At Water's Edge: Human Suffering and the New Year

In a 1937 novel written by Zora Neale Hurston, a hurricane approaches a poor community at the water’s edge in Florida. Big winds vibrate like a giant drum, lightning brightens the sky, and thunder rolls. The main characters, hiding in their home, hear terrible crashings and screamings. They look at the door of their house questioning God. The author wrote, “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”

Today, there are other events to occupy us—global warming, worldwide brutalities linked with religious fundamentalism, handgun violence, emotional distress, poverty and underemployment, and financial crises in so many places. How could so many people living and playing at the water’s edge not be hypnotized by the prospect of being swept away by one or another of the possible, long, terrible waves of destruction we face now?

Years ago, one of our church members told me that their son, Erik, who was five years old, came home from church, “Why does God let the bad stuff happen?” So, apart from the human grief and compassion we are all feeling, apart from our urgent desire to contribute and to support our suffering neighbors, here is our intellectual and faith crisis—our questioning, coming from the mouth of a babe. We all stand at the water’s edge, uncertain of what we see, yet fascinated, awe-struck and questioning.

Jesus asks the very same, deeply human questions about unpredictable disasters when in Luke’s gospel, for example, he asked those around him, “Do you think that the 18 killed when the tower at Siloam fell were 'worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?'"  In other words, is there something meaningful in an accident, or a disaster, or not? The question is universal; the answers unbelievably diverse and sometimes contradictory.

In 1755, a major earthquake (close to a 9 on the Richter scale) and an attendant tsunami struck Lisbon, Portugal, even then a prestigious city, on All Saints' Day. Reportedly, 70,000 people were killed there and elsewhere, as the shockwaves and tsunami struck various cities and communities in much of Europe and northern Africa. At the time, the philosopher Voltaire wondered in a letter to a friend, “What will the preachers say…” In that single speculative question, an intellectual gauntlet was laid down before all Christian churches and thinkers of his day and ours. Implicit in Voltaire’s remark was a fundamental challenge to classical Christian logic on the problem of suffering.

Theologians and preachers of the 18^th century certainly saw basically three main reasons to argue in favor of divine purpose at work even in human disaster. First, as many Christians do today, they saw God as sovereignly and mysteriously in control of all events, making them serve redemptive purposes; therefore, even disasters must lie within God’s will. Second, some saw the End-time or Apocalypse at hand, as an expression of God’s sovereignty and reaction to human sin. Today, we hear the same thing from Christian pastors and thinkers, as well as from other faiths. The trouble with this argument is that it has been applied to virtually every major earthquake, famine and natural disaster in history—with no decisive result, to date. In any case, I agree with Martin Luther, who told his friends, “Death is death.” It doesn't matter if one dies or 100,000.

Other 18^th century Christian leaders argued, and they still have their counterparts today, that there could be morally sufficient reasons for God to permit suffering. John Wesley saw the harm done to Lisbon as a call to repentance for all equally sinful human beings residing elsewhere. He opposed the appeal to scientific reason, saying, “It is not chance that governs the world…. If all these afflictive incidents entirely depend on the fortuitous concourse and agency of blind, material causes; what hope, what help, what resource is left for the poor sufferers...?”

In contrast and opposition, the philosophers of that Enlightenment period in Lisbon and Europe held that the movements of the world machine might have been created by God, but they could not be interrupted by God.

So, why does God let bad stuff happen? Here is my answer to a five-year-old named Erik and to Voltaire. First, I agree with some Christian teachers who say that God’s “power” is often misunderstood. Once God sets a free and material universe into motion, not even God can decide to block out one of the outcomes of that universe—which is suffering. In other words, Erik, you cannot have a real world without seeing it get hurt sometimes.

Second, some Christian teachers say that God’s “goodness” is also often misunderstood. God’s love is not trivial or sentimental; it works into the farthest reaches of the tens of thousands of galaxies. This goodness is so immense and so all-embracing that it can even include all suffering as an unavoidable consequence of real love. In other words, Erik, we cannot care deeply for one another without sometimes needing to be hurt by the things that occur while we are on the way to God’s “good stuff”.

