Jeremiah 31:27-34; Luke 18:1-8
Peering into the Darkness; Glimpsing Hope
James Sledge October 17, 2010
I presume that most all of you know about the two young boys from Upper Arlington who were killed by their father before he killed himself. The father’s depression had apparently become so severe and painful that not only could he not go on living, but he felt he was doing his children a favor by sparing them the sort of pain he felt. And out of the horrible, twisted logic caused by his sickness, three people are dead, a family is shattered, a community seeks answers, and most all of us shake our heads and wonder how such a thing could happen.
The family lived one street over from me, but I had never met them. My wife once bumped into them while walking the dog. The boys ran over to play with the dog. The father came along behind them. They all seem like nice, likable, friendly people…
It didn’t happen locally, but in the last month, five gay teenagers have died by suicide, most of them taking their own lives after being tormented and taunted to the point they simply could not take it any longer. And I don’t care what one thinks about homosexuality, these deaths are horrible, tragic, and the hate that caused them run counter to everything Jesus taught. Young lives have been cut short, families are torn apart, and communities are left to wonder how this could have happened.
How is it that the world can be such an inhospitable place for so many? And this isn’t simply an interpersonal thing. Thousands in Haiti are still living in tent cities all this time after the horrible earthquake there. Recent tropical storms killed some of these people living out in the open. And the billions in aid that the US promised are stuck in Congress, held up by a congressman worried that a few million of this aid is going to be used for something he considers wasteful. Enjoy your tents, folks.
And while we’re on the topic of Congress, our political system seems to have become almost completely dysfunctional. Democrats and Republicans alike would rather blame the other than grapple with serious issues. Politics has become a bitter war, and each party is terrified of giving the other any ammunition. So when it comes to long term issues such as Social Security, Medicare, and how to rebuild a crumbling transportation infrastructure, people on both sides are afraid to work with the other lest that side get credit. And they are afraid to propose difficult or painful solutions because they know the other sides will simply use them to make political hay, which explains why both major candidates for governor of this state are for improving education, but neither is willing to offer a single, specific proposal about how they will pay for it.
I talk to more and more people who are frustrated, and who are worried. They’re worried about their own retirement. They’re worried about what life will be like for their children. They’re worried that when they graduate they won’t be able to find a job.
It wasn’t so long ago that most Americans had an almost unshakable belief in progress. My children will be better off than I was. Technology and medicine will solve more and more of the world’s problems. Things will get better and better until everything is wonderful. But I don’t hear as much of that these days.
And yet every week some of us gather and together we pray, “Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Every week we ask God to make the world more like how things are where God lives. In the Bible, that’s what heaven is, by the way. It isn’t a place people go when they die. It is God’s home, and there everything is as it should be. And Jesus taught us to pray, “God make it like that here.”
I grew up saying the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, but somehow it scarcely occurred to me what the prayer actually asked. And I wonder how many others had the same experience. Sometimes I worry that such rote prayers are the religious equivalent of “Have a nice day.” Nothing wrong with the sentiment, but do we really mean anything by it?
I wonder if we wouldn’t do well to change up the Lord’s Prayer from time to time, to use a different translation or rendition of it. What would it do if when we prayed the Lord’s Prayer, we actually said what the prayer means? What if we prayed, “Lord, up in heaven, you see how things are here. Please make them better.”
And if we prayed this way, would it make our prayer feel more meaningful, or would it only depress us by reminding us of how far from God’s will being done things are?
It is not hard to understand why, over the centuries, the Church gradually shifted the good news Jesus proclaimed from “The kingdom of God has come near,” to “You get to go to heaven.” It was hard to keep talking about God’s will being done here, on earth, when you looked around at how things were.
And yet… Jesus says we should “pray always and not lose heart.” And long before Jesus, the prophet Jeremiah, who has told the people of Jerusalem that they will be destroyed and carried into exile by Babylon, can still proclaim, “The days are surely coming.”
“The days are surely coming,” says the prophet, “when it won’t be like it is now.” “The days are surely coming, says Yahweh, when…I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts… No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”
“The days are surely coming,” says Jesus, “when God’s dream will be born, when the poor will be lifted up and the captives freed, when all will be as it should be, when God’s will is done here, on earth.” And Jesus insists that God’s dream, the kingdom of God, “has drawn near.” And he calls people to repent, to begin living differently because they see what is coming. And he calls us to not lose heart, to pray always. But he also adds, “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
Will he, indeed? Or will we have looked around at all those ways the world does not conform to God’s will and concluded, “It’s hopeless.” The best we can hope for is something better when we die.”
I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but I think it is a lot easier to believe you will go to heaven when you die than it is to do as Jesus tells us, to pray for God’s will on earth, for a new day, and not to lose heart. It’s even harder to live the way Jesus did, as though that new day was just around the corner. Believing in heaven is easy. There isn’t really anything to dispute that belief, no convincing evidence against such a belief. As a result, all kinds of people believe in a heaven of some sort, even folks that aren’t in the least religious. But believing God’s kingdom is near when there is so much pain in the world… That’s something else altogether.
There was a time when I dismissed much of the current interest in spirituality, in walking labyrinths, going on spiritual retreats, and having a Spiritual Director as some sort of touchy-feely fad. It was for “emotional” types who weren’t satisfied with sound biblical knowledge and well reasoned theology. Worse, I thought that such types detracted from the Church’s mission by focusing too much on their internal, personal, spiritual issues and feelings. But I have discovered that the people with the deepest spiritual lives are very often the same folks most committed to Jesus’ work of lifting up the poor and oppressed, of proclaiming release to the captive, and the coming of God’s new day. And I think that’s because their spiritual connection to Jesus lets them see things more like Jesus does.
It takes a lot of faith to peer into the darkness of our world and say, “See that glimmer over there? That’s God’s new day dawning.” I’m not sure it’s even possible if our hearts don’t get folded into Jesus’ heart, if our lives don’t become lost in his.
Draw us in, Jesus. Draw us in.
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