Don Friesen
I love the Old Testament psalms. They contain wonderful poetic expressions of praise and thanksgiving and some moving laments as well, but there are also some weird psalms. For example, in Psalm 74 the psalmist praises God for all of the things God has created, including the "luminaries and the sun" (Psalm 74:16), but then follows a curious statement: "You (God) have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter." (74:17) Winter!?! God made winter! I say, "Enough with the snow and winter already!!"
I love the hymn, "Great is Thy faithfulness!" Only I've never understood the second verse:
"Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Winter is a witness to God's great faithfulness, mercy and love! Please!
At this point of our winter my attitude is the same as the southern boy who was drafted into the army and spent a bone-chilling winter at a northern base camp, prompting him to write home, "I'm sure glad we didn't win the Civil War. We might have had to occupy this country permanently."
I'm not wholly unappreciative of the changing seasons, but when winter just hangs on and on and on, the only assurance we have that gray skies will give way to colour and bare limbs of trees give way to branches lush with leaves is some vague memory that it's happened before.
Lent: The Winter of our Souls
Our response to the seasons of the earth may mirror our response to the seasons of the spirit. Lent is the winter of our souls, for it is the time when we anticipate the suffering and death of our Lord. It is a wintry liturgical season, a long and bare season during which we wait patiently for the spring-like joy of Easter.
In a wonderful poem entitled, "Waiting for It," Welsh poet and priest R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) wrote:
Now
to master is that
of a hard winter
I only recently discovered the late R. S. Thomas, a poet who was also a preacher--and a rather plain-spoken one--who spoke trenchantly of his own people as "an impotent people, sick with inbreeding, worrying the carcass of an old song." His own faith was hardly one of optimism. A student of his poetry writes that "we often find, in his work, the picture of a lonely old man, kneeling in a stone chapel, crying in anguish in front of the ‘untenanted cross,' waiting for God to tell him something." (Tom Davies, "Stolen Time with R. S. Thomas," Western Mail, 2000) Consolation did not come easily to this man, though I found considerable encouragement in the fact that he could be both a curmudgeon and a clergyman. The spirituality of Thomas' poetry is of the wintry sort, a kind that suits the season of Lent, for it recognizes winter's harshness, expecting its unrelenting chill yet stubbornly refusing to yield completely to its bleakness.
Twenty years ago Martin Marty, a professor of Christian history and associate editor of The Christian Century, wrote a book entitled, A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart (1983), in which he explored the jagged contours of a wintry spirituality, the kind of spirituality that can survive--and grow--in the most inhospitable of climates. It's the kind of spirituality spoken of in Psalm 34 where we read, "The Lord is close to those whose courage is broken and he saves those whose spirit is crushed." (Psalm 34:38, NEB)
An Unlikely Couple to Exemplify Promise
It's spirituality of a wintry sort that comes to mind when I read the story of Abraham and Sarah. Our reading from Genesis 17 tells us of the wonderful promise given to this couple. They are told that they will be ancestors of many, many descendants. "I will make you exceedingly fruitful," God tells Abraham. (Genesis 17:6) And Sarah, says God, will bear a son! (17:16) A lovely promise, only a few chapters back we were introduced to a rather harsh reality. In Genesis 11 the writer rattles off a long list of Abraham's ancestors, but the genealogy comes to a full stop at Abraham, with the rather terse statement, "Sarai was barren...." (11:30)
Those are dreaded words for any couple, but for a genealogically-fixated people like Israel it was the kiss of death! Barrenness is an indelicate word, much silent pain associated with it, and that was even more so in Sarah's day, for the ability to bear children meant everything then. Truth be told, it wasn't as if Abraham was a very admirable or promising progenitor, for on two different occasions he gave Sarah to other men because he was afraid they would kill him if he didn't let them sleep with her.
Genesis 12 and 17 are rife with promise, but the families that crowd the earlier chapters are not that promising! They have nothing to show for years of struggle but futility and weariness. Sarah's barrenness is symptomatic of their spiritual condition. The landscape of the earlier chapters of Genesis is a wintry landscape--bleak, clouded and grim. The word, "barren" evokes desert imagery. A wasteland--desolate, parched, and unfruitful. A place empty of life and void of hope.
It is in this bleak spiritual landscape, however, that God chooses a most unlikely pair to announce a sign of hope. Abraham and Sarah are a metaphor of hopelessness, but it is through this unlikely pair that God promises to work a new thing. God will bring into being a new community whose life and very human struggles will create a new thing in history--a covenant community with a great and special purpose.
An Amazing Story of Growth
The story is told of a small oak seedling growing in the forest. It looked around and saw that some seedlings turned into great oak trees while others became no more than little shrubs. The trees were strong and beautiful. The shrubs were weak and ugly.
One day the forest ranger was passing through.
"Excuse me, Mr. Ranger, will you help me grow into a great tree?" the seedling asked.
"Do you really want that?" asked the ranger. "It will be a very painful process, one that will require great patience and incredible discipline. It is much easier to just be a shrub."
"No," replied the seedling, "I really want to be a great oak tree. I don't care what it costs in time and patience. I don't care how difficult it is. To be an oak tree is my only desire."
Every day when the ranger came by the seedling, he pulled off some of his leaves and branches. Sometimes, when other seedlings were close by, the ranger uprooted them and left the seedling all alone.
One day the seedling complained, "Why do you treat me so harshly? Why don't you let me do what I want to do? Why must you prune my branches, poke my soil, restrict my friends? Why can't you just let me be?"
