"The Suffering Olympics" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | March 29, 2024 (Good Friday)

The Suffering Olympics

Sermon Preached: Good Friday, March 29, 2024 at Trinity on the Green

Palm Sunday, Year B: Isaiah 52:13-53:12 | Hebrews 10:16-25 | John 18:1-19:42

Surely he has born our infirmities, and carried our diseases. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I was a teenager when the film The Passion of the Christ came out. At the time I was attending an Evangelical Church in southern California. It’s hard to underestimate what an impact this film made in evangelical communities. It was like evangelical Christians had suddenly re-discovered Holy Week. There were trips to the movie theaters, for people to see it together. There were exceptions made for younger kids to see this R-rated movie, with its graphic depictions of the crucifixion of Christ. There was even a sense that you weren’t really a Christian until you had seen the film– or at least that’s what it felt like, to my adolescent self. Watching The Passion of the Christ was a rite of passage akin to baptism; it was a mature statement of faith, that you were ready to witness Christ’s suffering in its most exaggerated, uncensored form.

The Passion of the Christ, for those who don’t know, is a 2004 film produced by Mel Gibson, himself a controversial figure and a devout Catholic. The film itself was also controversial. It depicts the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life in the most graphic terms, with an emphasis on the physical suffering that Jesus experienced. Some have criticized the film’s graphic nature. Others have noted the film’s failure to address lingering anti-seminitism in the narrative, in particular in implications that the Jewish people were singularly responsible for Jesus’ death (and understanding that is false, and harmful in its implications). Despite these controversies the film was heartily endorsed and embraced by Evangelical Christians - a phenomenon that I felt in a personal way, as a young adult who thought that I had to witness, unblinking, the suffering of Jesus in order to be saved. 

The film The Passion of the Christ reveals a piece of theology that was central to my Evangelical upbringing: the idea that Jesus not only had to die for our sins, but that he had to suffer in the most heinous way. I remember listening to several sermons where the preacher insisted that crucifixion was the most painful way to die– as if Jesus’ suffering was only worthwhile if it surpassed everyone else’s suffering by miles. The preachers persisted in this claim, ignoring the fact that two other prisoners were crucified right alongside Jesus. They ignored, or simply didn’t know that crucifixion was actually a common form of capital punishment under the Roman empire. I’m sure that teenagers in my youth group, imaginative and strange as teenagers can be, could have come up with some other forms of death that sound more gruesome; more painful. Nevertheless, it was of the utmost importance to spiritual  leaders in that church to say that Jesus’ death was the worst. No matter what happens to us, no matter what pain or suffering we experience, Jesus had it worst of all.

Now I don’t mean to downplay the suffering of Jesus’ on the cross - certainly not on this day of all days, Good Friday. However, I do hope that we can see ourselves more clearly on this day when we contemplate Jesus’ death on the cross, and what it means to us. More specifically, I hope we can see the ways that we, as human beings, glorify pain. The Passion of the Christ is a prime example of our tendency to glorify pain. In some strands of Christian belief, we have located the power of Christ entirely in his suffering, instead of locating the power of Christ in his love and his teachings. 

When we overemphasize the physical suffering of Christ, we forget the importance of his emotional and spiritual suffering. When we overemphasize the physical suffering of Christ, we downplay the significance of Christ’s life and teaching. When we overemphasize the physical suffering of Christ, we imply that our own lives are not worthy or virtuous unless we suffer like Christ too. We run the risk of measuring our lives in terms of pain, instead of measuring our lives in terms of grace and love.

There’s a term that I’ve heard used for this competitive, glorification of pain. I’ve heard it called the Suffering Olympics. At times we act as if we are in constant competition to prove who suffers worse than others– as if pain itself is something that should give us worth, or power, or voice. This happens on a big picture level: such as when people consider, consciously or subconsciously, whether one group of people has faced more suffering than another because of historic and systemic wrongs. On a sociological level this is sometimes called the “Oppression Olympics” a related term with a history all of its own. 

