The Mystery of Jesus' Suffering

There we were, at our agreed upon end of a Lenten study on John's Gospel, and I was nowhere close to covering its final chapters. Then, some members of the group suggested that we continue by way of noon-time meetings the first four days of Holy Week. For me at least, it was a great suggestion. I only brought the lessons; they brought the lunch. Little did we know that we were establishing a tradition of both which would span decades.

Had I known at the time that I would be the one leading most of those sessions, the first question I would have asked myself should have been: Who do you think you are, presuming to know enough about just eight chapters of the New Testament (two in each of the four Gospels) to talk about The Passion Narrative across 30 years? Now, the question is: what was wrong with me back then for presuming that the Passion Narrative might not be able to speak for itself?

But speak it does, in the way that all of the other materials John assembled for his Gospel spoke to him: if all that Jesus did were recorded in detail, he concluded, the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (21:25) The overwhelmingness of just the Passion Narrative comes to me most especially in the form of unanswered questions. Meditating on Jesus' final week on earth leads you straight into one question after another, and to the gradual discovery that none of the questions admits of any easy answer. Rather, all of them together seem more to open out on unfathomable mysteries.

I still shake my head over the incomprehension to which Jesus' earliest followers descended, even though they had been privileged to press in on him from all sides during the highest moments of his earthly ministry. At its lowest moments, they abandoned him altogether. Thinking about those few women standing off at a distance from the cross only makes it worse. Their distance says it all. Further still, it is searing to remember that only a Roman centurion might have had even a momentary insight into what the whole ghastly denouement on that hard to locate hill was all about.

And then there is the mystery of what Holy Communion celebrates as the "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world." I understand the logic behind this language. It goes like this: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and for this outrage, no amount of contrition, confession, penitential action, or sacramental observance can possibly suffice as atonement. Only forgiveness from God Godself can possibly rescue a sinful humanity from its deserved and everlasting punishment. But God does exactly this; the Judge forgives, by sending His only Son to suffer on our behalf.

There is logic here, but not mercy. For it leaves it to the only one among us who has not deserved to suffer for anyone else's sins to suffer the most because of them. Meditating upon Jesus' sacrifice sometimes brings me to a sense of gratitude, but I still do not know how to release the guilt that comes over me for making Jesus go through what I will never have to go through. Our "interest in his blood" is no cause for boasting.

What heightens still further the mysteriousness of Jesus' "suffering under Pontius Pilate" is having to confront the idea --- or, for the early church, the fact --- that the humiliation and execution of the world's Savior were essential to the process of salvation itself. Were there were no other options open to God for reconciling the world to himself? Was forgiveness itself somehow not enough? If somebody still had to pay a price, where was the forgiveness at all? The answers must rest somewhere deep in the heart of a God whose thoughts and ways never run along the pathways that ours do.

Three centuries ago, Isaac Watts wrote about a "wondrous" cross, and conveyed in his hymn an image that has been especially comforting to me in all my struggles over the years to understand the horrific fact that the Son of God suffered and died at human hands like mine. When I survey that cross for myself, I see somewhat dimly what Watts saw very clearly: flowing down from Jesus' head, hands, and feet are "sorrow and love," mingled. The sorrow that Jesus feels over my failure to be all that his Father wants me to be has to be a depth of sorrow beyond all my comprehending. But so also must be his love, the only kind of love in all creation powerful enough to make me "pour contempt on all my pride."