When my daughter was younger, we
listened to a
story on tape about Contrary Mary. Contrary Mary liked to do
everything in a contrary, backward manner. She would say
“yes” when she meant “no,” and she’d say
“no,” when she meant “yes.” She would eat
dessert first, then her main meal. She often wore her clothes
on
backward. For her birthday, her parents invited several of
her
friends over for the party. When they brought out her
birthday
cake, they sang, “Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to
You! Happy Birthday, dear Mary! Happy Birthday to
You!” But everyone could see that Mary was not
happy.
Tears were welling up in her eyes! What could be
wrong?
Then her father had an inspiration: “Birthday Happy You
to!” he sang. “Birthday Happy You to! Birthday Happy You
to! Birthday Happy, Mary dear! Birthday Happy You to!” And Mary
clapped her hands and laughed with joy.
This story comes to my mind when I meditate on how God chose to bring
salvation to us. For we are the Holy Creator’s beloved
children – yet we have wandered away from God and fallen into sin
and death. How God longs to redeem us and save us, to bring
us
out of the pit of human mortality, out of pain and sorrow, out of evil
and death, into God’s holy goodness and light! And so God
acted. But what a contrary way to act! Is God just being like
Contrary Mary, playing games? Or is there a deeper reality
and
purpose behind God’s actions? For God did not do at all what we
humans would have expected. Think about it:
First of all, instead of remaining safely divine, immortal, and
all-powerful, instead of manipulating and sending power from above, God
jumped into the pit of human mortality with us. How do you
get
people out of a pit if you jump in and join
them? And
he didn’t become an all-powerful, immediately full grown gifted
human, like gods in previous religions – instead God was born, in
the blood and pain of the labor of a woman, God was born as a tiny,
vulnerable, dependent baby. And not in the comfortable stone
house of a merchant or the marble palace of a king, but amid the rough
straw and stinky manure of an animal barn.
Secondly, look at how God-as-man grew up – in a despised region
of a despised nation occupied by a despised set of oppressors –
son of a lowly carpenter. How contrary to human expectations
can
you get? And so it is with the whole story of Jesus of
Nazareth,
Son of God, fully human – fully divine. As we have been
following his life in this season of Lent we see how very contrary to
our ways of thinking, to our minds, this life of God-on-earth
was. The people he chose for followers were unimportant
people as
this world’s reality would have it: they were poor or uneducated;
they were demon-possessed until healed by Jesus or were seen as
murderous oppressors until they were loved into repentance by
Jesus. Yet this is how God chose to act and to use
divine
power! It makes us wonder: what is power? What is true
reality? What is our contrary God up to?
The climax to all this contrariness begins today, as we come to last
week of God’s human life on earth. And
again,
the scene is contrary to human expectations. Oh yes, over the
years we have made it into a triumphal entry into the capital city, the
holy city. But look more closely at what really happened. Did
Jesus ride in on a war stallion as a victorious King?
No!
He took a young colt of a donkey, the slow and steady transportation of
a man of peace, not a victorious king, the same transportation his
pregnant mother used going to Bethlehem. And who was it that
cheered him as he passed by? Who tore off branches and laid
down
cloaks? The little people, children and others considered
unimportant. The important religious leaders pooh-poohed
these
shouts of joy. And then God did the most unexpected contrary
act
of all: the Human-Divine One went to the cross, a criminal’s
sentence, and died. The power of God to transform began with
the
powerful act of sacrifice.
As I pondered the improbable, contrary work of our God, I was drawn to
reread parts of the novel “The Life of Pi.” Pi, a Hindu
youngster, is drawn to a Christian church where he meets an old priest
with whom he winds up having many conversations about the Christian God
and His Son. Pi is very shaken by the story of Jesus and his
death. He says:
“I’d never heard of a god dying.. . . . divinity should not
be blighted by death. It’s wrong. . . . It was wrong of
this Christian God to let His [incarnation] die. That is
tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son
is to
die, it cannot be fake. . . . The death of the Son must be
real.
Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God,
always
a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of
death forever in his mouth . . . The horror must be real. Why
would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the
mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is
perfect? ‘Love’. That was Father Martin’s
answer.”
Do you see how contrary this God is to the way humans beings understand
God? Are you able to get a glimpse of how this God turns all
our
notions of power upside down? As Samuel Wells, the author of
our
Lenten study book states, Jesus’ use of power transforms reality
– and reality is not at all as we imagined it.
