Dcn Susan Erickson

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. (2 Cor 1:4-5)

Dear Siblings in Christ,

I’m not very good at discomfort. On the contrary, I seek out and treasure comfort. A host of cozy routines helps me navigate my days, one of those routines being to prepare a nice dinner for my husband Jim and myself. Whatever else happens during the day, dinnertime is an island of reliably pleasurable calm, background music courtesy of Alexa and the Bill Evans Trio.  

But as we enter Holy Week we’re called to come to grips not merely with discomfort but suffering:  Christ’s suffering, as well as our own and others’. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow … .”  (Lam 1:12)

In her book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge emphasizes the utter shamefulness and degradation of the manner of Christ’s death. From the early decades of the Church until now, Christians have tended to avert their gaze from the cross and instead look towards the glory of the Resurrection. The Corinthians to whom Paul addressed his letters seem to have been—understandably!—more drawn to the “uplifting” aspects of their new faith; Rutledge provocatively calls those aspects “religious.”

But for Rutledge, Paul is the preacher of the necessity of the Cross. “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Cor 2:2). The uniqueness of Christianity, she argues, is precisely the way Christ suffered and died, something outside and beyond everything uplifting and glorious.

If we “pass by” Christ’s suffering, we are also likely to pass by the suffering of those around us, and to try to avoid our own. Yet the God who consoles us in our suffering thereby enables us to console others. What a paradox: that out of extreme discomfort should come an abundance of consolation.

In a world of suffering that often makes me feel helpless, I can at least “suffer with” by drawing on the “abundance” of Christ’s passion. May this Holy Week grace us with His suffering and consolation.

Faithfully,

—Dcn Susan