On Suffering

Mark 8: 27-35

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

How often in your life has the phrase, “Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me,” haunted you in relation to a challenging situation you were dealing with? How often did it make you feel that if you didn’t choose and embrace the most difficult and hurtful path presented to you, you would be denying Jesus and trying to save your life instead of losing it?

In writing his gospel, Mark was endeavoring to show how the Jews at first were all enthusiastic and excited about this new Messiah who had appeared on the scene but gradually began to turn away and become disgruntled with Jesus’ message as it became clear to them that Jesus was not the powerful political savior they thought he was going to be.  In this week’s gospel passage, Jesus is challenging his twelve disciples and the others who were following him to understand once and for all that his mission was not a mission that would uproot the Roman Empire, empower the Jews and set them free as a political nation.

The cross Jesus was challenging those particular followers to pick up was accepting that Jesus’ mission was radically different from what they were expecting. Even Jesus’ closest disciples weren’t too clear about what was on the horizon and when Jesus told them in no uncertain terms what was to happen, Peter rebuked him. Jesus, in turn, rebuked Peter and basically said to his followers, “If you’re looking for success, national freedom, material riches and worldly power then you’d better find someone else to follow. You won’t find those things with me. What you will find with me are people and priests who will hate me, reject me and put me on a cross. This is where we’re going folks.”

If Jesus thought that suffering in itself was a good thing and a way to please the Father, he would not have gone around healing people. He would have instead told them all that they should pick up their crosses and deny themselves. Before he was crucified, Jesus did not seek out extra pain and suffering to validate his life or please his Father. Yes, he lived simply but he had good parents who raised him in love, he often ate well, he went to weddings and drank wine and he had good friends he loved to visit. If he was offered a place at a banquet table, he took it. If a woman wanted to massage his feet with oil, he let her. He did not practice stringent asceticism for the sake of adding more pain to his redemptive work nor did he encourage any one else to seek out pain and suffering as a way to please God.

Jesus certainly suffered before he got to ‘The’ cross.  He was human and so he suffered hunger pangs, aching feet and cold hands. He felt the sting when others rejected him and his teachings. He grieved when his father and good friends died. He endured the loneliness of being misunderstood by his closest friends. He knew what it was like to not have enough money to buy much beyond the basics and sometimes not even the basics.  Jesus suffered because he accepted his human condition and lived with it as it was. He didn’t make the mistake of actually seeking to make it any worse than it was.

If he was saying anything to the rest of Christianity down through the ages, it wasn’t that suffering is good; it was that suffering is normal. Don’t try to avoid it but don’t seek it out either.

Are you a follower of Jesus because you believe he will make you financially rich? Do you read this blog because you hope I might give you a key that will make you a powerful person, one who can tell other people what to do all the time? Do you go to Mass because it will give you great status in the eyes of the community? Did you have children or do you desire to do so because you think it will make you rich? Do you feel that a successful Christian is one who has all the best in material goods and is one that other people envy?

No? I didn’t think so. In fact, I have to say that all the people I talk to about their spiritual lives and spiritual desires have indeed picked up their crosses, denied themselves and have followed after Jesus through the very normalcy of their lives. Status, power, riches and success have nothing to do with why they live sacramental lives. The ordinary life of the committed Christian is full of crosses and self-denial. Just look at the mother cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night or the parents staying with their child in the hospital or the people who suffer from chronic pain or the person who can’t find a job with a living wage or the couple who does not have the latest and greatest of whatever is late and great because their children need school supplies and new shoes or their income is simply inadequate or because they put money in the collection plate or because they simply don’t crave the latest and greatest, preferring rather to direct their energies and money to raising children or serving the church community or helping the poor. I could go on and on about the suffering inherent in our lives as people of God – sufferings we never even think about; we just live with them and get on with life in spite of them. They’re always there but we have a choice as to whether we live with them in gracious acceptance that brings transformation or in fear and resentment that increases the suffering. It is not the suffering that is valuable. It is our attitude within it.

We need to understand, once and for all, that Jesus’ suffering alone was not what saved the world. Millions of people, before and after Jesus, have suffered and died more horribly than he did. What saved the world was Christ’s love within that suffering and the love that Jesus possessed was awesome gift and grace.  “Pick up your cross and deny yourself” cannot and must not be considered a catchall theology of how to please God. Like any other scripture in the bible, it can be taken out of context and applied in destructive ways. To assume that God mandates every instance of suffering is a faulty understanding of God’s true nature. To assume that anything that could bring us simple pleasure and joy is to be held suspect because we’re not denying ourselves is also faulty theology. In the well-known book, “The Power and the Glory”, author J.L. Mackenzie says, “For many people, pain is a greater spiritual danger than pleasure.”  Why? Because we are prone to keeping a score board with God and we review all the pain and suffering we’ve gone through and all the pleasures we’ve denied ourselves so we can point out to him that we’re good and worthy and have ‘paid the price’ of being his follower. Suffering can actually be a gateway to spiritual pride.

We cannot control God or manipulate him by how we suffer and we are a people who love to be in control. We love to feel that we somehow have the power to make God attend to our needs and wants by what we do. It is a real denial of self to let go of the reins and admit we have no idea what we need. It is a real self-denial to humbly recognize that life is messy, wounding and not always easy or gratifying but it’s all right because we walk with a compassionate Christ. Compassion means ‘to suffer with’ so we walk with one who suffers with us and says to us,

“Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened and I will give you rest. For my yolk is easy and my burden is light.”

Deny yourself. Let go.