by K. J. Ramsey
Without the communion of saints in Christ, our memory makes love a faint outline, overshadowed by the flux of our daily disappointments and the rising of anxieties rooted in the past. Eugene Peterson was more right than he probably knew when he wrote, “But we need other experiences, the community of experience of brothers and sisters in the church, the centuries of experience provided by our biblical ancestors. A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week.”1 Both the history of the people of God and the unfolding history of our committed life together now, gathered around Christ crucified and risen, shape our hearts and minds to dwell in a love more steadfast than all our shifting feelings.
We’ll only live and tell our stories as good when we live and tell them in community.2 And I ache to share this, because while I’ve tasted the goodness of the body of Christ, I still grieve from the vast ways she has hurt me.
I imagine you do too, that you’ve felt the stinging pain of judgment and the hushed agony of isolation. I imagine you have your own pile of cutting, insensitive comments from other Christians and your own silent storehouse of unseen or unanswered needs. Or maybe you haven’t felt particularly hurt by other Christians or the church, but you’ve quietly wondered if your story is valued by them. Maybe you have questioned whether you are wanted in the church, sensing you are too troubled, too weak, too sick, too different, or too poor to be included.
The body of Christ holds both hurt and healing. To enfold our lives into God’s story of redemption, we have to enfold our stories into Scripture’s story of a people. And for many of us, this is a continuous act of great courage.
In the body of Christ is both our pain and our healing, and in you is her healing. Even as you cannot enfold your life into the life of Christ without the presence of others, the church cannot remember her whole story without you. So within these pages, pause. Consider the possibility that a people holds your hope and you, in part, hold theirs.
I recently sat in a church service where a few people were invited to share stories of ways God had dramatically moved in their lives over the past several weeks. I listened while shifting in my seat, trying to keep my joints from screaming too loudly for me to participate in the service. As I reached into my purse to grab some Zofran to abate the nausea surging to the tip of my tongue, I heard the pastor say, “Tell us how God healed you.”
Beaming with amazement, a young woman at the front shared her story of miraculous healing. She had suffered from chronic rhinitis for more than two years, and her struggle to breathe had become so troublesome she was scheduled to have surgery at the end of the month.
At the end of every service, this particular church has people available for prayer, as a space for being encouraged, listening to God, and following him in faith. The woman described that just two weeks before, she had gone forward for prayer for another issue entirely and was surprised by what happened. She had not even mentioned her breathing issues, but the person praying for her sensed that for quite some time something had been blocking her from being able to breathe and prayed for its removal.
The woman said she felt encouraged but didn’t think anything more of the interaction until later in the week, when she realized she had been breathing easily even with the spring pollen levels at an all-time high. By the next week her breathing had improved so fully she canceled her surgery.
While the Zofran dissolved on my tongue, the acrid flavor of fake bubblegum sweetness promising at least marginal relief of the nausea threatening to make me leave the service, I felt caught in the tension between her story and mine.
With tears streaming down her face, she testified to the church, “God sees you. My breathing issues were small enough that I hadn’t even thought to ask God to heal them, but he did. He cares about even the smallest parts of our lives.”
Two others followed her, describing stories of radical change.
I marveled at these stories and rejoiced to hear them. It is undeniable that God sometimes heals sickness, removes struggles, and brings new life in stunning ways now, even as we wait for the full expression of his kingdom to come. But sitting in present pain and nausea, in a body God has not chosen to heal, I wondered, When was the last time I heard a story like mine in church? Would a story of someone being sustained in ongoing suffering rather than having it removed ever be valued enough to be shared from the front of this church?
I glanced around the sanctuary, taking stock of the stories I knew it held—marriages ending in divorce, jobs lost, empty wombs, terminal brain cancer, chronic Lyme disease. I wondered, What story are these saints being shaped to expect? And if that story doesn’t come true, will they be strong enough to perceive God as kind even if he doesn’t remove the small and large struggles in their lives?
When the church amplifies stories of healing and overcoming without also elevating stories of sustaining grace, she is not adequately forming souls to hold on to hope. If the majority of stories we hear are tales of triumph, we will question the worth of our stories when healing doesn’t come. God, in his wisdom, in his hidden purposes, allows some of our suffering to linger, and the church unintentionally turns hearts away from the heart of God when she does not hold space for the sacred mystery that weakness reveals God’s strength.
