Baptized into Christ’s Death

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. (2 Cor 4:7-10)

“What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:1-3 NIV)

“For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” (2 Corinthians 1:5 NIV)

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14 NIV)

“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13 NIV)

In his poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” W.H. Auden has this to say about suffering:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Green water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

Auden understood the two things about human suffering that makes it so very difficult to deal with in any effective way. It is universal and it is subjective and because of this we often ignore anyone’s pain but our own. So universal is it, that merely by it’s scope, we are often deadened to it on any but the most minute of scales. And yet, so subjective is it, that we cannot escape dealing with the issue of suffering when it comes to examining our own personal lives for signs of pain. So we walk the tightrope that is tethered between being overly aware of its presence in the world and being numbed by that very knowledge.

Suffering is a reality that goes on all around us whether we choose to acknowledge its presence or not. While we may find it easy to stand in the kitchen nightly, washing dishes and thinking pretty thoughts, others in this world, in our churches, in our own households are harboring within them demons of pain that render them as motionless as the paralytic man who lived his life lying on a mat. It is that kind of pain and suffering, the kind brought about by sins and circumstances beyond our control, the kind of pain brought about by making decisions in the heat of the moment, that the typical pastor must grapple with each and everyday as he/she leaves the comfort of the church office and steps into the reality of a world groaning in travail.

Only the mystery of the cross can shed light on the darkness of human suffering. It is Jesus Christ’s birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection that gives to our lives the meaning we so long for. But the truth is that we often despise the meaning ascribed to our lives via the Scriptures. For the meaning given to us as children of the living God, often entails suffering. In fact, our commitment to the Christian faith ensures that pain and tragedy will be a part of our lives and we confirm this each and every time we baptize a person into the faith.

In Romans 6:3-4 an answer to the question “Why do we suffer?” is provided if only we will listen. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Being baptized into Christ’s death means for us a certain amount of pain and suffering in our lives as we experience our own sort of crucifixion, be it cancer or accident or dysfunction. This seems a harsh truth for many Christians to live with. Yet, if we take our baptisms seriously, we must admit that the receiving of this sacrament—the reality of being crucified with Christ—plunges us into a realm of being in which we begin to understand more fully his sufferings because of the suffering we ourselves endure. Our personal experience of pain and suffering helps us finally to recognize at least part of what Christ experienced as he hung on a cross and died so that we may live.

Understanding human suffering in terms of part of the bargain we make when we are baptized into the Christian faith is for many people an unpalatable idea. But the Scriptures are plain in this regard. At some point in time we must take our blinders off and recognize that making a commitment to Christ is not something we do to guarantee for ourselves a life filled with bliss, but says to our Lord and Savior, “I am with you, in the good times and the bad, I am with you.”

I began to understand more fully what it means to be baptized into Christ’s death as I watched my friend Jackie Futrell die of bone cancer. When he cried out to me for prayers for his baptism to finally be completed, I began to understand that here was a human being who had profound knowledge of what it meant to be a baptized member of the body of Christ. He was experiencing his own kind of crucifixion while life went on all around him. With the exception of his family members and a few of his friends, most had no idea of the depth of pain he endured. Most never saw that it was endured with grace and often joy because in his suffering he felt a closeness and kinship with the one he called Lord and Savior. His suffering was not limited to the extraordinary physical pain he endured but extended out into concern for the welfare of his beloved wife, his three children and his grandson. The pain he felt at the thought of being separated from them by death was at least as great as was his physical pain. But all was not lost, for just as he believed this awful experience to be a part of his baptism, he also understood that his hope for the future and the future of his family lay in exactly the same spot as did his pain. For just as he was baptized into the death of his Savior, he was also baptized into the new life promised to those who believe.

Following his death I began to understand in a new way, the profound reality of what it means to be baptized into Christ. Part of our baptism promises us that pain and suffering will come our way. We cannot predict how that pain will be precipitated out into our lives, but we can be sure that it will be ours. However, that is not the end of the story. Just as we are baptized into his death, we are also baptized into new life and therein lies our promise of release from the suffering we all too often flee. Where our suffering meets the sufferings of Christ lies that mystic sweet communion so many long for.

It is the cross and Christ crucified that ascribes meaning to our pain, as well as, the cross that offers us hope in the sure face of seeming hopelessness. For many this will not be a sufficient response to the problem of human suffering. After all, how does one translate this message into a language that a young girl can understand who lost her legs when a land mine exploded in Nicaragua? Did Christ himself not experience the inability to use his legs as they were nailed to a wooden beam? How does one include in this idea of being baptized into the faith, the loneliness that a young man in Haiti experienced when his village ostracized him because to them the sixth finger on his hand meant he was demon possessed? Did Christ himself not experience utter loneliness on his way to Calvary? How did his own community of Nazareth treat him?

For those whose main arsenal in life is the Word and the sacraments, this provides ample information in response to the question of why people suffer. Many will take up feminist Dorothee Soelle’s cry that this framework perpetuates the idea that God indeed is masochistic. If that were so, then only the crucifixion would have taken place. Yet, out of his mercy God also raised Christ from the dead offering us the promise of new life. Finally there are those who would say that this only perpetuates a sort of passive acceptance of suffering that benefits no one. To those people, I would say that indeed there are forms of suffering to which we have no choice except to submit. We can fight cancer with chemotherapy, but our bodies continue to undergo pain regardless of our efforts.

We can respond to pain by dashing the cross to pieces and claiming that we no longer have need of it. We can devise sociological categories for managing the whole idea of pain. We can implore those who suffer to fight back, to take steps necessary to escape the pain their bodies feel. Or, we can finally accept that being a Christian entails a certain amount of pain and that if we listen to it we might just find a new sense of meaning in sharing in the sufferings of Christ and a new sense of life as we too begin the process of being raised up out of the depths.

The most powerful word we can speak to someone in danger of being consumed by pain is that you are not alone in this and here is why. We can call God names, we can throw out theology altogether or we can construct new ways of categorizing human pain in a manner that will make it appear more manageable. In the end all we will have done is throw more words at something that can only be understood in terms of the physical reality of the cross at Calvary and what happened there so long ago. Indeed suffering does seem meaningless and tragic without the intrusion of the cross into its midst. It is that cross and the suffering endured upon it that turns suffering not into an extended wake but an opportunity to celebrate our coming into communion with Christ himself. To Him be all glory forever more.

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Jul/Aug 1996).