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4

FAMILIAR WITH SUFFERING

  We are exploring some of the deeper implications of the incarnation in the hope that this will lead us to a new appreciation of the wonder of Jesus’s love for us. Surely we must be drawn in a new way to our Saviour when we realise how he accepted our human nature in all its frailty and limitations, how he was truly tempted to give in to fear and selfishness, how he emptied himself of divinity to walk the lonely road of a limited human person and how he did all this for us. Will our hearts not be moved when we realise how like us he was and yet how he kept on reaching out to people despite disappointment, failure, misunderstanding, even rejection? Will we not want, as fellow human beings, to congratulate our Lord, to admire and thank him and believe more sincerely what he is telling us, that love is possible in our world? He invites us to follow him in this way, with total trust in our heavenly Father, and to be truly human in the best sense, thus bringing more light and beauty into our world.

  We considered briefly two high points of temptation in the life of Jesus, the desert and the garden. We can be sure that the deeper currents of our frail human nature, which surfaced on those occasions, were flowing all the time and that Jesus, like all of us, had his dark and low moments when he wanted to give it all up, to run away from it all and question why he should be his brother’s keeper. There must have times when he was tempted to anger with his enemies. Did he not feel a struggle within when James and John wanted to call down fire on those towns which rejected him? These are the thoughts of men, and Jesus is a man. When Peter protested at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus would not have to endure suffering, the desert temptation must have flared up again. His sharp rebuke to Peter reveals deep inner emotion, upset and struggle. Peter is speaking the thoughts not of God but of humankind. ‘The way you think is not God’s way but man’s ‘ (Mark 8:33). Jesus will think only the thoughts of God, but as a man he feels the pull of our thoughts. We have an expression of great, frustrated disappointment with his dull and uncomprehending disciples when he says to them, ‘Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear?’ (Mark 8:17-18). And what a great weariness must have swept over him to move him to tears over Jerusalem.

  The greatest temptation and the greatest victory and the supreme revelation of God’s love was, of course, Calvary. Here is the final emptying, not only of his divinity but of his very humanity. Here again the desert temptation is echoed. The crowd is shouting, ‘If you are God’s Son, come down from the cross!’ (Matthew 27:40). In the desert the tempter had said, ‘If you are the son of God, throw yourself down’ (Matthew 4:6), in that way you will win the admiration and support of the crowd. Here now it is the very crowd itself calling on him to work the miracle and come down from the cross. In the desert the tempter assured him that he would not suffer: ‘Angels will support you on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone’ (Matthew 4:6). Notice that in Satan’s picture of God there is no place for suffering. But this is not God’s wisdom. For God the only absolute is love, and to be true to love will involve suffering.

  Jesus is the love of God made visible. What keeps him on the cross is not nails or ropes but love. He cannot come down. He would contradict himself if he did. If he came down he would not be God for God is love. But let us try to be sensitive to the struggle going on in his humanity as he hangs there. We are so familiar with the Calvary scene. We can be tempted to glamorise it and inoculate ourselves against the dark mystery of this young man hanging there, sacrificing himself in total unselfish love for so many who do not care and entering into that deepest, darkest place for him – the sense of being abandoned by his beloved Abba as he cries out, ‘My God, my God, why have you deserted me?’ (Mark 15:34). Yes, he is grievously tempted but will hold on blindly to his trust in this Father.

  As we stand and watch Jesus, let us believe that the Father stands beside us. This is not mere fantasy. We are witnessing the mystery hidden from all time, the mystery of the ultimate expression of the love of the Most Blessed Trinity for you and me. We are loved and saved by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Paul says ‘Love endures everything’. Jesus now endures all, only because of this total trust in the Father’s love for himself and for us, a love which is poured out on him and us by the Holy Spirit. All this is for us as we stand and contemplate. We stand beside the Father. We look at the Son, our brother. And the Spirit is upon us to understand what we contemplate.

  One of our temptations as we stand there could be to experience fear or guilt. But neither of these is a Spirit response. The Spirit, which is given us as the fruit of what we contemplate, casts out fear, heals guilt and pours out love. We are involved in the greatest act of love. We are not witnessing an act of punishment. But maybe we should qualify that statement. Is Jesus being punished on Calvary? Yes, he is being punished, but certainly not by his beloved Father. He is being punished by people for being different, for answering evil with love, for challenging self-righteousness and pride, for identifying with the poor and sinners, for challenging power structures which would debase and destroy the image of God in people.

  But certainly he is not being punished by his heavenly Father who stands beside us. Jesus is the Beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased. Think of that gentle Father whom Jesus described in the story of the Prodigal Son. That’s how Jesus understood his father and he claimed that no one understood the Father except the Son (Matthew 11:27). In that story Jesus told us how the father of the prodigal missed his boy and watched every day for his return, how he saw the boy when he was far off and was moved to pity, how he ran down the road to meet him and welcome him. We stand by the Father now and look at this other Son on the cross. He too left his Father’s house for a distant place. He too took with him his Father’s riches to scatter them in a prodigal way among us, his sinner friends. But now he is tired and weary and broken and would like to arise and go back to his dear Father. Do you not think that this Father saw his boy Jesus when he was far off on the hill of Calvary, that he was moved to a great pity and that he has run here to embrace him?

  The father of the prodigal embraced his son in all his rags, covered with the dirt of the journey. This Son on the cross is badly disfigured from his journey amongst us. The prophet says:

‘Without beauty, without majesty,
no looks to attract our eyes;
a thing despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering,
a man to make people screen their faces.’

I don’t think the Father on Calvary screened his face because he does not judge by appearances. It is only we who do that. ‘God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but Yahweh looks at the heart’ (1 Samuel 16:7). The father of the prodigal saw the repentant heart of his boy under the rags of his sins and he embraced the boy on the road. On Calvary, the Father sees the great loving heart of his Son under all the disfigurement of his passion and lovingly takes the boy into his embrace when he says ‘Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.’ This embrace is the resurrection. We can imagine this Father joyfully announcing to us all, ‘We are going to have a feast, a celebration, because this Son of mine was dead and has come back to life’ (Luke 15:24).

  What will we say to this Father? How can we thank him? We can borrow God’s very own words to praise him, the words Yahweh spoke to Abraham when that father was prepared to sacrifice his only son Isaac out of loving trust to Yahweh. These words can now be our prayer. God said to Abraham, ‘Because you have not refused me your son, your only son, I will shower blessings on you’ (Genesis 22:17). God has not refused us his Son, his only Son. Will we not forever, in the power of the Spirit, shower blessings and praise on God our Father and Jesus his Son, our brother?

  Satan had it so wrong in the desert. The crowd had it so wrong on Calvary. You and I have it so wrong today. Our wisdom is so puny and shortsighted. ‘Avoid pain at all cost, even at the cost of betraying love’. In the desert Satan invited Jesus to cast himself down from the temple top, assuring him that angels would lift him up lest he hurt his foot. But God had another way. Not angels but people would lift up his Son and lift him up in pain. But by this very lifting up on the cross, he will draw all people to himself. The seed will die on Calvary and produce an everlasting harvest.

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