Without understanding that the story of Scripture includes suffering until Jesus returns, we will place unnecessary burdens on ourselves and others to heal or hide pain that persists. The good news of the gospel on this side of Christ’s return is that God is redeeming all that is broken and is holding all things together while we wait for the fullness of his redemption. The church only offers half her good news when she does not make space to share and honor stories of suffering that lingers.
As Jesus prepared his disciples for his death, he spoke these words: “Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will become sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world. So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you.”3
Jesus’ words to his disciples are just as true for us today. We will weep and mourn. We will have sorrow. And our sorrow will turn to joy. Today, in the tension of pain that persists, we are living the reality Jesus named. Here we find the descending, rising rhythm that creates our new life. As Henri Nouwen says, “It is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain.”4 In our longing for tension to be relieved, we cannot miss that Jesus said sorrow comes before joy. This is the church’s story: sorrow comes before the song.
The apostle Peter echoed Jesus’ words, encouraging believers to stand firm in suffering instead of being surprised by it: “Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.”5
Peter said we shouldn’t be surprised when suffering comes, but I was—and occasionally still am—when sickness and disappointments came crashing with fresh intensity. And you probably were too. You might still be surprised that suffering remains in your story.
Peter’s words encourage us not to be surprised but to rejoice, a shift that feels like a wild, almost insane leap in the middle of sobbing. His words make me wonder if rejoicing starts by reminding ourselves to not be surprised. Maybe we experience the joy of our suffering being connected to the suffering of Christ by first choosing to accept its existence in our lives. Maybe joy emerges in the tenacious choice to not be surprised or ashamed of suffering, no matter what
our churches or culture seem to shout.
Just a few sentences farther along in this passage, Peter exhorted his readers to be aware of the reality that the devil prowls like a lion looking to attack and devour anyone he can: “Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.”6
Part of our resistance to being devoured by suffering is being aware that suffering is the shared experience of the people of God all over the world. When our suffering is hidden behind closed doors and strained smiles, it’s difficult to remember the truth. It’s hard to remember you aren’t the only one afflicted when you can’t see anyone else’s tears. But the tears are there, waiting to be witnessed. We rise in resistance to the devil’s schemes when we remember we are not the only ones suffering and choose to keep seeing and embracing the poor, pitiable, and oppressed in our midst, including ourselves. Remembering suffering’s existence is resistance.
James also writes to the church as though suffering was expected: “Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”7
James used the word whenever, not if. Suffering is not just for some of us; it is something every Christian will experience. And it is because suffering is expected and because of the tension it creates that James writes toward the end of his letter, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, be patient until the Lord’s coming. . . . Strengthen your hearts, because the Lord’s coming is near. . . . Brothers and sisters, take the prophets who spoke in the Lord’s name as an example of suffering and patience. See, we count as blessed those who have endured.”8
These are words to the weary, counsel to those watching closely for Jesus to return. Endurance in suffering is the story of God’s people being formed into wholeness. Sitting in the place of our suffering prepares us to sit on thrones in Christ’s kingdom,9 for “blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”10
The apostle Paul also describes suffering as a central, unifying experience of followers of Jesus. He writes that God “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”11
Paul describes a participation in suffering that assumes it will happen, and his words place suffering in the context of community. To him, suffering was not about private pain but about shared comfort: “If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.”12
The church can multiply comfort and amplify endurance through becoming a fellowship where suffering is named as normal. It is not our whole story, but it is part of it. Hope rises when we remind each other of what Jesus told his disciples: “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”13
Christ’s ultimate victory over death fills us with confidence that suffering is not the end of our story. Rather it is the sacred space where God’s Spirit fills us with courage to express his power and presence in a world where darkness is passing away.
We are a people waiting in expectation for the day when God will make all things new. We are also a people of presence; Christ is in us and in our midst now. Grace is not always rescue. It is often Christ’s presence meeting us in weakness and sustaining us in sorrow. Grace is not just power to overcome. It is power to endure.
We who suffer are here to tell the church that the space we hold for suffering in our public gatherings and private conversations directly shapes the maturity of every saint in our midst to hold and experience her Living Hope.
We who weep are here to warn the church that unless we make room to bear witness to weakness, we’ll hand out half-hearted hope.
