For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ

Homily delivered at the monthly healing service at St. Paul's Franklin.

“For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5).

As we gather today in this service of healing, we remember that we are not alone in our pain and our struggles. God himself in Christ has experienced the gut-wrenching pain of a violent death on the cross, and has experienced what it is like to wrestle with the dread of pain and suffering. The night before his crucifixion, Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matt. 26:39). Although the Gospel of John portrays Jesus as calmly accepting his fate, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all describe Jesus struggling in anguish the night before his death, wishing that things could be otherwise. His prayer gives voice to a universal human cry: “Dear God, please save me!” – from pain, from suffering, and from death.

But pain, suffering, and death are unavoidable in this world: even Jesus did not get to bypass them in this life. And Jesus never promises his followers that their lives will be easy and painless; in fact, he warns them that following him may bring more pain and suffering into their lives, from a human perspective. But the consolation that we have through Christ that the Apostle Paul writes about is the knowledge that pain, suffering, and death do not have the final word. Although Jesus’s prayer to have the cup of suffering removed from him was not answered, the suffering and death that he endured did not defeat and destroy him. “On the third day, he rose again,” (Nicene Creed) and “rising from the grave, destroyed death, and made the whole creation new” (Eucharistic Prayer D, BCP 374).

God has answered that universal human cry to “save us” from pain, from suffering, and from death. As believers in Christ, through our baptism we have been united with Christ in his death – and in his sufferings – but also in his resurrection. As Paul writes in Romans 6, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).

The ultimate healing of humanity has already occurred in the transformation and transfiguration of mortal flesh into the eternal life of the Resurrection in Jesus Christ – and through our baptism we already begin to participate in that transformed life, the full flourishing of which we await at Christ’s Second Coming and the Resurrection of all. This hope for full participation in the Resurrected life is why we can say in our burial service, “Even at the grave we make our song, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” The consolation we have in Christ is not one that denies the anguish of suffering, but looks for its transformation into the life-giving power of the Resurrection.

“For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ” (2 Cor. 1:5). “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5).