As
much as during any season of my life, I reflected this Lent on the fact that there
are deaths, and then there are deaths.
All deaths are sad – but some we can reconcile in our minds as being
timely, or even a good death. If your
grandmother dies at 97 after a couple of grisly years battling Alzheimer’s, you
grieve, you miss her dearly, yes; but the death is understandable, acceptable,
good in a way.
Then
there are the truly awful deaths, too young, too sudden, too
knee-buckling. In our congregation, in
the span of 3 weeks, we had 5 numbingly awful deaths. Out of the blue, no one saw it coming deaths
of beloved friends aged 67, 33, 12, 52 – and then a child barely 2 years
old. This is the sort of loss that
Santayana had in mind when he wrote, “With
you a part of me hath passed away… And I am grown much older in a day.”
We all weep, and shiver a little, a hug our
loved ones – for we cannot dodge the truth we know but dare not stare in the
face: that we are all of us fragile, vulnerable, mortal. I
don’t want to sound like the manipulative, tedious preachers we’ve heard, warning
us that we’d best get right with God now, for you just never know… But really, you never know, about those we
love, and about ourselves. Our doctors
are very clever – but we are fragile, and life here is rather rudely
impermanent.
The
lessons of Lent – and Easter? We love,
we are tender with each other, and with ourselves. We ask about what really matters from the vantage point of What if it ended
tomorrow? We don’t procrastinate on
anything much that matters, and we really do get engaged with God.
Lent
begins with the marking of ashes – a sign of our mortality, the brutal truth
carved onto our foreheads that we might make it to 33 or 67 but we won’t make
it to 1000 – that is, not without Jesus who endured the first Lent ever and
dared to die at 33 on behalf of all who die too young, or in ripe old age. God told us the ultimate truth about him, and
about ourselves, by raising him from the grave:
God is never done with us. We
belong to God, God treasures every one of us, and won’t let us slip from the
mighty divine hands that made the universe and will bring all of us to God’s
good end.
So be
tender. Love God. Be grateful for the utter basics. Believe.
My
nonfiction reading during Lent included a terrific book by Bill Bryson – One Summer: America, 1927, a
spellbinding narrative of Americans doing the impossible in just three
months. Charles Lindbergh flew N.Y. to
Paris, unprecedented, alone, by dead reckoning, and in threatening weather;
Henry Ford developed the Model A; Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs (when most entire
teams hit fewer); and Mabel Willebrandt put Al Capone in jail.
All of us, even if not quite so spectacular
as Lindbergh, Ford, or Ruth, are amazing, gifted, rippling with unrealized
potential. God wants us to have a
can-do, adventurous attitude. But no
matter how strong the can-do spirit might be, there really are time you simply
can’t. There are debilitating
circumstances, diseases, hopeless scenarios, debilitating woes. The best intentions collide with impossibly
difficulties. Nobody can effectively
manage 100% of life.
Martin Luther scoffed at his fellow
theologians who urged people to “Do what is in you,” to do make goodness
happen. But there really are times you
can’t. The only 100% reliable truths
about our lives are Sin (we fail God and others), and death, even if there is
much excellence in life.
It is wrong to think God is there when we
can’t handle things ourselves. A guy I
know wrote a book with an awful title: Do Your Best & Trust God for the Rest. God isn’t our assistant to help us with what
we can’t handle on our own. God is in
all of it. If there is human brilliance,
accomplishment, excellence – then God did that!
And we are all broken, all vulnerable and moral, and God is there
too.
It is amazing what we can do. And it is even more humbling what we cannot
do. God is Lord of all; God is the
hidden author of all good, and the redeemer of all that goes awry.
I
didn’t give up anything big or daunting this Lent. I did give up TV (no big loss there) and a
few private things only God knows about.
I did
engage deeply, every day, first thing (even before coffee!) a little book, a 40-Day Journey with Julian of Norwich, a
marvelous, wise saint from 14th century England. The devotional book provided a reading from
Julian for each day, and then some intriguing, inviting but not threatening
questions about life. I learned a lot,
and was sad when I finished reading day 40.
We
speak of Jesus being risen, and alive now.
Julian had direct, personal, unforgettable visions of Jesus speaking to
her. If we doubt this, perhaps we are
not inclined to believe Jesus was actually raised from the tomb!
Julian, who lived most of her life alone in a single room, doing little
besides praying, had an intense fixation on the love of Christ – which is why
Easter happened in the first place. This
love of Christ probes deeply, even into the “shadowy, shameful aspects of our
hearts” – and yet still loves, even though Christ sees what we think of as the
worst in ourselves. And this divine love
“frees us from destructive patterns and addictions.”
