Leaning Toward Our Suffering

5th Week of Lent

There is a truth in life that most of us are fairly reluctant to accept. In fact we usually go to great lengths to avoid the searing impact it usually has on us. It’s summed up in phrases like, “No pain, no gain”, and “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, and, “Suffer not, live not”. Each of these expressions point to the truth we spend great energy trying to avoid: that pain, darkness, suffering do not have to be ends in and of themselves. They can actually be guides to something that we would have never been able to experience without them.

As we enter into the last week of lent, the week that we call Holy Week, I am struck once again by the fact that you cannot arise to the light of Easter without going through the darkness of Holy Week. Each year I face this, and each year something inside me wants to scream, “NOOOOOO. Don’t make me go there. Don’t make me walk through pain and darkness and suffering. Just give me a Mega dose of Easter life and joy. THAT’s what I really need!” And yet each year I step into Holy Week knowing, “No pain, no gain”, and “It’s always darkest before the dawn”, and “Suffer not, live not”.

You see the richness of Holy Week for me is that it stands as an incredible metaphor concerning the redemptive power of suffering in our lives. It is, of course, anchored in the redemptive suffering of Jesus on the cross for us. But it does not, it cannot, end there. The suffering of Jesus grew out of His living in the Father’s love for Him and for all humanity. It had meaning. And when we live our lives in the Father’s love then our suffering can have meaning too. Redemptive meaning.

Now, I want to be very cautious here. I know that there is much suffering in our world that is tragic and even horrendous that doesn't deserve the glib, and perhaps flippant expressions that I’ve listed above. There are some levels of pain and suffering that simply defy understanding in this life. Even so, I am still convinced that life lived in the Father’s loving embrace means that our suffering can somehow be miraculously “redeemed”, it is “bought back” in such a way that His glorious and ultimate will can be done in us. It does not mean that God always initiates the suffering that threatens to crush us (though I am sure He sometimes does). It does mean that there is no suffering so great, there is no evil so deep, there is no darkness so grim that God cannot redeem it for His own life-giving purposes in us.

As I said, by nature we seek to avoid things that hurt us at all levels: physical, psychological, relational, spiritual. And yet it is often in the facing (dare I say even embracing) of these hurtful places that we find our greatest healing. It is as we lean toward our suffering that we truly experience God leaning toward us.

Jesus demonstrated this for us when He came to a place in His life when it was time to head toward Jerusalem in order to face and embrace the suffering necessary for our healing. He was at the furthest place from Jerusalem that He ever travelled in His ministry years. Way up in northern Palestine, in a town called Caesarea Philippi. Luke 9:51 tells us that, “As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus RESOLUTELY set out for Jerusalem.” In other words, He turned His face toward, He leaned toward the point of what would be His greatest suffering. He knew what was coming and He walked toward it.

Jesus' resolute courage and determination to live within the Father’s love created what we call Holy Week. It embodies the heart of Christianity: the death and resurrection of Christ for us. It also serves as a timeless reminder that as we face and embrace the challenges, pain, darkness and suffering of our lives, but do so embedded in the Father’s love, that we too will awaken into the light of new life.

I recently heard someone use the example of falling into quicksand as an illustration of leaning toward our suffering. When someone is sinking in quicksand intuitively they begin to fight and squirm trying to get themselves out. In doing so they shift their weight from one leg to another, each time putting all of their weight on the very small surface of the bottom of one foot. As a result, all that their squirming accomplishes is to sink deeper and deeper. But if there is any hope of getting out of quicksand it requires doing something that is counterintuitive to what we might think. A person must displace as much of their body mass as possible onto the quicksand itself in order to keep from sinking further. Then you can begin to turn and try to roll your way over to the side and to safety. In a sense we must lean into, lay against, or get close to the very thing that threatens to destroy us. “Getting with” our own suffering, as odd as it may sound, is often the only way to keep it from destroying us.

So, I now turn my eyes now toward Holy Week. I face my own times of suffering. I lean into the often confusing darkness that grips my own soul, knowing that Jesus has already walked there and is waiting on the other side. So this coming week I have an odd suggestion for you. Attend a Holy Week service of some kind, but make sure that it is the darkest, most morose, depressing service that you can find. Put off, just for a moment, the joyful celebration of the resurrection. That will come. But this coming week lean into the pain that comes before the gain, the darkness that engulfs us before the dawn, the suffering that produces life and healing for us. Leaning may make us feel a bit off balance, but that is exactly the place we need to be in order to live in the embrace of the Father.