Suffering as the Way to God

Last night I started, or  restarted, a discipline I have done before and had let slide - the prayerful reading of Scripture (aka lectio divina).

I chose as my starting point the book of Hebrews.  I'm not entirely sure why I chose Hebrews, but choose it I did and over the course of the last 24 hours or so, I've found myself wrestling with one verse in the second chapter:

"In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered." (Heb. 2:10)


Those two bold words are the ones that leapt off the page and lodged themselves in my brain, the ones I can't seem to dislodge.  Fitting and suffered.  What this verse is saying is that Jesus' suffering - the mocking, the beating, the scourging, the cross, the dying - was all appropriate, that it was the way it should be.

It is fitting that Jesus suffered?  Really?

I have always had a bit of a hard time with the idea that Jesus "had" to die on a cross.  Maybe it's just me, but I suspect I'm not the only Christian to be troubled in such a way.  "Couldn't the God who is all-powerful have come up with another way?" That's the question that comes to mind.

If I'm honest, I've never been able to answer that question adequately.  I have always had to resort to my confidence that God is greater than anything I can ever comprehend and that I am simply not meant to comprehend the necessity of the cross.

Until last night.  As I prayed over this verse, God granted to me the beginnings of an insight into the cross and why it is indeed "fitting" that Jesus "suffered."

Suffering is, you see, the ultimate equalizer.  It respects no one's power and no one's money.  The powerful and wealthy can suffer just as much as the weak and the poor.  That is why we have to say that Jesus's suffering was fitting.  Because any other way would have left the old divides and structures still standing.

Sure, Jesus theoretically could have come to reign in a political way and overthrown Rome as so many of his disciples expected.  In doing so, though, Jesus would have demonstrated a path to God available only to the powerful or those with influence.  Surely the poor have no recourse or resource to overthrow governments.

But again, the poor can suffer.  That they can do, it is often a daily occurrence in the life of the poor, of the oppressed, of the weak.  Left without any ability to look out for themselves, they are forced to ride the wave of the strong and hope and pray for the best, for a break from their suffering.

By pioneering, by demonstrating a path to God through suffering, Jesus opens the path to all and flips the usual way of doing things on its head.  Whereas in the everyday world of Rome strength and money and power prevail, in the Kingdom of God weakness and poverty prevail.  Everything is upside down.

Instead of being at a loss, the poor lead the way.  It is the rich and powerful who must face difficulty on the path to God described by the Jesus whose sufferings were "fitting" - difficulties raised by the very things that set them "above" the poor and the weak.

It has never made sense to me before and it still doesn't completely make sense, but I am beginning to see that the God who transcends everything I know and am is, shockingly, better at laying out the path of salvation than we are.

Jesus' sufferings may make us uncomfortable, and rightfully so - but there is no longer any doubt in my mind that they are indeed "fitting."