God in Pain

I always enjoying reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s books and God in Pain, which I have just finished reading, is no exception. It is a great collection of sermons (or homilies) exploring the theme of suffering and pain and what it means. One of the key points, and values of the collection, is that this is something that we cannot always avoid. Towards the end of the book, there are a number of pieces originally prepared for Good Friday which offer a helpful exploration of the theme. She points out the good death that many religious leaders (like Buddha and Confucius) experienced, adding that: “Jesus was not so lucky. But if he had been luckier, what would he have had to offer all those others who die too soon – abandoned - who suffer for things they did not do, who are punished for the capital offence of loving too much, without proper respect for the authorities? His hard luck makes him our best company when we run into our own. He knows. He has been there. There is nothing that hurts us that he does not know about. On the whole, his love was not the sweet kind. It may have been sweet when he was holding a child in his arms or washing his friends’ feet. But more often it was the fierce kind of love he was known for - love that would not put up with any kind of tyranny, would not stand by and watch a leper shunned or a widow go hungry - love that turned over tables and cracked homemade whips before it would allow God to be made into one more commodity.” She goes on to point out the different, transforming approach offered by Jesus, to which we are called, but with which we struggle. “Our world is built on knowing who is up and who is down, who is in and who is out, who is last and who is first. His world turns all that upside down, and we simply cannot function like that. So we run this world our way and we make noises about wanting to do it his way, but we do not really mean it or we would.”