Suffering with Jesus—Can God suffer?

CHRISTIANITY AS BHAKTI MARGA

significance.

'This kind of existence is called life because it realizes in the highest degree all the possibilities inherent in life.

Only 'he who lives in Christ truly lives.

. But how do we enter into life through the death of Christ ?

SUFFERING WITH JESUS

The secret of attaining life with Christ through His death is explained in the next verse: 'If any man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will the Father honour.'

He who would find life in Christ must follow Him altogether.

And as His intensest moments were those spent on the cross, the Christian must identify himself with the suffering Lord and even share in Hisagony.

Only such entire and willing identity with Jesus can lead to life eternal.

The exhortation to follow Jesus occurs in different contexts.

In other places it may mean a readiness to carry out His precepts aud to do His will.

In our present context, with the solemn end in full sight, the exhortation must mean something more than a willingness to obey His words.

It must imply our willingness to follow Him with joy in His suffering.

This conviction has powerfully inspired some of the finest souls in the Christian Church.

Francis> of Assisi experienced the ' stigmata.'

With such intense sympathy and deep agony did he contemplate the wounds of Jesus that they appeared in his own body

Julian of Norwich has told us that she fell very ill, and desired to suffer with the Lord Jesus.

'I saw with ©

FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING

bodily sight in the face of the crucifix that hung before me, on the which I gazed continually, a part of His passion: despite, spitting and sullying, and buffetting, and many languoring pains, more than I can tell, and often changing of colour.

And one time I saw half the face, beginning at the ear, overgone with dry blood till it covered to the mid face.

And, after that the other half was covered on the samewise.'* The Imitation of Christ exhorts us thus:

' Put thee therefore forward as a good and true servant of Christ to bear manly the cross of thy Lord crucified for thee through love.

Make thee ready to suffer many contrary things and diverse incommodities in this wretched life: for so he shall be with thee wherever thou be and so thou shalt find him wherever thou be hid."

It is needless to multiply instances to show that all through the centuries Christian mystics have earnestly sought to realize oneness with the suffering

Lord by participating, often literally, in suffering.* This experience imparts a unique character to 'Christian mysticism which becomes a distinctively moral fact.

Communion with our Lord is made possible not by emotional fervour, nor by flights of speculation, or even of intuition, but by the difficult and yet joyous discipline of walking along His path of suffering.

The attainment of salvation by suffering is not a specially Christian idea; the moral quality of suffering is.

The 1 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, London

p: 21.

2 The Imitation of Christ, chapter xii.

2 For other instances, see E. Herman, 7he Meaning an« Value of Mysticism, London. 1916 ; pages 179-195.

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highest faculties of man are trained in the school of Christ's suffering.

The supreme power of God's love, which forgives and redeems, exerts its irresistable influence.

Lofty ideals alone are considered worthwhile and accepted.

Hardships are endured with joy and difficulties faced in the pursuit of these ideals.

The spirit of unselfishness and service is imparted in a generous measure to the eager soul.

'The oneness with the Lord reached through such discipline, severe yet happy, must necessarily be different from the oneness. realized in a flash of insight or in a moment of ecstacy.

There is not only a difference in the nature of the fellowship attained but also in its depth and intensity.

We know how firmly fire welds two pieces of iron:

We know how friends, who have passed through the same troubles and calamities, are more closely knit together than those who have been intimate only amidst life's abundant joys.

Sometimes, though indeed rarely, we come across two men whose love is thus. forged on the anvil of suffering.

Someone is suddenly called upon to face public obloquy and the penalties. of the law, because he stands accused of a great crime.

He loses his work and his career is closed to him.

Instead of requiring less money than before, he requires more in order to justify himself in the eyes of the law and to put up a defence, but he has no resources of his. own.

'The friends who gathered around him in the days of his prosperity abandon him, some meanly because they cannot get any more from him, and some with self-righteous moral indignation.

But some real friend steps in and disregarding his own name and

FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING'

comfort, works night and day to save him.

