Jesus was in the garden facing torture and death. He asked God to let the cup pass from him. But he finally conceded that it was not what he willed, but what God wills. What his vocation cost him seemed more than he could bear. I identify with that. The extent of my struggle fades in comparison. But I understand what it means to do something difficult reluctantly, to do what I must rather than what I prefer. Especially when things don’t make sense.
I struggle with my call to pastor. I find it very difficult, not because I don’t love the people or the church, but because it hurts. There have been a couple of times in my life when a prophecy has come to pass for me. Once in a blue moon there has been confidence that things made sense. But almost all the time I walk in darkness. Only my next step is illuminated, and that only sometimes, and pale. I can’t find meaning.
I was talking with a friend today who had moved here with his family to be a part of our community. Just after they arrived and made friends, we went through a crisis at the church and much of what they came for disintegrated before their eyes. This has happened so many times and applies to so many people I love. When people move here to be a part of our church, I want them to be happy. I want things to go according to their hopes. I need to provide them meaning, especially when things get rough. But I can’t. I can only love them. I can care. I can be tender. I can be there. That’s all.
The main theme in Job is meaning. He was offensively transparent in his insistence that there was no meaning in his suffering. His friends claimed to have meaning. Who did God exonerate in the end? The one who was blind to meaning. And the ones who claimed to have meaning repented. I can’t find meaning for myself, for my friends or for my community. But, like Job, I have to trust that God has the meaning. The meaning is God’s. Occasionally, like once or twice in a lifetime, we get glimpses of meaning. But in the end we must simply trust that the story we are in is written with a compassionate hand. And all we can do in the midst of this is love one another. That is the best meaning I can give. For now.
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A young man in our congregation asked if this could be read last Sunday morning. He composed it during the week. He’s going through an unbelievably difficult time. We meet often, and I am frequently overcome with the intensity of his struggles right now. I asked him if I could share this with you, and he said I could. I not only appreciate what he had to say, but the fact that he could say it in the context of his spiritual community, his church. The event (the reading and the hearing) says as much about his community as it does about him. What follows is verbatim what he wrote:
Well what is faith? How do we understand it? I believe that faith is being able to continue on with the assumption that there is hope even though everything around you in a worldly sense points to things being hopeless. When all you can see or predict has a likely or potentially negative outcome or an outcome that will continue toward an already downhill turn of events. This is where faith comes in. I look back on my life and I see that these are the times where God has performed the miracles.
A common expression at my work is “to keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity”, the insinuation being that you need to change what or how you are doing things and then you will have success. Well let me tell you sometimes having faith has the same definition. You get to the point where you have tried every option and every way of trying to control or manipulate the situation and as a result, with each event, thing continue to go further and further downhill. This is the point where God comes to you and says, “Are you going to let me take over yet?” This isn’t where you give up but where you give in. This is where you say, “Okay God, I can’t handle it anymore, but I know that you can.”
The reason I am saying this is not because I have already gone through a tough time and now everything in my life has changed for the better. I am saying this because everything in my life is not where I want it to be and continues to go further from where I want or expect it to be. The faith part is not saying how great things turned out after things turn for the good, even though all the way through you questioned or mistrusted God or even at times cursed God. I am here to tell you that I have questioned God and even mistrusted God, even though I do know that anything is possible for God. What I am here to say is that in this time of no hope, that all my trust and all my faith is in God, and I do know that things are going to improve. Not because I can see a way out of it, but because I can’t see a way out of it. But I know God can.
What do you need to let God take over in your life?
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Job is the man! It took you one word for him to ask the question and forty-two chapters to not get an answer. From beginning to end he’s the man. His friends, men with meaning on their lips, spoke words that evaporated in the heat of his defense. Not one word came close to him. Not one shred of meaning struck home. The unanswered question was his pillow upon which he laid his beleaguered head. It was the air he breathed. What’s the point of sitting on a dung-heap? Exactly! What is the point? He never did learn the point. Answers answers everywhere, flinging by his ears, and not one entered into his festering brain to settle his enormous pain. Not one. He insisted on living in the ugliness of faith, dark, lonely and uncertain. He is my resistant insistent reminder to reject the answer and the made point. Job is the man!
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I read somewhere recently that physicists believe that 60% of the universe is made up of dark matter. Some even suggest an even greater percentage if you add the dark energy. The same is true of the human psyche. It is pretty much agreed among psychoanalysts that the greatest percentage of the human psyche is subconscious (if you are Freudian) or unconscious (if you are Jungian). Jung spent a great deal of time studying and writing about the Shadow, that dark, mysterious and important component of the human makeup. It’s like an electric current: you need both the positive and the negative for power. All positive with no negative is harmless and useless. Good and evil, darkness and light and their relation is a profound mystery that we would be wise to investigate.
George Grant, the great Canadian philosopher, wrote:
Philosophy is for those who have moved beyond any simple certainty. It is for those who have come face to face with the mystery of existence and who have seen how profound a mystery it is. Philosophy is the attempt to fathom that profundity- that is, to find the wisdom which will enable us to live as we ought.
Now the sense of mystery arises for people in two ways; first from just plain wonder at the world around them, and secondly from the anguish of their own lives.
I am suspicious of anything that doesn’t have the undercurrent of anguish. The hyper-faith positive thinkers ring false because of the noticeable absence of the reality of suffering and evil that personally touches our lives. This is one of the things that is very difficult to teach in our community. Some people feel the need to believe and feel positively about everything all the time. To give them permission to be honest about the perpetual pain in their lives, to me, is a profoundly important step on their way to becoming fully human.
The fine art photograph with the beautiful contrast of darkness and light, is the creation of my friend Howard Nowlan.
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Sometimes, when it all comes down to it, you just want to be able to feel. The last thing I want to go is my ability to receive and give love. Keep my heart going!
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I had a dream last night. It wasn’t a moving dream, but just a snapshot. This was all I saw: Jesus, suffering, lying barely conscious in his own blood on stone. But the weird thing is that he is lying among precious stones. Bright jewels surround him. I have been reflecting on it all day, pondering its meaning.
It is available for sale HERE
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I’m feeling really tired today. Part of it is having teens. But you can tell, can’t you, when a tiredness comes over you that’s deeper than just sleep deprivation? I was at the church all day today pretty much by myself. The weather is terrible… cold, wet and foggy so I understand no one moving about. I had a lot of time to be by myself and think.
Lisa (my wife) and I were talking just this morning about the brokenness of the world. We were trying to describe it. You could say that everything is shot through with sin. Even when we think we are doing the right, the noble, the good, the true, I believe that running deep and often secretively beneath the surface is our self-centeredness and sin. But that really doesn’t say it. That’s not all if it. It’s not only morbid, but unfair. It has something to do with fallenness. That’s not even a real word but it says it for me. Our deepest and essential identity is that we were created good. Our secondary and, shall I say, derived identity is fallen. Our church community is filled with people who are in pain, broken and wounded and suffering, struggling morally with very serious issues. Everything is soaked in this sense of brokenness. It is a reality we all live in.
Some go one way and start speaking and acting and preaching very triumphalistically. That’s just utter baloney. I won’t even address that here. My tendency is to go the other way. Lisa said that it is important not to become Eeyores about it all. And THAT, my friends, is the struggle. This is why I don’t run away. I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to surrender. I don’t want to commit vocational and social and spiritual suicide. I think there is hope. I think there is a deep and residing promise of freedom being held out for all of us. And this is probably the only reason, in spite of my exhaustion, that I don’t allow myself to fall into a deep and everlasting stupor.
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David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
