Revisiting the Comfortable Pew

A message based on 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 preached at Queen Street Baptist Church. 

Introduction

A number of years ago, there was a popular book by Pierre Berton called The Comfortable Pew.  Berton was asked by a major denomination in the mid-1960s to write a report on the state of the church and the result was this book. It was a scathing report of the church as being completely irrelevant to society. When he calls the church a comfortable pew, it is meant as an insult and not a complement. He saw a church that was only interested in their own comfort and not committed to making a difference in the world.

In my own study of Scripture and my preaching, there has been a consistent theme of God not being interested in our comfort. Jesus calls us to a discipleship that costs us something. Despite what prosperity gospel preachers claim, there is more in Scripture about our suffering than there is about our prosperity. I’m confident that I am on solid biblical and theological ground.

Having said that, in just the the five verses of 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, the word comfort is mentioned ten times and it is used in a positive way.

The question we have to ask is, is God interested in our comfort or is he not? The answer is yes, he is and and he isn’t.

What I mean by this is that God is not interested in our comfort in the sense of life being easy, pleasant and pure happiness. God is not interested in us having the comfort that Pierre Berton was so critical of.

But that is not the only way to understand comfort. The word that is translated comfort in many translations has a range of meaning from exhortation to consolation. I will give you two examples of what this looks like. One of the most rewarding experiences in my life was joining the army reserves and making it through basic training. Our training was specifically for chaplains. As you can imagine, not every pastor is in perfect physical shape or particularly athletic. When we would go for runs at 0600 hrs, there would be a lot of exhortation. We would encourage one another that we could make it through the run, no matter how cramped or out of breath we were. That is one way to understand comfort.

Here is another. Amanda and I lost our first child in a miscarriage. When we were in the hospital, a pastor came to visit us. He did not try to explain why this happened, he did not throw Bible verses at us to try and make us stop feeling sad. He simply shook his head and said, “This is just not right.” For us, that was consolation that gave us permission to grieve. It was comfort in what was a rather uncomfortable experience.

With those understandings of comfort, let us take a look at this passage and try to understand what it means for us, and what it means for the persecuted church.

Divine Comfort

Paul starts by describing God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles. Notice the use of all. Paul is not describing a God who has comfort as one of his minor attributes and which he uses only on rare occasions. When Paul says that he is the God of all comfort, he is saying that he is the source of comfort and that comfort is continually being offered.

John records for us this saying of Jesus: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.” (John 14:16) The advocate that Jesus is speaking of is the Holy Spirit, who was to be given to all believers, the same Spirit we received when we put our faith in Jesus. But what does this advocate have to do with comfort? The word that the NIV translates as advocate is the same word that Paul uses in 2 Corinthians for comfort. In fact some other translations use the word comforter rather than advocate.

We have already looked at the role of the Father as the God of all comfort and the Spirit as the comforter. Wouldn’t it be great if the Son was involved as well so we could have trinitarian comfort?

Comfort assumes knowledge of suffering, and more comfort can be offered when the comforter knows that suffering personally. When I and my fellow chaplains were exhorting each other on the run, we knew what it was like to want to quit. When that pastor visited us in the hospital, he knew what it was like to experience loss.

Does God know suffering? Since God is omniscient, he knows everything about suffering, down to the most complex chemical reaction in our brains and in our body. But through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God knew suffering by experience. Jesus understood what it was like to be betrayed by friends, mocked by strangers and undergo intense emotional and physical pain. Because of the incarnation, God knows and understands suffering personally.

Today is the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. I need to make it clear that I have no idea what persecution is like. I have been teased and made fun for being a Christian, but that is not real persecution. There are people today losing their lives for their faith in Jesus. It is happening all over the world. I have a friend in England who converted from Islam to Christianity. Even in England, she needs to be careful of who knows her story because she could easily become the victim of violence. In many countries, publicly confessing Jesus as Lord is a very dangerous thing to do. It is not just their own lives at risk, it is also that of their families.

Where is the comfort for people who are enduring persecution? Most of all, it comes from the God of all comfort. God is able to bring comfort, in the sense of exhortation and consolation, to even the grimmest of situations. Our faith centres on the Saviour who was arrested, condemned, tortured and executed. We need to use our imagination, for many of our brothers and sisters, that is the life of the believer. God can bring comfort to the suffering, because he is the God who has suffered.

What about us in the west? We do not know suffering here the way others do in other countries. But there is still suffering represented here. It may be personal suffering or the pain of watching loved ones suffer.

God is the God of all comfort for all who suffer. He does not just comfort those in certain countries or those being persecuted or those under evil and violent regimes. Whatever your current situation, God is in the business of bringing comfort. It may or may not be a change of circumstances. It may be the exhortation to keep on going or the consolation of a pain shared.

Human Comfort

It would be really easy for us if comfort was only about God comforting us. But Paul does not leave it there. As much as God comforts us, we are to comfort one another. Some of the experiences that that Paul was experiencing, was resulting in the comfort of the Corinthians.

The church is about being the family of God. Every Christian is our brother and sister, how can we not desire their comfort?

Let us think once more about the persecuted church. Have you ever thought about how the persecuted church brings comfort to us? We hear about their faithfulness, about their love for their enemies, their courage and their willingness to lay down their life for Jesus. We hear this and we are encouraged in our faith, as we struggle through the relatively minor difficulties that we go through. They exhort us when we feel like quitting, encouraging us to finish the race.

Is there a way that we can comfort the persecuted as they comfort us? One way is to remember them. Let us not get so distracted with our own wants and desires that we forget what is happening elsewhere. We can comfort by focusing on the things that are important and not get caught up in petty squabbles. We can comfort by taking the advantage of the freedom we have, that they might not, and openly proclaim Jesus as the way, the truth and the life.

What about comforting people within this congregation. Offering comfort is much more than inviting people to sit in the soft couches rather than the hard pews. Who among us is getting tired of the race and needs encouragement to keep running? Who among us has experienced loss and needs consolation?

God comforts us. Let us comfort one another.

Conclusion

I would like to conclude by going back to Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew. Berton’s report on the state of the church was not very optimistic. But he did offer a possibility for a change in the church and it might not be what we want.

But there seem to be two ways in which a truly Christian reformation could come about. It could come about through some terrifying persecution of the Christian Church – a persecution that would rid the Church of those of little faith, of the status-seekers and respectability-hunters, of the deadwood who enjoy the club atmosphere, of the ecclesiastical hangers-on and the comfort-searchers. Once the Church becomes the most uncomfortable institution in the community, only those who really matter will stick with it. At this point, one would expect the Church to come back to those basic principles of love, faith, and hope that have made martyrs out of men.(p. 142-3)

There is a tremendous amount of irony here. The way for us to have the comfort that Bible says is important is by losing the comfort that society says is important. Those in the persecuted church, who to us seem to be in an uncomfortable position, are actually in the best position to receive true comfort. It is us, who have the comforts that they cannot imagine, who will struggle to experience what God really wants for us in the comfortable pew.

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