* * *
—
One morning in church I watched a couple whose dearly wanted baby was colicky and wailed constantly so that there was no sleep to be had for child or parents, and all three looked white and drawn and exhausted and yet the mother and father had nothing but joy in their eyes as they tried to hush their screaming infant before taking her out so she could cry without disturbing the service.
And then I wondered about the Rwandan babies and the Bosnian babies and the Abyssinian babies whose little stomachs were not going to be filled and who were not going to stop crying. And I knew they were why Christ left the star-flung heavens and came to us to be part of all the pain and suffering. And the joy. And I remembered that the first recorded miracle in the Bible was at a wedding, two people coming together in love, that marvelous love which is never completely understood. And I knew that we do not have to understand, we do not have to understand anything except that the Maker loves us enough to come and be part of us.
That is what matters.
When we try to explain it, we lose it. When we try to explain the stories which have grown up around God’s love we lose the love in the midst of the explanations, because love defies explanations. What matters is not whether Adam and Eve were actual, provable, existing people or whether they had belly buttons, but that God in infinite love peopled this lovely little planet for us to care for and expected that we would love each other, and that we would therefore love the God who made it all.
As long as our explanations are stories, seeking after truth rather than fact, we need not fear them. But when they become finite answers to infinite questions they contribute less to knowledge than to divisions and hatred and tears in heaven.
Unless an answer is “I love you,” it is apt to cause pain, not explanation.
O, God, I love you, for you love me, and love begets love.
* * *
—
As I contemplate the love of God which has sustained me for nearly eighty years, and still sustains, I think of Jesus’ young life being cut off, Jesus’ being misunderstood, hated by some, loved by a few who, despite Peter’s declaration that Jesus was the Christ, still did not understand. When Jesus tried to explain to his disciples the difficulties ahead, Peter cried out, “God forbid! This shall never happen to you.”
Jesus’ next words were, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are not on the side of God, but of man.”
These were hard words, and the disciples did not want to hear them. In effect, they closed their ears and refused to hear.
Six days went by and Jesus took Peter and James and John with him and went up to a high mountain, “and he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun and his garments became white as light.”
And Moses and Elijah appeared, talking with him.
And bumbling Peter wanted to build three booths, to keep them there. Back in their safe little boxes. Back right side up again.
The Transfiguration was, indeed, incomprehensible, and the disciples did not comprehend.
And a voice came out of the cloud saying, “This is my beloved Son. Hear him.”
Listen! Listen!
And suddenly the three disciples were alone with Jesus.
It was a moment of glory which preceded the darkness of the days which were to follow. How often people want mountaintop experiences, more, please, more! But Jesus’ disciples had only that one. The rest of the time they slogged along the dirty roads in the glaring heat, not knowing what was going to happen next.
Not knowing.
Peter, James, and John did not know what Jesus was showing them in that blinding light of the Transfiguration. Was it ordinary light? Or was it the light which Christ originally knew, uncreated light? They did not know whether they had dreamed, or whether they had actually seen what they had seen. As far as we know, after Peter’s suggestion of three tabernacles, they did not speak of it. Mortal language, human understanding, was not adequate.
* * *
—
A few days later Jesus tried again to alert them. He knew that he had antagonized the religious leaders beyond any hope of reconciliation. Perhaps Moses and Elijah had warned him of that, and affirmed his willingness to stay human, the mortal man who had to be with his brothers and sisters as they were, not as a god who could play at being mortal and who, when things got tough, would leave them to be God again. Jesus kept his promise to be human for us so that we might be human, too. It is difficult for us to understand his dual nature, but impossible if we diminish his humanity. Our understanding will not come in ordinary, mathematical proofs or equations, but in flashes of the reality of love, a reality which is often most honestly faced in the world of dream, myth, parable, and questions which have no finite answer.
* * *
—
Jesus knew that when he returned to Jerusalem, he would be going to his death, and he knew that this death would probably be by crucifixion because that was the worst punishment that the Romans allowed the Jews to give.
* * *
—
The cross. Oh, what about the cross! Everything in me rebels at the idea that the cross was part of God’s plan. The cross may have been inevitable, just as Cathleen’s death was inevitable when the drunken driver hit her car, but it was not preplanned. God knew that Jesus’ actions would lead to the cross, that his Son would die, but his love was so great that he would not interfere.
In my ears I hear a sort of midrash, the feminine in the Trinity exclaiming, “You planned what? Your own son? Are you crazy? That’s a terrible plan. No loving father would plan to crucify his own son. What are you thinking of? You almost made this mistake once before, and I had a terrible time finding a ram in time. But this—No. This is not a plan. This is not possible. This is not love.”
