Unfathomable

I have little to say about the horrific events that took place in an elementary school in Connecticut this morning. As much as we might like a reasonable explanation, there is none. And as much as we might like to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, we know that’s not possible. Already, some are ranting about guns, while others are insisting that this has nothing to do with gun control. I have an opinion on that, but it doesn’t seem to matter very much right now.

Today I heard David Brooks suggest that the media should adopt a policy of not making the names of mass murderers known. Instead, we should attribute such deeds to anonymous perpetrators, thus denying them the notoriety they seek. We have yet to hear the name of who opened fire on innocent people in Newtown, but we will. We’ll hear all about him and his family, while the experts dissect and examine all the circumstances of his life that might have led to this.

With our very rational, western minds, we consider it our duty to understand everything that happens in this life. Not only do we have to understand  how a senseless tragedy can happen, from a human standpoint, but we even think we have to understand why it can happen, from a theological standpoint. Why is it so important to us that we can explain such events? Does this make it easier to accept that which is clearly unacceptable?

Our attempts to grasp what happened in Newtown are feeble at best. It is both foolhardy and arrogant to believe otherwise. Any explanation, no matter how well-reasoned, is ultimately futile. Nothing can be said that can make the day's tragic events anything other than what they are -- unfathomable. 

Songs that catch in my throat

I can't imagine what my life would be like without hymns. They touch on everything that speaks to me. I love music, and singing, particularly in a crowd. And I am stimulated by theological ideas,  whether they echo my own or challenge my deepest convictions. But most of all, I cherish words that transcend their surface meaning and invite us into mystical truths. Hymnody does all of this for me.

I know my heart is captured when I'm singing one of those good old Lutheran hymns and the words catch in my throat. They are so big that I can’t get them out. In “For All the Saints”, when we sing about people who have died in the faith and cheer us on until we join them, the words “we feebly struggle, they in glory shine” aren’t easy to leave behind as I move on to the next phrase. Then I find that I can never sing the sixth stanza because I’m always fighting back the tears: But then there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia! Alleluia!

As I’ve gotten older, “How Firm a Foundation” seems to squeeze the sound from my vocal chords when I get to the fourth verse.  Throughout all their lifetime my people shall prove my sov’reign, eternal, unchangeable love; and then, when gray hairs shall their temples adorn, like lambs they shall still in my bosom be born. 

I’m not sure why certain hymns seem to affect me this way, but they do. I wish I could say that the words sneak up on me and catch me unawares while I’m singing, but that’s not usually the case. I know the words; I’ve sung them a bazillion times before, and I know what's coming. But I can’t help myself. They penetrate an unprotected place within me and all pretenses disappear.

There is a verse from an Advent hymn that disarms me like this. We sang it last Sunday and it's stuck to the inner walls of my skull like velcro: “Comfort, comfort now my people; tell of peace!” So says our God. Comfort those who sit in darkness mourning under sorrow’s load. To God’s people now proclaim that God’s pardon waits for them! Tell them that their war is over; God will reign in peace forever. The phrase where I lose it completely is, “Tell them that their war is over.” Whenever I hear those words, I can’t help taking them personally. Even though I’ve never served in the military, I think back on my life and, in many respects, it feels like I’ve been through a war. Some of this has been because of circumstances beyond my control, and some of it has been self-inflicted. But no matter the cause, engaging in war has been physically and emotionally exhausting. There is no greater peace than knowing that the war that has had such a toll on me in so many ways, is finally over. 

"Tell them that their war is over." How can hymn writers give us such huge words and expect us to sing them? Maybe that’s why hymns are meant to be sung by a community of people. While I’m struggling to sing, others are effortlessly blurting the words out. And then, while someone else is stuck on the first phrase of a hymn, I’m gliding through all the verses. 

Singing hymns takes the collective courage of a community. When I try to sing from the hymnal in the privacy of my home, I consistently get lost in the witness of the words. That’s a big reason why I gather regularly for worship with a faith community -- because I know I can count on them to sing hymns with me. And I need to sing hymns. 

