Despairing to Hope
I am blessed with two wonderful parents! That they were not destined to remain husband and wife until parted by death I suppose will always be emotionally painful for me, but I am truly grateful that our love for one another has managed to transcend whatever differences divided the two of them. In a strange sort of way their separation has actually made it possible for me to get to know my parents as the individuals that might not have been as accessible as the couple. They each continue to challenge and inspire me to live life with purpose and meaning.
Their nurturing concern has spanned now more than half-a-century and has been most recently evident as they have each agonized with me as I have wrestled with a calling that no longer finds expression in the traditionally defined roles. And each of them continues to offer in their own unique way a promise of hope that has sustained them through their dark times as a way to get through my own. It was in the home they created that I first heard these words of Phillips Brooks:
Tomb, thou shall not hold him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right;
Faith and Hope triumphant say
Christ will rise (in human hearts) on Easter day!
No one needs to hear – and more importantly to assimilate – these words more than me. I have let myself become overwhelmed by the apparent apathy of the American people toward the treachery and deceit of the Bush Administration that has plunged us into an international quagmire while at the same time undermining our most precious liberties at home in the feigned name of patriotism. My children will be victimized by a national debt that already defies any sort of rational remedy, my planet is being raped to satisfy unquenchable corporate and personal greed, and my religious/spiritual freedom is being usurped by right-wing fanatics that have managed to put their Messiah in the White House.
I have not yet seen Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” and am beginning to suspect that I never will. If there truly were those who did not know or comprehend the horrific nature of Jesus’ crucifixion then the film may have served some polemical purpose. It also served to remind those of us already familiar with the story of what a truly dark moment in human history that day was. For as hopeless as the world situation seems to me today, it pales by comparison to how those disciples of two millennia ago must have felt about their situation.
The reason that any of what happened then is still remembered now, however, is because something transformed those followers’ despair into hope. I am skeptical that this “something” was the sudden formulation a complex Christology based upon sacrament, ritual, and a catechism for human (or for that matter, personal) salvation. All of this was, for better or for worse, to come later. I believe that the transformational phenomenon experienced by the original faithful was the realization by those who knew him that Jesus was the incarnation of Truth, a living expression of the Ultimate Reality that could not be destroyed, even by cruel and unjust execution.
From such an understanding I am able to pursue my own transformational movement from despair to genuine hope. The eternal Truth is revealed throughout the ages as it passes from one generation to the next through those who have known and experienced it, and it is just as accessible to me this Easter as it was to those who witnessed the first. Rather than dwelling in darkness, I can turn my vision to the light. Rather than being oppressed by the wrong, I can liberate myself by pursuing the right. Rather than succumbing to despair, I can truly discover hope in the resurrection promise that “Death is strong, but Life is stronger!” Thanks, Mom and Dad, for making known to me the Truth, and for continuing to encourage me to encounter and embrace it. Amen.
