Luke 2:33–35
In a time of fear and real suffering, when deaths that any other year would have been largely invisible are counted daily before our eyes, we need to remember the suffering and death of our Lord.
Without Jesus, suffering – which is an unavoidable part of all life – seems futile, meaningless and tragic. We avoid thinking about it in the main, because otherwise life itself would be impossible – futile, meaningless and tragic. But sooner or later its reality will catch up with us, and most of us are entirely unprepared.
But Jesus has changed that. It is not that he has done away with suffering – though a day will come when he will – but he has himself entered into our suffering and transformed it. Without him the ultimate end of suffering is death. With Jesus, trusting in his suffering and death, its ultimate end becomes life; eternal life, fullness of life, reigning now in life!
Because Jesus has suffered for us and died, suffering and death are not taken from us, but they are transformed. So, Mary is told “a sword will pierce your heart also”. Some of us will learn again the reality of this during this Coronavirus crisis. So, let us also learn how Jesus can transform that suffering, so that our grief may not be without hope.
Paul learned this lesson. Just as, at his conversion and call to service, he was shown “How much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). So, in later life he says:
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14
Sooner or later ‘a sword will pierce your heart also’. Will it destroy you? Will it destroy your faith? Or will you receive it as grace – a very hard grace admittedly – because you have been counted worthy to suffer with him who has suffered for us all.
Only Jesus can transform your suffering, and mine. Now is the time to prepare our hearts, by giving them to Jesus. Now is the time to share the gift of Christ with others; to bear him and reveal him in our lives, as Mary did for us, regardless of the cost.
Have you yet discovered “the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”? Now is the time