Hebrews 9:25-26 (NIV) 25Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Suffering is an illusion buster that strips us of our confident belief that we can conquer and control anything that comes our way. It shakes our hard won sense of security and insults the often held notion that somehow we are invulnerable to life’s hurts and pains. Suffering forces us to take a look at our limits and our lack of strength, cutting away layer after soft layer until only the core stuff of our life remains. Stripped of all lesser gods that tempt us into self-satisfied complacency, we are more open to God. With this openness to God we are now more ready and able to receive God’s grace.
Jesus spent His life eliminating suffering, whether from disease, from conflict, or from death. He gave His life to deal a deadly blow to these realities that oppose God’s original good intention. Part of the grace we receive is the experience of knowing what Jesus came to conquer, and part of the grace we receive is knowing that Jesus is with us in our suffering. We are not abandoned to endure agony and pain without the promised Comforter.
Before His story is over Jesus Himself appears to be like any other sufferer overwhelmed by pain. God seems woefully absent, and Jesus seems terribly abandoned, even by His most loyal friends and followers. His life ends on the most negative note possible – betrayed by one friend, abandoned by others, struck down by a gross miscarriage of justice, and humiliated before the whole population by both ruling and religious authorities. Gods appears absent. Suffering can so fill our mind, body, and spirit that we do not see or feel God’s presence, but our feelings do not change the facts. The God presently hidden from us will emerge victorious for us. We may be like a foot soldier in a war. All we can see is the battle we are fighting, but above us and beyond us another battle has been fought and won. And, as promised by the High Command, we will share that victory of the certainty that Jesus is making our suffering purposeful instead of pointless, redemptive instead of destructive, life giving rather than death dealing.
Grace is knowing that in whatever suffering we endure Jesus is in it with us. And it is in the sharing of suffering that our relationship grows. Is not this the strange paradox of suffering? Shared suffering is the fountain that has fed our best relationships. In our shared suffering with Jesus the bond is built. The relationship richens.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 18, 1990
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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