Third, I think some Christian teachers have interesting things to say when they admit that God’s power may not be entirely sovereign, or that it may still be maturing as we journey toward the fulfillment of all existence. In other words, Erik, just as you grow up to be 6 or 20, and gain new abilities, so God may also be growing and changing in certain respects, as God responds to the way the things are in the universe and in our world.

The last thing I want to say is that I think that God suffers the pain of the world, its creatures and people. Christ suffers for the world. This knowledge somehow comforts and inspires me. God knows all that we are experiencing and enduring. We have been baptized into Christ’s death and into his resurrection. Therefore, we also participate in the suffering of Christ and of the world. Therefore, we also always stand at water’s edge, just as Jesus did when he came to be baptized in the Jordan by John.

Therefore, we are not afraid to stand with the suffering at the water’s edge, watching the massive tidal wave sweep in. We are not afraid to drown at the water’s edge, if that is what is required of us by duty to our neighbor or by unavoidable circumstance.

The Christian theologian, Alister McGrath, once wrote, “The sufferings of this earth are for real. They are painful. God is deeply pained by our suffering, just as we are shocked, grieved and mystified by the suffering of our family and friends. But that is only half the story. The other half must be told…. [It is] a glorious vision of a new realm of existence. It is a realm in which suffering has been defeated. It is a realm pervaded by the refreshing presence of God…. It lies ahead, and though we have yet to enter into it, we can catch a hint of its fragrance and hear its music in the distance…. Just as suffering is real, so are the promises of God…”

Because we are Christians, we know that at a place on a Galilean beach, at the water’s edge, when the full and disastrous hurricane and flood of death had overwhelmed the disciples, they suddenly found the one who had suffered and died standing alive on the beach, and they had to say,“It is the [risen] Lord” (John 21:7).

Advent: "Prepare the Way of the Lord..."

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord...'" (Matthew 3:1-3)

When I was about 14 or 15, I remember my father shaking me awake one Saturday morning. He said, "The pastor is coming to talk to you, and he wants to meet with you in your room." Well, my room was a typical teenager's wreck, and so his announcement threw me into a panic. I jumped in the shower, dressed, then scrambled to pick up, put away, sweep, mop, make the bed, and get everything spotlessly ready for the pastor to visit. When I was done (and sweating the arrival that could come at any moment), I went upstairs to my mother and father, and asked breathlessly, "When is the preacher coming?" My dad just grinned, and said, "We were kidding." He was happy. On a Saturday morning, his teen-aged son was up and awake, and the bedroom chores were actually completed. Needless to say, I was not pleased.

Well, Advent is about One who comes in the Incarnation, and this time, no one is kidding. It truly is time to awaken, put on new clothes, and prepare the way of the Lord.

The Advent of the Christ has a peculiar emotional mixture involved. On the one hand, it bears all the comforting and joyous emotions of the infant birth of the Christ, yet on the other hand "the day of the Lord" is described in both the Old and New Testaments as a day to dread. It is associated with earth-shaking events, with storms of wind and water, with anxiety, and with destruction of old structures. Christ's coming is simultaneously a time of confrontation with our slumbering souls or dirty rooms, and of comfort in the mercies shown us and of joy in the new world that awaits us in God's realm.

So when we mature a bit, we recognize that the season of Advent presents us with the challenge of accepting Christ into our world, and even preparing the way for his entry, as an event and relationship which potentially changes everything for us by both opposing, and by healing, our sin. The soul tells its truth, admitting flaws and also confessing to giftedness. God takes such souls by the work of Christ--and transforms them into amazingly beautiful human beings.

As this season progresses, the emphasis of the Sunday and daily readings shifts from warnings and prophecies toward more immediate experiences of grace, delight and hope. May this be true in your life. At first, Advent is a rough wake-up call and a summons to cleanse and prepare the heart. Yet as time goes by, the path becomes more smooth for every trembling heart.

Blessings in Christ in this paradoxical season of intermingling confrontation and hope.

