A mysterious, hopeful communion

Why do veterans of war get each other? How is there a mysterious bond between women who have miscarried? There is a compelling mystery in how people experience communion through pain. Shared sorrow and anguish can transcend class, race, and even politics to bind together people in profound ways — and in the Gospel, we even believe this applies to us and our God!
A consistent aggravation for those who suffer is the heightened power of isolation. People in pain frequently withdraw from social engagement because they sense their diminished ability to relate to others. They’re hurting; they’re distracted from whatever other people are saying or enjoying or planning because their very present (and often overwhelming) pain takes up so much space in their minds that they sense that they’re not able to be there for others.
People who have experienced a tragic loss, failure or reversal often feel shame. So because of their sense of being disqualified, they voluntarily withdraw from others. So whether by pain or shame, a very frequent experience for people who suffer is that their original “problem” is now amplified by an added layer of loneliness and isolation. This is a bitter cake with poisonous icing.
Until they meet someone else who’s gone through what they’re going through.
Support groups form organically around these very dynamics, often adding also an element of shared hope. Not only is there a common bond from a similar struggle or sadness, but there is also mutual support to help reassure, recover, and even flourish.
So what if God also entered into all of our sufferings? What if God willingly entered into every major category of suffering in order to save people like you and me?
Consider the experiences of what we would quickly describe as hardship or even misery. Poverty? Obscurity, being overlooked or ignored? Slander, ridicule or mockery? Miscarriage of justice? Abandonment? Rejection? Betrayal? Abuse, violence, or even torture? Physical agony, murder and death? Check all the boxes, and Jesus entered into all of these experiences in order to redeem us.
Everyone who trusts in Jesus is met at the deepest levels of all of their worst experiences and fears by Jesus’ communion with them in their sorrow and loss. Whatever you may think Christmas is about, it is at least about this! God, Most High, left His place of the highest, most glorious privilege in order to voluntarily come to our rescue by entering into all aspects of what troubles us.
Therefore, an inherent consequence for those who trust in Him is that as He enters into our sorrows and pain, He enables us to then willingly enter into the hardships and struggles of others who are just like us. This is the literal meaning of words like empathy or sympathy. They derive from the Greek term for suffering (pathos) combined with a prefix that means “with.”
Interestingly, we can see this in Acts 16 with Lydia, a slave girl and the Philippian jailor. It’s subtle that we could overlook it, but with some obvious cues, three very disparate lives are brought together by Jesus as the Apostle Paul shared the Gospel with them. Lydia, by her trade, is a dealer in purple cloth, which marks her as a wealthy merchant (purple cloth might well correspond today if someone was a dealer for Mercedes or BMW). Yet, she’s identified alone, and her household is called her household, so was she a widow? Or had she been abandoned? The slave girl was literally trafficked. And the jailer, in all likelihood, was a grizzled retired Roman war veteran. What could possibly unify three people of such different stations in life? They had all suffered, and they were all brought to a saving faith in the God who suffered to save people like us.
As Christmas can preoccupy us with things that are happy, joyful, and glad-hearted, don’t forget how, at its roots, it is about God’s resolute commitment to enter into our sorrows and pain to ultimately and eternally heal them all. It does get us to all the reasons to sing about joy and hope. But it runs just as much through the alleys of Bethlehem, to the flight to Egypt, to all of Jesus’ suffering and death before it ends in resurrection, ascension and glory. Welcome Jesus into your sorrows and pain. And then, as He communes with you in every point of sadness to redeem you out of it, turn your eyes outward to those around you who are suffering. Jesus loved us enough to leave comfort for a time. How ready are you to leave your comforts also so that someone else could be redeemed?
2 Corinthians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
More in Announcements
January 22, 2025
One voice out of millionsDecember 31, 2024
Housekeeping at Trinity - and a Happy New YearDecember 16, 2024
Presented without comment