I Am with You Always, to the End of the Age
I listen to quiet music coming from a hand-pan as a gentle
snow falls upon a Colorado mountain. I ponder suffering. It seems to be as the
Buddha said 27 hundred years ago – there is Suffering. So very much suffering that
even our planet Earth is suffering. As chapter 13 of Luke opens up, some people
tell Jesus of the suffering in Jerusalem as Pontius Pilate had slaughtered
pilgrims from Galilee and “mingled their blood with their sacrifices.” Appointed
sacrifices that could only be offered in the Jerusalem Temple. Jesus then
recalls those killed when a tower in Jerusalem crashed and fell to the ground. One
tragedy the result of an intentional calculated act of terror by a powerful
Roman official; the other an accident? Or, perhaps the result of shoddy
workmanship in an effort to save time and money and maximize profit.[i]
Suffering. Like the intentional act of violence and terror
against the people of Ukraine. Or, people still suffering the effects of the earthquake-tsunami
and nuclear plant meltdown in Fukishima, Japan.
Earlier Luke tells us, “When the days drew near for him to
be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”[ii]
He has already told his friends and disciples that he goes there to enter into
the suffering. Who knows, once he is in Jerusalem, perhaps he will recall Psalm
63, “O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my
flesh faints for you, as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.”
We know this feeling all too well. We internalize the world’s suffering; that
of our loved ones; our own sufferings. When talking to the people about the
fate of the Galileans and the Jerusalemites, what he says is what he always
says, “Repent.” By which he means, as Psalm 63 concludes, “My soul clings to
you; your right hand holds me fast.” There is so little time to turn, to
re-turn, to the Lord. For who knows when our end will some. But fear not, for I
am there. I will be there with you through any and all suffering. It has
nothing to do whether you have been naughty or nice. I will always be there. If
you turn, you will see me. You will know that I am with you.
Then he tells them a story about a tree. William Countryman
in his little book, Good News of Jesus[iii]
tells the same story about a woman and her two trees:
The new life of
the good news is like this. There was a woman who lived in the country in Sonoma
County, near Sebastopol. She had no relatives there – not even any close
neighbors. The nearest was an elderly man who lived a half-mile away. Behind
her house she had a garden, and at the foot of the garden, two apple trees that
were her pride and joy.
Once she was
called away to care for her only living relative, who was sick and lived very
far away. She gave a key to the elderly man, who promised to look in on her
house every week or so; but he was too infirm to care for her garden. She
thought she would be away a few months, but she was gone for two years. From
far away, she heard about drought and fires and storms.
When at last the
woman came home, she found her house had lost some shingles, and there was a
little water damage inside. Otherwise, things were much as she left them. Then she
went through the house and out into the garden. It was overgrown with tall grass
and nettles. At the foot of the garden were her two apple trees. They were in
bloom – at the height of their bloom, when apple trees look like white clouds
with a touch of pink and the petals are just beginning to fall and carpet the
ground with white as well.
She stood thee awhile
and drank it all in, and her heart filled with delight and thanks. Then she
unlocked the toolshed, took out her pruners and, wading through the weeds, went
down to the apple trees and began cutting out deadwood. And she thought. She thought
of the day when she would have apples for herself and her neighbor.
The snow continues to fall, the music continues to fill the
air. I once read that our image of God creates us. Like Pilate, like the woman
in the story, we make choices. We can be reactive like Pilate, like the man in
the story Jesus tells, and cut the tree down. But is that what we really think
our God wants us to do? Is this what our God wants to do to us, whether or not
we have been naughty or nice? Our God is not Santa Claus. That is not a God of
good news. My God is more like the woman who bears no anger toward her neighbor
who let the property go while she was attending to her sick relative. Instead,
her heart is filled with delight and thanks. She looks forward the day when she
will have apples for herself and her neighbor.
Yes, there is suffering. The Buddha, like Jesus, also said
there is a way through suffering. A path. A hand to which we may cling when we
feel we are in a barren and dry land where there is no water. Jesus set his
face to go to Jerusalem – Jerusalem, which at the time, was the center of much
suffering. He sings Psalms, songs, as he enters into our suffering to be with
us. Jesus, who also says, “I will be with you always, to the end of the age.”[iv]
What is our image of God? Just how and who does it make us?
Can we reach out in our suffering and cling to God’s hand? These are the
questions that race through my mind as I listen to the sound of a hand-pan as
snow gently falls upon a Colorado mountain. I ponder suffering. I ponder Jesus
setting his face toward all that suffering in Jerusalem. I ponder the Buddha’s
path through suffering. I ponder the psalmist who sings of our constant need to
turn our souls toward the Creator. And oddly, I begin to feel delight and
thanks in the midst of great sorrow. Amen.
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