Don Friesen
Some years ago Lois Duerksen Deckert wrote an article in The Mennonite (November 24, 1981), recalling her service with Mennonite Central Committee in Indonesia. Upon arrival in the country, Lois found the traffic rather daunting. On the mountain roads especially, traffic was heavy, its steady stream of trucks, buses, motorcycles, cars, and vans interweaving without rhyme or reason, and leaving a noxious wake of noise and fumes. A two-lane road often became a three-lane road as traffic wove in and out, and Lois was rather surprised when they reached their destination unharmed! She mentioned her fear of the traffic to Charles Christano, then President of Mennonite World Conference. Lois writes, "(Christano) told me that as long as we thought we had to stay rigidly on our side of the road, we would have a difficult time. We had to learn to flow with the traffic." Lois found Christano's counsel helpful. She writes, "I've decided life is quite a bit like Indonesian traffic -- crowded, busy, a bit frightening because you can't always be sure what is going to happen."
Not all of us are naturally equipped to flow with the traffic. We get on the road with certain expectations, and if drivers don't do what we expect we have a few words with them, albeit in the privacy of our own car. We motor along the road of life in a similar fashion, expecting things to happen according to some pattern. And we're bewildered when something disrupts the pattern. When we encounter what appear to be anomalies of life, we want to know the reason.
It's not at all uncommon for victims of personal tragedies to ask, "Why? Why me? Why did this happen? Is it something that I did, or something I didn't do?" Chris Lockley tells the story of his first grade son who suffers bouts of asthma. One evening as he lay in bed, a particularly bad asthmatic spell severely restricted the boy's breathing, and he began to panic. In between breaths the boy said, with some desperation in his voice, "Mom . tell . God . I'll . be . good!" His parents had never implied that his condition was related to his faith or his behaviour, though they discovered that the boy's grandmother had told him that when he didn't behave, God would punish him. The boy himself made the connection between his asthma and God's wrath!
We try to make some of the same connections, even in less personal circumstances. When something bad happens, we look for reasons that it happened. This week at least 200 people died in Madrid, and there was, understandably, an immediate search for answers. Who was responsible? Basque separatists? Al-Qaeda? Why did they do it? Sometimes there are answers, a path of logic we can follow and then take steps to avoid such tragedies. Sometimes, however, the answer proves elusive, or less than satisfying.
How Do You Interpret The News?
No doubt such questions were on the minds of people in today's Gospel reading. The setting is Jerusalem, and there had been two tragedies in the news that week. First, the story about the Roman Governor, Pilate, who killed some Galileans preparing for worship. The Galileans were just strolling down to the Temple, when out came soldiers with their swords flailing, and massacred them! And then, to top it off, Pilate did some unspeakable things with their blood! (Luke 13:1)
Then, on page two of the Jerusalem Times, there was another alarming story -- the story of a construction accident. Pilate was building an aqueduct in a part of Jerusalem called Siloam, and during the construction a tower fell down and killed eighteen people who just happened to be passing by at the time. (Luke 13:4)
These stories were in the minds of people and Jesus had a good idea what people were thinking as they read them. He challenged them, asking them, with respect to the Galilean victims, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?" (Luke 13:2) And with respect to those who were killed when the tower collapsed, "...do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?" (13:4)
A rather blunt question, but Jesus was addressing people who were taught that personal pain and suffering are a direct consequence of personal sin; ergo, the Galileans slain by the soldiers must have done something to deserve it. Those underneath the tower when it fell must have done something to deserve it. It's a blatant way to phrase it, but there is a certain logic to this. For example, we examine history with this notion in mind, sifting through events in order to put them into some meaningful sequence or pattern. We look for some order, some cause and effect. And if, as we believe, God is the ruler of history, then there must be some meaning to the events that happen to us.
At times the Scriptures almost seem to encourage such simple notions. The Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy is a lovely book, but it tends to couch human choices in very stark terms. Choose life -- or choose death! (Deuteronomy 30) It's one, or the other! If you choose God's vision of life, you will rewarded with prosperity! If you refuse it, it's a quick slide downward into the Pit!
And to this line of thinking, Jesus replies with an emphatic "No!" (Luke 13:3 and 5) And each time he says, "No," he asks his listeners to repent! You see, they had it all figured out. They were good people, and bad things only happen to bad people. It's a tempting equation, but Jesus would have none of it. It's a tempting, crude, and insidious equation, for it can easily become a cluster of unfair prejudices: If people are poor, it must be because there is something wrong with them; if people are sick, they must have done something to deserve it. And Jesus asks: Are those who experience suffering worse than anyone else? Of course not! It can happen to any of us.
A Story Challenging a Tidy Understanding of the Universe
We may long to explain things by constructing a nicely ordered, predictable universe, but if we do, life itself will frustrate and baffle us just as much as Indonesian traffic baffled the person I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon. There doesn't have to be some mysterious, divine reason behind everything. As someone has said, some days you're a pigeon, and some days you're a statue! Sometimes bad stuff just happens!