Those annoying little bumps in the road

When I’m in the yard and a car slows down in front of my house, I look up to see who it is, assuming that they must be stopping to greet me. Since I moved to my new home on Arnold Drive, this happens all the time. In fact, every single car that goes by slows down in front of my house. And I always look up, wondering who it is. Even if it’s not a familiar face I see in the car, I wave. Usually, they wave back. Are people in my new neighborhood that much friendlier than they have been any other place I’ve lived? No. But this is the first place I’ve lived where there is a speed bump in the street directly in front of my house.

Speed bumps. Don’t you just love ‘em? All you want to do is get from point A to point B, and they throw these little obstacles in your path for no other reason than to slow you down. They’re so damn annoying. But, of course, there is a reason for them, because there is a reason why you need to slow down. This is a place where people are walking, and running, and playing. And for the safety of the people (and animals) on the street, those who are driving their cars need to be inconvenienced. Really, it’s a small price to pay when you look at it that way.

The street I live on, Arnold Drive, could easily become a cut-through street. You enter it on the south from Central Avenue, which is one of the main arteries in Charlotte, and the entrance to the east is from another busy street, Eastway Drive. But Arnold is not an easy way to cut through, by design. The road snakes around more than any street I’ve seen outside the mountains. And it is filled with speed bumps. 

It really is a lovely little road, and I enjoy the drive -- when I’m not in a hurry. But when I just want to get from one place to another as quickly as possible, I avoid it. I have several short cuts I can take to get home, where I miss the curves and most of the speed bumps, and I'm in my driveway before I know it, with no recollection of how I got there. Yet I have to admit that when I travel the long way down the street, and slow down for the countless speed bumps, making my way to the place where I live, I always remember my journey.

Maybe there is something to be said for the value of speed bumps to those of us who always seem to be in a hurry. Maybe those little annoyances in our path are there to remind us to ease up and pay attention to what’s happening around us.

Yeah, and maybe those speed bumps are a metaphor for other annoyances as well. 

Somewhere else

In a few weeks, about a million people will cram themselves into a street on the isle of Manhattan to watch a ball drop down a flagpole. It’s not just a New York tradition; it also has become a global event, when an estimated billion people around the world hold their collective breath and cheer at the exact moment the clock strikes twelve in Times Square. Years ago, when I lived in another time zone, the absurdity of this celebration hit me. Although it was only 10:00 where I was, when the ball dropped, we all shouted, “Happy New Year!” The good part was that we got to go to bed earlier. But it was weird to realize that it didn’t matter where a person lived; the real New Year’s party was in New York City. The rest of us were just… somewhere else.

My generation was the first one to grow up in front of a television. Although TVs back in the 50s were nothing like they are today, there was always one in the house. And it was usually on. As a result, I grew up with a distorted view of reality. When my daughter Gretchen was little, I sensed the same thing was happening to her after she watched one too many old episodes of “Leave it to Beaver” and “I Love Lucy” and asked me if the world was black and white when I was a kid. It was a logical question. Especially if the world was happening on the TV screen and we were always… somewhere else.

In the opening chapters of Luke’s gospel account, he is careful to place his story within history by naming those who would have been famous to his readers. In chapter 1, the birth of John the Baptist is announced against the backdrop of history: “In the days of King Herod of Judea...” He does this again in chapter two with the birth narrative of Jesus: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” And then, we see Luke citing the historical context of his story a third time in as many chapters:  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis, and Lysanius ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…” So, for Luke’s ancient audience, it would have been very clear when this story happened. It was when all those people were in power: Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanius, Annas, Caiaphas. They were very real people -- the ones everyone knew about. This seems to be Luke’s way of saying, here’s how you can place these events I’m telling you about in history.