What
are the destructive patterns of your thinking? or behavior? To what are you addicted? I read a book years ago about God’s power and
the breaking of addictions – and the author, Gerald May, provided a
surprisingly long list of what we get addicted to: not just alcohol or drugs but also shopping,
attention, exercise, TV, anxiety, computers, gossip, the stock market, nail
biting, work, hoarding, golf… His list seemed endless, and a bit scary, yet
revealing. What are your addictions?
A
“destructive pattern” might not be an “addiction” per se, but it’s a habit that might keep us from God. One pattern many of us slip into is
impatience. A TV show can bore me in two
minutes and I’m out of there. When I
preach I know it had better hook people early.
Make it good, make it quick! is our pattern.
The 40-Day Journey with Julian of Norwich
started out okay week 1, then I got a bit bored with weeks 2, 3 and even
4. But I’d promised God I’d do all 40…
and was richly rewarded. The best, most
life-transformative stuff in the book was in the very last 10 days! The best wonder in Jesus’ life story was in
his last few days too. I wonder if we
can hang in there – and see that God’s best, if it’s in a devotional book, or
in life itself, is coming if we stick with it.
After all, Jesus hung with his Lent for the full 40 – and stuck with his
love for us to the Cross itself.
In her
14th century Revelations of
Divine Love, Julian of Norwich asked an intriguing question: “Who has custody of your heart?” The kneejerk reaction might be “I do, of
course!” But you don’t, I don’t, none of
us do. Your heart, that part of you that
feels, fears, loves, frets, believes, and dreams: it’s in you, it is you – but it always beats for something outside your self.
Who
has custody of your heart? We think of a
mom and a dad arguing over custody of a young child. Who is battling for your heart? A romantic interest? A career?
Dark, foreboding anxiety?
Something addictive? Friends, or
whatever people out there prevent you from feeling lonely? Cultural rancor? or acquisitiveness? Negative messages that have resounded in your
head for who knows how long?
What
would it be like for God to have custody of your heart? Julian can’t stop talking about the depth of
Jesus’ love for each one of us; and she persuades me that “all that is in
opposition to this reality of being loved by Jesus – all these impulses are
false.” What impulses in you are in some
way opposed to the reality of being loved by Jesus? In your imagination, can you stick a label on
each one that declares it to be “False”?
If we
see our wretchedness, our mistakes, our lostness, “Jesus does not want us to
remain there, or to be much occupied in self-accusation, nor does he want us to
be full of misery.” He does want us “to
attend quickly to him, for he waits for us, lonely until we come.” Why is this?
“We are his joy”
If
God’s love is the custodian of your heart, if you are God’s joy, this doesn’t
mean everything will go smoothly. But
how you respond to whatever circumstance that plops itself down in your life
will be different, maybe calmer, less frenzied, more contented and
hopeful. The risen Jesus told Julian, “You
will not be overcome.” He did not say
“You will not be troubled.” But Jesus
did say “You will not be overcome” – because he’s got your heart.
Bible
writers! Thomas Merton, in his wonderful
journal called The Sign of Jonas,
began thinking one day that, if he struggled to get anything out of Scripture,
he might actually ask the Bible writers themselves for help – assuming they are
in heaven, and living eternally…
He
mused, “I have a great, though sometimes confused, affection for the writers of
the Bible. I feel closer to them than to
almost any other writers I know of.
Isaiah, Moses, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all part of my life. They are always about me. They look over my shoulder, earnest men… I
feel they are very concerned about me, and that they want me to understand what
God had them write down – and that they have always surrounded me with
solicitous prayers, and that they will always love me and protect me.”
Wow. Bible study feels like a solo activity: I open the book and try to make sense of it
or find something helpful. It can be
hard, we’re buffaloed at times, distracted or maybe even bored. Maybe I’m in a group, like Disciple – and I at least have friends
helping me to reflect and dig deep.
But
Merton expands the circle sumptuously!
Maybe I am alone, I am hoping to read something from God, a word of
hope, or just to know more about God and understand what the heck is going on
in my life from God’s viewpoint. What if
I could think of Isaiah, Matthew, Paul and John hovering above me, rooting for
me, praying for me and loving me?
Easter is about the resurrection, about the dead having a wonderful
communion with God – so we might well expect the ancient writers to enjoy each
other but also be somehow palpably available to us, maybe even eager to see
someone reading their material they labored over and treasured so much.
I’m a writer – and believe me, I think about
this stuff long after it’s gone, and I hope and pray you get something from it,
and I stand ready to help, to answer a question or two. How much more then would God’s inspired
authors feel even more strongly about you and their marvelous library of
publications we call the bible? Could
Merton be right – that you have some invisible but real help?
