Not About Angels, You Know: Hebrews 2:10-18, Second Essay

Suffering, then, is the means by which God leads "many sons" [sorry, that is the literal translation; it really doesn't say "children", much as we in 2007/08 would like it to. Does that it mean it just refers to males today? Of course not...] to glory. How does suffering do that?

First, suffering gives wisdom. Let me be quick to add, however, that suffering doesn't by definition always provide wisdom. Sometimes suffering hardens rather than softens our hearts; it can make us hard-headed rather than warm-hearted. Sometimes suffering so turns itself on us that we become turned in on ourselves and on others and become carping, critical, bitter, resentful and angry. Suffering takes the measure of us, to be sure, and often tries to give us its best shot. But if you give suffering its due, if you pay it the charge it wants to exact from you, and then if you politely dismiss it from your life, you will discover that when it departs it leaves the sweet-smelling residue of wisdom. Wisdom is suffering's parting gift to us. If we are not too stubborn we can receive it as a gift, by realizing that suffering has done a number on us but it has given us a framework, a vocabulary and a heart to construe others' suffering. In that regard, suffering provides a hermeneutic, an interpretational grid, through which to see the world.

Just last night, for example, I visited a friend whom I had not seen for four months. She was down in the dumps because her children were staying with her "ex" this Christmas. This provided the occasion for some memories from her deep past to return and stab her. Memories don't just gently waft into our consciousness. Sometimes they stab. So they were doing that to my friend last night. I didn't visit her expecting her to be in this condition, but I found that because I, too, have also felt the stabbing reminders of memory, I was able to interpret her pain in words that actually did us both a lot of good. Somehow my own acquaintance with suffering gave me words, gave me vivid images, and gave me the right timing to say things that just seemed to be the right thing to say. I don't say this to boast; I say it to acknowledge what you, too, should confess--that suffering brings wisdom. I think the reason I am insistent on this point is that if we don't say it, we might give suffering the last word, the upper hand, in our lives. Speak out the wisdom that suffering provides; you and others will be glad you did.

Second, suffering provides authority. The point is not terribly different from the preceding, but it allows different emphasis. Let me tell a story illustrating this point. When I lived in Boston with my wife in the late 1970s, we had a weekly ritual late on Friday afternoons, where we would go to the laundromat and grocery store. The man who ran the laundromat was a Jew, a Holocaust survivor, a man who clearly was haunted by memories of a time that happened several years before my birth. On one occasion he and I "got into it," with a wide-ranging discussion on the nature of the world, on the existence and love of God, on the issue of man's inhumanity to man (as we called it then). He cut me off, looked at me with a mixture of disdain and authority and said, "I think those of us who came through the fire, who endured the Holocaust, have become gods." He said it with such a confident air, such an air of conviction, that I was taken aback and didn't respond at all. Clearly this man had lots of time to think as he folded and ironed shirts!

But as I have thought of his words, uttered to me about 30 years ago, I began to learn something about suffering. It is that suffering gives us a sense that we now are "authorities" on life. Oh, don't misunderstand. I wouldn't have taken my taxes to the guy to file with the IRS. It isn't as if suffering all of a sudden gives you a certain competence or skill that you didn't have previously. This reminds me of the cartoon you may have seen. Man comes to his doctor with crushed fingers (dropped something on them). He asks the doctor frantically, "Doc, will I ever be able to play the piano?" Doctor responds, "No problem." Guy heaves a sigh of relief, "That's good news. I never could play the piano before..." Thus, when I say that suffering produces authority, I don't mean that it gives us new skills or competencies. I will say, however, that it allows us to speak with authority about life, about what human actions might mean, about people's ambitions and hopes. Acquaintance with suffering gives us a kind of skepticism about grand human plans and transformative ideas. Language of "transformation," which glibly falls from the lips of politician and many preacher alike, is not the language of a person who has suffered.

Finally, suffering gives us fellowship. Paul talked about the "fellowship of Christ's sufferings," and the author of Hebrews would have known exactly what he meant. Suffering and its relationship to fellowship suffuses this morning's reading. But the author of Hebrews gets to the equation in an interesting way. First, he emphasizes our "connection" to Christ. The one who sanctifies (Christ) and those who are sanctified (us) all have one Father (v. 11). And, if we share common parentage, what must we be? Brothers and sisters. That is the reason for vv. 11-13 and the OT quotations. They are there to "confirm" the notion that we are siblings of Christ. As siblings, we "share the same things" (v. 14), and indeed, he "had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect" (v. 17). Note here that the author almost goes over the top. In ch. 4 he will qualify the statement he just made by saying that Christ shares our nature completely, except for sin (4:15). But here, in ch. 2., he is simply in the headiness and attractiveness of the thought of our sharing the same nature with Christ and Christ sharing our human experience completely, and he doesn't qualify his thought.

The point is this: suffering provides us with a whole community of people who have suffered. We become, as it were, a member of their club, of the club that knows what loss is all about, that knows the stabbing pains of memory, that knows the "number" that suffering can do on you. But then again, mysteriously, sharing in suffering with others gives you a kind of understanding that allows intimate human communication, communication of the highest and most precious order. It is almost as if you can at times be led to say that the suffering was "worth it," because of the fellowship that results. Never in our lives would we crave or covet the suffering, but the gift of human intimacy bequeathed to us by that suffering, is something too precious for words.

Conclusion

I close with one more comment on the Greek text. Verse 18 reads, literally, "for in which (i.e, the whole experience of v. 17) he suffered, after having been tempted, he is able to aid those of us currently being tempted." Jesus' temptation wasn't suffering, but it was the doorway or gateway to it. This is an interesting view of temptation. You don't "conquer" it or "achieve victory" over it. Rather, you go through it to suffering. But, then again, the suffering results in some pretty awesome things...

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