But then again, maybe it was Luke’s way of saying, here’s the crazy way God does things. Because, as Luke tells the story, the word of God didn’t come to the governor in his palace, or to the high priest in the temple. The word of God came somewhere else. The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

Now, if you read the story of God’s relationship with his people in the Bible, the wilderness seems to be God’s favorite place to meet up with them. It happened that way for Moses and the children of Israel. It happened for Elijah and Jeremiah and Isaiah and many of the other prophets. It even happened for Jesus; just after he was baptized, he was tempted in the wilderness.

When we hear the word wilderness, we may think of a thick forest, like the place where we've hiked in the mountains. Sometimes the same word is translated in the Bible as desert or a deserted place. The Hebrew word midbar originally was a place of herding, and it came to mean that which is beyond. As in, beyond civilization: beyond organized settlements, beyond governmental control, beyond traditional norms. Any place beyond the immediate reach of the city could be considered wilderness. It is somewhere else.

Often, in the Bible, wilderness refers to more than just a physical place. The wilderness is a spiritual place – a place of testing and renewal. It is the experience of being in a place that’s outside the one where we normally hang out. It can be a place of grief and despair, or transition and anxiety. It is a place where what has worked for us in the past isn’t working any more, and we feel like we have nothing to grab onto. Wilderness is the perfect place for us to see God. It’s much like the stars that are always present, but it takes the darkness of night to see them. God is with us all along, but sometimes it takes being in the wilderness for us to see him.

We tend to avoid the wilderness because it’s a place of discomfort. We would rather be in the center of things than on the margins. We would rather be with the beautiful people, where life appears to be really happening, than where we really are, which is…  somewhere else. It reminds me of a quote I’ve grown to appreciate, from the historian Will Durant, in which he defines civilization. He writes: “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.”

We get a distorted view of the world when we allow ourselves to believe that life is always happening where we aren’t. That everything of importance is being shown on CNN or Entertainment Tonight. Or what matters is what we read about it in the newspaper. Or that significant people and events are the ones they write about in history books. We may think that life, real life, is always beyond our reach and we’re stuck somewhere else.

But the message of Luke’s gospel is that God is up to something radical in this world. He calls it the Kingdom of God. You may not be able to see it. You may assume that it has nothing to do with you. You may think that it’s always in the place where you aren’t, while you’re living somewhere else. But somewhere else is exactly where you find it. Somewhere else. Standing behind the kitchen sink. Sitting in front of a computer screen. Stuck in the car pool lane at school. In a hospital bed. On the playground at recess.  At Toys R Us two weeks before Christmas. Carolling on the front porch of a shut-in. Gathered in a red brick church on The Plaza.... In a barren wilderness. In a smelly barn. On a wooden cross. That’s where God finds us. Always somewhere else.

 

 

A deprived childhood

When I was in seminary I had a roommate who came from a small town in Wisconsin. Our backgrounds were very different; I was a city girl and she grew up on a farm. I was amazed at the lack of wordly experiences she had been exposed to. Especially for someone who had been through college and was then in her mid-twenties.

Once we went to a movie together, and she told me that she had never been to a movie inside a theatre before. How was that possible? Another time, we had hot-fudge sundaes and she confessed that this was the first sundae she had ever eaten. This boggled my mind. Now, if she had grown on another planet, or even in another country, I could understand it. But she grew up in Wisconsin, for crying out loud -- a place that I had always considered to be part of the civilized world.

I started to feel superior to her. I had done so many things that she had never experienced and concluded that the poor thing had led a sheltered life and she was pretty clueless about what really mattered. 

On the day she told me she had never played mini-golf before, I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Are you serious? You’ve never played mini-golf?”

“Never.” She told me.

“Surely people in Wisconsin play mini-golf.”

“Not in the town I came from. We would have had to drive a hundred miles to do something like that and it wasn’t that important to me.”

“Well, you led a deprived childhood,” I told her. I said it light-heartedly, like it was a joke, but we both knew I wasn’t joking.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Have you ever walked into a barn where the floor is completely covered with fuzzy, yellow baby chicks, all peeping at once?”

