The Choice to Suffer
Lent is a time reflection as we remember the suffering and death of Jesus, and a time of repentance as we make room in our lives for the life of Jesus, which we will celebrate on Easter Sunday.
We have been talking a good bit about repentance and humility. Both of these have to do with our will to respond to God’s grace by turning from our ways and emptying ourselves of pride. Now we turn our contemplation to suffering, which is different in the sense that it’s not something we specifically choose.
Many people do give up something for Lent, but not as some kind of self-inflicted suffering. The heart behind denying our usual comforts and pleasures is to help us turn from our self-absorbed lives so we can remember the sacrificial life of Jesus. He is the one who chose suffering.
The mystery of Jesus’ suffering is that it is guided by the Holy Spirit of God. As it says at the beginning of Luke 4, Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and is “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness”.
Our wilderness is not literal, but we are in the same way tempted to sustain ourselves, to escape our vulnerable humanity, to chase after our aspirations without thought of others. Jesus offers another way, a humble way, a way that waits patiently - despite the suffering - for the Spirit of God to lead Him along the road to the cross.
Jesus reveals to us what it means to embrace our humanity without short cuts. And we live into that humanity as we surrender our lives to the Holy Spirit, wherever He may lead us. The season of Lent is about waiting, maybe even suffering the loss of things that have come to define our lives, because we know that our life is dust— and because we are looking forward to resurrection life.
SCRIPTURE READING: 2 Corinthians 1:1-11
We have been talking a good bit about repentance and humility. Both of these have to do with our will to respond to God’s grace by turning from our ways and emptying ourselves of pride. Now we turn our contemplation to suffering, which is different in the sense that it’s not something we specifically choose.
Many people do give up something for Lent, but not as some kind of self-inflicted suffering. The heart behind denying our usual comforts and pleasures is to help us turn from our self-absorbed lives so we can remember the sacrificial life of Jesus. He is the one who chose suffering.
The mystery of Jesus’ suffering is that it is guided by the Holy Spirit of God. As it says at the beginning of Luke 4, Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit,” and is “led around by the Spirit in the wilderness”.
Our wilderness is not literal, but we are in the same way tempted to sustain ourselves, to escape our vulnerable humanity, to chase after our aspirations without thought of others. Jesus offers another way, a humble way, a way that waits patiently - despite the suffering - for the Spirit of God to lead Him along the road to the cross.
Jesus reveals to us what it means to embrace our humanity without short cuts. And we live into that humanity as we surrender our lives to the Holy Spirit, wherever He may lead us. The season of Lent is about waiting, maybe even suffering the loss of things that have come to define our lives, because we know that our life is dust— and because we are looking forward to resurrection life.
SCRIPTURE READING: 2 Corinthians 1:1-11
posted by Will | 1:38 PM
2 Comments:
So we do not choose to suffer. We choose to submit to the Spirit.
I think so ... I suppose we may choose to obey in ways that we know will bring suffering, but the choice is for obedience. So to your point, we choose to submit to the Spirit knowing that He may lead us into suffering.
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