In her book The Power of Self-Compassion Laurie Cameron writes that there are certain statements we can tell ourselves when crisis comes that will enable us to endure it well. One of those statements is this:
“I am not alone.”
Cameron proposes that this one truth that empowers us during crisis–the recognition that others suffer with us. We’re not in agony alone. We are part of the community of difficulty.
I’ve found this to be true. Not long ago some really hard things happened in ministry. And one of the things that brought me great comfort was hearing from others who had experienced something similar. I felt alone and isolated–until friends and strangers reached out and said, “I just want you to know, something similar happened to me.”
This truth is one that seems important to Jesus as he enters the suffering for which eternity has prepared him. As we’ve seen in this blog series, Jesus’ last statements on the cross provide us the chance to think about three things that help us in times of hurt: self-care, soul-care, and social-care. He attended to his relationship with himself. He attended to his relationship with God. And, he attended to his relationship with others. Misery became an opportunity for ministry.
Diane Langberg in Suffering and the Heart of God writes this (9):
The trauma of this world is one of the primary mission fields of the twenty-first century. It is one of the supreme opportunities before the church today.
She mourns how the church often misses this mission.
She tells of visiting the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana where hundreds of thousands of Africans were forced into its dungeons and then onto its slave ships. Two hundred men would live chained together in the cramped dungeon before being shipped across the Atlantic. Her guide led her group down into the dungeons and told horrific tales. Then, he pointed up, at the low ceiling just above their heads. “Do you know what is above this dungeon?” he asked. “The chapel.” Immediately above them was the space where Christians gathered for praise and prayer. And literally beneath their feet the most traumatic of trials was taking place. Can you imagine, she asks, what could have happened if those Christians had left their comfortable place of worship and descended into the dungeons to stop the despair?
This is exactly what Jesus has done. And it is what we find him doing even on the cross. Even as Jesus endures agony, he reaches out to others who are suffering and cares for them.
Here, Jesus reaches out and essentially says, “You are not alone.”
Jesus does this through a surprising pair of statements:
26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. (John 19:26-27 CSB)
Jesus sees John, “the disciple he loved.” And Jesus sees his mother. And Jesus knows both are suffering. The cross isn’t merely misery for the Messiah. It’s also Misery for Mary, and for John. It’s a place of intense suffering.
Shared suffering.
That’s why Jesus now says, “John, my friend, you are not alone. Do you see this woman, my mother? She, also, suffers. She, also, is therefore family to you. We are all bound together in this moment by this shared suffering.”
That’s why Jesus now says, “Mother, my beloved, you are not alone. Do you see this man, my friend John? He, also, suffers. He, also, is therefore family to you. We are all bound together in this moment by this shared suffering.”
In this misery, the Messiah ministered. He helped two others recognize that they were part of a larger family of sufferers. They were not alone.
This, it turns out, is the central meaning of the cross. M. Shawn Copeland, in Knowing Christ Crucified, writes that we “find ourselves standing in a crucified world and standing before a crucified people.” (133) And therefore … (133-135)
To know and to follow Christ crucified is to know and love those children, women, and men who are poor, excluded, and despised, made different and unwelcome, lynched and crucified in our world. To now and follow Christ crucified is to know and love these women and men … If we would follow Christ crucified with attention, reverence, and devotion, we would recognize that the tears and blood and moans of the innocent have been absorbed into the air we breath, have seeped into our streams and rivers and swamps and seas and oceans, into the earth in which we plant and from which we harvest and eat. If we follow with attention, reverence, and devotion the moans and tears of the brutalized and burned, raped and mutilated, enslaved and captive across the centuries, we are led to the ground beneath the cross of the crucified Jewish Jesus of Nazareth.”
Jesus left a world of heaven and entered into a world of hurt to show us that we are not alone–he suffers with us. He suffers for us. And his cross now stands as a place of sorrowful and satisfying solidarity. It is the space from which we, too, enter into the pain of other people. It is the space from which we, too, are bound to others and bind ourselves to others as the household of hardship.
How might you live this week in a way that says to yourself, “I am not alone?” And, how might you live this week in a way that says to others, “You are not alone?”
