I have come around to another Good
Friday as a grieving father – I am not sure what all “sharing in Christ’s
sufferings” can mean, but perhaps we who mourn or grieve are among those who
can be counted as somehow sharing in Christ’s suffering.
I went to the Stations of the Cross
service today and followed our priest and congregation around the church as we
recited the events leading to Jesus’ crucifixion. It struck me that Jesus went through at least
three phases that are recorded in the different Gospels.
Grief and perhaps
anger: as Jesus was suffering, in
enormous physical pain and what seems like spiritual anguish, he cries out
“Father, why have you forsaken me?”
Grace: later on, Jesus expresses enormous grace as
he says to his Father “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Faith, trust, and
hope: finally, Jesus puts his ultimate
faith into the good hands of his Father as he cries “into your hands I commend
my spirit.”
If we are somehow mysteriously
created in God’s image as Scripture teaches and if we accept the premise that
Jesus, while God, was also fully human in his incarnate state on earth, then
perhaps sharing in Christ’s suffering can include experiencing stages such as
those outlined here.
I mentioned to my men’s group this
morning that I thought we could experience healthy depression – time-limited
and retaining the ability to “snap out of it,” but depression that is perhaps
something akin to Jesus feeling forsaken by his father. At that moment in human time He was utterly
alone, fully aware of this feeling of abandonment, and I can imagine perhaps even
greatly depressed and distressed by this awareness.
Thus, when I suffer hours or days
of episodic depression over Daniel’s death and, at times, even a feeling of
utter abandonment by God, I take some consolation in the fact that Jesus seems
to have felt some of these same feelings with even greater intensity as he hung
on the cross.
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