The ranger replied, "There is only one way to be an oak tree. Because I want to help you, I must cause you some pain. That is the way of growth. Without pain you will be nothing more than a shrub, never a full grown tree." (Charles Arcodia, Stories for Sharing, page 24)
It must have seemed to Abraham and Sarah, given their desolate circumstances, that a shrub was about all they could hope to become. Yet it is a sign of God's grace and power that this unlikely couple became what Isaiah refers to as "oaks of righteousness". (Isaiah 61:3) "They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory." (61:3) A delicious irony, really, for it was at the Oaks of Mamre that Abraham and Sarah laughed themselves silly over the absurdity of God's promise. (Genesis 18:1)
In our reading from Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us that Abraham "considered his own body ...already as good as dead...." (Romans 4:19) Abraham had faith in God's promise, but he was "hoping against hope" (4:18), writes Paul, a phrase that sounds like a hope that is less than hopeful! Yet the New Testament remembers Abraham as a great man of faith. "No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God," writes Paul. (4:20) Indeed, Abraham "grew strong in his faith..., being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." (4:20-21)
The New Testament book of Hebrews remembers this couple in a similarly honourable light, telling us, "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents.... For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old--and Sarah herself was barren--because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.'" (Hebrews 11: 8-12)
Abraham and Sarah--these seedlings of faith--grew into great oaks of grace and righteousness. Their journey and the journey of their descendants was not an easy one--it included forty long years in the wilderness; it included seventy long years in exile; it included all manner of strife and tribulation, often leaving them feeling forsaken by God--but they persevered in faith, and barrenness of spirit gave way to blessing.
Out of Emptiness, Fulness of Grace!
Like the little oak seedling in the forest, we too may wonder why pain and suffering, the pruning shears of the spirit, are necessary for growth. Simon Peter had little patience with this notion. Our Gospel reading tells us that Jesus "began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed...." (Mark 8:31) This is the Suffering-Rejection-and-Death School of Discipleship, and it was not the one in which Peter had enrolled! Peter had signed up for the political science programme whose graduates expected to ride into town with Jesus when he claimed his rightful political power! Well, Jesus put short shrift to that notion!
One might expect that Peter would have gotten his walking papers for this fundamental misunderstanding of Jesus. Jesus was certainly upset with him, calling him "Satan" and upbraiding him for espousing typically human values (Mark 8:33), but Peter remains in leadership, and though he pops up in a few other humiliating circumstances this unlikely leadership candidate also grew from his mistakes.
No doubt we can identify with Peter, and with Abraham and Sarah. We know what it is to experience wintry seasons of the spirit. We too have known seasons of doubt and despair, "winters of discontent" when we pray and are answered by silence. There are times when we do not pray, or cannot pray. We too have known dry spells, seasons when the springs of spirituality dry up, times when we feel like we're in a vast desert with no compass and no idea where the next oasis might be found. We know these seasons of the heart, individually, and corporately too, for there are also seasons of barrenness in the church, times when we choose hype over holiness, cute substitutes for prayer, or techniques--high-tech or otherwise--that are supposed to jump-start our spirits.
Someone has said that "barrenness is not just the condition of our futility; it is also the soil within which God works...." (Brian Ross, "Called from barrenness," Faith Today, July/August, 1989) It is often out of experiences of emptiness and desolation that a redemptive spirit emerges. Those who have felt great aridity of spirit often grow into beautiful human beings, great oaks of grace, if not righteousness. Out of the crucible of suffering arise souls whose sensitivity to the pain of others is very moving and most genuine.
There are no short-cuts to spiritual growth, however. The story is told of a young clergyman who was sent to a small town in Scotland to be the new preacher. He was to take the place of an old man who had been minister in the village for many years. Hoping to be complimentary, the young minister said to the old man, "Well, I will begin where you left off." The old man thought for a moment, and then said, "No, my son, you will begin where I began." (James Barry, The Little Minister)
Sometimes we think we can grow in spirit by making radical choices or grand gestures--and no doubt there is a place for these--but there is another story, a story of a wealthy man who went to his priest with a cheque for fifty thousand dollars made out to the church. He handed the cheque to the priest and the priest looked at it for a few moments. It was a lot of money! "We could sure use it for the Building Fund," he thought. But then he wisely handed it back and told the man, "Go cash it in. Cash it in for quarters or dollar bills and spend fifty cents or a dollar at a time doing the Lord's work." Taken aback by this reaction to his opulent generosity, the man exclaimed, "But that will take the rest of my life!" "No doubt it will," answered the priest. (Fred Craddock)
Growing in Christian spirit is a daily challenge and discipline. It is not encouraged by the undisciplined culture in which we live, but its impact can be powerful. Cyprian, a third-century martyr and another great oak of grace and righteousness, was not impressed by his own culture; he wrote to a friend, "If I were to ascend some high mountain and look over..., you know very well what I would see: brigands on the highways, pirates on the sea, armies fighting, cities burning; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds; selfishness and cruelty and misery and despair under all roofs. It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians--and I am one of them."
May the words and hymns and prayers of this Lenten season encourage our own growth in Christlikeness, so that we too might become masters of our souls, great oaks of grace and righteousness.
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love."
in the small hours
of belief the one eloquence
of the bowed head, the bent
knee, waiting, as at the end
for one flower to open
on the mind's tree of thorns.
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.