Hope Beyond Reason
It is summertime. The little boy is running. He is running so fast over uneven terrain that his body can't keep up with his legs. Down he goes – onto the gravel. His skin is torn – the grains of gravel embedded in his knee – trickles of blood beginning to seep out. His dad and mom aren't far behind. They run to pick him up. They want to ease his pain. They tell him, "Everything will be alright!"
Everything will be alright!
Sometimes we Christians tell others, "Everything will be alright." But I have to confess, I often wonder about that.
This morning's gospel brings that question to the very forefront of our being. Will everything be alright? Biblical scholars refer to the 13th chapter of Mark as apocalyptic literature. They mean different things by this. At its core meaning they generally are saying that this literature was written to a particular time and place, a time and place when people were suffering greatly. The purpose of such literature is to encourage such suffering people to still trust God, to try to live faithfully, to believe that God is still present with them, regardless of what is happening. Apocalyptic literature means to show the people that somehow, someway God will deliver them to new life. In some ways such scholars are saying that such literature tells the people that "Everything will be alright, at least for those who trust God!"
But I still wonder – in the light or darkness of part of our reality –of a psychiatrist walking onto his military base and killing 13 people, while wounding 29 others, people who just happened to be there that day. I wonder in the light of Krystallenacht, remembered last Monday – when hundreds of synagogues and literally hundreds of shops owned by Jewish people were burned and looted – and the fire departments and police departments of that time and place were told to do absolutely nothing.
To help us wrestle more with reality I share 2 stories.
I am blessed to have a Palestinian friend, Yosef, living in Israel. Yosef and his family have lived in the same small village very near the Mediterranean coast in what is now northern Israel for over 800 years. In some ways their village seems so simple. There is a circle of small houses made out of rock surrounding a central area where goats graze and turkeys chatter and a lone dog patrols. There are simple cooking pots in the central area. The residents of that village all know each other in ways that we in North America seldom do. In some ways these people's way of life has changed little over these last 800 years. In other ways there have been drastic changes. Between 60 and 70 years ago some Jewish settlers began returning to the land near Yosef's village. These people were seeking refuge in a world gone mad. They brought with them technology, an incredible work ethic and a strong nearly desperate will to survive. But survive they have. Thrive they do. And now next to Yosef's village is a thriving, prosperous Jewish kibbutz of over 300 people. Yosef accepts this. In fact he seeks to build bridges with his Jewish neighbors. Yosef does find reciprocation with some of his Jewish neighbors. Yosef also finds like mindedness with a few of his Palestinian friends and neighbors. But Yosef also encounters great resistance in both communities. Jews and Arabs/Palestinians have been at war for well over a thousand years. Hatred, misunderstanding and suspicion often abound. So, I ask - will everything be alright for Yosef, his 3 young daughters and wife – for my Jewish friends on the kibbutz? Or will car bombs and people moved by fear and hatred win the day? Will each other's culture, faith and lives continue to be torn asunder?
Many have already given up! But not my friend, Yosef. He keeps working. He recruits Palestinians and Jews to meet over coffee, to talk, to get to know each other – maybe even to care about one another.
A second story: Mary, a vibrant young Chinese Canadian, phoned me one day. She and her husband had just been blessed by the birth of their first child. Mary wanted her baby girl to be baptized. She herself had never been baptized. So, she had a great desire to be baptized with her baby Shelly. I set up an appointment. I heard a bit of her story. I shared some of my faith story. Then that grand day came. Mary and baby Shelly were baptized together. For me, it was the beginning of a wonderful journey with them.
Mary was a very fine nurse. She took her Christian faith both seriously and joyfully. She lived her faith out with her children. Eventually she was blessed with two other children. She respected her husband and his reality – not believing in God. But she prayed. And how she loved, mentoring her girls by the grace of the Spirit into amazing faith and life. Even now I am humbled by all of this.