Four Missional Stakes

Bishop Bruce Ough has been sharing a message with us since he came, concerning his four stakes in ministry while serving the Minnesota and Dakotas episcopal area. He wants our shared ministry to be characterized as "missional leaders, missional churches, missional impact and missional connection." It's a sound, Wesleyan and Christian plan. It is solidly Scriptural since it reflects Christ's intention not to entertain, not to just "do religion," and not to appease or please others, but to actually heal God's people in every way possible.

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, "Woman, you are set free of your infirmity." ... She at once stood up straight and glorified God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said, "...Come on [the other days] to be cured, not on the sabbath day."  --Luke 18:10ff.

This passage in Luke's Gospel is provocative. A leader in a significant religious system is presented as disinterested in, and even resistant to, the "missional" fulfillment of God's work of healing human life and restoring human dignity. The leader seems to us to be caught up in the comparatively lighter stuff of religious observances, dramatically overlooking the fact of a remedy for human suffering. How sorrowful, and yet how common this is! When the leaders are so trapped, then the faith community is also, and so is the overall impact, and so is the wider connection among such communities!

How many of us have attended worship, hoping not to run into some boor? How many of us sit at a dining table or bus seat, wishing that we would not need to be near a person we find unappealing for whatever reason? How many times have we hoped to be picked for the good team? How often have we preferred the rules and common practices of our institutions and organizations to what our own senses and souls tell us? How often have we denied our own interior pain, rather than admit personal limitations or struggles to anyone?

Why do we do this?

We prefer the comforts of control and the avoidance of inconveniences like poverty, mental or emotional affliction, chronic illness, and suffering of so many kinds. We prefer this to allowing God to do what God does in Jesus Christ--which is to face, confront and address human sorrow and suffering in order to bring abundant life to us and to all.

What if we were to imagine our religious gatherings as places where the key actions taking place were not the fulfillments of ritual expectations, but the grateful glorification of God, and the unflinching ministry of releasing all kinds of people from all kinds of bondage and infirmities?

What if we broke the rules of church in order to heal the people of God? What if we were to become
missional leaders serving missional churches for missional impact in and through our missional connection?

October is Clergy Appreciation Month

Many of us have an abiding affection and respect for pastors and ministry leaders, especially in these challenging and conflicted times. But we may not tell or show them how we feel very often. It could be done at any time in many ways--a simple note, a kind word, a small gift, an unexpected day away from the pulpit, an encouragement to take a full weekend with spouse, children or friends. It could happen often, even be a normal and expected part of the local church's year, month and week.

I am told that Focus on the Family launched Clergy Appreciation Month in 1994, and they chose the month of October, especially the second weekend, as a specially selected time to honor and thank the churches' entire pastoral staffs and their families. The blog, "Thriving Pastor" writes that there is biblical precedent: "We believe that the concept of clergy appreciation started with the Apostle Paul as he was establishing the first Christian churches. In 1 Timothy, he wrote, "The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching" (1 Tim. 5:17). And, in 1 Thessalonians, he said, "Respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work" (1 Thess. 5:12-13).

I don't know about you, but when I look back to many of the key transitional moments or crises of my life, there has almost always been a pastor present to listen, acknowledge, comfort, encourage, counsel, pray and guide. When I was first learning the basics of Christian faith, a pastor taught me. When I went on my first canoe trips and service projects, I was led by pastors like Robert Hunter and Tom Brennan. When my brother was nearly killed in a work-related accident, our pastor, Robert Bailey, came to be with my family. When Mary Lynn and I were trying to figure out if we should be married or not, a pastor counseled with us. When I was in studies at college and seminary, pastors were often the people who noticed my journey and challenges and gave encouragement along the way. When my sons were to be baptized, I asked a friend and pastor, James Dahlgren, to baptize them. When I just needed encouragement, there were pastors like Richard Harper and others, who spoke that word and showed their care. When I was under stress at work, or aching with some concern in life, it was almost always the case that I turned to pastors for a listening ear and effective support through the difficulty or crisis. Even when I noticed the absence of a pastor, that was also an acknowledgement of the role they play in key events of celebration or of loss.

