Seven Words at Saint Pauls

This year I did the Seven Words at Saint Pauls. For those who are unfamiliar with how this service works, it is mostly readings, sermons, music, and silence. During this year' silence I got to thinking about why I identify with God suffering. Perhaps it has to do with the suffering that I witness. My workplace is the home of some of the greatest suffering possible in a country as wealthy and technologically advanced as this one. I am regularly face to face with people being assessed for consciousness. Others are receiving treatment to stop them from harming themselves or others. Others are fighting against the devastating, unfair new reality into which they have been thrust. Others are not fighting at all and are surrendering the idea of life itself. Some suffer frequent or nearly constant pain. Some are amazingly valiant in the face of their tragedies. I am grateful to be in a position to offer these people as much humanity as I can muster. I fail them sometimes due to my own limitations. Institutional and societal constraints also limit our efforts. While therapeutic gains could always be better, at least I am present in a place where I can contribute.

Sitting there in the Good Friday silences, my mind wandered to some people in this and other equally wealthy and technologically-advanced countries who are quick to credit their own good fortune to some quality they possess or some act they have perormed. Such a view insists that my clients deserve their fates, but no one could deserve these fates. I suppose mankind has never been short of people who claim that they have all the answers to life's mysteries, demanding, as if they are gods, that everyone live by the rules that they have picked out for all of humanity to live by. Those people only wish to wield power over others. Perhaps that is what I like about Good Friday. Instead of spouting off rules and wielding power over us, Jesus chooses a fate no one could deserve. In those moments on the cross that we contemplate on Good Friday, there is no resurrection, no celebration of a certain end. I relate to those moments. War, famine, poverty, my clients: suffering is all around us. I can relate to what my mind's eye sees when it looks up toward an innocent carpenter being tortured. Sure, I can imagine salvation too. But I do not have to imagine suffering. It is all around me. But suffering often reveals the grace and beauty of real people who react to suffering with recognition and kindness rather than with demands and judgements. Their altruism speaks much more powerfully to me than some paradise that is not consistent with anything I have ever experienced. The people who judge everyone but themselves: who are they behaving like in the Christ's passion? The God on the cross is not dictating prescriptions of behavior.

In the end, I do not have the skill to write exactly why I identify with a suffering God. As a man, I do not have any answers, behaviors or otherwise, that are useful for anyone but myself. Do not follow my example; I am no god. But as a human witness to suffering, my heart is more inclined to a God who suffers with me than one who spouts inflexible rules devoid of compassion or glares down a condemning, pointing finger.


Photo Credits
Saint Pauls Interior
Jesus Suffering