The reality of suffering is undeniable. It comes in many shapes and forms. It is physical, mental, spiritual, emotional. It can come from what we may consider to be natural causes, or it can be the result of people’s actions and behaviors. Suffering can also flow from the very structures of culture and society. It can result from ignorance and it can be inflicted with intentionality and deliberation. Who we are, the circumstances into which we are born, and who we are perceived to be, can instigate responses or reactions from others that are cruel and violent. Sometimes our lifestyles themselves seem to augment our suffering. Whether through injustice, environment, or simply the travails of being a human being, we all suffer. John’s gospel (JN 15: 18-21) seems to be coming from this realization today, but with a special emphasis:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own;
but because you do not belong to the world,
and I have chosen you out of the world,
the world hates you.
Remember the word I spoke to you,
‘No slave is greater than his master.’
If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,
because they do not know the one who sent me.”
Jesus is emphasizing to the disciples that the cost of being his follower will entail pain and suffering. There is a painful distinction that occurs on account of their discipleship. They are not going to be very popular, and probably most of the time. He reminds them of the same thing he told them earlier, that ‘no slave is greater than his master.’ If the meaning was ambiguous initially, it now seems clear that it means that disciples will experience the same rejection, adversity, and suffering that Jesus encountered. The way he puts it, ‘the world will hate you.’
This is not very encouraging in itself. However, it is the reality. And, according to what Jesus is saying here, the suffering itself is directly related to having been chosen by him, and ultimately belonging to him, or as we would put it, belonging to the Father. Belonging carries its own connotations. We speak of belonging in terms of our families, our cities, our nation, organization affiliation, our culture, our religion, and the list goes on. There is a sense that Jesus is speaking about a different kind of belonging – a much deeper sense.
Just prior to this scriptural passage, Jesus clarified some things with the disciples:
I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father
It was not you who chose me,
but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another
The radical sense of belonging is directly related to this friendship granted in Christ. This is a friendship directed toward one divine goal, so to speak – loving one another! In this loving, there is going to be some hating received in return. Note that Jesus is not saying that we only love those who love us, he is making the point that on account of this very love, there is going to be suffering. He wants to let them know what they are in for.
Belonging to Christ, being friends with the divine love, entails suffering, and there is not anything we can do about that, at least in terms of avoidance. The radical relatedness of friendship in Christ, this belonging that is not of the world, does not take us out of the world, but in fact puts us even more concretely within it. This is the suffering love that is sent into the world, now being transmitted through us! We are the sent ones now!
Belonging to Love itself takes its most radical turn here in that we are sent toward and sometimes into suffering, in all of its forms. Belonging to Love does not discriminate in suffering. This does not mean that suffering in the form of abuse should be embraced or that suffering resulting from injustice should not be challenged. It does mean that in these cases as in all cases, it is the context of Love as it approaches these sufferings that is the crucial distinction. This is the mysterious paradox of the cross.
The Quaker missionary and writer, Thomas Kelly, speaks beautifully of this approach to suffering within the friendship of Love as a paradox where nothing matters and everything matters.[i] If we approach suffering only with the directive to alleviate it, we sidetrack the directive of the Love sent, as Kelly calls it – Holy Obedience. Belonging to love means that we allow it to take us into or through the suffering where a transformation can happen. The transformation is effected through a ‘stretching of the heart’ where, as we move through suffering in love, the heart becomes enlarged. “O the agony of this enlarging of the heart, that one may be prepared to enter the anguish of others.”[ii]
Only love can to do this stretching, because it is the Love itself that is stretched and enlarged. This is where everything matters and nothing matters. Each suffering is precious and infinitely matters, yet all suffering is nothing when Love is sent through it. So, even when the we suffer the hatred of the world on account of being friends of Jesus, we are commanded to remain in that love and allow it to do what it can so as to stretch our hearts and even the hearts of even those who hate us. Love works on both sides and always has the capacity to make two into one, as the Gospel of Thomas tells us. This is how belonging to Love means suffering Love’s capacity to be itself by growing into more.
Thomas Kelly claims that we bear God’s burdened heart in all the suffering we encounter – our own and each other’s.[iii] What an intimate and powerful image! We are, as friends (not slaves) in Christ, Love sent to walk through the world with a willingness to welcome suffering and give Love – as ourselves in and through the suffering – the opportunity to mysteriously and concretely expand even more its already boundless field.
[i] Thomas Kelly, A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION (Harper One: 1992), 49.
[ii] Ibid., 43.
[iii] Ibid.