Of course, she knew the answer to that. “No.”

“Well then, you led a deprived childhood,” she said.

This conversation happened decades ago and I still remember it from time to time: whenever I begin to feel superior to those whose experience doesn’t match my own, whenever I measure what matters through the lens of my own myopic perspective, whenever I’m reminded that those I think I have so much to teach actually have more to teach me.

Yeah, I’ve been to lots of indoor movies, and I’ve played mini-golf, and I’ve eaten more hot-fudge sundaes than I should have. But I’ve yet to walk into a barn carpeted in newborn chicks. And a part of me still feels that I’ve been deprived.

Educating Nancy

I’m thinking back on my formal education this morning and wondering what the point was. After high school, I spent about 14 additional years in school. For the past 26 years I’ve been able to put Ph.D. after my name, although I rarely do. It’s not necessary for my job, or my life either, for that matter. When I went for it I thought I would one day teach in a college or a seminary, but life got in the way and it didn’t happen. Now I don’t feel any calling whatsoever to the academic life, so what was the point?

Interestingly, after I successfully defended my dissertation and my advisor told me I was officially in the club, I felt a let-down. It seemed to prove little. If anything, a doctorate is an exercise in perseverance; there is always another hoop you have to jump through. When it was all over, if I had any pride over what I had accomplished, it was that I had hung in there and finished what I started. My Ph.D. does not leave me feeling superior to less schooled people. Not only is the sheepskin missing from my office wall, I couldn’t even tell you where it is. I actually am a little embarrassed by it because it seems so pretentious to me. Yes, for a short while, I knew a whole lot about a little. But now I am only too aware of the fact that I know very little about a whole lot.

Through the years, I have had this recurring dream where, for one reason or another, it’s discovered that I never actually fulfilled the requirements to graduate from high school. So, they take all my degrees away from me and I have to go back to finish. The problem is, I can’t pass any of the tests in order to graduate. This isn’t far from the truth. I suspect that I really wouldn’t be able to pass the standardized tests to graduate from high school these days. Especially the math.  Oy! Knowing that leaves me feeling like such a fraud. Yes, I’ve spent more years in school after high school than it takes most people to get to high school graduation. And, what was the point?

There is much about our educational process, in general, that leaves me asking this same question. For years we encouraged kids to go to college so they could get a good job someday; many recent college graduates are still waiting. But then, even when it happens according to plan, even when you find yourself in a position where you get paid more because you have a college degree, how much of what you learned while working toward that college degree do you actually use on your job? The percentage has to be miniscule. I sometimes wonder if we just reward people for playing the game and going along with the system.

What do I know? I took Latin in high school, and what was the point of that? At the time, the draw was that it would help you on your SAT’s because it’s such a great vocabulary-builder. What a crock! Since English borrows heavily from the Germanic and Romance Languages, any one of those is a great vocabulary-builder. And the thing about German or French is that you can actually go someplace where people speak the language! I can see absolutely no point in learning Latin or Klingon or any other  language that no living person on earth speaks.

Maybe I’m just a slacker. Back when I was in seminary we had to learn Greek so that we could read the New Testament in its original language. (By the way, it’s also a language that no one speaks anymore as modern Greek is only remotely akin to biblical Greek.) I went to classes and crammed it all in so I could meet the requirements. But that was over thirty years ago. I have colleagues who turn to their Greek text every week as they prepare their sermons, but not me. It’s been decades since I’ve cracked open my Greek New Testament. So, what was the point?

Was it all a waste of time? Although I’m sure I must have gained something from my schooling, I have trouble pinpointing what that something was. It certainly wasn’t information, because that seems to leave my head as quickly as it enters, which is why my best friend these days is someone named Google. If anything, I learned how to learn. I learned a way of thinking critically, with my mind open to new possibilities. And I learned a way of organizing and processing stuff that I might not have figured out otherwise. Or maybe I would have. I’ll never know, because I can’t go back and un-school myself.