We who hurt are here to remind the church that the stories worth telling are not just the ones where pain ends but where God sustains. Because when the church doesn’t shape saints to expect affliction, she doesn’t guide us to encounter our suffering, risen Lord. We aren’t well-prepared to offer and receive the ministry of Christ’s presence, because we aren’t well-prepared to acknowledge suffering that isn’t short-term. Remembering the place suffering holds in the story of God empowers us to acknowledge and respect its place in one another’s stories rather than cowering in corners or judging from perceived strength.
The space the church offers to recall and express the reality of suffering directly shapes our expectations of the grace we can receive in it. When the main thrust of our liturgies is the triumph of the resurrection, those who strongly sense the dirt of the grave might eventually feel pushed right out the church’s back door. Jesus’ story included dying, and if we don’t regularly sing and speak the reality of lament, we won’t see our stories rising in the upward trajectory of his resurrection.
I wonder what our lives would look like if the church intentionally made room for suffering. I’m curious about how much more hope we could hold if worship services included half as much time for lament as they do for praise. I wonder how much encouragement we might all be missing by treating each other’s ongoing suffering like an awkward subject to avoid rather than a normal experience to share.
I wonder how much less anguish we would experience in suffering if the church treated suffering like a story to tell rather than a secret to keep until it passes.
Instead of approaching and analyzing ongoing struggles and disappointments as indications of a lack of faith or the absence of God’s presence, Jesus reminded his disciples to remember suffering’s existence so that we could dwell in his peace. We can’t repeat his words enough: “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”14
No matter what our churches or the culture around us says, our Lord said to expect suffering and to expect his peace. When we step courageously into the reality he named, we show the rest of the church and the watching world that God has not forgotten the weak, the poor, the odd, or the needy. When we let suffering be seen as part of our stories, we remind others that suffering is a valuable, sacred part of following Jesus Christ. As we do, the continuing presence of disease, disorders, weakness, trauma, and poverty become stories of Christ’s solidarity and places to see his lordship touch everything.
God has not closed his eyes to the pain of his world. And we must not either. I’ve tried many times to close my eyes to darkness, hoping it would help me see light. I’ve turned my gaze from my own pain and sin and the hurts of humans both near and far, and I’ve found the sight that generates the most hope is the one that faces evil squarely, steadily, and compassionately. Open eyes and hearts hold the most grace. I find compelling truth in the words of theologian and philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff in Lament for a Son: “We’re in it together, God and we, together in the history of our world. The history of our world is the history of our suffering together. Every evil act extracts a tear from God, every plunge into anguish extracts a sob from God. But also the history of our world is the history of our deliverance together.”15
The frayed edges of your suffering become lines to trace to joy when you see they aren’t borders but threads, tying you to others, tethering you to hope. Your suffering is a woven thread in a tapestry of transformation. Its beauty is most evident not as a singular strand but as one of many intertwined fibers, holding each other’s weight, forming a textured picture of being the image of God. When the church sees suffering as a chapter in her story of joy, she can weave together loose, weak threads. She can form a tapestry of wholeness where there was isolation and hidden darkness. She can embody the sight of God.
You are never too sick, too needy, too sad, or too odd for God’s kingdom. Church, if
Jesus said his power is perfected in weakness, maybe we should spend less energy treating weakness as a problem to fix and more time bearing witness to it with expectation of seeing Christ.
Every church lives and reinforces an embodied story.16 We have to consider the story we are being shaped by. And we must ask ourselves honestly if we will contribute to the reshaping of our shared story.
We belong to each other, and our life together as a body forms both our hope and the fullness of our participation in God’s story of redemption. We are embodied, socially embedded creatures, and as such, we are shaped most deeply not simply by what we hear in sermons but by our physical and social experience of being with and among the body of Christ.17 Christianity “is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian, but rather,” ethicist and theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues, “Christianity is to have one’s body shaped, one’s habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable.”18
The church’s gathered presence in worship can both form and fragment our likeness to Christ. Embodied experiences in gathered, corporate worship that capture all five of our senses carry the power of absorbing Christ’s memory farther into our own. Because we have embodied, relational minds, when we gather together, our shared presence, postures, and habits are either reinforcing old neural networks or forming and strengthening new pathways of peace, hope, joy, and love. Liturgies shape us in conscious and unconscious ways, moving us toward a specific goal.19 The question is, how are we shaping each other? Are we moving one another toward a kingdom of consumeristic self-sufficiency or the kingdom of communion?