The Discomfort of Following Christ in a Comfortable World
  By David L Rattigan

We live in a world where pain and discomfort are not generally seen as good. Happiness and comfort are pursued zealously even if it means that others must instead suffer (though we find ways around this difficult truth). In particular, we live in a world where the paradox of the cross is not easily understood, for it cuts against the grain of everything we have been taught to value, as indeed it did for those of Jesus' day who simply could not find room in their definition of Messiah for weakness, powerlessness and suffering. The German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer astutely observed that it was through his weakness, not his omnipotence, that God saved us. This appears utter foolishness to sinful humanity, a stumbling block to a power-hungry generation who search for wisdom and miraculous signs, but it is the gospel nevertheless.

We are taught to despise suffering, and Jesus' commands to turn the other cheek and give without question to those who want to borrow are alien to our every instinct. If someone wrongs us, we find a way to return that wrong, rather than repaying evil with good as Paul, following Jesus, teaches us. When stepped on, we stand up and fight. It would be humiliating, fatal to our pride, were we to let people harm us. It would reveal our weakness, our failure to assert ourselves, our vulnerability.

The paradox is that the most powerful one of all also makes himself the most vulnerable one of all. Out of the love and fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God created us to join in that relationship, exposing himself to the pain of rejection in the process. Against the strange classical doctrine of impassibility, the philosophical notion that God can neither suffer nor be frustrated in his desires, Jesus laments over his people, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." Just as in our own lives we must, in order to truly love others, open ourselves to the possibility of pain, so God takes a risk in creating us and inviting us into friendship with him. He is, as the evangelical open theists have been discovering, the ultimate risk-taker.

This is what is revealed at the cross of Jesus. The Jews expected that if his claims to be Messiah were true, he would show his glory there and then, saving himself from crucifixion just as he claimed to save others. Instead, he did the unthinkable: He chose the shame of the cross, forgiving his murderers even as they drove the nails into his hands. The shame was in the sheer defencelessness of his situation, the humiliation of being captured by evil men, stripped of his clothes, his dignity and ultimately his life, and being too weak to prevent any of it. The shame was in dying the cruelest death, knowing that he did not deserve it, aware of what it meant to the onlookers--that is, that he was accursed of God--and yet speaking not a word in his own defence. Which of us, when her character is impugned or her wisdom called into question, does not immediately leap to defend herself? Yet Jesus emptied himself of this concern for his own interests, not clinging to the possibility of power as Adam before him had done, but making himself nothing, a slave, submitting himself to the death of the cross for our sakes.

How tempting it is to recline and rest complacently, enjoying the benefits of what Christ has accomplished for us; and yet, we are ever aware of that uncomfortable command of Jesus to do what seems counter to all our concerns and instinct for survival: "If anyone would come after me, let them take up their cross and follow me." It takes a lifetime to learn this lesson, and we can take heart that even Peter did not straight away understand: His immediate reaction to the revelation of the cross was to say, "Never, Lord!". If tradition is to be believed, however, Peter did eventually learn the lesson of the cross, and died in the same way as his Saviour.

Paul, too, learned to carry the cross in his own life and ministry. He told the Colossians that "I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what was lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." He addressed the Galatians as his "dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you." It is no coincidence, after five chapters of expounding on the gracious work of God in Christ, that Paul also expresses the Galatians' ministry one to another in the same Christological imagery of bearing loads and carrying burdens and so, in this way, "to fulfil the law of Christ." It is worth quoting in full from Paul's words in his second epistle to the Corinthians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

It is quite astounding, not to mention unsettling, to think that we have been called to imitate--to share in--Christ's work of bearing the burdens of others. We are asked to follow Jesus, the one who despised the shame of cross.

Despising the shame does not come naturally. When faced with humiliation or weakness, we let the shame coerce us into defending ourselves, giving up and getting down off the cross to find an easier way. In life there is no easier way. As a pastor I once poured out my heart and soul into helping a young man who, though a believer, battled constantly with drugs and alcohol. It was an uphill struggle to help him forge a path forward, not least because a number in the church felt that I (and one or two others committed to helping him) was wasting my time. To them, we were allowing ourselves to be walked over. We often found ourselves hoodwinked by his deceptions and manipulations, and it damaged our pride to have to face cries of, "I told you so". We had, indeed, made ourselves vulnerable by letting this young man into our lives. We had voluntarily opened ourselves up to the possibility of being damaged and hurt (a possibility that was realized at times). In the face of others telling me that this person was a good-for-nothing who would never change, I bit my tongue and let them think that I was weak and easily manipulated. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and felt ineffectual. It was not easy: It hurt; and the thing that most hurt was the prospect that nothing might come of all our help and ministry, and the critics would be proved right. From a worldly standpoint, I didn't have a leg to stand on.

Reading my Bible one evening, however, the words of the writer to the Hebrews jumped out at me: "He endured the cross, despising its shame." It brought tears to my eyes as for the first time I was struck by what it meant for Jesus to despise the shame of the cross, to fly in the face of all human wisdom for the sake of others; and I was struck by the call to go out into the world and do the same. The writer to the Hebrews saw the same lesson in Jesus' suffering: "And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore."

We are at ease with our comfortable lifestyles. We accept things the way they are and rarely challenge the standards of our society. We do our part for charity, put in our one hour, or even several, a week as our contribution to church life, but are we willing to let our entire lives be characterized by the utterly selfless self-giving of the Jesus kind? Do we draw the line when our service to others begins to infringe upon our own rights and privileges? Jesus hit at the core of this kind of thinking when he asked, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Love your enemies." This is the kind of love that Christ had: The love that enabled him to forgive his murderers even as they drove the nails in. This is the kind of giving Christ had: The giving that enabled him enabled to him to offer his life willingly even as his killers cruelly and barbarically snatched it from him. It was a love and a self-giving that turned the values of the world on their head.

"Going the extra mile," and "turning the other cheek," are not clever adages from folklore, witty sayings from a gifted storyteller that we can take or leave as we choose. They are the words of a saviour who lived out what he preached to save an ugly and ungrateful world, declaring that its only hope lay in death and resurrection. We have become content, comfortable with our icons of a dying Saviour upon a cross; but are we as comfortable when he asks us to do the same?