| June 13
- June, 13, 2010
I think it’s significant that Luke says Jesus “increased in strength and wisdom, favor with God and man.” Because you don’t have to live too long to realize that life is a struggle in each of those ways: physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. It starts out hard and ends up harder. And the longer you live, the harder it gets. That’s just the way it is.
The three primary influences that make life easy or hard are heredity; environment; and freedom. People have found ways to overcome their heredity and rise above their environment, but not freedom. That’s the arbitrary one. Which may be one reason there’s so much anger out there today. People feel they’re losing their freedom to inept institutions, and are certainly “out of control.” Bad things happen if that goes on too long. Mishandling our freedom has always been a great temptation for us, which makes life hard. Especially our young. So many temptations and things you think will make you happy end up hurting. It takes awhile before we learn life is not about what belongs to us, but what we belong to. We learn right early that life is paradoxical; that roses have thorns; and other kids bite. We’ve got to learn what it’s like to be sick; or when our parents move to another place to live and there is nothing you can do about it, but go. It’s all part of growing up.
Jesus didn’t arrive full-grown. Even he had to work on his own humanness -- and didn’t always get it right. When he tried to push against the limits, to find out what’ll budge and what won’t: Mary wouldn’t; Nazareth wouldn’t; neither would Jerusalem or Rome. But by hook-or-crook, we hopefully learn from our mistakes to gain a healthy sense of our own power. Then we discover that we can make certain things happen! We can make friends; or enemies. We can make excuses or be responsible. We can say “yes” or “no” or “maybe.” And might ought to ask ourselves, should I do all I’m able to do?
Some of us get carried away with the discovery of empowerment, so that we begin to think we’re in control of our lives. We “come of age” and fall in love with “calling the shots.” And sometimes that seems to work; enough, so that we convince ourselves it's true. That if you just do everything right, then everything will turn out all right; that human beings can take charge of their lives. Until ... something happens that reminds you, you’re not the one.
The income evaporates, the kid's grades go down or the doctor finds clogged arteries, and it's like being trapped inside a room with open doors. In an instant, everything changes. One minute you're in command of your life-journey and the next, you're rocketing down the road out of control. That's what it means to be human too, and why it takes lots of courage. “I’m no longer in control of my life!” That's what good people say when bad things happen to them. I've said it myself - but it's not true. Human beings don’t lose control of their lives. What we lose is the illusion that we were ever in control to begin with! And that’s a good loss. But it's a bitter pill to swallow.
So distressing, that most of us go back to the drawing-board again to rewrite the script, in order to “get it right.” It’s the struggle to find some way to master our human condition so that there’ll be no ambushes; no surprises, or leaks. As far as I can tell, it can't be done. Never has. Never will. “Getting it right,” that is. Some things will budge for us. Others won’t. I guess there’ll always be Democrats and Republicans. We can't fly like a bird. Nobody lives forever. And that’s a good thing if you’ve got Altzheimer’s. We can't forecast the future and we sure can't control everything that happens to us or around us.
So where does God come in? We can expect from God what Jesus got: minimum protection; maximum support. That pure and simple is the “human condition” as I've known it and seen it all my life. There’s never been a single exception to that. And it can be very scary. Because it means that we have no say in all the conditions of our lives. Some of us just discover things that are there; tumors or germs. We don't know how they got there, or why. They just are. But there’s a randomness to living that means, all we have left is our response to it. We can either spend our time trying to control what can’t be control or else learn to manage ourselves. That’s the human condition.
It's in the Bible; especially Mark 5. Jesus and his disciples are out on a lake and a storm brews up. Lightning strikes, waves swamp the boat, the disciples are scared. They’re at the mercy of the wind and the sea, and nobody can make a deal with Mother Nature except Jesus. And he's in the back, asleep! “Teacher, Don’t you care that we’re out of control?” And Jesus woke up and calmed things down: “Peace be still!” Just to show Mother Nature who’s Boss! And when the storm obeys: “Why are ya’ll afraid,” he wanted to know? “Have you no faith?” Well, no they didn't.
