Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
Embracing Necessary Pain
Diocesan Life, October 2000
Next to Diana, the most important person in my life right now
is a man named Jeff. When I am with him, I enter an experience
of deep, prolonged, and burning pain unlike anything I have ever
encountered.
The pain is necessary because without the brutal physical therapy
of the six to eight weeks that follows the repair of a massive
tear in the shoulder muscles, the shoulder would quickly "freeze," and
my arm would be almost useless.
Jeff clearly dislikes hurting people, but he knows that unless
he does his job ruthlessly, I will be a cripple. He has a goal
in mind that I still have a couple of months to realize, so at
this stage he keeps moving my muscles for me, painful as that is.
I owe him a great deal for that pain.
More ordinary suffering is necessary at times. It is a gift as
well.
As I have observed before, my mother diligently sat for three
years and made me practice the piano until the spark caught.
I will never be a very good musician, but I owe her for her suffering
through those sessions - and through my attempts at avoidance -
to give me access to the great joy of making music.
I could not even imagine that joy at the age of nine. All I knew
was my suffering, with no clue to hers until my turn came as a
parent and I failed to carry the torch.
We Boomers were generally not fond of discipline. Our children
are paying for it. They pay in ignorance of western culture, in
the lasting trauma of homes broken because spouses simply stopped
trying to be faithful, and in a general sense of instability. I
was recently told that it is not at all uncommon for students who
start college right from high school to take seven years to complete
a bachelor's degree.
One of the things that seemed outrageous in the eyes of the First
Century was Christianity's claim that God knew suffering. In the
world of the Greeks and Romans, one of the principle characteristics
of a god was being beyond suffering.
For some Greek thinkers, the idea was that a god did not suffer
any passions (the word means suffering) at all. For these thinkers,
what gods "did" was contemplate their own perfection.
Imagine their reaction to a religion that spoke of God on the
move, taking on all the limitations and vulnerabilities of human
life, and then going on to experience the most hideous form of
death the word knew, emerging the victor. How absurd that a suffering
god from the backwoods of civilization should have anything to
offer a sophisticated world!
We live in a culture almost as sophisticated as that of the First
Century. Like its inhabitants, we stumble on questions of suffering,
pain, the mystery of evil, and the even greater mystery of human
cruelty. In the midst of that predicament, what use is the suffering
of God?
The New Testament witnesses to several aspects of the cross. Most
basic is the gospel message that when we see the love God poured
out in the face of our evil, we are convicted and also experience
forgiveness. But there is more.
God suffers with the world, showing it the eternal moment of the
crucifixion, always offering the path of growth where we prefer
death, always waiting for us to mature. The path to maturity requires
the mastery of self - it requires the pain of discipline.
It is not surprising then that there are places in the New Testament
that tell Jesus' story in terms of disciplined pursuit of a goal.
The letter to the Hebrews is particularly blunt. Here Jesus is
spoken of in dynamic terms, the "pioneer and perfecter of our faith" -
the Lamb is also a Tiger. Jesus' suffering has a purpose: "who
for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
disregarding its shame."
To mature in Christ means, in part, having the nerve to suffer.
We do it with the support of community, word, and sacraments, but
the choice to embrace necessary pain is something that only an
individual can make. Each day offers the chance to be a hero.
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