But one afternoon when Mary's youngest girl was still less than one year old and her others were 11 and 8 or 9, I received an alarming call. Mary and her family had returned home from vacation. She hadn't been feeling well. She thought that she had the flu. She went to the hospital late that night as she was becoming more and more ill. Almost immediately she had been air evacuated to a Vancouver hospital. Mary had leukemia!
The next few years were touch and go as to her survival. At first her cancer markings had been extremely high. Everyone held our breath. We prayed. We loved her family as best we could – bringing food, sometimes transporting members to wherever they needed to be.
To be very frank, I railed at God. Please don't let her die! Can't you see how much her girls need her? Don't you see how much her husband needs her on so many levels? Now, Mary needed a bone marrow transplant. There were only 2 compatible donors registered in the entire world. We prayed some more. But both people refused to donate. Mary's health continued to deteriorate. She was in Vancouver for most of a year away from her kids. We continued to pray. And I continued to rail at God.
Then there was some good news. One of the bone marrow donors had changed their mind. The donation was made. Over the course of the next months Mary's health gradually improved. She could come home. She could return to some of her previous responsibilities, the joys and work of a mother, wife and friend. There was a lot of rejoicing.
So it went for between 4 and 5 years. But one day I received another call. Mary was gravely ill. She was hospitalized. This time she died. Her youngest daughter was only 5 years old. Soon her husband called. He asked me, "Tim, will you come and do Mary's funeral?" What could I say to him, to them?
I went, I marveled at the 2 older girls' faith and love in the face of their pain. Will everything be alright for them, for their younger sister and their dad?
Life can be so amazing, so wonderful, so filled with joy. And life can also be hard, at times even horrific, marked by much pain.
So what do we do? What do we hook our lives on? Whom can we count on? Is there anyone, anything that we can we trust?
Be careful. Trusting in the market has more than a few ups and downs. Even fully trusting in other people, even the most inspiring people can lead to great disappointment. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of my heroes. And yet sometimes in the living out of his sexuality he made choices that were sinful and caused great pain to those who loved him. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is another person who greatly inspires me. And yet as we hear more following her death – she struggled greatly with her faith. Not that this disappoints me. But this will disappoint some.
Yet, what if we place our trust neither in things nor in people, but in God? Will we still struggle? Then, will things be alright?
The Old Testament prophets worked at placing their trust in God. But their lives were far from smooth. The people of Israel throughout the course of what we call the Old Testament vacillated between trust and distrust of God. They experienced both blessing and pain. And Jesus himself, the One we believe to be God's Son is the one who ultimately trusted God. Yet he experienced great hardship to the point of being crucified!
Was everything alright for him? Do you remember him crying out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
But – and this is a very important BUT – neither his cry nor his death are the end nor the totality of who Jesus is. Somehow on that third day Jesus is raised. Somehow he returns to his early followers enabling them to get up and go out from the midst of all their struggles. They go painfully aware that everything is far from alright. They go convinced that Jesus comes to enable them to live with that, to work to change that – to model a different way, Jesus' way of forgiveness, of care, of trusting that God is at work in all things – to ultimately bring about new life, hope and harmony with God.
In the amazing vulnerability and seeming weakness of Jesus' suffering and death, hatred and evil run the gamut. But they discover that although they may have won that battle they do not win the war. As John's Gospel puts it, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness (as deep as it is) does not overcome it (the light).
Know this: everything isn't alright. That's why Jesus comes. But His coming, His ongoing presence, shines a light on all that we experience. Our experience is not the end nor the goal of God's hope and dream.
We are called to be part of that hope and dream. By God's grace we can cling to the promise and love of Jesus, his suffering, death and resurrection in all that we do. Then seemingly against much or all rationality we also can see that God is working to bring about something new and different, something truly and wonderfully good.
May God help us, wherever we are, whatever we are experiencing to keep on living, to work at loving and trusting that through Jesus there will be a new end, a purpose, a coming together by God's grace that will be good – even though everything else may be falling apart!
For this faith O God, and this trust O God in you and Christ, we pray, HELP US! Amen.