Thanksgiving and the Radical Suffering of Christ

“Let’s go around and name one thing we are thankful for from the last year.”

We all look around the Thanksgiving table, wondering who will be brave enough to go first. Hopefully, it’s someone across from you. That means you have the time it takes seven or eight people to talk before you have to say something.

This is a Thanksgiving tradition in our family and I’m sure in other families around the country. I look forward to hearing what people remember from the year that has passed and what they hold dear. Some years, the exercise is easy; we can think of too many moments of gratitude to share. Other years it’s more difficult as we think of hard times, lost loved ones, or difficult days.

To be sure, it is a valuable exercise and is part of the purpose of our national holiday. Thanksgiving is set aside as a day for giving thanks, not presents. For celebrating the bounty of God’s blessings and the company of friends and family. It is one of my favorite holidays, not only because the food is amazing but because the purpose is simply to be with one another in gratitude. I hope this year brings you too many memories of gratefulness to number.

But it’s also possible this will be a year for you when you struggle to name just one person, one event for which to give thanks. We are human and suffering is a part of the rhythm of life. Perhaps this year brings one more empty chair at your table from the loss of a loved one, perhaps by death but perhaps by a broken relationship.

Too often we emphasize the risen Christ, the one reigning on high, liberated from the cross. In fairly typical fashion, Christ the King Sunday falls the Sunday after Thanksgiving and we look to the coming of the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven while also celebrating the ways the kingdom is already realized in the kingship of the risen Christ. It’s a Sunday about triumph and glory.

But we must remember the glory and triumph were preceded by the suffering and darkness of Good Friday. There can be no resurrection or ascension without betrayal and crucifixion. That, too, is something for which to be grateful this Thanksgiving. At the heart of the Gospel is Christ’s willingness to bear the pain common to all of humanity. We must never forget the radical and subversive action of the cross, on which Jesus of Nazareth hung in the very public act of humility that was the ultimate show if his power.

Why is this radical suffering so important? Because through it Christ defeated death and won for us liberation from all that would bind us. But also because it means we have a God who suffers as we suffer, who willingly enters into our pain and darkness. We are never alone, even in the deepest abyss, because Jesus is there with us.

I won’t say that all suffering brings transformation and revelation. Another habit we have is saying, “There must be a reason for this,” meaning that God makes us undergo the pain to teach us some valuable lesson or another. But to do so is a gross rationalization. We live in a sinful world and some of our pain is caused by another’s brokenness, not because there is some grand plan. Similarly, our souls inhabit human bodies and those bodies fail us, not as punishment but simply because of biology.

The message we first carry with us is not that there must be a grand reason for our suffering. The primary message of the cross is that we have a God who loves us so deeply, so completely, that God inhabits the depths of our suffering with us. We are never abandoned, even as we find ourselves taking up our own crosses.

Prayers and thanksgivings for you all, my friends. As the season of gratitude falls upon us, I pray you find quiet spaces to tuck away into, spaces where you can plumb the depths of your experiences and rest both in and from your suffering. This year, I lift you all to God in my prayers of thanksgiving, grateful for the love and light you share with the world.