“Those who love their life lose it,
and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”[1]
If there were ever a phrase designed to turn people away from Christianity,
that’s probably it.
Why would any
of us want to be a part of something that asks us to suffer? Why would we want
to be a part of a faith that tells us you have to hate your life to gain
eternal life?
The question
for some of us is this: Is this all there is, or is there something more? We
want more than what we see right here. It’s not that we’re scared necessarily
of what happens when we die; we want believe there is something more.
The more
complicated question, and perhaps the one to which there is no answer, is this.
Why is suffering part of the deal?
Now let me make
this clear. This is something for which I do not have an answer. If I did, I’d
be publishing books and appearing on talk shows and making millions. If you are
expecting answers about suffering you might go have some coffee instead. As I
said to someone just the other day, I don’t know the answers. All I know is a
lifetime of asking questions. I do know this however; God does not deliberately
cause suffering. God does not sit on a throne somewhere and say, “Who shall I
‘zot’ today?”
Maybe we’re
asking the wrong questions. Maybe the question to ask isn’t why is suffering
part of the deal? Maybe the question to ask is this: Is there another way to
deal with suffering rather than trying to fight against it or overcome it?
Understand please, we still need to
do everything in our power to help those who suffer. Injustice, poverty,
violence; all of those things need to be worked on as part of following Jesus.
At the same time, the knowledge that suffering is part of the deal can be the most
freeing thing we can encounter.
We often hear
“those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life”[2]
as life denying. What if the intent is life affirming; affirming our selves as
the self God created us to be? What if the intent is affirming an understanding
that life cannot be hoarded – cannot be kept in a grain sack – it must be
scattered to grow and die to live again?
Suffering in
the Gospels is portrayed as a necessity of following Jesus. Suffering is
something for us to, if not embrace, at least to gather towards us as best we
can. Not because we are fatalists but
because we are faithful.
The question
why is suffering part of the deal is transformed by the realization that Jesus
the Christ suffered fully and is fully engaged in suffering: both his own and
ours. Jesus was not vaccinated against suffering by being the Son of God;
instead his suffering became that which we can look toward when we suffer.
At what seemed
like the end, the question Jesus asked was the same question we ask. “My God,
my God, why have you forsaken me?”[3]
That most fully human sense of abandonment brought that cry to his lips and
brings it to ours. And yet the story is not over; the last words have not been
said.
We cannot have resurrection without death.
Anything else is resuscitation. In Jesus’ conversation with the Greeks who came
to see him, they must have been bewildered by his suddenly talking about a
grain of wheat dying. And yet in that dry, harsh climate Jesus inhabited, wheat
was a precious thing, just as life is. We spend our lives warding off death.
But what if
it’s the other way around? What if resurrection is what we are seeking and
living is the journey to the destination. Not the final destination, but the
destination of being in the presence of God, of being in the constant light of
Christ, and in the holy movement of the Spirit.
God does not
promise us a life without suffering, but God does promise that in our
suffering, we will be heard.
In the Epistle
to the Hebrews, the writer says, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up
prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able
to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” Jesus’
giving up of his life allowed the resurrection to happen. And while there was
great suffering for him, “He was heard.” That is what was promised to Jesus. That
is what is is promised to us.
We are never promised freedom from
pain or freedom from suffering. We are never promised happiness. We are never
promised rescue from death itself. We are promised that we are heard. The cross
is the question. The resurrection is answer.[4]
AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018
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