Today’s readings introduce two words that we all have difficulty with but that are part of what we need to confront as Lent draws to a close and all our preparation for Easter begins to reach a climax. The two words are suffering, and obedience. St. Paul’s second reading links the two in that mysterious phrase that we still puzzle over: “through suffering, he learned obedience.” And in this Gospel, from the Gospel of John just before Jesus faces his passion and death, which we face with him next weekend when Holy Week begins, we see Jesus himself struggling with this idea that suffering and obedience are a necessary part of his life, not a necessary evil, but somehow, a necessary good, part of our divine vocation, and his.
The words here are hard: suffering, obedience, St. Paul uses the phrase “reverent submission.” Catholicism is associated with suffering and obedience in many people’s minds. It is certainly associated with reverent submission. But there is a problem with the way we usually think about suffering, and obedience. They are often seen as passive virtues. We only hear about them when we face a situation that we cannot expect to change.
If we are afflicted with an illness, or if we lose someone near to us through death or sickness, then perhaps we can think of the word suffering, and we think of Christ suffering, of the martyrs suffering, and that helps us, sometimes, understand something of our situation.
Or, if we are in a situation that is difficult for us, if we have to live under oppression, or the threat of violence, or if we are chafing under a miserable routine or some system we cannot bear, then we think of the word obedience and we see that there is sometimes a virtue simply in patience and meekness, in accepting our lot for a while in the interest of peace and discipline.
There is truth in both these ideas, but this is not what Jesus is talking about here today, about accepting and enduring the suffering that comes to us unavoidably. Illness, or accidents, or misery, or the loss of friends — those things come to us unavoidably, and tragically. They are not things that we choose. Our faith and our community and God’s grace can give us strength to survive them, but they are not the kind of suffering and obedience that this Gospel is about.
The difference lies in this: The suffering that Jesus will undergo as he begins this inexorable movement towards his death, an unjust death, is a suffering that he knows he will undergo, and that he could probably avoid. The struggle that he is clearly feeling within himself in this Gospel — “now my soul is troubled — and what should I say, “Father, save me from this hour?” —that struggle must be at least partly because he knows that he could stop the whole thing now, simply melt away into the countryside, perhaps go back to living a normal life. We get few clearer pictures of Jesus being so truly human than this struggle with his mission, and this final decision he makes to set the process in motion from which there will be no turning back.
But he does set it in motion. Because he also knows that he would not be himself, he would not be what the Father intended him to be, if he chose this moment not to fulfill his role, to be disobedient to his own call.
This obedience is not passive obedience to external circumstances, but an active obedience, and obedience to what he knows God is demanding of him an obedience that takes on anything, including suffering, including death, if it means that we fulfill our own covenant.
Somewhere deep inside each of us there is a message and a call like this a covenant that we want to live up to, that the prophet Jeremiah says in that first reading is written on our hearts. It is very likely a call to do something you do not want to do, that you fight with all your being, because you know it will turn your life inside out that it will hurl you into a situation over which you have no control, and that in all likelihood there will be no thanks for, from anyone. It is not a call to do something pointless, suffering for suffering’s sake, but suffering for God’s sake, for the poor’s sake, for the sake of prisoners, for the sake of the sick, for your spouse’s sake, for your sake.
The obedience we owe God is to honor that call above all else. Let’s change the words here to ones that explain what the real virtue is — not suffering, or obedience, or reverent submission even. How about courage.
Courage is not simple bravery, but the willingness to undertake something important knowing that it is the right thing when all your instincts of self-preservation and comfort tell you it’s the wrong thing. That is what Jesus shows us in the Gospel today, not only that he is with us in all our suffering but that suffering is not worth avoiding compared with the glory of living out that covenant.
A faith without obedience and suffering we could do without. A faith without reverent submission I for one would have some interest in. But a faith without courage isn’t worth living for. A faith with courage is what the next two weeks tell us everything about.