Out of the Frying Pan…
What happens when things don’t work out the way we had hoped? Where do we turn when the worst case scenario becomes the very thing we must live through? When there’s no explanation for our suffering, how can we go on? And what if - and this may be the most difficult question of all - there’s no answer to the question, ‘why?’
The 5th chapter of Exodus presents just such a scenario. Moses follows God’s instructions and things start going very, very wrong. The Pharaoh gets angry and increases the workload of the Jewish slaves. In short order the Pharaoh is angry, the Jewish Foreman are angry and the people suffer, terribly - all because Moses did as he was told. There’s a couple of things we have to keep in mind when reading this story. The first is that it plays out over a time-line that was a lot longer than a ‘made for tv movie’. The Jewish people endured real hardship and suffering while this story played out over weeks - if not months. The second is that we read this knowing how the story ends. This is not the case with Moses, the Pharaoh, the Jewish people or anyone else at the time, and their actions look very different when seen from this perspective. They can’t answer the ‘why’ question. They don’t know what happens next. A God they’ve only just been introduced to - “I Am That I Am” - appears impotent and they must pay the price for the foolishness of Moses.
We’re going to try and walk through some of this on Sunday morning. Frankly, the passage raises a lot more questions than it does answers and not all of them are questions we want to ask. It’s easy for us to discuss those questions in a coolly detached way in church but it’s quite another to find ourselves trying to live through them. Sometimes, an answer to the question ‘why’ simply isn’t possible. How can we live without the answers that matter most?
Image: Moses in front of Pharaoh by Haydar Hatemi, Persian Artist. Public Domai
Imagine what could happen if…
“Dance your bones” may be the best advice I get all year. Your best advice of the year is probably in this post from Rae at Blackbird Studio as well.
Easy and Light
I’m always happy to have Christmas and New Year’s done with. If you work in retail or hospitality - or for the airlines, I suppose - Christmas means nothing more than stress. Long hours, lot’s of activity, a crush of people. I have friends who work 12 hour days during December - 6 days a week - and still must find time for family and shopping and parties and whatever is left of their life after that. For 25 years I was ‘that guy’ and this is the first year I’ve been free of the overwhelming stress of Christmas. It’s been difficult to change my way of thinking about the holidays - our emotions have memory, too. For many people, though - and to a certain extent myself - what follows Christmas is more difficult that what precedes it. Many of us are, right now, in the midst of the Great Christmas Crash.
It’s understandable. There’s so much hype, so much build-up, so many parties, baking, travel, shopping, travel - and on and on - that when it’s all over we bottom out on the emotional roller coaster. There’s a particular and unique kind of exhaustion that sets in at this time of year - an exhaustion that seems to encompass our whole person; mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a serious concern for many of us. For most of us, though, there’s a definite sense of struggling through these remaining weeks until light and life return. Here’s the good news: it will return, and each passing day brings us closer to the world being born again.
So what to do with all this? As John the Baptist languished in the darkness and despair of Herod’s prison he sent his disciples to Jesus with a simple question: “Are you the one?” Jesus responded by pointing to the evidence: people receiving healing, freedom and wholeness, people receiving hope. He speaks to John’s doubts before speaking to the unbelief of the everyday people - like you and I - who lived in Korazin and Bethsaida. Jesus also speaks to the unbelief of the religious leaders saying, ‘no matter what I do you’re not happy’. Through it all he’s speaking to a people who are burdened by the law, exhausted by the law, separated from God by the law they can’t possibly keep, forever under judgment and condemnation. Into this world of darkness, sorrow and longing Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
I often find that much is made of the ‘yoke’ in this passage. I think that’s an exercise in missing the point. The yoke isn’t about working for Jesus, or even working with Jesus. He’s contrasting what the religious leaders of his world were doing to people - crushing them under rules and regulations - and what he offers, which is rest. Some commentators on this passage suggest the ‘yoke’ is Christ’s teaching. That may be so, but it’s hardly the point. The point is that he’s offering us rest.
Think about that for a moment. When was the last time you heard a sermon that suggested Jesus wants you to rest? When was the last time you were asked to do less for Jesus? Sometimes our lives are stressed to the max. Sometimes are lives are so busy that our to-do lists just keep getting longer and our inbox is never emptied and it seems like there’s not enough hours in the day or days in the week. Jesus stands in stark contrast to our obsession with doing more and, although we can work our way to wealth I think it’s pretty clear that we can’t work our way to rest. Jesus brings us to the precipice of a great truth here, namely, that we also can’t work our way to God. Instead, Jesus invites us to himself, and promises that we will find rest for our souls in him. I don’t think this is a one-time, sudden or miraculous event he’s talking about here. I think that he’s asking us to spend time with him and to allow him to teach us. He promises to be gentle with us, joining us in humility. What Jesus is asking us to do is to be present in him, and allow him to be fully present in us.
It’s difficult to grasp the full significance of what Jesus is offering. This is not a Jesus who is giving us a way to be better versions of ourselves, able to do better things for better reasons. He’s suggesting that we completely, totally and magnificently re-orient ourselves from the stress and strain of all our activity to the quiet stillness of being with him. It is the exact opposite of everything our world tells us. But those of us who are suffering under the burdens of that world need to make the change. Given the time and our willingness - and courage - to follow Jesus, real rest is possible; the kind of rest that lives within us, an ever present peace that exists not in separate from our life and circumstances but amidst them.