“Should I stop it?”
“Of course not. You know power is not what it is about. But you don’t plan it.”
No. Love is what it is about. Love is God.
If God is God, how much does God know? Is there anything that God does not know? The Russian theologian Nicholas Berdyaev believed that there were times when God chose not to know, in order not to deprive us of any of our freedom. But I think it’s more complex than that, and more difficult for us to understand. We human creatures live and know in time, whereas God also knows in eternity, which is not limited by time. Eternity is not a time concept. So the powerful paradox I live with is that God could know about the cross without planning it. In God’s eyes, the story is complete in eternity. To our limited way of thinking, God knows yesterday, today, tomorrow.
As Jesus points out, only God knows the moment of the Second Coming, and God is not telling, not even Jesus, not even the holy angels in heaven. God’s way of knowing the entire story is something we time-bound creatures can’t even begin to comprehend. Occasionally the saints and mystics are given glimpses, but they are only glimpses.
This does not mean a blank nothingness in our comprehension. In my childhood my father could not promise me that there would never be another war because he could see the lineup of the nations and where the tensions and angers were leading. My mother did not have to be a doctor (or God) to know that my father was dying. I did not have to have any special knowledge to know that when we left Europe and returned to the U.S.A. and to the South, not home to New York, things were going to be different.
* * *
—
There are terrible questions to be asked as we think about the nature of love and the nature of God.
A young woman comes to tea, bringing her three-month-old baby and her deepest questions. “Madeleine—”
“Yes?”
She brushes her lips gently over the baby’s soft, sparse hair, then raises her eyes to mine. “God is love? You believe that?”
I know what is coming. I answer softly, “Y
es.”
“Then what about the cross?”
“God did not stop it.”
“Could it have been stopped?”
“If God is God, yes.”
“But—what my Sunday school teacher said—the cross was something God already knew about before Jesus was born. God arranged it.” She shudders, holding her baby close. “I wouldn’t. I would never plan to kill my baby. On purpose. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or ten years from now. I know I can’t stop my baby from being hurt…but I’d never plan it ahead of time.”
Oh, God. Fumblingly I try to tell her my thoughts about time and eternity.
Do we dare allow God the free will that God gave us?
But she asks, “Does a God of love preplan the terrible death of a beloved Son in a hideous, painful way before that Son is even born? Was it really the way a loving Father would deliberately choose before he sent his only begotten Son to us for love of us?”
No. No. That is not how it is.
Dear God, how could you give us free will if you have no free will yourself? Does God’s free will conflict with God’s complete vision in eternity?
The young mother bounces her baby, and the little one crows with pleasure. “Babies used to die of diphtheria, but God didn’t plan for them to have diphtheria?”
“No,” I say.
“And then there was polio and now there are other weird new diseases, and that insurance company sent a baby home from the hospital too soon and the baby died, but God didn’t plan all this. I could never plan anything that would hurt my child just to make some kind of point.”
“No,” I agree.
“But when my baby had a cold last week I did everything I could to help. I sat up all night and rocked and sang and loved.”
“And loved,” I say.
“And when the baby cried, I cried, too.”
“You know the story of Noah and the flood?” I ask.
She looks startled. “Yes.”
“There’s a story that God was so sad at what was happening to his people that he wept for forty days and forty nights. God’s tears made the flood.”
* * *
—
Someone suggested, “Did [God] plan it? If I sent my child into a street, knowing that the child will never survive that street alive, did I plan her death? I think so. Even though I am not the one running her over, I knew it would happen and I intended it because I sent her there. In that sense, to me, God planned the Crucifixion.”
This is, to me, a horrible, unthinkable example. What mother would deliberately send her child into the street, knowing that the child will be killed? Wouldn’t the mother hold the little girl’s hand? I don’t believe that the writer of this example would ever do what she suggests. She continues, “But [the Crucifixion] was not premeditated murder.”
Wasn’t it? Isn’t it murder to send your child into the street knowing that she is going to be killed?
We flawed, limited human beings do not know what God knows. We only know, from reading and rereading Scripture, that God loves. That is enough. Do not try to explain it to me, and I will not try to explain it to you.
Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand,
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.
* * *
King of Kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
In the body and the blood
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.
It is the mystery of love. That is enough.