Snch a' real friend. cares neither for what others think nor for what he has himself to pay, but in an entirely selfless spirit endeavours to give all the help that is necessary.

Need it be said that these two friends will be knit together for life with the strongest possible. ties?

'The one who helps so nobly and to such. an enormous extent has nothing to gain, except of course the great joy of seeing his friend on his feet again, but everything to lose.

His help is not: given for any thought of self whatsoever but finds its. roots in the very depths of love.

The one in trouble is deeply impressed with his friend's unselfishness and profound love and responds to it with all eagerness.

To this is added the spell of emotion which on such occasions comes mightily over men.

Such analysis can never fully interpret the magic and might of love but may give us some idea. of fellowship in suffering.

We may pursue this analogy into the range of mystic experience and say that the intimacy between a. bhakta and his God, who have passed together through suffering, is exceedingly strong.

It is only in the Fourth Gospel we are significantly told that, in His hour of utmost sorrow, Jesus entrusted

His mother and His beloved disciple—no doubt the two persons whom He loved most dearly on earth—to each other's care.

In suffering love finds its fullest expression.

But it may be said that while hanging on the cross, Jesus cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.''

Jesus might have 1 Matt. xxvii. 46 ; Mark xv. 34.

CHRISTIANITY AS BHAKTI MARGA

been expected in His terrible suffering and sorrow to realize the presence of the Father even more intensely than on other occasions.

Either Jesus uttered those words or He did not.

From the fact that Mark and Matthew have recorded them we suppose that they actually came from the lips of Jesus.

Apparently then Jesus did experience a momentary sense of desertion by the Father.

When suffering is regarded as cementing the union of two persons it does not mean that such union never undergoes even for a moment the feeling of separation.

Any occasional experience of separation does not do away with the fact of the profound union.

The oneness of the Father with the Son must have been deeply felt by Jesus in spite of His passing emotion.

For Jesus Himself, as reported by the Fourth Evangelist, declares:

'Behold the hour cometh, yea is come that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.'* There is another point of more importance.

The Evangelist puts the Farewell Discourses? on the eve of the crucifixion.

During these critical hours Jesus dwells upon the theme of His oneness with the Father and of His disciples' oneness with Him with unwonted fulness and vigour. However much amplified by the later reflection of the Evangelist, the discourses no doubt, mirror an hour of special fellowship the sense of Jesus' oneness with the Father reaching an extraordinary strength in view of the storm that was gathering.

With the long history, of Christian asceticism before 1 John xvi. 32.

2 John xiii-xvii.

FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING

1s us, we may well doubt the ways of the medizval mystics who were eager to enter into close fellowship with Jesus by imposing upon themselves penances and mortifications.

But self-inflicted suffering apart, there is abundant suffering for those who would follow Christ' and every Christian is called upon to pass through it in the spirit of the Master so that his union with Him may become deeper and fuller.

To some comes the suffering of poverty when, day after day, the pinch is felt from half-satisfied hunger.

Others may have to bear with numerous disappointments which make life dreary; yet others may have to fight with failing strength which at any time may end in painful disease and death or may become afflicted with chronic ijlhealth which may keep them all day long in pain and sorrow.

Others are called upon to face social persecution and to fight their way towards their ideal by trampling upon the susceptibilities of their closest friends. Whatever the character of the suffering, everyone of us has his share of it when we really follow Christ without going out of our way to court it.

The spirit in which we pass through it is most important.

When we go through it bravely and gladly with the earnest desire to attain unity with our suffering Lord, we shall indeed realize that we are entering into that rich fellowship in a way which would not have been possible for us otherwise.

Can Gop SUFFER?

It is exceedingly difficult for the Hindu religious consciousness to grasp the idea that God suffers with

CHRISTIANITY AS BHAKTI MARGA

us and that through common suffering our fellowship with Him becomes deeper and richer.

This belief runs counter to most Indian thought.