Even though I have been a pastor myself for 30 years, I am not sure I have fully expressed my gratitude, thanks and appreciation to the clergy. How about you, your family, or your church? When the clergy offered God's love, light, healing and hope at times that these were deeply needed, or when they performed their ministries graciously and kindly though under fire, or when there were seasons of conflict in the life of the congregation, were you thanking God for these clergy and their families who bear the costs of Christ's work in many, many ways? Think of all their lost sleep, lost weekends, lost vacation days, unexpected interruptions, headaches and heartaches--on behalf of God's people! Have we thanked them and thanked God for them? Please give it a try. Appreciate those who serve in pastoral and staff ministries.

Instructed by Gates

As many of you know, I am returning from a three-month renewal leave. Thank you for bearing with my absence, and with the necessary time to get on board again with the district ministries. Mary Lynn and I did a lot together this summer, but one key adventure was travelling to Scotland for the first time. We saw Glasgow, Edinburgh, the sacred island of Iona, Ben Nevis, Loch Ness, Saint Andrew's, and the Culloden battlefield, among other beautiful, historic, and mysterious places. We visited with wonderful people, many of whom we could barely understand! Our sons came along, too, so there was time to talk, hike, try haggis together, and go to the tiny villages in Fife County where the Oglesbee family originated, and the area from which Alexander Oglesbee emigrated to the Virginia colonies in America around 1750.

I titled this return post "Instructed by Gates" because we learned a lot from gates while we were in Scotland. One beautiful blue gate in front of a home at the seaside town of Oban said only, "Carpe Diem" ("seize the day"), and I realized I had been instructed by a lovely, small gate about life's callings to us. We really should seize the gate of the day, seeking the grace that awaits when we pass through! "Go through, go through the gates..." (Isaiah 62:10).

We also learned hospitality from gates, which if you think about it, seems contradictory to the purpose of gates. However, the national laws provide for anyone who wishes to do so to walk or hike over private property more or less at will. People may also camp on private property, more or less at will. The restrictions on this, especially out in the countryside, are that one does no damage, avoids stock animals, and stays out of the farms' living and work areas. Otherwise, you are free to wander.

We were deeply touched and affected by this, as we ourselves walked the paths and dirt roads. Property owners not only allow guests on their lands all the time, but they provide gates or stiles for easy passage over fences. Animals stay in, while travelers can conveniently pass through the fields and forests.

We could not help thinking again and again how differently private property is being viewed in Minnesota and in the US. We all know that most gates are intended to signal to others that the owners want no uninvited guests near the things that belong to them. These days, one risks being shot on sight for perceived offense. Yet in Scotland, that was not the case. The gates were signals of hospitality, which did not say, "Go away, suspicious person!", but instead, "Here is the way. Pass through here!"

This experience reminds one of the words spoken in the Gospel of John 10:9: "I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture." It was a very simple thing, but we were moved by it, and we are considering how the open gate signals grace and generosity in God's work through Jesus Christ, and we are wondering how to make the things we own, the property we have, and so on, something to be generously shared, rather than tightly guarded. I am considering getting a gate for my home, one without a fence at all, a gate that only serves to remind us to find the way to God--and to go through. Blessings to each of you!  --Clay

Until Further Notice

For almost eight years now, Bishop Sally Dyck has asked the pastors and leaders of our United Methodist churches in Minnesota to meditate on one text: the full chapter of Romans 12. The idea behind the study of this text is that the people of God can only be transformed by God’s love and grace expressed in Christ Jesus, and therefore, can only become people who actively show their faith if they have learned and imagined what an authentic Christian-life looks like.

The Bishop enjoys Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase from The Message. Who can help being inspired or encouraged by a fresh reading of Paul’s words? "So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your every day, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

The Bishop's instructions were that this should be read daily "until further notice." I don't recall that she ever lifted that instruction. The point was that the way of the Christian life requires steady, disciplined, dailiness and practice "until further notice."