Or take this resuscitation story. Jesus keeps crossing the Galilee from the Jewish side and then the Gentile side. This time he hadn't been on shore five minutes till a synagogue ruler approached him with a problem. Jairus also is suffering from the human condition. He's up against something that won't budge, out of his control. Not a storm of nature or anything impersonal like that; but the prospect of losing his little girl. Something very personal. These are the ones that hurt the most. When you can't protect your loved ones from the harshness of life.
Jesus encounters a distraught father who is helpless with a human condition. All he can do is grovel in the dirt and beg, “Please, come and lay your hands on her, so that she may get well!” And I’ll feel like my life is back in control again? Rulers like to be in control. Then the bad news arrives. It's too late. She’s already gone. But Jesus ignores the negative media. Instead he turns to the father and preached the shortest sermon of his life: “Don’t be afraid, only believe.”
ONLY BELIEVE WHAT? That our prayers will be answered the way we want? That life will go our way for once and things will fall into place and we can live on Easy Street? That's how it appears to work in these Markan stories. People just call on Jesus so they can “get what they want.” The storm stops for the disciples, the demons depart from the man called “Legion,” and a ruler’s little girl gets up out of bed. So a lot of religion has to do with trying to figure out what these folks did right, so we can do it too!
Only these stories are not about how to get God to do what we want. That's only another way we use our religion to stay in control. Rather, it’s about who God is, and how God acts, and what God’s like. Mark recorded them for one purpose: to show that Jesus is no ordinary human being. He goes to great length to do it, both sides of the Galilee, at the Decapolis: “Jesus is the Son of God, and you can believe it!” The reason Mark wanted us to believe it is not so that we can control what happens to us in life, but so we’ll develop the strength to meet whatever comes our way in life. Yeah we’re more interested in control than faith. That’s the human condition. But we need to believe Jesus still has the power to calm the storms, to banish the demonic, and to restore life to those losing it. That’s why Jesus had to struggle with the human condition like us. His destiny was a cross, so that God could show us how the “Best of the Breed” was willing to lose control of his life, that he might receive it back again, for all time, and for all humanity. This is what it can mean to be human. “Don’t be afraid! Only believe!” Only believe what? He doesn't say what. But there are only two choices we have once we discover that control is not an option for us: We can be afraid or we can believe. We can panic and jump overboard or ride-out-the storm with Jesus. We can despair or wait for sanity to return to a wild man. We can toss in the towel or trust God for new life to come someday. It's never a matter of either/or. I don't know anybody who believes all the time. I believe in the resurrection ... most days. I hope I believe in it the day I die. But I know what both fear and faith feels like.
FEAR will suffocate you. Fear is like being locked in a dark room and there is no place to move around. You can only face one direction, usually behind. But that really doesn't matter, you can't see anyway, because fear blinds. There’s no future with fear. Only the past.
But BELIEF is totally futuristic; though it's not what some would have us think. Belief is not a well-defended castle -- on an impregnable hill, protected by the safety of a moat. It's more like a rope bridge high above the rocky canyon down below. You're just out there, suspended, in a dangerous place. The rope is sturdy, but it swings back and forth, with precious little to hang onto - except the stories you've heard. Stories about the rope bridge being the best way across; stories about how others got across it; that it will bear your weight, because it has borne the weight of others before you. Trusting the stories -- is belief. Faith teaches us to believe in the bridge more than you believe in the gorge.
And you don't have to believe all by yourself. Church sees to that. There are brothers and sisters all around who believe too, “a great cloud of witnesses that surround us even now on our journeys,” and some will even believe for you, when your faith runs thin. We all need somebody to nudge us along the bridges we’re called to negotiate: who’ve already crossed the rubicon and aren't scared of it. While we take one foot and put it in front of the next and hope for something -- anything to pull us through.
That’s belief. And that’s why we come to church. To hear the gospel preached, to remind us that the bridge will hold! Believing that won’t put us in charge. Or get us what we want. Or protect us from harm. But it will give us all we need to master our human condition. Jesus is our “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” and we have no reason to fear whatever life decides to bowl down our alleys. So that no matter what human condition we find ourselves in, we can overcome any condition. And we may even come to love it, once we realize, it too comes from God.
Providence Prayers: (June 13, 2010) |