The great modern sage Ramakrishna-Paramahamsa said :

'When the shell of an ordinary coconut is pierced through, the nail enters the kernel of the nut too.

But in the case of the dry nut, the kernel becomes separate from the shell, and so when the shell is pierced the kernel is not touched.

Jesus was like the dry nut, ie., His inner soul was separate from His physical shell, and consequently the sufferings of the body did not affect Him.' '

There have been many thinkers even in the Christian Church who have found it hard to believe that the Son of God really suffered on the cross.

They have tried in different ways to explain away the reality of the crucifixion; His suffering, they have maintained, was only apparent: but the Christian Church has never accepted their position, condemning it as Docetism."

Why is it difficult for the Hindu to grasp the truth about suffering ? The fundamental reason no doubt is. the idea that God is joy.

Zhe Upantsads declare again and again that Brahman is Ananda.

The followers of Sankara who maintain that God has no qualities. interpret Ananda as the negation of pain and sorrow.

According to them God has no qualities and therefore Ananda can refer to no positive quality which He has but can only mean the absence of suffering and sorrow..

1F, Max Muller, Ramakrishna, His Life and Sayings, London, 1899 ; p. 112.

-2°See art, on ' Docetism' in the Axcyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,

FELLOWSHIP IN SUFFERING

The followers of Ramanuja understand Ananda to mean the possession of positive calm and peace.

God cannot be moved by the changes in human lives.

He cannot be at the mercy of the various tides which flow through men's affairs.

"As the sun, the eye of the entire world, is not touched by the external impurities seen by the eyes, so the one immanent Self of all things is not touched by the sorrow of the world, for He is outside it.' *

It would be possible to quote from Hindu religious literature rare passages which speak of the suffering of God.

The Ramayana declares that Rama becomes deeply grieved with the sorrows of men."

GovindaRaja, the most famous of the commentators on the Ramayana, finds in the verse depths of meaning.

""Of men" means "' not merely his mother and others."

Who then are included?

All men whether they are rich or poor, whether they belong to the twice born castes or not.

'' With the sorrows,' with whatever sorrow whether it is insignificant or significant.

"Deeply" does not mean "'as much as the man grieves."

What then does it mean?

Like an elephant sunk in mud, he becomes as deeply immersed as possible in grief as is fitting with his magnanimity.

And he does not forget it with the lapse of time.' * The Tamil Bhakta Kulagékhara Alvar believed in suffering with his suffering Lord.

He was a king and was filled with Bhakti for Rama.

It was a source of great delight to him to hear the Ramayana expounded.

1 Katha Upanisad, 5. 11.

? Valmiki, The Ramayana, I. 2. 4, 3 See his commentary ad loc. j

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One day the passage where Rama left his wife Sita behind and went out alone to fight. with his enemies was expounded.

The Alvar forgot that the incident took place long ago and thought within himself:

"My Lord is in trouble.

It is not fitting that I should fail to help him in any way I can.'

So he summoned his armies and with them set out to help Rama.

Not understanding the meaning of this, the people stood confused.

But the wise teacher who had been expounding perceived its reason and said to the Alvar: 'Singlehanded Rama defeated all his enemies and returned to his cottage safe and joined his loving Sita.'

On hearing this, the Alvar was filled with joy and gave up the idea of an expedition.

This is indeed a remarkable case of participation in the pain and agony of the incarnate

God.

One of this Alyar's hymns is a lament of Dagaratha, full of piercing grief, for his son Rama who was in exile in a forest."

But Kulagékhara Alvar seems to have been an exception.

Neither the idea that God suffers nor the idea that we suffer with Him has really found a place in Hindu thought.

On the contrary, the conception of God as joy has been dear to the heart of India.

But is it right to say that God rejoices with men but does not suffer with them?

God is love and what is love if it keeps separate from man in any particular circumstance ?

Why do we revere the love of a mother as the highest expression of love in human life?

It is not merely because she is with her children and feeds them and plays with them and teaches them.

Others 1 Perumal-Tiru-Molt.