Emily Schaming
A story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king's foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king's forgiveness. "Why did you suffer this pain in silence?" the saint wanted to know. The king replied, "I thought it was part of the ritual." Pain and suffering are a part of life, a part of the rituals of our everyday living. We see people sleeping on the street, friends suffering through cancer, newscasts full of disaster. No one is exempt from hardship, and sometimes life feels unbearably tough.
As we come toward the end of the church year, the Bible readings begin to focus on the finite nature of this world and all the pain that comes with it. Daniel says, "There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence." In Mark's gospel Jesus talks about the end times, of wars, earthquakes and famines as being just the beginning, the birth-pangs of the end of the world. Well, these tragedies and thousands more are certainly present in our world. Does this mean we are coming to the end? How do we deal with our troubled world? Where do we go from here?
We spend a lot of our time planning for the future, carefully shaping our dreams. We want a cottage, well-educated children, another car. Much of this planning revolves around our financial savings. On the TD Canada Trust bank website, there is a section on retirement planning. It says we should remember these three "s" words, "Start now, save now and stay invested." This seems to be sound advice as we prepare for an end, whether it is for retirement, for the end of our lives, or for the end of time as we know it. But our carefully wrought plans change so quickly when we encounter tragedy. Everything in the world is dropped as we sit by a hospital bed, rush to an accident scene or attend a funeral. So how are we supposed to prepare and plan for the unexpected?
The rich young man in the gospel reading today had plenty of this kind of credit. Not only was he materially wealthy, in those days considered a sign that he was favoured by God, he was confident that he had done well by his neighbours, and kept the Commandments faithfully. And yet he wanted something from Jesus. He asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" One wonders if he was just waiting for a pat on the back. Maybe a "keep on doing what you're doing, but cut back on the fatty foods" or a suggestion that he study scripture more. But Jesus wasn't interested in bestowing this kind of credit on someone who already had so much. Instead he says, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me."
Start Now
On an old episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a character advises her friend, "Carpe diem!"
Her confused friend responds with, "Fish of the day?"
"Not carp- carpe! It means 'seize the day'" comes the exasperated reply.
Perhaps we ought to imagine that we know Jesus is coming to us tomorrow. What would your first reaction be to that news?
I might feel a little panicked. There would be so much to do, neglected friends to call, neglected tasks to finish. I would feel more intensely my secret guilts and worries.
What would you do? One thing is certain, there would be no time to waste, we would need to start now.
Theologian William Barclay said "If we live in the shadow of eternity, if we live with the constant possibility of the intervention of God, if we live with the prospect of the consummation of the coming of Christ ever before us, if the times and the seasons are known to none but God, then there is the necessity ever to be ready."
Yesterday the youth group and I watched a movie called Rize. The film documents the lives of young dancers in the poor neighbourhoods of South Central Los Angeles. One of the young men featured in the movie gives advice to the film's audience in an interview on the DVD, he says, "don't be ashamed of your struggles." In our Western society that places so much value on perfection, simplicity and ease having trouble getting through everyday life is sometimes seen as shameful. Throughout the film, the dancers talk about their lives, the fear of being shot in their own neighbourhoods, family members in and out of jail, the lure of drug dealing for easy money, the intense pressure to join gangs. Part of being ready to encounter God is being able to admit to our weaknesses, our trials and our problems.
We don't need to be ashamed of our struggles, rather we need simply to allow Christ's love to enter into our lives and to have it flow out of us to others.
Save Now
The second bit of investment advice is to save now. Saving things can be easy, but we must ensure that what we hold on to are the right things. Jesus looks at the great temple buildings in Mark and tells the disciples that not one stone will remain standing on top of another. We put a lot of trust in stones. We assume certain things will always be there to cling to. The temple; the home of God, the place where lies the Holy of Holies, the place where the ark of the Covenant once rested, where the altar for the mercy and praise of God was located, was an important and imposing place. It was the physical representation of a dream - the dream of the Hebrew nation from the time of Abraham.
We all have dreams that we cherish, stones that we feel we must cling to or the world will crumble. Of what are your walls built? Do you believe in governments and human power, in real estate values, in family connections? Jesus says not one stone will remain at the end. So where do we go from here? On what do we base our lives if not the material life that we have attained as a result of years of dreaming and careful planning? Where is our hope?
When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything--property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life--concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.
"I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child, " Frankl wrote. "Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! I found myself confronted with the question of whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning."
He was still wrestling with that question a few days later when the Nazis forced the prisoners to give up their clothes.
"I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber," said Frankl. "Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.)
"How should I have interpreted such a 'coincidence' other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?"
We can desperately try to save up our stones, to keep them in a pile, to count them, and treasure them, but it is in the living of our lives that we serve God and show most truly what we value. According to Hebrews, we do not need the laws and rules of the material world to guide our lives. Instead the Holy Spirit will make a covenant with us so that we are no longer reliant on the stones of the earth. God says, "'I will put my laws in their hearts and I will write them on their minds,' he also adds, 'I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more'".
With God's laws in our minds and hearts we are able to live in hope and to overcome the inevitable suffering we encounter in the world.
Stay Invested
In Guideposts magazine, Billie Wilcox shared a sad story. While she and her husband Frank were living in Pakistan many years ago, their six-month-old baby died. She tells of an old Punjabi man who heard of their grief came to give comfort.
"A tragedy like this is similar to being plunged into boiling water," he explained. "If you are an egg, your affliction will make you hard-boiled and unresponsive. If you are a potato, you will emerge soft and pliable, resilient and adaptable."
It may sound funny to God," she says, "but there have been times when I have prayed, "O Lord, let me be a potato."
The bank's retirement plan says we need to stay invested. This means that even when we suffer, even when we are in pain, we can choose hope. Hope does not mean forgetting our sorrows, or putting on a brave façade. Hope means remembering our sorrows, building our resilience and loving enemies. Hope leads us to action, so that even in times of trial and adversity we do not become hard-boiled, but adapt to our circumstances and act for good. Vaclav Havel said that "Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."
In his 1986 Nobel lecture, holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel spoke of hope and how it is the antidote to suffering. Drawing from the Old Testament he says, "[Job] demonstrated that faith is essential to rebellion, and that hope is possible beyond despair. The source of his hope was memory, as it must be ours. Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest… We may be powerless to open all the jails and free all the prisoners, but by declaring our solidarity with one prisoner, we indict all jailers. None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness."
He goes on to say that the way to hope and peace is through our encounters and relationships with other people. Hebrews tells us that this is also the way to hope in an ever-present God. "Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful," it reads. "And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
All the more as you see the Day approaching. We must stay invested in hope, love and faithfulness, so that we have prepared ourselves to encounter Jesus not only on the last day, but through our lives every day and in every person that we meet.
The first savings principle that the bank recommends is to start now, to seize the opportunities of today. Today's reading from Daniel tells us that, " [t]hose who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever." This passage feels peaceful, powerful, reassuring. But then it is easy for doubt to overshadow the passage, one begins to wonder, "have I ever really been wise?" and what does it truly mean to lead someone to justice? How do we make eternal things like wisdom and stars feel more immediate.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.