The meaning of suffering

How do you react when you hear that someone say they believe they have been called by God? Are you somewhat skeptical? For me, it depends on the particular call the person believes she or he has received. If the person believes they have been called by God to serve the poor, I admire them. If they believe they have been called by God to eat four pounds of hamburger, I’m a little more skeptical. And, if they believe they’ve been called by God to beat me up, I try to more actively discourage the call.

One of the central things that Jesus needs to establish in the gospels and especially in the gospel of John is his identity: Who is he? In the first three gospels, the so-called synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus’ identity is proclaimed from the heavens at his baptism. We hear in the gospel of Mark, a voice from the skies that says, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”, In both Matthew and Luke, the voice seems to change from a message to Jesus, to a message to those surrounding him. The voice says, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”

The gospel of John has no such divine pronouncement at its beginning, probably because there is no explicit statement that John baptized Jesus. Instead, the gospel writer prefers to do make the statement here, 12 chapters from the beginning. That prompts all of us to ask, “Why?” and “What is John doing by moving the voice of God to this point in the gospel?”

It’s important to understand a few of the details before proceeding to answer those questions, beginning with a bit of context. In the chapter immediately preceding this, Jesus does one of two resuscitations that are recorded in the gospels. He brings to life a dead little girl in Mark. In the gospel of John, he raises his childhood friend, Lazarus. We know that this had a profound spiritual affect on Jesus because it is the only time in which the very human emotion of weeping overcomes our Lord. It is an image of his own gruesome death and the sadness that will be a part of that experience. After Lazurus is raised, a banquet is thrown in celebration. In the middle of that banquet, Mary the sister of Lazarus, (not Mary Magdalene regardless of what Dan Brown says) anointed the head of Jesus with costly oil. Judas gets angry because they could have spent that money on the poor, though the evangelist says that is has nothing to do with the concern for the poor but concern for himself since he was stealing from the collection. Jesus sees in this lavish anointing a preparation for his own burial, a statement that could have only been confusing for this group of disciples since he had just raised Lazarus. Can’t he also raise himself? All of this is taking place at Lazarus, Martha, and Mary’s house in the little town of Bethany, which is the same name of the town that John the Baptist is supposed to have baptized and is not far from Jerusalem. Jesus enters into Jerusalem the next day, a wildly popular figure after having raised Lazarus. He enters to a throng of people waving palm branches and singing songs to him, an event we will celebrate next week, Palm Sunday. In the context of this entry into Jerusalem, our current scene unfolds.

It all begins when some Greeks, probably non Jews, want to see Jesus. What spills out is a clarification of Jesus’ identity…literally the crowd gets to see Jesus. That’s when this heavenly dialogue unfolds. Instead of Jesus either seeming to passively receive the knowledge of his identity or passively have his identity broadcast to anyone listening as it took place in the previous three gospels, John seems to want to fold Jesus’ identity into his mission of being lifted up. Jesus now accepts that, just like Lazarus actually had to die before he was resuscitated, so he is himself going to have to die before he is resurrected. The heart of the passage begins when Jesus asks, “…what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour.’ But, it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.” Then, in a unique dialogue between heaven and earth, Jesus turns to his heavenly Father and says, “Father, glorify your name.” The voice responds, “I have glorified it and will glorify it.”, a phrase, I’ve learned, indicates a timeless quality to salvation. John has put it here to be the time when Jesus, basically, accepts his divine calling to be glorified, to be crucified. His identity is not merely announced, it is inextricably bound to his death for the salvation of the world.

We, the members of the body of Christ, can learn a great deal from this divine dialogue. It is the true message of Lent; the cross. So much of the time when we talk about the salvation that has been won for us in Christ, we talk about it in terms that pass quickly from the cross to the glory of the resurrection. During Lent, we are forced to find value in suffering. Christianity is a religion that takes suffering seriously. We can see this in Christ just as easily as we can see it in the life and death of Pope John Paul II, whose requiem anniversary we remember this weekend. John Paul II was a man who knew profound suffering. From suffering under the repression of the Nazis to the tyranny of the communists; in watching his mother and brother die as a child and in his own attempted assassination in 1987; in the dissent of so many theologians and the calls from theological demagogues who tried to turn the church into an ideology or another community among other communities, in the development of Parkinson’s disease and the developments of his death, we can see an example of one who taught us much about the dignity of suffering and the importance of accepting the crosses each of us have been handed.

Our primary vocation is given to us in baptism, a call to holiness. This is what Matthew, Mark, and Luke wanted to transmit. John wants us to know that this call to holiness will involve suffering; the suffering of watching a loved one die, the suffering of being what society calls the imperfect, the poor, the handicapped, marginalized, the suffering of war and hatred. We take up our crosses when we do not run from these sufferings but see them as a part of our central call to holiness, our participation in the central act of salvation.