The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 29), November 23, 2025

Redemptive Suffering

All of us will inevitably suffer “from” something in life—heartbreak, illness, grief, tragedy, disappointment. Suffering “from” something is unavoidable in life. But sometimes it happens that people will suffer “for” or “with” someone or something because they believe that, in the end, their suffering will contribute to some greater good beyond themselves. Central to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s deep commitment to nonviolence, for example, was his belief that “suffering can be redemptive.” King believed in the redemptive power of enduring suffering without retaliation—the willingness to accept blows without striking back. He taught that “unearned suffering” for a cause can be redeeming, liberating, transformative in our relationships and encounters where violence dominates.

Throughout history, there have been brave people who, in the face of violence and injustice, dared to imagine how much more beautiful the world might be if they were willing to voluntarily suffer the birth pangs of justice and peace and freedom to see it.

What would the world look like today had Rosa Parks not refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama; had Nelson Mandela not endured 27 years in a South African prison to stand against Apartheid; had Gandhi not led millions to fast and pray for India’s independence from the British government; had the unidentified protestor known as “Tank Man” not stood before a column of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square in Beijing; had John Lewis not led 600 marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma knowing what awaited them on the other side?

Each faced real injustice and violence. But each refused to fight back with violence. Instead, they chose to respond in ways that made their own suffering inevitable, perhaps even necessary, believing that their suffering might, in the end, help transform and redeem their adversaries.

Jesus’ Crucifixion as Redemptive Suffering

In Luke’s Gospel, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion captures the power of redemptive suffering so beautifully and convincingly. In the story, Jesus is caught between the collusions of religion and the cruelties of the Empire. The leaders of the temple have deemed him a religious heretic; the rulers of Rome have judged him a political insurrectionist. Jesus is sentenced to crucifixion on a cross—the most violent means of public execution possible, and one of the most agonizing forms of suffering imaginable.

Luke calls the crucifixion of Jesus a “spectacle” (vs. 48). It’s a mob scene—a first-century public lynching by a crowd of people possessed by a violent spirit and fueled by a cacophony of shouts and insults, jeering and taunting, and the clamor of hammered spikes piercing human skin and separating bones—and the reverberating echo of a refrain, repeated over and again, three different times: “If you are the Messiah, save yourself.”  The people in the crowd are the first to shout it; then the soldiers; then one of the criminals crucified next to him–“If you are the Messiah, save yourself.”

Messiahs are not supposed to die on crosses. Messiahs are expected to rule with power. Messiahs are not to be ridiculed or humiliated. Messiahs are invincible, almighty, and merciless with their enemies. “If you are the Messiah, command your army to take you from this cross, and save yourself” (vs. 37).

But, instead, this Messiah just hangs there. He will not command an army or fight back. He will not even respond to his accusers.

The Power of Transformative Love

And yet he seems still to hold all the power in this chaotic scene. It’s not a coercive power to fight back. It’s a persuasive power to transform.

From his cross, Jesus prays over his executioners: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (vs. 34). He turns to one of the criminals next to him and says, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (vs. 43).

Disarming Violence Through Love

Jesus just hangs there, but his is nobody’s victim. He holds all the power. By taking everything they could throw at him and absorbing it into his own body–every act of evil and violence, every insult and injustice, every expression of hatred and hypocrisy and ugliness and cruelty–he dismantles the whole violent, destructive arsenal of humanity itself, until the people have nothing left to throw at him. Disarmed of their violence and laid bare by this humanity, they can finally see the truth of what they have done and who they have become. Their banners and spears and swords litter the ground as Jesus’ lifeless body hangs from a cross. It’s only then that Luke says a lone centurion comes to his senses and mutters, “Certainly this man was innocent” (vs. 47), and the people go home “beating their breasts” (vs. 48) out of deep guilt and shame.

Voluntary vs. Involuntary Suffering

To say that suffering can be redemptive does not imply that one should tolerate an abusive relationship, or quietly endure the cruelty of bullying, or passively submit to evil policies under authoritarians, or refuse to defend oneself while being violently assaulted. These are examples of involuntary suffering that leads to victimization and the denial of one’s agency or power. There is nothing redemptive about enduring involuntary, disempowered suffering at the hands of others.

A Process Perspective

For Alfred North Whitehead, the very building blocks of reality are “occasions of experience” infused with feelings (prehensions) and emotions (subjective forms). Whitehead’s universe is not a collection of inert objects but a process of becoming, where each “occasion of experience” is a moment of feeling. Suffering, like all feelings, is not merely a sensation, but a central, interconnected part of the universe’s ongoing process in which each moment of experience is influenced by its relationships with others—and by the feelings it both inherits and transmits. In this way, suffering can be both terribly destructive and powerfully redemptive/transformative—both for the one who suffers and the one who inflicts or transmits suffering.

As Whitehead says, “Progress is founded upon the experience of discordant feelings.” Discord, whether in the form of disturbance, conflict, pain, or suffering, jolts us out of complacency, awakens us to new possibilities, and gives rise to novelty and fresh aims. It is “a necessary factor in the transition from mode to mode.”

An Invitation to Transformative Love

In a world torn by division, violence, and cycles of retaliation, Luke’s account of the cross offers us an alternative way forward—not through the demonstration of power over others, but through the willingness to absorb hatred and transform it into love, to meet violence with forgiveness, and to trust that such radical vulnerability can indeed redeem both oppressor and oppressed.

 The question for us today is whether we have the courage to follow this Galilean vision of transformative love in our own contexts—in our families, communities, and world. Can we dare to believe, as Jesus did, that suffering willingly endured for the sake of love can birth new possibilities for healing and wholeness? The cross suggests that when we refuse to return evil for evil, we participate in God’s ongoing work of transformation and becoming.

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Mark Feldmeir is Sr. Pastor at St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highlands Ranch, CO, and the author of five books, including A House Divided: Engaging the Issues through the Politics of Compassion (Chalice Press, 2020) and his latest, Life After God: Finding Faith When You Can’t Believe Anymore (Westminster John Knox, 2023). Learn more about Mark at www.markfeldmeir.com.