Suffering and Redemption
“When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit. (John 19: 30)
Why does an all-powerful and all loving God allow tragedy to happen to innocent people? Tragedy like cancer, a teenager’s death in a freak accident, babies dying of starvation in Ethiopia. The answer to that question has confounded theologians for ages.
In 1966, Harold Kushner, a Rabbi, learned that his only son, Aaron, then three-years old, had a rare childhood disease called “progeria,” or pre-mature aging. Aaron would never grow much beyond 3 feet in height, would have no hair on his head or body, would look like a little old man while still a child and would die in his early teens.
The disease forced Kushner to abandon his commonly held, and biblically based belief, that if he were a good and pious person, God would protect him and his family from tragedy. He went through a difficult period of doubt, trying to figure out what God’s relationship could possibly be to his son’s terminal illness, describing the process in his best selling book, now a modern classic, When Bad Things Happen To Good People, first published in 1981.
In his words, “I became very angry at God. I felt I had kept my part of an implicit bargain, but God had cheated and not kept His.” Kushner turned to reading the Book of Job, written in the 6th century BCE, and also Archibald MacLeish’s modern version J.B. He eventually began to realize that God does not cause misfortunes. Some misfortunes, he concluded, are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable result of our being human, living in a world of inflexible natural laws.
In his view, the painful things that happen to us in life are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when it strikes. Rather we can turn to God for help, precisely because God, who created us in His image, is as outraged by tragedy as we are. Indeed, it’s God who gives us the strength to deal with tragedy when it happens and comforts us in our suffering. It’s also God who inspires and enables us to alleviate suffering in others.
That realization led Kushner to a change of heart. Thereafter when he went to a hospital to visit the sick, for example, instead of asking, “Why does God permit this awful disease?,” he’d ask, “Isn’t it amazing that doctors and nurses can be so dedicated in trying to help people surmount illness? These good people symbolize God’s presence and healing.”
Today’s gospel reading of the passion from John ends with Jesus dead in a sealed tomb. If that were the end of the story, it would have merited no more than a footnote in recorded history and we certainly wouldn’t be here today commemorating it. But that’s not the end of the story because Sunday we’ll be back here joyfully celebrating the Empty Tomb. Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection redeemed humanity, triumphantly winning for us too – eternal life.
Ours is, indeed, a loving God who intends only good for us; who, while not causing evil to happen, brings good out of evil. Metaphorically speaking, God draws straight with crooked lines. Pain and death is the price we pay for being human and being alive. After all, not even the Son of God, who became human for our sake, was spared. The truth is suffering makes no rational sense whatsoever; but, while we can’t avoid it, we can, at least, have a measure of control over how it affects us and others and what sort of people we become because of it.
When misfortune strikes the questions to ask are not, "Why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?" Those are unanswerable questions within the human intellect. Better questions would be, "Now that this has happened, what am I going to do about it?" What kind of lemonade can I make with these lemons?
Out of the dark days of World War II came numerous examples of the human spirit triumphing against unspeakable evil. Schindler's List a 1993 biographical film directed by Steven Spielberg, chronicles just one-- the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Holocaust.
God’s command to pursue justice is at the very heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Knowing that anyone suffers anywhere places upon us the responsibility to make life for that person as fruitful and meaningful as possible. That means reducing poverty, preventing diseases, alleviating suffering and bringing hope to a world devoid of hope. In the words of that great theologian Kris Kristofferson, it means helping each other make it through the night. Children really don’t need to die of starvation or malaria, bigotry need not go unchallenged, and we don’t have to sit idly by as genocide is perpetrated. You and I, in short, are God’s means of responding to preventable tragedy.
Beethoven composed his Ninth Sympathy while profoundly deaf. Van Gogh painted masterpieces while deeply depressed, even suicidal. And many people with disabilities like Helen Keller lead remarkably productive lives despite their physical limitations. God can, indeed, draw straight with crooked lines.
Christians believe that what occurred on the cross that Friday over 2000 years ago mysteriously becomes part of all human suffering and transforms it. After Calvary, suffering, when accepted in imitation of the crucified Christ, becomes noble and inspirational instead of absurd and pathetic. By joining ours to his, our suffering takes on meaning not possible before Good Friday; because for us as for him, without Good Friday, there can be no Easter Sunday. For a Christian, therefore, the source of endurance in the midst of suffering is faith and hope in the resurrection.
Suffering, moreover, brings us closer to God and to authentic discipleship. It has redemptive value. How do we know? Because the Empty Tomb is the quintessential example of God drawing straight with crooked lines.
Anthony J. Sciolino
Isaiah 52:13-53:12/40
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42.
Good Friday March 21, 2008 (Cycle A)