Suffering With Christ
Suffering is a tricky topic for Christians. On the one hand, we are supposed to share God’s blessings with our neighbors, hopefully alleviating whatever suffering they may be experiencing in the process. On the other hand, we are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus, implying that we will suffer along the way. There is certainly some instinctive avoidance of suffering, but we are told that hardship will afflict us as disciples of Christ. We could say that God didn’t intend for suffering to be a part of the perfect Creation that God made, but at the same time, our sin and the consequences of sin are real. The apparent contradictions that exist in our views of suffering have led many throughout the years to take very different views.
There are some Christians who seem to completely subvert the idea of suffering. Preachers of the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” describe God as only wanting to bless us. This sounds nice at first, until one realizes that they don’t really make room for suffering at all. For preachers like Joel Osteen, suffering can be overcome with a different mindset. Our thoughts can affect our reality, so if we just imagine ourselves healthy, happy, and prosperous, those things will come true.
Other mega-pastors may speak more about suffering but don’t seem to do much of it themselves. Kenneth Copeland is one of the most influential televangelists today. As a man so close to God and passionate about the faith, one might expect him to be humble and lowly. However, he is worth an estimated $300 million and owns his own private plane along with his own private airfield. For people who live paycheck to paycheck, it’s probably hard to imagine Copeland being well acquainted with suffering.
On the other extreme, there are Christians who seek out suffering. While fasting may be a good spiritual practice for the sake of centering oneself on God and recognizing your own weaknesses, some Christians do it more for the suffering itself. Some may think this gives them a right to boast among other Christians about the lengths they will go to for their spiritual well-being. Others may actually come to recognize suffering as a holy experience in itself.
Some Christians will deprive themselves of food, water, shelter, and many other things that can give them happiness. Sometimes this gets taken to a personal extreme with groups like Skoptsy in Imperial Russia (Don’t look that one up unless you’re ready to be uncomfortable). Other times this results in a careless complacency toward the plight of the poor. We can imagine them saying something like: “We need not lift the poor out of their poverty. Poverty is a good thing. They are closer to God. Let them stay poor so they can connect with God better.”
As Lutherans we reject all of these ways of seeing suffering. Suffering is definitely bad. “A theologian of the Cross calls a thing what it is.” There is no way to sugarcoat suffering and be a theologian of the Cross. We do not need to try to make ourselves suffer, but we also aren’t supposed to flee from it at the expense of our neighbor. But why do we have to suffer in the first place? Do we absolutely need to suffer to be Christians? And if so, does that mean I’m not doing it right if I’m not suffering?
I actually think our Epistle lesson for this week helps with this. Romans 8:12-17 speaks about us being adopted, no longer living according to the flesh, but rather being part of the family of God. God puts our sinful self to death, raises us to new life, and calls us children. This is all wonderful news until we come to the end of the passage. Our adoption and glorification has a condition. We must suffer with Jesus.
Suffer with Jesus. Not suffer like Jesus.
With Jesus.
I don’t always get along well with everyone in my family. Sometimes we disagree. Sometimes we get frustrated with each other. Normal family things. However, when one of my family members is suffering, I find myself hurting. When we genuinely love someone, their suffering makes us suffer empathetically. We want to protect them, to heal them, to hold them close and make sure nothing else bad happens to them. We want to protect them from the cruel world that hurt them. I can’t even begin to imagine what Jesus feels like.
Jesus loves everyone. Jesus loves every child who goes to bed in terror that a bomb might drop on their house while they are sleeping. Jesus loves every middle aged man or woman stuck in a dead end job never able to get anywhere, who watch their dreams get farther out of reach every day. Jesus loves every person dying alone on the street without loved ones nearby, every soldier just hoping and praying that they will live long enough to see their newborn when their tour of duty is finished, every child being bullied, every person who is struggling after losing a long time job, everyone suffering from addiction or mental illness. There are a lot of suffering people in the world that Jesus loves. There are a lot of people in the family of God who are going through difficult times. Jesus joins them in their suffering because he loves them. To truly love, is to suffer with.
If Christianity leads us to love Jesus, we can’t help but empathize with those suffering around the world. We walk into their suffering because that is where Jesus is. Their suffering causes us heartache enough that we do something about it. The suffering of others causes us so much grief that we can’t help but seek to alleviate that suffering. We don’t need to seek out suffering. The world has plenty to go around. It is not our task to create suffering or to help people connect with God through suffering. At the same time, it is certainly not our task to ignore suffering completely. Our task is to face the reality of suffering, bear the sadness that empathy with those who suffer in a cruel world brings, and serve our neighbor.
We are all siblings in the family of God. We share in the joys and sufferings of one another through Christ. The Christian life is characterized by suffering and sadness. We see a world filled with suffering and we respond with holy grief, but that is not an idle thing. Grief moves us to action from a place of desperate humility. What begins as prayer for God to intercede flows into God interceding through our hands and voices. Facing suffering opens us up to the struggles of the world and the work of God facing them. To bear our cross, we need to love and believe. God will sweep us into the Way from there.
