Talking Points with Pastor Woodford - Suffering
That evening at sundown they brought to [Jesus] all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. (Mark 1:32-34)
Countless diseased, oppressed, and suffering people were healed and relieved. What was it like to receive instant relief? One moment your back is aching and throbbing, the next there is utter relief. One second your body is riddled by misery and disease, the next you’re healed and made well. One instant the devil is oppressing you, and the next you are free and at peace.
There are many suffering people who want to know what that is like. Maybe that includes you? When your body hurts, life becomes difficult. When your emotions are in turmoil, life becomes heavy. When your mind is unwell, you see more darkness than light. Suffering brings all kinds of questions. If we boil them all down, we could fit them into one word, “Why?”
Why does your body have to hurt so much? Why did the accident happen? Why does cancer strike so randomly? Why does it have to be your loved one?
It’s Job’s proverbial question. Even Jesus Himself asks it in His suffering on the cross, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus’ question is our question too: “Why?” Why must I suffer when others don’t? Why do I hurt? Why am I in distress and filled with so much anxiety? If God is God, why doesn’t He do anything about it?”
The anguish of suffering, physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, is relentless and ruthless. If you are in the middle of it, you’re looking for hope. You’re longing for some solace to ease the pain, lighten the load, and bring relief. In fact, when the pain is bad enough, just a glimmer will do. You want something to make you believe you can get through it.
Jesus Christ gives this hope! Whatever your suffering may be on this day, Jesus brings a powerful solace…but maybe not the way you think. You see, sometimes the pain of suffering can only be undone and relieved by one who suffers with you.
To be sure, suffering makes you wish you were in that crowd that received Jesus’ healing touch. Yet, His compassion and healing shows something important. As much as God’s silence in the face of our suffering may make us wonder, God does not want to assault you and torment you. He desires to love you and baptismally wrap His arms around you.
However, the Devil wants to assault you and torment you. Like a raging tempest and a roaring lion, he brings assaults and ailments of all kinds upon your conscience and into your life. He is by nature so malicious and venomous he can’t stand to see or endure anything good.
Martin Luther said, “It irks him that an apple should be growing on a tree” or a flower growing a garden; “it pains him that you have a sound finger,” a healthy knee, or a vibrant life. “If he were able, he would tear everything apart and put it all out of joint.” The devil wants you to curse God, abandon your faith, and fall into despair from your suffering.
What does God do about it? He sends His Son into your flesh and blood to be oppressed by the Devil. He sends Jesus into the utter depths of unbearable pain and horrendous suffering to bear your pain ahead of you. To us it would seem simpler just to take away all the suffering and evil. But sin had to be paid for; God’s wrath had to be appeased. To remove evil and suffering, sin first had to be dealt with. Therefore, God sends His Son not only to pay for your sins, but to suffer for your sins, and in so doing, give meaning to your suffering because He sanctified it by His most holy touch.
There is something powerful about someone who knows our suffering—someone who knows the depths of our sorrow and the anguish of our affliction. When somebody like that comes alongside us in our suffering, there is an intimate connection through the bond of shared pain. That’s what Jesus does. He knows your suffering intimately well.
When you look at your suffering from the perspective of the cross, you can see your suffering in a new light and a powerful hope. On the cross Jesus sanctified your suffering because He suffered first for you. On the cross, He sanctified agony, as painful and miserable as it is. When you carry around pain, you are carrying with you your Lord Jesus Christ and the pain He bore in His own body. Scripture talks of it like this:
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. (2 Corinthians 4:8-11).
You see, in the suffering of Jesus He not only rescues you from sin, death, and the devil, but He also paves the way for you to follow Him through suffering. In other words, amid all your misery and hurt, amid the confounded anguish and blasted pain in your life, you recognize how you are being crucified along with Christ.
Not that your suffering could ever merit or earn anything toward salvation, but that by it you become all the more aware of how Jesus is drawing you more and more into Himself; of how in your suffering, as ugly, painful, wretched, and miserable as it is, you are being emptied of everything else and united to your Savior in the most intimate of ways, through the pain of suffering.
You are being drawn closer and closer to Jesus; more and more into Him; and being more and more conformed into His image. Not simply for suffering’s sake, but as it was for Jesus, so that you will enter the eternal honor and glory that comes at the end of all suffering. That’s living by faith. Which means we know, as the Bible says, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us (Romans 8:18).
In other words, your suffering does not get the final say. Jesus has the final say! Jesus has claimed you as His very own. He has baptized you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is yours and you are His! He has defeated the Devil. He has paid for your sin. He has sanctified suffering, and He has destroyed death. Now He is risen from the grave, lives and reigns to all eternity, and is coming again to remove all suffering once and for all.
In Christ,
Rev. Dr. Lucas V. Woodford
President
Minnesota South District, LCMS
