An Open Table where Love knows no borders

The Body of Christ as Painbearer

A sermon on Colossians 1: 15-28 by Nathan Nettleton

It is not too often in the Bible that you will find a suggestion that there was anything lacking or deficient in what Jesus Christ did. What you will normally find are statements that sound more likely to be erring on the side of being impossibly overblown. In the first part of the reading we heard tonight from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, you get a good collection of those sort of statements:

Christ is an image
of the God we cannot see.
Christ is firstborn in all creation.
Through Christ the universe was made,
things seen and unseen,
thrones, authorities, forces, powers.
Everything was created
through Christ and for Christ.
Before anything came to be, Christ was,
and the universe is held together by Christ.

Most Biblical scholars think that it was probably a hymn that was sung in the early church and that Paul is quoting the hymn. Whether or not that is the case, it is a good example of the sort of “Christ is everything and more” statements that we come to expect from the Bible. Having just read those verses, it comes as a bit of a shock when just a few verses later we find the one and only time in the entire New Testament that the word “deficient” or “lacking” is used with reference to the actions of Christ. In verse 24, Paul says he is glad that he is suffering for the sake of the church, and that in so suffering he is completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Given that Paul is so strong on asserting that in Christ’s death on the cross he has completely set us free from the power of sin and death, what on earth could he be meaning by suggesting that not only was there something left lacking in Christ’s afflictions, but that he, Paul, is himself making up for that deficiency in his own suffering? Has this bloke got a Messiah complex or what?!

Well, I don’t have the time or space (or in fact the knowledge!) to deal with all the complexities of the arguments about that verse, but I can touch on a couple of reasons for thinking that Paul hadn’t totally lost the plot at this point and that this verse does have some important implications for our life, prayer and ministry.

There are some technicalities about the words used that are important, although I won’t bore you with the full details. The most important though, is that when Paul speaks of what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions, the word translated “afflictions” here is a different word from the one usually translated “sufferings” that he uses when talking of the suffering through which Christ achieved our salvation. It is not a word that he ever used in that context. Rather it is a word which appears elsewhere in the context of discussing the trials and tribulations that God’s people suffer as the end of the age approaches. In other words, the thing that Paul says was left incomplete by Christ was not the thing that he speaks of as bringing about our salvation.

One of the possible, but by no means certain, beliefs that could be finding expression in this verse is an ancient idea that there was a set amount of affliction that God’s faithful people had to suffer before the end could come and the final Reign of God be established. If that idea did lay behind this verse — and I’m not convinced one way or the other — it would make some sense, because it would be saying that Christ personally bore a disproportionately large share of those afflictions, but there is a fair bit left for the church to bear; and that Paul could be glad that he was himself suffering so much because that reduced the amount that the rest of the church would have to bear. Very noble, if it was what he was thinking, but there is no way to be sure, and it is not a belief that is well supported either in scripture or in subsequent Christian thinking, so we can’t be too dependent on it as we search for a way to understand and respond to this verse.

What does seem much more certain is that the sufferings that Paul says he is experiencing are sufferings incurred in the course of his faithful witness to the truth of God’s love in Christ. He is not suggesting that he is somehow making atonement for the sins of the world, but neither is he talking about his ingrown toenail or the after effects of too much curry the night before.

As long as the work of witnessing to Jesus and reconciling the world and its people’s to God is incomplete, then the suffering that will be incurred in the process of that work is incomplete. What Jesus achieved in breaking the power of sin and death was utterly unique and no one else can add to it. We can participate in it in our union with Christ and we do so every time we gather around this table and break bread, but we can’t add to it or do anything to make it more complete or adequate. However, what Jesus suffered in the course of standing for truth and love against the forces of deceit and oppression, was not unique. If only it had been! The Bible is full of stories of faithful witnesses who suffered persecution, abuse and even murder for their courageous commitment to God and God’s ways. The history of the church since the close of the scriptures is equally full of them. And as long as the forces of greed and callous self-interest are competing for control of the earth’s peoples and resources, those who stand up in defence of mercy and justice will pay a price for their love and courage. And their suffering is part of the cost of enabling the whole world to see that Christ has provided us with a way to be reconciled to our creator and to the wholeness for which we were created.

When Paul describes himself as suffering on behalf of the church, or in some sense reducing their suffering by taking it for them, I suspect that he is making a simple and incontestable point. Those who take the highest profile roles in witnessing to the Reign of God will attract the greatest hostility and abuse. It is perhaps a bit like when I was involved, many years back, in the push for the Baptist churches to treat homosexual Christians as equal partners in the body of Christ. Because I was the most public face of that campaign, I absorbed a lot of anger and hostility that might otherwise have been directed at other people. In some sense, what I went through then was of behalf of other Christian people. I don’t think Paul or I are making any messianic claims in that. We are simply acknowledging that injustice is never going to deal itself out equally!

However, we all share in the task of announcing the good news of God’s love and freedom in Christ, in our words and in our lived reality, and we will all share, albeit unequally, in suffering the rejection, hostility and abuse of those whose interests are threatened by it. The fractured world around us is so fearful and unstable, that it is constantly resorting to creating the only unity and security it can in pointing the finger at others and baying for blood with the cowardly unity of the mob. Sometimes it is the traditional family values mob accusing the gays of destabilising marriage. Sometimes it is the xenophobic nationalist mob uniting in anger against muslims. Did you hear the chorus of outrage recently when one of the federal government ministers took his oath on the Koran at the the swearing in of the new cabinet? Sometimes it is mobs of workers from declining industries who blame their declining job opportunities on asylum seekers and Indian students. Whoever it is who has somehow become the target of our misplaced anger and fear, Jesus steps between the victim and the mob and says, “Love your neighbour. And who is your neighbour? Everyone, even the despised and feared and outcast. Even the one everyone else wants to run out of town or tow back to sea. Love God, love your neighbour, love your enemy.” And when you step between a mob and its victim and witness for love without limit and without boundaries, you more often than not end up wearing the wrath of the mob yourself. But Jesus, who knows that only too well, says “Which one was a neighbour? The one who had mercy on the victim. Go and do likewise.”

We are the body of Christ, and as such we give ourselves for the world and are broken for the world. Jesus put his body on the line, and in uniting ourselves to him in baptism, we have become that body. But, just as we experience around this table each week, that very brokenness itself becomes the source of healing and nourishment, strengthening us and filling us with hope for the journey into fullness of life in a world reconciled to itself and to its God. Love will prevail.

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