosing all of the above.

And then, on the other side of joy, you have the person lying in the hospital bed being killed by cancer or some other horrible murderer of our human bodies.  And besides the fact that they are facing death, they are enduring a kind of pain most of us could only imagine.  I’ve sat by a few too many hospital beds, seeing that kind of pain in peoples’ eyes.  What can the doctors do to heal them?  Nothing.  But what can they do to ease the pain?  Morphine.  If we have some way we can help ease their pain, even a little bit, why not do all we can?  And God forbid, if that’s you some day lying in that bed, no doubt you will be thankful to God for a little bit of pain relief.

We’ve grown up learning that pain is something to be avoided, something that we should bring relief for if there’s any way possible.  Think about it: It is ridiculous to stay in pain when there is a way to get out of it, isn’t it?  Especially if you were about to be brutally murdered… My goodness, even when they put a person to death by lethal injection, they first shoot a round of something into them to put them to sleep so it won’t be painful.

There was a similar custom in Jesus’ day.  A man who was about to be executed had one right.  He had the right to beg for a “grain of incense,” a kind of narcotic mixed into wine in order to dull his senses and alleviate the pain.  The narcotic had a stupefying effect.  It drugged a person up, maybe even knocked them out.  They had a nice-sounding name for it: gall.

As the tradition goes, this is something the women of Jerusalem did for the people who were crucified.  They would put this version of morphine or LSD or pot whatever it was like into a sour wine which would increase its effect and give it to the condemned right before being nailed to the cross.  And Jesus was offered the traditional narcotic, alright.  “But after tasting it, he refused to drink it.”  Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.  Why?

Why did He refuse the pain-killer?  Because He didn’t want to be knocked out.  He still had a few words He wanted to say.  He had a few prayers He wanted to pray.  He wanted to be able to recognize his mother when He saw her.  He did not want a narcotic to get any credit for helping Him endure the agony of the cross.  Most importantly, my friends, Jesus knew it was important for Him to not drink the cup of pain-relief so He could drink the full cup of suffering for our sins, yours and mine.  He had to suffer the full pain of this sentence to take all of our pain away!  Friends, if Jesus would not have suffered for our pain, we would still have to.

He didn’t take any kind of short cut with this mission God sent Him on, so that you and I would never be left wondering whether or not the source of our pain has truly been taken away.  Isn’t that amazing?  That He willingly was arrested, falsely accused, sentenced to death, and nailed to a cross, when all the while He could have stopped this pain being afflicted on Him… but didn’t!  Why?  Only out of love for us.  THIS is LOVE!

And the reason that is so amazing is because our typical response to pain is to get pain relief as soon as possible.  To take an aspirin at the slightest ache to silence the pain.  But that only deals with the symptom, and not the problem, doesn’t it?  And we’ve become pretty good at addressing the symptoms and not the problems when it comes to pain relief…

You’ve had a long day at work.  A really long day.  The stress level is off the charts.  Your head hurts and your muscles ache.  You don’t feel like talking, but you need the stress to go away.  You plop yourself into a chair, and pop open a beer or pour a glass of wine.  And three glasses later, the pain begins to go away.  Ahhhh.  Pain relief.

Or you are dealing with relational problems.  Your spouse and you are in a deadlock.  What’s the point of working on it anymore?  It will only lead into fighting and arguing, and it hurts even thinking about it all.  It is painful.  But if you can escape for a while, the pain will go away.  And there’s something about 4 hours of watching movies or playing video games that takes you out of the painful reality of the world and gives you some pain relief.  For a while.

Or maybe something happened suddenly that demands some quicker pain relief.  You just lost a job, a spouse, or went to a funeral.  And it hurts badly.  So you grab a big bottle of something that burns when it goes down.  It probably has a nicer-sounding name than “gall,” but more or less does the same thing.  Kills the pain.  For a while.

Or you just can’t live with yourself.  You don’t like who you are.  You have a self-esteem problem.  You’re going through the “pain” of being a teenager, a young adult.  It’s hard to fit in.  So you get stoned.  And you find that as long as you are stoned, you don’t feel the pain.

Friends, our approaches to dealing with pain so often only deal with the symptoms.  Let’s be thankful, shall we, that Jesus got to the root of the problem!  We suffer a lot of pain in this world, don’t we?  Whether it is physical pain, mental pain, or emotional pain.  And wouldn’t it be great to live in a pain-free world?  Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of pain?  Who of us likes to suffer?  And why does God continue to allow it?  Where is God when we suffer pain?

Where is God when we suffer pain?  Well, look at Him on the cross.  Suffering the full amount, for us.  Refusing a pain-killer to help Him through it, so He would suffer all of it, the full amount, instead of us.  Suffering not only physical pain, but the much greater pain of being separated from God because of our sins.  Suffering the pain of guilt so that we might have the pain-free joy of forgiveness!  That’s where to find God when you are suffering pain!

One day, in an army barracks, someone came up with the idea for a prank of throwing a disarmed hand grenade in the middle of the floor and pretending it was about to explode.  The young newbie soldier would be petrified with fear and they would all have a good laugh at his expense.  So at the appointed time, they tossed the hand grenade and everybody began shouting, “Get out!  Get out!  It’s a live grenade!  It’s about to explode!”  But, instead of running away, the odd young soldier fell on the grenade and yelled to the other recruits, “Get out of here!  You’ll be killed if you don’t!  Run for your lives!”  The barracks fell silent.  Shame was in the air.  The other recruits realized that this young man had thought the grenade was live, but instead of running away, he had been willing to give his life to save the others.

Jesus, instead of running from the pain we would have run from, instead of taking the narcotic we would’ve taken, took the full painful brunt of punishment for our sins to save us from it!  It wasn’t until all had been completed 3 hours later that He allowed some of that wine vinegar to wet his lips so that He could declare with a loud voice for all to hear: “It is finished!”

Real pain relief is ours!  So you’re having trouble with self esteem and trying to fit in.  You could get stoned, and besides breaking the law and killing your brain cells, it might give you some pain relief for a while.  Or you could let Jesus assure you that you are valuable and loved!  When someone dies, you could kill the pain with hard liquor to numb yourself from the hurt.  Or you could let Jesus fill you with the hope of eternal life!  When you are struggling in your marriage, you could escape to the world of make-believe and fill your time with side-hobbies.  Or you could turn to Christ for help, and let his love fill you with what you need to give it rebirth!  When you’ve had a long day, you could escape by drinking yourself into a stupor.  Or you could let Jesus give you a longer lasting comfort and pain relief!

There’s nothing wrong with some morphine to take the bite out of cancer’s pain, or an epidural to get you through the birthing process, or anesthesia to help you make it through surgery… but why don’t you add to those things the truth that Jesus has been there and felt that kind of pain, too!  He knows what you are going through!

And there’s nothing wrong with taking an aspirin for your aches and pains, but as you are trying to relieve yourself of those pains, don’t forget to remember that Jesus promised us one day a new world where there will be no more tears and no more pain!  So child, when you bump your head, and it hurts, let Jesus kiss it.  With the kind of kiss that only He can give.  Let Him give you real Pain Relief!   Amen.