It's enough to drive a man crazy; it'll break a man's faith
It's enough to make him wonder if he's ever been sane
When he's bleating for comfort from Thy staff and Thy rod
And the heaven's only answer is the silence of God
Andrew Petersen, "Silence of God"
It was not a partial death. Jesus was not unconscious. He suffered mortal wounds. His death was witnessed and attested to. His killers were professional murderers. They knew what they were doing. He had to suffer. We have to suffer as well..
His suffering was redemptive and required according to the covenant God had made with Abraham. Humankind had forsaken God. He had called faithless Israel back to himself time after time, after time. But they were a stiff-necked people and would not listen.
And finally the Messiah came fulfilling the prophecies. He brought sight to a man who never had it. He raised the dead, hearing to the deaf, made the lame walk...he brought hope to the hopeless and healing in his wings.
...and yet, he suffered to the point of death.
and we are called to look at the tomb today. It is full. It is sealed. It is silent. We are forced to ask why. And when we come up with the answer, we suffer....
Why? Because it should have been us. If we don't suffer in this thought than we have never truly understood why Jesus died. We have never honestly repented. We wailed to God out of fear, not love. We wanted to save ourselves and the life we cherished. We did not cry out in repentance for the hurt and death we caused our Father by our disobedience. This is repentance. This is why the tomb is full. This is why Jesus came. This is Judgement.
...he suffered death for us
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A dear friend and I had a really deep and wonderful time of conversation and prayer around the suffering of Christ and how His suffering brings meaning to our own. And how we can bring our suffering to the cross and somehow share and join in Christ's. When I was I little girl I was terribly troubled that Jesus had to wear a crown of thorns. On Good Fridays I would go and kneel on thrones in a blackberry patch and tell Jesus how sorry I was He had to endure that for me. When I started painting last summer, the last painting in a series was of me as a little girl replacing Jesus' crown of thorns with one of wild flowers and me holding His crown in the other hand and having been pricked by it. I don't know if any of this is theologically correct, but maybe it's my way of identifying and owning the suffering that should have been mine and was His instead.
ReplyDeletethe suffering Christ had to bear we could not and not "simply" because He was the only one worthy of it, but also because our mortal nature could not carry the weight of it. We share in Christ's sufferings when we are persecuted in His name and when our mortal bodies die. It seems to be a fine line but we are called to grieve not because of what Jesus suffered, but because we caused him to suffer it.
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