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For more commentary on this week's readings, see the Reflections on the Lectionary page. For full-text access to all articles, subscribe to the Century.
Reading Laurus, a Russian novel penned by a scholar of medieval history (Eugene Vodolazkin), I face the shadow of my sunny love of comfort. As a multigenerational American, I have been formed this way, I tell myself (so it’s not entirely my fault): Alexis de Tocqueville observed a pervasive and “vehement” passion for “petty pleasures,” physical gratifications, and comfort among our people (nearly 200 years ago!), which he considered the “predominant taste of the nation.” On top of it all, I chose the Anglican/Episcopal tradition (cue denominational shade about our allergies to self-denial). What good is physical pain?
In Laurus, as in passages like 1 Peter 3, the more complicated relationship between suffering and goodness is observed: “The sweetness of the apple that Adam eats turns into the bitterness of the vinegar that Christ drinks. The tree of knowledge leads humanity to death but a cross of wood grants immortality to humanity.” Where is the bright Easter sun in these maudlin explorations? What do we make of 1 Peter 3 beyond the cloudy days of Lent? Can we circle back around to the wisdom of suffering in late May? “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.”
Of course, the truth is that human suffering is never confined to the liturgical seasons, and there is suffering in our church bodies on Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, too. So there may be space here, six weeks into our most joyful season, to highlight threads between goodness and pain we may never understand but can yet recognize. Theologian Sarah Coakley has helped me focus on the distinction between “generative suffering,” like the cross of Christ, like childbirth, like the self-denials of all costly caregiving, and “fruitless suffering,” the evil of pointless and prolonged pain. “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.” It can be a pastoral and personal gift to try to sift our experiences in this way. But remnants of mystery remain: how can we know, really, what is generative and moves toward goodness, in the end, and what is pointless? We would have to have the mind of God. And what do we do with that suffering which remains, no known fruit in sight? Sometimes I feel I have to turn to other cultures, other times, other places, for answers: Russia, Japan, Indigenous peoples, my own frontier ancestors, folks who have handled suffering with greater aplomb.
But then I read Acts 17:22-31, reflect about my deepest experiences across human difference, and remember that we have been given everything we need (not want!), together, as one human family, loved and shepherded by our Creator and Redeemer: “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth … indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Add to that assurance of holy proximity the promised gift of the Holy Spirit in John 14, and we might begin to see ourselves again as a beautifully diverse and still intact human family: loved well by God and still learning to love each other and this God through our collective wisdom, even in the midst of sufferings that none of us can yet fully understand.
