John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the most enduring parables about the Christian faith. Bunyan envisions Christianity as a journey, portrayed through the travels of “Christian” from his home to the “Celestial City.”
Early in his journey, Christian comes to a steep hill. The name of the hill is “Difficulty.” It is daunting. It is intimidating. To the left, around the base of the hill, leads one path. To the right, around the base of the hill, leads another path. The one path is named “Danger.” The other is named “Destruction.” Though they attempt to bypass the hill “Difficulty,” these two paths, in fact, merely lead to ruin. The road leading to the Celestial City goes straight up the hill Difficulty. If he wants to reach his destination, he cannot avoid this steep hill. So, upward, with great effort, goes Christian.
Bunyan’s point is that the even, or especially, with the Christian journey, the road will inevitably lead to affliction. And there’s no getting around it.
This stands in stark contrast to the “health and wealth gospel” or “prosperity gospel” prevalent in Western cultures. Kate Bowler is a Duke Divinity School Professor. She’s written the definitive study of the prosperity gospel in our country. In her book Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved she writes about how she, too, had bought into this lie that said as long as you followed Jesus, everything would pretty much work out. And it did … for awhile. She got a great job out of graduate school. She married. She had a child. And then … she got cancer. And everything she’d ever thought about life with God changed.
This is Bunyan’s point. If you walk the road with Jesus, you will come to the hill “Difficulty.” In fact, you’ll probably come to many hills of difficulty. The journey is fraught with affliction not with affluence.
This suffering, however, is a doorway to deeper fellowship–ours with Jesus and Jesus with us. JoAnne Terrell in Power in the Blood? The Cross in African American Experience and M. Shawn Copeland in Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Religious Experience write that many in the African American community were drawn to Jesus not because of some promise of prosperity but because of Jesus’ experience with pain. Terrell writes (34):
“African Americans’ suffering is near fully paralleled in that of the martyrdom community, yet the tendency among black people has been to identify wholly with the suffering of Jesus because the story made available to them–Jesus’ story–tells of his profound affinity with their plight. Like the martyrs, they are committed to him because his story is their story (emphasis mine).”
Copeland explores the spirituals sung by enslaved people in the United States and makes this summary statement (26):
“Finally, because Jesus himself was beaten, tortured, and murdered, the enslaved people believed that he understood them and their suffering like no one else. They believed that he was was one with them in their otherness and affliction, that he would help them to negotiate this world with righteous anger and dignity (emphasis mine).”
In other words, suffering people are drawn to a suffering Savior. People in pain are fixed on Jesus not because he promises prosperity but because he understands pain. There is a unique and unfathomable fellowship that occurs between those who share in suffering.
This is Paul’s point when he writes that he wants to …
“to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (emphasis mine, Phil. 3:10 MEV)
Many of us probably resonate with the first longing–to know Him and the power of his resurrection. That sounds appealing! But true fellowship with Jesus also comes by “the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to His death.” As we enter into suffering, we find that our fellowship with Jesus deepens, because he, too, suffers.
The writer of Hebrews states this:
18 Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested. (Heb. 2:18 NLT)
Jesus’ loss enables him to help us in our time of loss. There is a unity of soul, mind, heart and even body because of shared suffering with the Savior.
I was reminded of this recently when Dr. Jerry Taylor invited me to dinner. I had recently gone through a time of deep suffering. Dr. Taylor travelled from Abilene, TX to Memphis, in part, to be with me in my suffering. As we sat down to dinner, he looked at me and said, “I’m here because I want to enter into your suffering, Chris. I want to become one with you in what you are experiencing. This is how we experience real unity with Christ. And it is how we experience real unity as brothers in Christ.” And, for the next two hours, Dr. Taylor entered in a transformative way into my pain. We shared a fellowship of suffering.
None of this is intended to glorify suffering. Suffering sucks! Can we just say that? And … one of the things that can happen as we endure loss and crisis is that we find ourselves in deeper fellowship with Jesus.
This present season of suffering we are enduring as Covid-19 spreads and as the physical, emotional, financial and spiritual consequences continue to deepen can lead us to experience a deeper fellowship with the Messiah of Misery than we’ve ever had before. We can experience his unity with us, and our unity with him in the midst of this trial.
Judah Smith in How’s Your Soul? writes about the difference between “helicopter Jesus” and “anchor Jesus” (73). When storms hit, what many of us want is “helicopter Jesus.” We want a Jesus who will swoop in like a helicopter, lift us up and out of the torrential rain and waives, and fly us away to sunny skies elsewhere. But what we get is “anchor Jesus.” What we get is a Jesus who enters the raging waters with us and becomes our anchor, enabling us to endure until the storm passes. In the next few articles, I’ll share some practical steps you can take to be with Jesus and to flourish in this crisis. But, for today, consider this truth: suffering can deepen your fellowship with Jesus and his with you.