There’s one last thing I want to say about this ‘easy’ yoke and ‘light’ burden - something I’m going to try and keep uppermost in my mind this coming year. It’s simply this: If following Jesus is difficult then you’re doing it wrong. It’s that simple. When you need something it will be provided for you. When you need an answer it will be given to you. When you need to find your way the path will be revealed. Let Jesus be your guide.
God in the Diner
There’s a diner in my neighbourhood that I enjoy visiting. Red vinyl booths. Formica table tops. A chrome quarter jukebox at every booth. I have breakfast there on Friday mornings with a couple of old codgers like me. We’re like the old guys in the balcony on the Muppets Show - perpetually enamored with our own cleverness. We get sass from the wait staff and love it. For some inexplicable reason we talked - briefly - about funerals last Friday morning. I mentioned a time when I attended four funerals in five weeks. I realized, somewhat sarcastically, that people only ever talk about the good things at a funeral. By the time I had been through five eulogies, however, I thought there might be something else going on. You have to pay attention at funerals, I said to my breakfast buddies. They teach you about what matters most to those who love you. They teach you how to live.
Tonight I stopped in to the same diner, for no particular reason at all. I sipped on a vanilla milkshake, reading a book. The author quoted one of the beatitudes, as interpreted by Eugene Peterson in the Message. “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. I put the book down and thought about this for a few minutes. I’ve been trying to understand this little nugget of wisdom for about ten years “Blessed are those who mourn”, Jesus said, “for they will be comforted.” Really? Comforted? How? Tell me again, Jesus? How does that work, exactly? I was stunned by the way Peterson interpreted this Beatitude. It seemed like I was so close to the truth - the huge, infinite, terrifying and beautiful truth but, somehow, I wasn’t quite there. I couldn’t quite break through the darkness and fog into the light.
As I was thinking about this the waitress slid into the booth across from me. The place was almost empty, and we had been having a conversation as she went about her work. She will soon be sharing an apartment with her sister and I wanted to give her a bit of wisdom. I wanted to say that the key to living with someone you love is to figure out what matters and what doesn’t. But I didn’t say it, because it sounded trite, and I didn’t want to intrude, and I really didn’t want to intrude with triteness. But the conversation soon changed tack, so the opportunity was lost, and then she told me about her first love, who tragically died. “I loved him like crazy”, she said. “I’ll never love anyone like that again.”
And the universe went, ‘click’. Suddenly I understood. It may not be the whole story - and it may not be your story - but tonight, while my French fries went cold and my milkshake melted, I saw the fog slip away and the light breaking through the darkness. I finally understood why people only talk about the good things at a funeral. I understood how mourning is a blessing. I understood that comfort might not be felt in the moment of our pain and loss but that it will come, and that maybe until we lose the thing that matters most we’ll never know what it is that matters most, and what doesn’t matter at all, and that there’s really nothing in between. Maybe the comfort that Jesus promises is in the fact that once we lose what matters most we’re finally able to live by what really matters and, in so doing, know the comfort of living a life from the wellsprings of our heart. What Jesus might be promising here is the comfort of knowing that we are living, perhaps for the first time, our real life.
She went back to work and I tried to continue reading but couldn’t. As I was about to leave I wanted to ask if I could share a ‘Jesus thing’ and tell her what I had just learned. But she was already saying good-bye, and it somehow seemed so very important and yet I just couldn’t tell her. A moment later I was outside, in the dark, late autumn night and then it really was too late. So I walked home from the diner, lost in my thoughts, carrying the infinitely dark and heavy weight of a beautiful mystery in my heart, repeating the name of her lost love over and over, like a mantra, like the chorus of a hymn to worship the one who longs to comfort us all.
Broken
What I’ve learned is that God is in the broken places, that God is in the broken and wounded and hurting places. God is in all the parts of life that are messed up, chewed up and run over. Don’t get me wrong - God is all about healing, wholeness and redemption, God is all about bringing freedom to the oppressed, rest to the weary and wholeness to the broken. It’s just that the process with which he does that is bloody and messy. Got a car crash? Got a train wreck? Got a life that’s full of twisted steel and broken glass? If so, you’ve found a place where God is at work. I keep thinking about what my doctor says: “God doesn’t care very much about our comfort.” It’s true. He’s not callous, but if he needs to blow up our life in order to achieve his purpose - well, that’s exactly what he’ll do. But after the implosion and the collapse, after the smoke has cleared and the blood has been mopped up he begins creating again.
Creating gardens out of chaos is what he seems to do. I can count on my fingers the friends who know this from the inside out. Truth is - you don’t know it until you’ve been through it. We can agree with the sentiment but the experience of it is something else. Sometimes God brings our world to a crash - sometimes we crash and burn all by ourselves. Sometimes, though, we go through pain because the world is just a messed up place, and we suffer through no work of God or fault of our own. Yet somehow God seems to work through it all. “Everything happens for a reason” is a heart-wounding platitude when you’re in the midst of the suffering, mostly because not knowing God’s reason makes suffering all the more difficult. So we make the best decisions we can with what we know. We do the best we can with what we have. We keep putting one foot in front of the other. In the end, we often must simply sit our spirit still, and wait, and trust that God love us.