Steve Manskar, a discipleship leader in our denomination, has written that practicing our faith is like any other skill or practice; it requires repetition, and going back to basics often. A baseball fan, he noticed that Sports Illustrated recently published a story on the radio communications among players and coaches during baseball games. The magazine discovered that the most frequent communications between coaches and players were not big, strategic plans, but reminders from the coaches to their players to keep doing the basics properly.

For us, this means using the means of grace: regular worship, regular Communion, personal and family devotions, searching the Scriptures, conferring with and supporting other Christians, forgiving and seeking forgiveness, fasting, and serving the poor of the earth, and so on.

The Desert Fathers tell the story of a younger monk who came to an Elder in his community. The young monk had been faltering in his practice of his faith, losing heart and hope to a point where he was no longer keeping any of the promises that he had made about the way he would live. Every time that he tried to pray, or read the Scriptures, or fast, he just lost heart and quit.

The Elder, listening generously to the younger monk, told this man the story of a father who sent his son out to farm a piece of property with the promise that the land and its fruits would be his when he had cleared the land. When the son arrived at the land, it was so full of thickets, brambles and thorns that he just despaired, and, rather than work, he just lay down and wept, and then he slept. When his father came by to see what was happening, the son told him, “Look at this land! I've done nothing here because this ground is impossible. Just look at it!” The father patiently told his son, “You’re right. This ground cannot all be cleared all at once. What you must do, then, is to pull out the brambles and thorns a little at a time, each day. If you will do this, a little each day, then in the end the field will be yours.” Then the Elder told the younger man, “The same thing is true in matters of the Spirit. Only begin to practice as much as you can each day, and in the end you will have the fruits of your effort.”

So that’s Christian renewal: gratitude, imagination and daily practice—until further notice.     

Called to the Great Journey

I wonder if there is ever a time when we are not being called by God? To me, it seems embedded in our created natures to yearn for God. To put this a bit differently, the Holy Spirit and prevenient grace, speak to us of God, even when we are unprepared to respond or to make a confession of faith. We spend our lives immersed in the light, winds and water of the Spirit, in the illumining presence, the whispers and rustlings, the currents and waves, and sometimes even the confronting storms of the divine voice addressing us.

My own strongest experience of conversion and calling came during a summer of light, wind and waves, a summer of creation and yearning. I was hired as a canoe guide in the summer of '76, and with one other young man, we led a group of teen-aged youth, some troubled and some from normal backgrounds, on a long journey in a North Canoe (which held all of us and all our gear in one canoe). We paddled from the Minnesota border near Lake Superior, westward to the Lake of the Woods, then northward to Lake Winnipeg, and from there all the way to Hudson's Bay, imitating the journey Eric Sevareid and his friend took many decades ago.

We were paddling as a team for over two months, and often went a week or more without seeing other people. Every day was an adventure, a time of friendship, teamwork, physical challenge, deep conversation, and the intimate experience of vulnerability to the day's light, wind and water. You can't control the weather, as they say. And you can't control what God will do with you!

Somewhere on the Lake of the Woods, I was paddling in time with the rest of the group, and silently reading a tiny New Testament that was propped under my boot. Surrounded by the kids for whom I felt great responsibility on that great lakes journey, I stumbled across the 21st chapter of John's Gospel. Here was another lake, another time, and a man named Peter, who was also trying to care for God's people, but without much confidence or clarity about what he was doing. Jesus spoke to him, you remember, asking three times, "Do you love me?" And when Peter replied that he did, each time Jesus instructed and called him with these words, "Feed my lambs....Tend my sheep." And after all that, Jesus said, "Follow me."

Those words touched me so powerfully that day that I began to cry. Over me--the Light of God's love, touching and guiding me--the Winds of the Spirit, underneath me--the Waters of grace, around me and in my care--the People of God. I was converted and called by grace to tend the sheep.

I've tried to live on that great journey with Jesus ever since. Sometimes I don't do that very well at all, but at the heart of it all, is joy in constant communion with God, Christ, Spirit, humanity and all creation.