A Force Bigger Than The Pain

I was sitting with a young woman a few weeks back who was overwhelmed with the challenges that she faces in her life. She struggles financially, has few friends and lives with a mental health disability that makes her life a somewhat unpredictable roller coaster.

It was a tearful conversation for both of us.

During a quiet moment, I asked her how she goes on.

While she is no longer connected to a faith tradition, she said, “I’ve got to believe that there’s some force like God that is bigger than all of this pain…”

I often think of so many people in this world who hope, like she does, that there’s a force like God that is bigger than all the pain.

Maybe you’re feeling this way these days or are accompanying someone who is. You might be facing a physical or emotional challenge or a loss that has changed life as you knew it. Maybe you don’t have what you need to live and thrive. Maybe you just feel absolutely alone or struggle to believe that this world can ever find its way out of the situations we’re in.

Jesus anticipated that this would happen to his disciples.

In today’s gospel reading from John 16, Jesus says to his friends, “Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to your own home…” 

When I read that, I hear him telling us that, somehow, we’re all going to have to face things without a reassurance that “everything will work out fine.” He might even be suggesting that we will feel separated from him or other forms of community that nurture us. Some of the great spiritual teachers, like John of the Cross, called this the “dark night of the soul.”

The “dark night” has been used in more modern times to mean “a difficult period of life” or a depressing or painful time. And that may be true. But John of the Cross originally meant it to mean that our soul and spirit would “first of all [be] brought into emptiness and poverty of spirit and purged from all help, consolation and natural apprehension with respect to all things, both above and below.”

Ugh. This is generally not a welcomed situation! We search and strive and struggle and, finally, after much effort surrender into the arms of God and find, often to our surprise, that we are being held and have been all the while.

In John 16, Jesus knows that he is going to face his own dark night, but his focus is on his followers. So he goes on to say, “In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

What I appreciate about these words from Jesus is that he affirms our worry and concern. He knows that the world is going to shake us. And he says, “When this stuff happens, don’t lose heart. I have already overcome the trouble you face.”

I know that this is sometimes hard for me to believe, and it may be hard for you to believe as well. And yet this is the promise given to us in our faith tradition – that our God is bigger than the harm or loss or confusion or tragedy that we face in this life. God – in the person of Jesus – has faced the powers of death and prevailed, and this story line is the one in which we find ourselves (even if it is not currently visible from where we are).

I do not think it is accidental that this reading comes just a day after “Ascension Sunday” when Jesus supposedly went up into the sky to be in heaven. While I have A LOT of questions about that theology, what it symbolizes for me is that while we may no longer see or feel the reassurance from Jesus, he is here. Moreover, this is part of a resurrection faith – that whatever we are going through right now is not the end of the story. It is just one part.

The great mythologist, Joseph Campbell, when speaking about the Ascension said that we must understand it in terms of myth. He says that, “If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing steak written there, and starting to eat the menu.” He goes on to say, “For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But…there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy, Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility, But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within (from The Power of Myth).”

For me, this makes Jesus so much more accessible. He is not “out there” somewhere far removed from our experiences. Instead, he chose to be right here with us. That, in fact, is the meaning of “Emmanuel.” God is with us.

And so when the world “scatters us to our own homes,” we turn inward to the place where the world cannot prevail. It is the place where Jesus can now meet us. It is the place of comfort. It is the place of care. It is the place where he accompanies us no matter what we are going through. And it is the place in which he urges us to not lose heart because he has already overcome the trouble that we face. And he will see us through.