The Open Secret of Love--January 15, 2021

The Open Secret of Love--January 15, 2021

"I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." [Colossians 1:24]

There is something beautiful--compelling, even--in the ways we choose to bear sorrow or pain or hardship on account of love. It runs against the conventional wisdom of the day to say that, but it is true. Love--the intentional choice to seek the good of someone else--transforms suffering into something powerful, something capable of bearing joy, even something redemptive.

I picture nights when my son or daughter were up in the middle of the night--feeling sick or scared by a bad dream--and sitting on the couch with a little head in my lap, knowing that my giving up sleep for a stretch of hours in the night meant that little head could finally get some peace and fall asleep. And when I look back at those moments, I see there was something wonderful about that time (and rest) sacrificed for their sake. It didn't stop the morning from coming, or the dark circles from appearing under bloodshot eyes when the sun rose, but somehow the difficulty was worth it, because it was for their sake.

Or the time your friend asked you to pick you up at the big city airport, and even though it meant rerouting your whole day off and you had to deal with headaches of rush hour traffic, you were glad to do that for them, because that's what love does.

It's the time you spend sitting in a hospital waiting room with someone whose loved one is in a critical surgery, or the time you give up listening and talking them through a crisis. It's the comfort you lose being willing to take a turn sleeping at the church to be a host for the homeless families staying for the week in your Sunday School rooms. It's the choice to encourage someone who just got bullied. It's the willingness to be pushed out of your comfort zone by listening to the perspective of someone whose life story is very different from yours and that might make you squirm to hear it. 

It's any of a thousand other ways you and I are called daily to endure discomfort--in bodies, and in hearts--for the sake of someone else, whether someone very dear to you, or someone you'll never meet this side of glory. You know already that there is something strangely joyful about the privilege of getting to suffer for the sake of love. Doesn't make it less painful, but it does somehow make it worthwhile.

Well this, dear ones, is the secret (but an open secret) power of the life of following Jesus. This is the kind of life we are drawn into as people marked by the cross of Christ. We are called to be people whose lives are spent in the joy of suffering love--that is, love which is willing to put the needs of others before our own comfort or convenience. And it is powerful, that kind of love. It is the most powerful reality in the universe, because it is of a piece with the One who is Love, whose reign over the universe is a reign of suffering love.

Let me say that again: The God who reigns over and fills up the entire universe does so by means of suffering love. God is the Parent up all night with a sick kid (us... the whole world). God is the One who makes the long, slow, out-of-the-way trip to bring us home. God is the One who sits and waits with each of us in our times of heartache. God is the One who bears the angriest and most painful words we can throw. God is the One who lifts up the lowly and encourages the ones who have been stepped on by bullies or internet trolls or angry mobs. God is the One who bears even the pain of a shameful execution at the cross of Jesus. This is God's power, and this is God's way of relating to us--in love that bears pain, rather than in adolescent displays of brute force or coercive bellowing. And if we have been claimed by this God, then our way of life, too, will be marked with the love that is willing to endure suffering and sorrow for the sake of others.

So when Paul writes that he is completing whatever is "lacking in Christ's afflictions," he's not saying that Jesus didn't do enough on the cross to save us. It's more like the same love that went to a cross for us is still needed in day by day situations as we care for others. The question for us is, "How do we bring the same self-giving love of Christ to every situation we face?" Paul looked at his own life and saw that he had opportunities to spend his time, energy, love, and reputation for the sake of others, and he understood that he could participate in the same Love shown to him in Christ that way. And for you and me, we have the same opportunity with every day: we are called to seek out ways to give ourselves away in love for others. That is our power. That is our revolution.

In a time when it is easy and tempting to just turn the cross into an insignia on a flag and then misuse it to try to justify violence, terror, and intimidation, Paul reminds us that the cross of Jesus isn't simply a symbol or corporate logo that we can make to mean whatever we want. It is the sign of the Love that is willing to suffer for the sake of the beloved--which is all of us. To bear the mark of the cross is to be willing to take up that kind of love, that kind of willingness to suffer for others, that kind of self-giving strength--for whomever God sends across our path.

Today, our calling is to love--and to know that is not merely an emotional state, but the choice to bear suffering for the sake of others.  And at the same time, God is calling someone else to love you as well--to bear sorrow or pain or inconvenience for the sake of caring for your good as well.  Go, give and receive Christ-like love.

Lord Jesus, help us today to bear hardship where it will help someone else, and to find joy in the ways we let love flow through and around us.