Jesus wasn't born in his home town; his pregnant mother had to endure a long, uncomfortable ride on a donkey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, because Joseph and all Jewish men had to travel to the place of their family's beginnings for Tiberius Caesar's census. And so Jesus was born in less than comfortable surroundings. As an infant, he quickly learned what hunger was, and how to cry. Then, Mary and Jesus' foster father Joseph had to leave town in a hurry with their baby and be refugees in Egypt for a time to escape their ruler's murderous plans for the infant Jesus. Jesus' youth undoubtedly included illness and accidents, fevers and toothaches. Joseph died when Jesus was relatively young, at least by the time Jesus was thirty, and he understood the long mourning of losing someone so vitally important to him at a young age.
Jesus chose to leave his family, friends, and the comfort and predictability of his carpenter's job in Nazareth to go on mission for three years out of a tremendous love for his whole Jewish people. He yearned to teach them spiritual wisdom about God, about their lives; he yearned to heal them, mentally, physically, and, above all, spiritually. Eventually, through listening and reaching out in ministry, he learned that his mission was to all people, including Samaritans, and even gentiles like the Romans.
Jesus' mission years included much suffering. Long, rigorous traveling from one town to another. Sore feet. Exhaustion. Hunger. Gossip, slander, rumor-mongering, and outright attacks and rejection from his own Jewish leaders. Constant crowds, clamoring for healing, leaving little time for needed rest. The people not understanding what he was trying to teach, or rejecting it, or not understanding its importance or relevance to their lives (ask any teacher - they'll tell you that their students' negative attitudes can cause them real suffering.) His closest followers rarely understood what he was trying to teach them through his words and actions; they didn't understand who he was, the Messiah, (except for Peter and Martha), and all but John and a group of women deserted him when he was arrested and later crucified.
Jesus, before he even chose to take on human flesh, knew that he was going to suffer as a human being. "Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at; rather, he emptied himself and took on the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of human beings." Yet God is Love, and in the physical, limited universe which God created, great love always, always involves great suffering. Jesus, Love itself, chose to become one with us, to teach us just Who God is, knowing that who he was, a human being, would bring him day-to-day suffering, and also knowing that who he was, God, Perfect Love, Mercy, and Truth, would evoke sinful rejection, misunderstanding, abandonment, and eventually death at the hands of sinful human beings. Only his perfect acceptance of his suffering, his words of loving forgiveness on the cross - "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing!" - had the ultimate power to absorb our sinfulness and bring us back to God.
We also learn that Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and grace, grew, indeed, his whole human life until the hour of his death. Scripture even tells us that Jesus "learned obedience from what he suffered." Jesus, through his obedience to the realities of love and suffering in his life and death, teaches us that the only way to grow up, achieve maturity, in this world, is through great love and great suffering. We don't truly grow up until we accept responsibility, as Jesus did working as a carpenter, and then later accepting the responsibility of his three year mission. We continue to grow as we accept the responsibility of a marriage, children, or religious or ordained life, or the single life. Yet every step towards maturity results in the suffering of laying aside selfishness, of no longer being the center of our lives, of living in self-sacrifice. We learn, by living it, that "where there is no struggle, there is no strength."
But we human beings, in our sinful selfishness, don't want to accept suffering, we don't want to be "obedient" to suffering. We grow angry, complain, think and talk as if suffering is the worst thing that can happen to us. We live in a society that rejects every kind of inconvenience, wants everything "our way," thinks that freedom means freedom to do what we want to do when freedom really means choosing to do what we SHOULD do. Some couples divorce when the day-to-day labor of making a marriage work seems too hard, too demanding, and the fall-out is broken-hearted children. Some couples - I just read this - choose to abort a baby because they are upset that their unborn child is not the sex that they wanted. When we refuse to accept the necessary suffering and inconveniences that lead to maturity in our lives, we will devalue relationships, even life itself, in order to get our own way.
Which is why when Christianity came on the scene in a pagan culture that devalued responsibility and sacrificial love, the Romans were literally blown away: "See how those Christians LOVE one another!" What were they talking about? Couples staying faithful and true to their marriage vows till death. Parents being faithful to the right raising of their children. Priests and Deacons who sacrificed time and energy to lovingly minister to their people. People, on the whole, who rejected materialism and consumerism and shared their money and belongings with those less fortunate. Communities of faith that listened to each other and supported each other as dear friends in good times and bad. Christians who suffered and died, were even martyred, with inner peace and strength, depending on the loving strength of their Heavenly Father. CHRISTIANS WHO LOVED WITH GREAT LOVE AND FAITHFULNESS AND ACCEPTED THE DAY-TO-DAY SUFFERING AND DEATH TO EGO THAT GOES WITH THAT - JUST AS JESUS DID.
We all have daily struggles. Some of us have absolutely brutal, life-changing daily struggles. The way to survive them is to lean on the Lord, lean on Jesus,believing and trusting that in him and through him and with him by our sides we can not only survive, we can triumph. Because after every Good Friday, there is an Easter. There is new life. There is new hope. There is a new reason for living, loving, enduring. There is the new strength and wisdom that comes from the struggle. The Risen Christ understands that because, when on earth, he was human like us. Feeble, fragile, hurting, and frail like us. Our key to new emotional and spiritual life is to let him WALK WITH US and teach us.