Today's daily lesson comes from Mark 15 verse 23:
"And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. "
Jesus refused the myrrh; he refused to be taken out of his own misery.
I want to be careful here. There is a danger that we misread this lesson and draw from it a misleading conclusion. What is not to be concluded is the idea that the relief of suffering is a bad thing. For most certainly the relief of suffering is not bad -- especially at the end of life. We ought never to make an idol of our own or anyone else's suffering.
Rather, the point the text is getting at is that Jesus demonstrated extraordinary courage in his willingness to be near suffering -- so much so that He became one with it. At the cross He took on both the sin and also the suffering of the world. In that sense, it was not so much that he was experiencing his own misery but in fact the misery of all humanity. This is the full and ultimately devastating reality of Incarnation -- that the one who knew no sin or death became sin and death for us.
We are most Christ-like, not when we refuse to avoid our own pain, but rather when we chose to enter into the pain and suffering of others -- when we sit with the sick, when we bear the harsh words of the afflicted, when we stand on the side of the scorned and the oppressed, when we suffer the scandal and shame of the weak, vulnerable, aged, and dying.
To refuse the myrrh is to come and be near the pain and suffering of others. And it is to be near to Christ also; for it is with those who suffer and are in pain that He is always to be found.
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