Religion
Christ knows
Martin Sullivan
Christians at their baptism are enjoined to follow the example of their Saviour Christ and be made like Him. There are, however, certain gaps in the Master's life which make a literal imitation impossible. I am not referring to the disparity of the centuries or to the vast differences between His culture and environment and ours. There are wider and deeper cleavages. He was, as far as we know, never seriously ill or suffered from prolonged incapacity. He did not marry, or at least we are not told so definitely. He never assumed the responsibilities of family life or shared the task of rearing children. He never grew old and so was spared the indignities and ignominy of the geriatric. While all this is true it may be argued that it was not necessary for Him to pass through all these experiences in order to understand the plight of those who have endured them.
One may not demand of one's doctor that he must suffer all diseases before he is qualified to treat them. It is better that he should be free of most of them if his diagnosis and treatment are to remain objective. And yet Christ Himself had such a wide ministry that He seemed to touch and to know all sorts and conditions of men. The sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, the palsied, even the dead were brought to Him and He did something about all of them. Little children rushed to Him; this in itself is a revealing peep-show into His personality. He exercised a special, albeit at times a perplexing ministry to His mother and who can tell what kind of relationship He bore to the silent, unobtrusive, almost anonymous Joseph? This father-son relationship must have existed, and when at the age of twelve He explained His absence from the family caravan by saying that He had to be in His father's house, He could well have been paying some tribute to it. He may indeed have thus been acknowledging what Joseph had taught Him about God. He was always to be found among the dependent, the hopeless, and the helpless and it is possible that He who died young really understood the old. "Christ," says the poet Baxter, "leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before."
There is a very real sense in which this is true. He did not need to be a geriatric to enter into their problems, or the victim of cancer to understand and share pain and suffering. He had been on the rack before He was nailed to the Cross, and His humanity was not a dis guise. Those of us who know a different kind of suffering from His, and enter into rooms which
new discovery. Our suffering Ma) be an extension, and in sonle, mysterious way a fulfilment 01 what is a in t Chrilst line ofHimself oegxhptersitenpcaeudi T tbreagnsalnatiotoo ehrxiphglosreou. tAhimodesmearl. ing. "It is now my happiness t,° suffer for you," he writes to ll's friends at Colossae. "This is rhY way of helping to complete, in rilY, poor human flesh, the full tale 0' Christ's afflictions still to be en' which for is tthhees ackhe oorfc 11H. blorld,Y, statement cannot lightly be terpreted, but it may be legitimate to draw some inferences from. of otshteofsiuosit,fiensdpethciaathtyhethvoisseitavvthollo are seriously ill and perhaps a,,c; tually dying, proves too much or us. We do not know what to saY aihndfawtoeottenchfiantdtear waahyouotf escaPen
sequential matters. inco'
I tdiissceoxvterra extraordinary often i n arl an do urervaenalxi isle! to ties are removed by the Pe°,P,';' whom we have come to see. „., visit us, and bring us the blessing and the comfort we hoped to bear to them. Even those in great Pai.rlt often have a serenity and a sPir,it of acceptance which puts to fliVe our anxieties. Maybe theY already in sight of a land which very far off. In their poor hunla' flesh "they help to complete full tale of Christ's afflictions. They give us a momentaan glimpse of a possible answer to insoluble problem. They show that the nettle can be grasped arlu„ that the defeat of pain is partlY tue be found in the way in which bear it and thus transform it. In long experience of ministering tw' the sick I have found very fe sufferers who cry out in protes.:, Whether they acknowledge Chrt-t or not these people show forth, ag tihc,oaunrdgei.ve the rest of us hoP
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Martin Sullivan is Dean of Paul's
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