Years ago, when I was a new pastor, I met with a couple whose marriage was in turmoil. Though there were a handful of factors that had led to the breakdown, it still seemed as though there were plenty of reasons to hope for healing and change. The couple were not members, but they were in regular attendance at nearly every event the church held including the Lord’s Day service. After nearly two months of frustration over a passive attitude toward repentance and a blatant indifference toward accountability, I began to press a little harder. We met more often. I gave clear and detailed assignments. I filled the space between meetings with emails, texts, and phone calls. I told them we should have no hope at all for their marriage if they were not willing to practice putting sin to death by the power of the Holy Spirit and replacing it with cultivated patterns of delighting in righteousness. It was then that they let me know they had been attending another church that met earlier than ours and that their inclination was to follow the other pastor’s approach rather than mine. I was completely taken aback. I couldn’t fathom how a household could allow me to invest so much time and energy fighting on their behalf for the preservation of their marriage and the health of their own souls, only to have known the entire time that their interests and commitments lay elsewhere.
Needless to say, that incident was formative in forcing a little Baptist church-plant to rethink a number of our positions including membership, expectations in counseling, and healthy boundary-making. But it wouldn’t be a one-off. Regardless of maturation in polity and care of souls, there would be no way for me to keep pastoring broken individuals who needed the gospel and avoid a recurring heartbreak.
Over the years, I’ve seen folks double-down on their sin to the detriment of their own soul and make a shipwreck of their faith. I’ve seen men walk away from their wives and children in order to pursue the temporary pleasures of lust. I’ve seen friends be given good counsel from shepherds who cared for them only to ignore the counsel. I’ve listened while folks I’ve spent countless hours teaching and praying for explained to me how a YouTuber had convinced them that my theology was all wrong. I’ve poured everything I had into people who would turn around and complain that it wasn’t enough. I’ve heard people assess the congregation that loved them as having been a waste of their time. I’ve been told that everything I did in an attempt to help was, in the end, part of the problem, if not the problem in its entirety. I’ve baptized people who got bored with the faith. I’ve married people who came to believe it was all a mistake. I’ve buried people who died far from being the Christians I’d hoped they would become before they went on to meet their Maker. And I’m not alone in any of this. It’s simply the work of a shepherd. God uses heartache to position us before him in need, and this fans the flame of God’s love that will never be extinguished.
When the prophet Simeon finishes the Nunc Dimittis he turns to Mary and interjects a prophecy about her own sorrow (a sword being driven through her own soul) as a thread woven into the tapestry of Jesus’ work as the scapegoat. But more than mere scapegoating is on display here. The scapegoat in Simeon’s prophecy functions as a divining rod. When spoken against, he uncovers the secrets hidden in the hearts of many brought into the clear light of day by their verbal rejection of her Son. Mary would witness this and it would cleave her soul.
And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed (Lk 2:34–35 KJV).
When Augustine spoke about this passage in his commentary on Psalm 105, he compared Simeon’s word to Mary with the Psalmist’s language about Joseph in his Egyptian captivity: “His feet were hurt with fetters; his neck was put in a collar of iron” (Ps 105:18 ESV). Augustine’s emphasis revolves around the word translated as neck in many versions. The neck, he argues, is better understood as being the soul (nafshô), as seen the Douay-Rheims version: “They humbled his feet in fetters: the iron pierced his soul.”
Hear what Augustine says about this:
They humbled his feet in fetters: the iron passed through his soul, until his word came. What is, until his word came? Until the word of the Lord tried him. That is, the Passion of the Lord, which was a fall unto many, and in which the secrets of many hearts were revealed, since their sentiments respecting the Lord were extorted from them, without doubt made His own Mother exceeding sorrowful, heavily struck with human bereavement.1
Christ as the divisive scapegoat ends up functioning as the divine Extortioner of Souls as well. Mary witnessed this, and we are left understanding that the soul-wound is connected to the plethora of dark revelations that are laid bare in Christ’s provocative role as suffering sign. Mary saw a review of the debris that litters the foot of the cross. It is the heartbreaking truth of the schism that is left in the wake of Christ’s role as cornerstone or stumbling block. She saw the falling that manifests itself when speaking against the sign. But praise God it’s not only a falling. There is rising again as well. And shepherds are privileged to see these things in the same theater that showcases the heartbreak.
Shepherds in the church share in this sneak peak of the hidden things of the heart laid bare. On a daily basis, they are spoken against not because they are sinlessly provocative in the same manner as our Lord but because they stand in the shadow of His signification. Shepherds are amongst the debris that litters the foot of the cross. But they are privileged to be there. Shepherds are pierced with the Marian wound for the same reason she was, that our hope in Him might be interlaced with both heartbreak and triumph as we await consummation. Shepherds see the rising and falling of many and are pierced for similar reasons as the mother of the Savior, even for doing what is right. The Lord often holds his fingers on a wound in order that it not close until the final consummation. It is better to have a preacher with a broken heart than one who, for any number of reasons, has managed to avoid it.
In Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, Father Zossima says, “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”2
Don’t think of this as a lexical definition; rather, think of it as a descriptive one. When shepherds bear witness to the love of God in their shepherding, they by necessity bear witness to a lack of reciprocity. We are not a breed apart from those who fail to love well in the face of love. None of us can match pitch with God in our attempts to love him back.
A wounded heart feeds the flame of God’s love because it postures us before Him in desperation and need. Part of the glorious work of God’s redemption of the world is that nothing has the final say apart from redemption. If hell itself will glorify God then ministers must believe that our heartbreak will as well. And not only will it bring God glory in the eschaton, but our wounds will be used by the Spirit even now to outfit us for the work of shepherding under Christ as our sign. If hell is the suffering of being unable to love then it makes sense that, in Christ, we are taught that love must include the ability to suffer. Charity suffereth long and is kind.
Garrett Soucy lives in Maine with his wife and nine children where he is the pastor of Christ the King Church. He is also a writer and musician.
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