Now, there may be some people who thrive on chaos. A shop in Nottingham, England put a notice in their window explaining their reason for being in business. The notice read: "We have been established for over 100 years and have been pleasing and displeasing customers ever since. We have made money and lost money, suffered the effects of coal nationalization, coal rationing, government control and bad (debts). We have been cussed and discussed, messed about, lied to, held up, robbed and swindled. The only reason we stay in business is to see what happens next." Some people may thrive on chaos, but most of us prefer a more patterned existence, and are frustrated when the pattern eludes us.
Jesus told the equation-lovers of his day a story that challenged their love for a well-ordered universe. He said, "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down!" (Luke 13:6-7)
Fig trees, apparently, are high maintenance trees which don't produce fruit until the third year, and Levitical law required another three years before the fruit was considered "clean" for human use. Fig trees require regular watering, and they deplete soil nutrients rapidly. The canopy of the fig tree provides thick, dark shade, but nothing else can grow underneath it, so you have to really want figs if you're going to go to the bother and expense of growing fig trees! Even the wood of fig trees, though sometimes used for firewood, burns hot and fast, and its fire must be well-ventilated so that the caustic fumes from the latex in the fig tree bark don't asphyxiate anyone nearby!
A non-producing fig tree is worse than useless; small wonder that the owner of the fig tree in Jesus' story said, "Cut it down!" (Luke 13:7) It's simply taking up space. It's a waste of good soil. The gardener in Jesus' story, however, said, "Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down." (13:8-9) The gardener wants to put some rotted manure around the tree, dig around the roots to break up the hard soil so that water can get to the roots, and then -- who knows? -- maybe it will come around!
It's a beautiful little story. The axe is ready to take down the tree, but a gracious and patient hand reaches out to stop the axe in mid-stroke. To the one who is ready to give up on the barren and the broken, the Merciful One says, "Let's give this hopeless case one more year." Jesus' story is a story of grace. Instead of certain incidents or behaviour being a cause for judgment and blame, they are, in Jesus' mind, an occasion for a second chance! His story tells us that everyone -- however you may judge them -- everyone deserves another chance. And more to the point, all of us -- every one of us a mixture of good and bad -- all of us could benefit from a little more manure and a lot of care and nurture.
Our Longing for a Well-Ordered World
The season of Lent lends itself to introspection, and one source of spiritual growth is to explore this human need for a well-ordered world. Let's do what Jesus advised: let's dig around this notion -- put some manure on it -- and see what comes of it. No doubt there is a certain serenity to be found in a vision of a tidy universe. If one can summon sufficient explanations for unpleasant things, then one can relax. There is order and security in the world. Bad things happen, but they fit into our tidy scheme. They were meant to be. Such an outlook make help us feel better, and make us feel that we have more control over our life, but it's a lie, and unbecoming to the Christian gospel.
Such an outlook on life is a lie because life isn't like that. Oh sure, some behaviour has predictable consequences. If you drink and drive, chances are that you're going to cause an accident at some point. If you've chain-smoked for many years, then lung cancer should not come as a big surprise to you. However, a cause-and-effect outlook on life is not a template for all occasions. Terrible things happen to all kinds of people -- good people, bad people, as well as those of us who fall somewhere in between!
Ralph Milton tells of standing with his sister at the bedside of her son who was dying of cancer. Not long before, Ralph's nephew had been a tall, cheerful, bright young man playing basketball, and then -- a skeleton covered in skin facing imminent death. It made no sense. The young man's pastor came into the hospital room, and Milton remembers thinking, "Please don't try to be helpful. Don't try to make it right. Because, by God, it is wrong! Please don't say anything helpful." And Milton relates that the pastor did exactly what should be done at such a time of anger and pain -- he took his little book and in it found the words needed. "No little saccharine pieties, but the huge, soul-shaking lamentations of the Psalms. With passion and anger in his voice that reflected the passion and anger in our hearts," says Milton, "he cried to God those vast, eternal unanswerable questions; threw at God the anger in our souls (and) brought to God the terror in our hearts." (Milton, Collected Stories..., page 52)
The events of life may not lend themselves to nice and tidy explanations, and that may be unsettling to us -- sufficiently unsettling that we begin to question God. Nicholas Wolterstorff, a professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale, lost a son in 1983, a tragedy recounted in a book he wrote, entitled Lament for a Son. His twenty-five year old son, Eric, a doctoral student studying architecture in Munich, fell to his death while climbing a mountain in Austria. Wolterstorff was devastated by the loss of his son and responded to his pain much like the Old Testament Job -- he lamented. He lamented, though he refused to abandon God in his struggle to survive his loss. His lament is most eloquent and moving; he writes: "I remember delighting in ...trees, art, house, music, pink morning sky, work well done, flowers, books. I still delight in them. I'm still grateful. But the zest is gone. The passion is cooled, the striving quieted, the longing stilled. My attachment is loosened. No longer do I set my heart on them. I can do without them. They don't matter. Instead of rowing, I float. The joy that comes my way I savour. But the seeking, the clutching, the aiming, is gone. I don't suppose anyone on the outside notices. I go through my paces. What the world gives, I still accept. But what it promises, I no longer reach for."
