Suffer | Wayfarer

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
Mark 10:43-44 (NIV)

I got a call the other day from a team member. I don’t know what the issue was, it went unstated, but my employee sheepishly asked me if I would help complete a project for them. The truth is, I have an incredibly packed schedule both for work and in our personal lives. It is the holidays, after all. I won’t get paid for doing this team members work for them. Nevertheless, without hesitation I agreed to do whatever my team member needed me to do.

My immediate agreement to assist was predicated on two things. First, as a disciple of Jesus I’m told that with leadership comes the responsibility to serve, not to be served. Jesus states that clearly to His disciples in today’s chapter.

Second, this was modeled for me by our company’s founder thirty years ago when I was a young husband and father with two toddlers at home and didn’t know what in the heck I was doing most days. My boss rarely left a phone conversation without asking if there was anything he could do for me. There were two very distinct moments in those early years that his question came while I was dying under a crush of work. Both times, I sheepishly responded with a request for him to help me finish my work. He didn’t hesitate to do what I asked him to do, and he never held that over my head or made me pay in any way. I never forgot that. I’m now the one in his position, and my gratitude compels me to follow his example and pay it forward.

One the things I’ve learned to look for in this chapter-a-day journey are patterns. In each of the last three chapters Jesus has told His disciples that He’s going to be arrested by His enemies, be handed over to the Romans, and then be beaten, flogged, and executed. In each instance, the very next things that happens is that the disciples respond by denouncing this or arguing over who among them is going to get a promotion. All three times, Jesus responds by reminding His followers that those who want to be great have to be the servant of all.

In a few chapters, Jesus will give me, and all of humanity, the greatest example of this principle. He will follow through with His trinity of prophetic predictions. The Son of God will sacrifice Himself for all, for me.

In the quiet this morning, I’m feeling the weight of Jesus example as well as a deep sense of gratitude. This compels in me a desire to follow His example, and pay it forward.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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[Jonah] prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.
Jonah 4:2 (NIV)

As I get older, I’ve grown to enjoy etymology, the study of words and their origins. I find it fascinating how these building blocks of communication become part of our everyday conversations, and how they wax and wane in popular usage. I also find it fascinating how cultures ascribe certain significance, power, and meaning to certain words, while others don’t. Our kids in Scotland have a few great anecdotes about uncomfortable social moments when they discovered that a word they used, which has a benign meaning in the States, has a very different meaning in the U.K.

There is a word I first noticed a few years ago, and I’ve found that it’s growing in popularity: schadenfreude. It’s a compound German word that comes from the root words meaning “harm” and “joy“. It means to take pleasure in another’s person’s misfortune.

There certainly is a natural and rather harmless way that we enjoy seeing the bad guy get his comeuppance. I was one of the many who watched the entire series Game of Thrones. The series was masterful in creating really bad characters who I wanted to see come to a nasty, bitter end and was happy when it eventually happened.

At the same time, there is a dark side of schadenfreude that I feel like I’m witnessing more and more in our current culture. It’s not enough to disagree with another person’s political, religious, or social worldviews, we have to publicly call them names and post antagonizing memes on social media. Just last night I found myself shutting off social media and walking away. I realized how mean-spirited the posts were that I was reading and it wasn’t having a positive effect on my psyche or my feelings towards others.

In today’s final chapter of the story of Jonah, we finally learn what was at the heart of Jonah’s mad dash to flee from what God had asked him to do. Jonah didn’t want God to be gracious and merciful with his enemies. Jonah wanted to wallow in schadenfreude and watch his enemies, the Assyrians, suffer.

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus took five common statements about matters of relationship and then told His followers He was raising the bar. Jesus’ expectation for me as a follower is that I behave in a way that goes against the grain of common human behavior:

“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.”
Matthew 5:43-47 (MSG)

Reading Jonah’s story this week has caused me to do some real personal introspection. You can see it in the common ways my posts have ended the past few days.

As I was reading about the etymology of the word schadenfreude, I learned that many cultures and languages have a word that means the same thing. I recognize that there is a relatively harmless pleasure that I take when my favorite team’s rival loses. C’est la vie. I don’t, however, want to wake up someday and find myself in Jonah’s sandals. Following Jesus means loving, even those people who wish to see me suffer; Even those who actually act on it.

“Forgive them. They don’t realize what they’re doing.”

God, make me more like that.