Perhaps the best I can say is that my formal education hasn’t hurt me. Maybe it’s even made me a better person. But it seems that the most important things I’ve learned have had little to do with school. Things like forgiveness, and compassion, and joy. And I've learned about them in a multitude of ways: through my relationships with other people, through losses, by making mistakes, by venturing outside my comfort zone. Of course, that’s learning that continues to this day. There are no hoops to jump through, no papers to write, no exams to take at the end. Instead, this learning simply leads me into a deeper, fuller understanding of myself and the One who is Love. I don’t need a Ph.D. to get the point.

The end of the world as we know it

I never know whether to take biblical accounts of the end times literally. Will we wake up someday to see heaven and earth trembling and Jesus coming in the clouds? I’m open to that possibility. But I’m more open the possibility that the biblical description of the second coming is not to be taken literally. Which is right? I dunno.

A lot of people got it wrong the first time Jesus appeared. They studied the scriptures and they thought they had it all figured out, but their Messiah came to them in a way they hadn’t expected and they missed him completely. So, I’m always leery of anybody who thinks they have it all figured out. Even if that anybody happens to be me.

Jesus promised that he will inaugurate the end of the world as we know it. Maybe it really happens the way we Christians have been taught to expect it. Maybe Jesus came and lived on this earth until he went up into heaven. And now, maybe we’re all waiting around for him to come back. That would be kind of like what happens with my pets, Guido and Pooky, when I leave the house. They run to the picture window and watch me drive away and Pooky throws a conniption fit. Then they lie down and go to sleep, until they hear my car return to the driveway, at which time they jump up and run to greet me at the door. Maybe the second coming of Jesus works like that.

Or maybe it’s more like that sweet country song where the guy is leaving his kid to go on a trip and he assures the kid that not only is he going to return, but he’s already here. Maybe Jesus is already here. Maybe the second coming is a process. And maybe we’re all a part of it. That’s what makes the most sense to me. (Yes, I may very well be wrong, but if I am, God still loves me. And that’s how I’ve come to see it.)

What I can’t deny is that this world as we know it will end. Well, I shouldn’t say that I can’t deny it because, in fact, I spend a lot of time denying it. I get all caught up in my day-to-day life and lose sight of the larger picture. There’s a whole big universe out there of which I am just a teeny tiny speck. And there has been and will be a history of which my life occupies less than a nano-second. The astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson wrote, “If the events that span the 15 billion year timeline of the universe were laid along the length of a football field, then all of human history would span the thickness of a blade of grass in the end zone.” This first Sunday of Advent reminds us that we are but a small part of a cosmic drama that has a beginning and middle and an end.

 I suspect we’re missing the point if we think it all ends with Jesus riding into town on a white horse, whipping out his six-guns and restoring peace. Jesus doesn’t come to the rescue of this messed up world at the end and make everything right, because, for starters, Jesus never left this world to begin with. He never stopped being Emmanuel, “God with us.” His kingdom is always near, and his kingdom work continues to be ongoing.

 

Jesus himself likens the end of life as we know it to a fig tree. It doesn’t just lie dormant and then all of a sudden fruit appears. First, the tree dies. Then it buds. And it blossoms. And it grows. That’s the way God’s story unfolds. And it’s not just God’s story; it’s our story, too. We’re a part of it. The way that Jesus continues to remain present in the world today is through us.

Jesus promised that he will inaugurate the end of the world as we know it. Will it be a time of terror, the way we see the apocalypse depicted in the movies? I can’t bring myself to imagine that, not if God is really the God of love I have come to trust through the years. What I can imagine, though, is a time when things are made right and God’s peace, justice and love prevail. That’s my hope. I’m striving to wait for it patiently, but never passively. It’s my prayer that Jesus may inaugurate an end to this poor excuse for life that we've come to know and bring us to experience real life in its place. May that new life come, not despite us, but through us.

 

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine... fine...

-- R.E.M.