Wolterstorff talks too of his regrets -- regrets forgiven by God, but which linger. Regrets are a form of longing, the longing for what could have been. And Wolterstorff resolves, concerning his regrets, "I shall allow (them) ...to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other's arms and say, ‘I'm sorry.' The God of love will surely grant us such a day."
The Grace of God's Absence
Wolterstorff discovered what others who have engaged in spiritual struggles have discovered -- the paradox that our longings themselves may be a Divine gift. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, penned a lovely prayer:
"Father in Heaven,
...longing is Thy gift,
... When Thou in the longing
The psalmist also knew such longing. He wrote, "O God, ...I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)
Meister Eckhart (c.1260-1326), the thirteenth century Christian mystic that I mentioned in last Sunday's sermon, also wrote of deep longing, saying, "The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God's love; but if the soul cannot yet feel this longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God."
The logic begins to feel a bit strained, but at the heart of these spiritual grapplings is the profound truth that no matter how deeply we may feel the absence of God, God's grace is not far away. Janette Turner Hospital, in one of her novels, hints at the potency of absence. She speaks of a character whose "absence filled the pub and the restaurant and the stairwells and the waiting emptiness of Charlie's apartment." Writes the novelist, "If the potter takes clay to make a pitcher, its usefulness lies in the hollow where the clay is not." (Turner Hospital, The Last Magician, page 73)
Perhaps what we perceive to be the absence of God is like that. It seems almost tangible, and this itself is a sign of grace. There is that place in us "where the clay is not" -- where the presence of God is not -- but there is spiritual usefulness in that realization.
I think that Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Wounded Healer, hints at a similar spiritual paradox -- that a source of healing can be found in our wounds. Our wounds can teach us; it is in our own wounds that we find the capacity to reach out to others who are wounded, standing beside them with deep empathy. The wounded one becomes the healer. It's a paradox not unknown to the Bible, where the New Testament tells us, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9) "Therefore," writes the Apostle Paul, "I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities... ...for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." (12:10)
Exploring our Longings
It may be a worthwhile Lenten exercise to explore our longings, our cravings, our yearnings, seeing them not as occasions to fill ourselves, in the words of our reading from Isaiah, with "that which does not satisfy" (Isaiah 55:2), but to learn about what these yearnings say about ourselves.
Some of us may yearn for a universe in which things make sense, otherwise we are destined to flounder. Some of us yearn for what is lost, and cannot rest until it is found. Some of us year for a second chance, if only to take our minds off the terrible mess we've made of things. Some of us yearn to be fruitful, and if given a second chance, we may, by God's grace, become an asset to the kingdom of God. Some of us simply yearn for love. Peter Fonda, an actor, is the son of an actor, the late Henry Fonda, who was very uncommunicative with his own family. He could sit on the bus and talk to strangers for hours, but when with his immediate family, he was at a loss for words. "The more we demanded," says Peter, "the further he withdrew...."
Peter took it upon himself to teach his father to say "I love you." One day, on the phone, he said to his Dad, "If I could, I'd write a scene for Henry Fonda and direct it. The name of it is ‘I love you very much, Son.'" And Peter says, "My dad went Uggggh! and hung up!" Before long, however, he had coached his dad to sign off each phone conversation with those longed-for words. Some time later Peter flew to Los Angeles to visit his father, who was by then frail and using a walker. "When I was ready to leave," recalls Peter, "(my dad) grabbed me by my shoulders. With tears he said, ‘I love you very much, Son.'" Recalls Peter, "I hugged him so hard I could feel his pacemaker and said, ‘I love you, Dad,' (and then) I got in my car and wept like a baby." (Interview with Peter Fonda, June, 1997, by Graham Fuller)
Our yearnings, of whatever shape, are a bedrock desire for something that, until it is found, remains an existential emptiness at the core of our beings. The psalmist found the fulfilment of his yearnings in God. He wrote, "O God, ...your steadfast love is better than life... My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast ...for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me." (Psalm 63:5, 7-8)
Thanks be to God!
well we know that it is Thou
that giveth both to will and to do,
that also longing,
when it leads us to renew
the fellowship with our Saviour and
Redeemer,
is from Thee.
But when longing lays hold of us,
oh, that we might lay hold of the longing!
dost offer us the highest good,
oh, that we might hold it fast!"
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.