However, we participate in the Suffering Olympics on a personal level too. We participate in these Suffering Olympics whenever someone you know has a particularly difficult week, and you respond by saying “mine was way worse,” and go on to talk about your week instead of listening to theirs. We participate in the Suffering Olympics when we tell our children that they have things way better than we did “in our day,” rather than trying to understand their unique stories and their unique struggles. We participate in the Suffering Olympics even when we write our own pain off– perhaps saying that we shouldn’t feel bad for ourselves when bad things happen, because at least we aren’t experiencing this or that or the other thing. In each of these cases, we place a value judgment on our lives based on how much we have, or have not experienced pain. In a bizarre, mixed up way, we glorify that pain– just as Christians so often fall into the trap of glorifying Jesus’ pain on the cross.

One particularly tragic example of how human beings participate in the Suffering Olympics is present in our news almost every day, as we hear ongoing coverage of the war between the State of Israel and Hamas. In an October 2023 article by Tarunjit Singh Butalia published by the Religious News Service, Butalia addresses this problem of “The Olympics of suffering” in relation to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. He describes being in settings where the suffering of Israelis is described in graphic detail, without any mention of the suffering of Palestinians. Conversely, he describes settings in which Palestinian suffering is at the forefront, without any mention of the suffering of Israelis. Butalia writes, “The message to me was clear: The pain of my religious community is so immense that I don’t want to hear the pain of the other side in the same breath at this time.” 

Butalia suggests that we have to move beyond this Olympics of Suffering, in order to pursue any kind of meaningful peace. He writes, “Recognition of the pain of the other does not mean you agree with its causes. We need this empathy to recognize that both communities are in pain without arguing over the magnitude of suffering on each side. This is compassion– a fundamental value in every religious tradition in the world. And lastly, we are only as secure as the least among us. May we live up to these ideals.” (Butalia, “The Olympics of suffering: How to get out of it?” Religion News Service, 2023).

Butalia shares these thoughts as a US Sikh interfaith activist. But they are ideas that resonate deeply with me as a Christian, because they remind me of the teachings of Jesus Christ. God does not love us on a graduated scale based on how much suffering we have experienced. Instead, God loves each and every one of us completely, and joins us completely in our joy and in our pain. Jesus, in his ministry, validated the experiences of people from different backgrounds and stations in society. He empathized deeply with both marginalized Samaritans and Roman centurions; with tax collectors and those living on the edge of poverty– and somehow Jesus did this all while encouraging us to always look out for “the least” among us. 

The fact that Jesus prioritized the “least of these” in his teaching and ministry does not mean that Jesus made a hierarchy of our sufferings. It simply means that Jesus understood, and also avidly taught that we are all interconnected. Whatever happens to the least one of us impacts us all. And so we should be moved by other people’s pain– whether or not their suffering is deemed “greater” or “lesser” than ours. We can commit to following Jesus by practicing empathy and compassion– feeling pain when others are in pain, and feeling joy when others are joyful. That is exactly what God did when Jesus was born into this world. God perfected empathy by becoming human– to live, love, and die among us.

Tonight, I want you to hear this: the power of Jesus’ sacrifice has nothing to do with how much or how little Jesus suffered during his death on the cross. Instead, the power of Jesus’ sacrifice has everything to do with the fact that God became human. God subjected God’s own self not only to the particular suffering of Jesus on the cross, but also to the suffering and joy of every human being– in the past, the present, and even in the future.

When you look at the cross, whose suffering do you see? I hope you see the suffering of Jesus Christ. And I hope you also see the suffering of thousands of Palestinians who are starving in Gaza, experiencing the near constant threat of bombing. I hope you see the suffering of the Israeli hostages, their families and communities, and those who died in the October 7 attack. I hope you imagine the suffering of someone unknown to me, whose pain is deeply known by and cared for by you. And I hope you can see your own struggle too when you look at the cross, trusting that God joins you in the midst of your pain no matter how great or small it may seem.

God loves us all; grieves with us all; and celebrates with us all, when there is good to be shared in this world. The cross shatters our human hierarchies of pain, and invites us into a selfless, endlessly interconnected love.

May our adoration of the cross on this night expand our hearts to love as Jesus loved. For that is the way of the cross. That is the way of salvation. Amen.

Works Cited:

Tarunjit Singh Butalia, “The Olympics of suffering: How to get out of it?” Religion News Service. 27 October, 2023. Online, accessed 28 March 2024. religionnews.com/2023/10/27/the-olympics-of-suffering-how-to-get-out-of-it/