For it was fitting that he, for whom and by
whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer
of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Hebrews 2:10
It’s an
intriguing verse, isn’t it? We might
think of Jesus’ suffering as regrettable, even unavoidable, but fitting?
Why was it fitting that Jesus should suffer? Why, when the creator of the universe set in
place his saving plan, should the pain not merely be necessary, but somehow
deeply right?
It is
certainly not that all suffering is essentially good. Any response to suffering simply must cry out
against the children maimed by war or disease, the lives forever shadowed by
abuse, the hearts shattered by one blow after another, and say: This should not
be happening. This is not right.
So God in
Jesus didn’t say, it’ll be all right in the end. He said something greater: I am in it with you. Jesus’ job was to plunge into the depths of
all that wrongness, all that godforsakenness, and experience it fully, with us
and for us. He took on the pain of
loving the unloveable and forgiving the unforgiveable. He became the God alongside us, the God who
understands.
And then –
miraculously – this deepest experience of suffering became the victory over
it. The cross smashed a hole in the
compressing darkness, and the resurrection let in a beam of light from beyond. Now
the message was not just, I am in it with you.
It had become greater still: You
are in it with me. The creator God had
submitted himself to the worst of his creation and had suddenly, startlingly,
come out the other side. Not only that,
but he had brought us with him.
The New
Testament letter-writers tried to convey this new idea by talking about sharing
in Jesus’ suffering. Jesus revealed the
fullness of God’s love by blazing a new path through death and into glory, they
said, and we can follow him. As we share
in his suffering, we share in his death, we share in his resurrection, and most
of all, we share in his love. John
summed it up in his first letter: We
love, because he first loved us.
And that
becomes the key to it all. The suffering
becomes fitting if it is undertaken out of love. A love which was willing to be born in a stable,
to feel pain along with us, and to bring us, along with Jesus, to perfection in
love.
So this Advent,
as we still struggle with all the pain in the world, we look again to the one
who came to suffer with us. And we find
hope that as we share in his suffering, as he shared in ours, we too will come
to know that perfect love. The love which loves the unloveable, and brings them
to glory.
Photo attribution: By Vicki Nunn (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo attribution: By Vicki Nunn (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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