So what is the power that God uses? Why does God act in such
a
contrary manner? The priest in the novel names it with one
word,
“Love,” he says. That’s what the Bible tells us
too: love is the power of God, love beyond our deepest longings and
imaginings, love that is more passionate than all our passions, love
that is more powerful than all powers, love that is more gentle than
the gentlest caress, love that is more creative than the most splendid
art. Love is the power of God, and this love created the
universe, black holes and all; love created the lands and the oceans,
love shaped the tiny, simple, one-celled animals and formed us, large,
complex human beings. Love chose to work through humans,
through
humble, flawed disciples. Love chose to walk the road of the
cross and die for us. And when God’s Son died, reality
turned upside down and was transformed, and the contrariness of
God’s power of love turned death into life; the contrariness of
God’s power caused an act of extreme sinfulness to become a
source of salvation.
Through the cross and the resurrection, the reality of God burst out in
full force to confront and throw down the reality of human sin and
death and all the false values of this world. And so we
Christians now live in two realities that carry entirely different
conceptions of what is powerful and what is good: on the one
hand, we are part of the reality in which power and strength is seen as
having large armies, complex advanced technologies and political
coercion; on the other hand, we are called to God’s reality, a
reality in which power is contrary to these kinds of human power
– it works through the small, the meek, the children, the humble.
God’s reality is backward to what this world teaches, to the
point that it takes death to bring life, the death of God’s Son
to stop death and transform it into life.
What reality do you choose to live in, God’s reality or the
shadow reality promoted by this world? For that is the choice
we
have – God’s reality or human reality, God’s power or
human power.
In the confirmation retreat yesterday, the two topics were
“prayer,” and “Christ and culture.” We put
these topics together purposely: Christ and culture dealt with the
aspects of our contemporary cultures that oppose Christian values (such
as the rampant consumerism of contemporary society in America and the
West), and the aspects of culture where godly values play a strong role
– such as the social movements for justice and mercy, or the work
to end violence in the home and wars among the nations. It was a
contrast in realities: God’s reality and human realities.
And one essential key to living in God’s reality is
prayer. Prayer is the source of God-power and
connects us
to the reality that Jesus brought with his life and death. In
the
retreat, I showed these young people different ways to pray, different
ways to tap into God’s reality. They learned how to ground
prayer in the Word of God, in the Psalms and in the stories of
Jesus. They learned the classic kinds of Christian prayers,
such
as adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication that are
modeled in the scriptures and developed by the Christian family over
the centuries.
Are you choosing to begin living in God’s contrary reality
through prayer and study? Are you working with Jesus to transform all
of human reality into God’s reality? And are you models for
others, for these confirmands and other young people, models who
demonstrate how to live in God’s reality? Are you a coach on how
to receive courage and strength from God’s power in Christ Jesus?
Are you using God power or human power?
In our Lenten groups we have been reflecting on the power that each
person had who was around Jesus when he was arrested and
executed. We have explored in depth the words and actions
such
persons as Pilate and Pilate’s wife, as Nicodemus and Joseph of
Aramathea, Peter and Mary Magdalene. Each one used the power they had
in a different way. Wells believes that we can learn from
them,
for we all have a certain amount of power just as these persons did,
and we need to employ it for God’s kingdom.
But I don’t have any power! you may say. Ah, but we have
God’s power! God even seems to prefer to use us, the weaker
vessels, to spread God’s love. You and I can make a difference in
this world! You and I, even the “least” among us, can
live in God’s reality and exercise the power that our contrary
God gives us, the power of love. And by that I do not mean simply the
feeling of love. Love is a decision to act, however one
feels. That decision begins with an act of love toward God:
the
decision to pray and study the Bible, the decision to listen to
God’s Word through scripture and sacrament. Love is a
decision of how to act towards others: it is a decision to be
honest, whatever the cost. It is a decision to forgive, in
spite
of the hurt. It is a decision to listen, no matter how
painful. It is a decision to reach out, when all we want to
do is
turn away. It is a decision to turn over the tables of business as
usual and demand God’s justice. It is a decision to risk
one’s life for the love of God and neighbor. And these
decisions make all the difference.
These decisions to turn away from power as the world understands it and
choose God’s power is part of God’s plan to transform the
world. Our decisions are important to God and for our lives.
They
are decisions to be contrary and to live in the contrary reality of
God. There are decisions to follow Jesus, the Christ, down
the
Mount into Jerusalem, on the road of sacrifice; they culminate in the
decision to follow our contrary God and the Son all the way to the
cross. Can you do that? Amen.
