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Meaningful Suffering

Meaningful Suffering

8 May 2013

"Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." (Col 1.24 KJV)
 
"It is my happiness to suffer for you.  This is my way of helping to complete, in my poor human flesh, the full tale of Christ's afflictions still to be endured, for the sake of his body which is the church." (NEB)
 
"I am glad, because it gives me a chance to complete in my own sufferings something of the untold pains which Christ suffers on behalf of his body, the Church." (Phillips NT)
 
Historical Protestantism is generally known for its collective silence so far as this text is concerned.  Often the best that can be mustered is an embarrassed cough, a convenient leap from verse 23 straight to 25, and a mumbled denunciation of "Roman Catholic false doctrine".
 
But this traditional muteness is an abyss into which far too many suffering saints either fall or are cast by those churches that categorise or stereotype all misfortune and illness (of body, soul or spirit) as either,
 
1)   The consequence of personal sin.
2)   An insufficiency or failure of faith.
 
Or both together!
 
Now, all of our actions in this world and life - including our sins of commission and omission - have consequences.  And none but the fantasist or unstable could possibly claim "full" faith in God or in the totality of His Word.  So yes, the intelligent and diligent pastor will always want to explore these possibilities prayerfully and discretely when succouring a distressed member of the Flock.  But to automatically and conveniently "pigeon-hole" a suffering saint according to points 1 and 2 is actually loading a kind of cruel form of punishment on top of the original affliction.
 
We ought to steadfastly affirm and testify that,
 
A)   "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away...Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity...and you forgave the guilt of my sin." (Ps 32.3-5)
B)   "Praise the Lord, O my soul...who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases." (Ps 103.2-3)
 
But if we abandon this matter there, we do dishonour God, and do a grave disservice to our troubled brothers and sisters.  Rather than consigning them to a lifestyle of perpetual self-condemnation and meaninglessness, I believe our text does attach creative meaning and purpose to the sufferings of the members of Christ's Body.
 
One of New Zealand's greatest 20th C poets and playwrights, James K Baxter, converted to Christianity during the 1960s, and devoted his later years to following (literally) in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi.  In a series of essays ("Thoughts About The Holy Spirit", Wellington, 1973) he reflected upon our text as "a mystery that involves all Christians".
 
"If the Holy Spirit is present in our souls, then a cancer or a nervous breakdown will take on a different meaning...without (the Lord Jesus) our suffering would be spiritually valueless.  But our union with him transforms the meaning of our sufferings.
 
"The suffering of the Christian is part of Calvary."
 
In Europe between WW1 and WW2, another conversion to Christianity of a brilliant young Jewish philosopher, went (typically!) un-noticed in the corridors of power.  Edith Stein later immersed and immolated herself in the contemplative life in Carmelite communities in Germany and Holland.  She died as a martyr in the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz.  Edith considered the problem of human suffering with the cool detachment of a philosopher, and the melting heart of the lover of God who lived in the shadow of the Holocaust.  In 1934 she wrote an essay "Love of the Cross".  (www.essays.quotidiana.org)
 
Surveying "the sight of the world in which we live, the need and misery, and an abyss of human malice", she observed that this "again and again dampens jubilation over the victory of light".
 
"The world is still deluged by mire...The battle between Christ and Antichrist is not yet over.  The followers of Christ have their place in this battle, and their chief weapon is the Cross."
 
In the face of escalating human suffering, Edith asserts the Gospel, and that "because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively becoming one with Him our happiness on earth, the love of the Cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God.  Helping Christ carry His Cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God's Kingdom, are the most authentic children of God.
 
"And those who have a predilection for the way of the Cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past and that the work of salvation has been accomplished.  Only those who are saved, only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ's Cross.
 
"Only in union with the Divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power."
 
Traditional Protestant silence over Colossians 1.24 is not unreasonable...but it is reactionary.  It is over and against the Medieval religious culture whereby ascetics caused themselves pain and suffering in the mistaken belief that they could build up a "treasury of merits" to call on at some later time for their (or others') salvation.
 
Sadly, as has happened too many times throughout Church history, the Reformers' over-reaction led to the baby being thrown out with the bath water.  The present-day upshot is that we generally avoid the unrelieved sufferings of saints, or blame the afflicted.  If they do not "receive" their healing in the "appropriate" manner or time-frame, they are reproached, marginalised, or as in some extreme cases, literally shown to the door of their church.
 
(In the 1970s I met and got to know a quite remarkable woman who suffered with Cerebral Palsy.  She possessed a faith in Jesus Christ of fiercely heroic proportions.  Nevertheless, she once endured the humiliation of being publicly harangued by a local church pastor for being a "disgrace to the Gospel" for not having been cured through prayer!)
 
Our text (Colossians 1.24) does contain an authentic Christian mystery; (i.e. truth which cannot be fathom-ed or embraced with our purely human faculties and resources alone).  And it is this: that there are occasions and situations where a saint's suffering is literally an extension and continuation of Jesus Christ's "stripes"! (1 Pe 2.24)  Even as the Lamb of God began to shed his precious Blood for our salvation in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before Calvary, so today He continues to "bleed" for His Church, through His Church...through those unbidden and undeserved wounds borne by His little brothers and sisters.
 
Such trials are to esteemed and appreciated, rather than denied or dismissed.
 
"We considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." (Isa 53.5)
 
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Php 3.10-11)
 
"For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.  If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort." (2 Co 1.6)
 
So...in practical and mundane terms, what meaneth this?
 
At the very least, the unrelieved sufferings of the saints are not to be treated as an embarrassment, ignored or avoided at all costs.  If there is even only a very slim and remote chance that they may have meaning and value so far as God's plan of salvation is concerned, then they are to be treated with respect...rather than a barrage of deliverance prayers, religious cliches, reproachful silence.
 
On the other hand, if it is true that our Lord and Saviour really does continue to "bleed" for His Church, through His Church, then the unrelieved, undeserved and unbidden sufferings of Christians are hallowed, and valuable beyond all estimation.
 
"It was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed...but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect." (1 Pe 1.18-19)
 
I do believe that it is Scriptural for a suffering saint to make unto our Redeemer an offering of their afflictions, perchance He may take something out of them (great or small it matters little) which He can add to His own "finished work", and thus,
 
"Make up the full sum of all that Christ has to suffer...on behalf of the church, his Body." (Moffatt)
 
"Helping to complete what still remains of Christ's sufferings on behalf of his body, the church." (TEV)
 
"Fulfil the uncompleted sufferings which the work of Christ still entails...for the sake of his body which is the Church." (Barclay's NT)