The Community of Suffering Mercy
3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6If we are distressed, 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 we suffer. 7And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
As if pain and suffering weren’t bad enough, one of the common features of suffering is that those who are afflicted tend to feel terribly alone in their distress. We often contribute to that isolation by distancing ourselves – either physically or emotionally – from suffering people because we just don’t know what do say or do. We want to solve problems, not just acknowledge them, and when we don’t know how to solve the problem we sometimes make the mistake of not acknowledging it at all.
The Christians in Corinth are going through a particularly difficult time and Paul wants them to know they are not alone, so he charges right out of the gate in this letter with a praise for the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.” Paul wants these believers to know, first of all, that they do not suffer without relief, for our God is the God “who comforts us in all our troubles.”
But notice, Paul says here that at times comfort from God comes not in the form of a solution, but in the form of empathy and understanding from others who have suffered! Paul says
“[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (v4).
Paul then uses a powerful image to drive home his point: Picture a large kettle filling up from a rapidly flowing tap, the liquid racing to the brim and them gushing over the edge, splashing down the sides and running out onto the floor.
This is the suffering of Christ.
As the people who place our trust in the faithfulness of Christ, his suffering inevitably spills out onto us. Yet, this overflow is also the comfort of Christ, and as he comforts others we too are bathed in that merciful flow.
Paul’s evocative image illustrates a surprising and distinctively Christian truth that we can receive comfort and empathy from God for our sufferings because we serve a God who has himself suffered. Christ meets us in our pain and misery – not from a sympathetic distance, but shoulder-to-shoulder in the muck and mire of our broken humanity. He has been there as a broken human, and he offers us mercy from the wellspring of his empowering grace.
When we have received this mercy – sometimes in prayer, sometimes in scripture, but mostly in community – we respond by sharing it to others around us. That is the community of mercy in action. The gift of grace must be moved or else rot and spoil like lay-old manna. We are common sufferers, and common comforters, in Christ and with Christ, and by this activity we begin to enjoy a kind of equality that is peculiarly meant for the people of the Kingdom of God (2 Co 8:13-15).
