31.03 | Complication & Comfort
2 Corinthians 1:1-2:4
‘Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.’
2 Corinthians 1:7
One familiar element of Facebook, since its explosion from the dorm room of Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, is your relationship status. Among the various conventional options is the intentionally unclear It’s complicated. It fills the gap for undefined or struggling relationships. It’s a public statement of relational ambiguity.
Today we’re starting 2 Corinthians. It’s rich in deep theology and beautiful in principles of power and humility and comfort and generosity. You’ll find it to be a letter containing stunning one liners and ideas, a magnificent interruptive in a world of accumulation and image management.
But understanding the background of Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians is going to help us navigate the journey.
In a phrase, it’s been complicated.
Let me give you a quick timeline of events:
AD 50. Paul arrives in Corinth, and spends 18months there, making tents to support himself during the week, and establishing this new church community.
AD 52-53. After moving on, Paul writes them two letters. One of these is lost,1 and the other we’ve just read through in 1 Corinthians, which he wrote in AD 53.
1 Corinthians wasn’t received as well as Paul had hoped. When Paul hears this, he visits the Corinthians for the second time. He describes this visit as “painful”— a meeting of difficult confrontation.2 Off the back of this, Paul then writes to them again—a letter (also lost) that scholars describe as the ‘letter of tears’.
This time the confrontation hits home. The Corinthians, grieved by their behaviour, receive it with humility and a desire to change. Disagreement gives way to grief, which in turn is paving the way for reconciliation.
AD 55-56. Paul’s response to this is 2 Corinthians. It’s a letter that goes into the deep emotional places of pain and reconciliation, failure and regrouping. It’s been complicated. But it’s also coming full circle into the kind of tenderhearted wholeness that sits on the other side of reconciliation.
As Paul begins, then, we get an insight. It’s an insight into how he responds to this community on the other side of reconciliation. It’s not antagonistic or passive aggressive. It’s not clinging to aged grievances or putting them down for taking so long to come round.
Rather, he points to what they have shared in this journey.
Suffering. And comfort.
Suffering, because they have all endured through a season that has been hard, with all the grief and anxieties of human division and human pain. Paul, we’re going to find out, has written this letter out of a myriad of circumstantial challenges. It’s not made him bitter or resentful. It’s made him compassionate. That they have all suffered has allowed their hearts to become soft in a deeper kind of compassion.
And comfort.
Mark this well, for Paul offers us something groundbreaking.
The comfort, he writes, is not primarily the comfort of their reconciliation: it’s not the comfort of an argument won or disagreement resolved. Rather, it is the comfort that both the Corinthians and Paul have found in their shared source of comfort. Their shared journeys of grief and suffering have taken them on a shared journey more greatly into the heart of the Father.
And suddenly a new paradigm emerges. Not of hard triumphalism or bolshy confidence. But rather the kind of gentle compassion that grows out of heart that has journeyed pain, but, in its very depths, has allowed the love of the Father to restore that place of tears into a place of extraordinary love.
It’s an emotional beginning. And this tender place becomes the starting point for a letter that is going to introduce us to a way of being that can only grow out of the soil of this remarkable meeting of soft hearts and the comforting God.
Reflect:
With who do I have a grievance today?
What might it look like for us both to experience the comfort of the Father?
What shared purpose could we both have on the other side of this?
Don’t try and force this. You won’t be able to. But you can offer Him your heart, inviting Him to come and begin and continue and consolidate a journey of healing, that takes your pain of today and turn it into a vocation of compassion tomorrow. Bring Him all that you have, and ask Him to do all that you cannot.
Pray:
Father of all comfort,
My places of pain,
Are difficult to look at.
Sometimes I blame you for them;
I feel shame for them;
Or I just avoid them altogether.
But, God of all comfort,
Today I bring you my wounded heart.
Comfort me—
Comfort me deeply in my inner places;
Reveal your love amidst my tears.
And Father,
I give you permission
To work the miracles of the heart that are beyond me,
That turn pain into purpose,
And cost into compassion;
That this heart may become soft and beautiful and filled with love.
That my life may carry the healing touch,
Of Jesus my Lord,
Whose suffering led to my wholeness,
And whose love restores all things.
In His Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Deuteronomy 29:1-31:13 | Psalm 41
Paul mentions this letter in 1 Corinthians 5:9
2 Corinthians 2:1
This has such a beautiful depth.