12
MY BRIGHT EVENING STAR
God’s love does not lessen the impact of Jesus’ dying on the cross but enlarges it. God has come to us and even gone to death for us, because love will not tamper with the free will given us, even though that free will leads to our death, our death far more than Jesus’ death. But God loves us so much that Jesus’ death is used to kill death. Adam couldn’t make it, didn’t love God enough to obey. But Jesus did, loved God enough so that he was willing, in his humanness, to go to a death that his divinity could have prevented.
He had raised people from the dead, the son of the widow of Nain, Jairus’s daughter, Lazarus—Lazarus who had been dead for four days.
Jesus called Lazarus from the grave and set off for Jerusalem.
* * *
—
Again he warned his disciples, telling them that he would be mocked and shamefully treated and spat upon, and that he would be scourged and killed, and on the third day he would rise.
But they understood none of these things. Instead, James and John asked that they might sit, one at his right hand, one at his left in his glory.
Had they heard nothing?
And again he told them that he had come to them not as a king but as one who serves.
* * *
—
When they drew near to Jerusalem and came to the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples: “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ Say, ‘The Lord has need of it.’ ”
A crowd followed, and people threw down their garments and palm branches. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”
“Hosanna in the highest!”
It was a raggle-taggle procession. Many had already left him. He entered Jerusalem, and taught, and told stories. He told of a man who planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants. When the time came, he sent one of his servants to collect his dues, but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent other servants, and they were equally evilly treated. Finally he sent his son, saying, “They will respect my son.” But the wicked tenants killed the son.
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they could not help knowing that Jesus was speaking about them. His last parables were told to the very people who were going to kill him. He would not have told this story at the beginning of his mission. Now, as he neared his death, the stories changed.
He stood over Jerusalem and mourned, “Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem!”
He warned his friends of the terrible troubles that were to come and urged them to be ready, “for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
Was he aware, then, that Judas was going to the chief priests in order to betray him? Did he know why? Did Judas know why? We can make guesses, that Judas perhaps was trying to force his hand, to get him to forget that he had promised to come to us mortals as one of us, and throw out a divine thunderbolt or two, but we will never know.
Meanwhile they prepared for the Passover. As they gathered together he warned them that one of them sitting at the table with him was going to betray him. And they began to question one another, and perhaps not one of them was entirely sure of his own loyalty.
As they were eating, Jesus took bread and blessed it and said, “This is my body.” And then he took the wine and said, “Drink you all of this,” and so began the holy mysteries we know when we, too, meet together, for bread, and for wine.
It is indeed a holy mystery, and when we try to define it we lose it, as we lose the truth of story when we confuse truth and fact.
Even at the Last Supper once again his disciples began to argue about which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. It is hard to believe. But would we have been any less selfish? And, yet again, Jesus reminded them that he had come as a servant, not as a lord.
Had Jesus expected that his message of Good Ne
ws would be received with joy? That his chosen disciples would understand him and stay with him in his time of need? That Judas would be trustworthy, not only with caring for the money of the disciples, but in his faith in Jesus? Did Jesus know the potential for denial in Peter when he called him from the fishnets?
Shouldn’t God have suggested fewer healings on the Sabbath? Couldn’t he have urged Jesus to be more tactful?
Not if Christ came to us as Jesus, fully human. And isn’t that what the Incarnation is all about?
They sat at the table together for that last meal, and he warned Peter that he was going to deny him. The other disciples were too busy arguing about who was going to be greatest to give any thought to the suffering of their Master. It took no prescience on Jesus’ part, no calling on the divine aspect of himself, to know what lay ahead.
Peter cried out, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”
Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, that the cock will not crow this day until three times you deny that you know me.”
* * *
—
He went to the garden to pray, taking Peter, James, and John with him, and even then, seeing their Master’s visible anguish, they could not keep their hearts alert with him but fell into sleep. They were the three disciples with whom Jesus was most intimate, who went with him to the Mount of Transfiguration, but they, even they did not have the strength to wait with him.
So Jesus had to struggle alone. Perhaps this was Satan’s final temptation. Did he insinuate, “You don’t have to go through with this, you know. Crucifixion is a horrible death. You’re God as well as mortal, Jesus. Isn’t it about time you forgot the mortal part and used your divinity to get out of this horror? You’ve failed in your mission. Nobody understands you. Nobody knows what you’re all about, so why not say—if you’ll pardon me—to hell with it and just go back to heaven? Or, if you insist on trying to help these idiots, let them crucify you and then leap down from the cross. That would be more spectacular than turning stones into bread.”
Bright Evening Star Page 13