Stop for a moment and listen carefully. Do you hear the groans of the world? Do you hear it crying out in pain? Look around. Can you see places where ‘normal’ is no being called no longer useful? Can you see places where the fabric of our lives appears to be torn to shreds? What do we make of the groans, the cries of pain, the challenges to what is normal, this shredding of the comfortable? Are they death throes or birth pangs?
This summer I read a wonderful little book called Virus as a Summons to Faith by Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. Published last year, the book is collection of 7 reflections on passages of Scripture in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. The last two reflections are about change and God’s new thing. Both Jewish and Christian Scripture reminds us that God is in the process (constantly I think) of doing a new thing. The God who created the world is constantly at work creating and re-creating the world. Sometimes that fact brings hope and joy. Sometimes it brings fear and pain. Every time something new is born something old dies, at least a little bit. As Revelation proclaims “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away”. When God does a new thing there are great gains, there may also be great losses.
As I look at the world I see and hear so many signs and sounds that the world is groaning, calling out for liberation from the chains of our normal. The very earth is groaning with the reality of climate change. Our Indigenous neighbours and siblings are crying out for truth-telling, recognition, and reconciliation. The pandemic of the last 18 months has exposed flaws in our economic models, flaws in what we assume to be the most ‘profitable’ way to live together. As a person of faith I believe that God is speaking in, and listening to, these groans and cries. I believe that God is doing what God has always done – working to bring liberation and justice to the world. I wonder what things will look like when God is finished? I wonder what it will be like to live through it?
Woody Allen is reported to have said “I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.”. A variation on the same idea is to not be afraid of death, but not wanting to go through the process of dying. Often I think the same holds true for any great change in our lives. We may have great hope and vision for the end result. But there is a part of us that does not want to go through the hard work of transition. It would be much nicer if there was just some big switch we could turn and get tot he end result without the pain and struggle. Alas, that is not how life works. Even when it is God leading the charge for change it is a slow process with struggle and loss and pain involved. Remember, the people of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years before they crossed into the Promised Land.
As a species, as a culture, we can be very good at turning a deaf ear to the groans. We can deny there is any problem. We can build walls to defend the normal and the comfortable. We might do this on a personal level. We might do it on a communal level. We might in fact do both of those. But the groans don’t go away. Eventually we have to listen to them, as God is already listening. Eventually we have to embrace the possibility of loss for the promise of a greater gain.
Both the prophet Isaiah and the apostle Paul used the image of a woman in labour to talk about the work God is doing to re-create and renew the world. Childbirth is accomplished with a lot of discomfort, to say the least. Sometimes (often?) the pains of childbirth are described as the worst pain the person has ever endured. Bringing forth new life is not easy, sometimes it is downright difficult and dangerous. But the pain is endured because of the promise of new life that lies beyond. Heck, many mothers even choose to go through it more than once!
How will we respond to the groaning of the world? Will we risk, or even embrace, the possibility that some things we have held dear will die so that something new will be born? Will we dare to feel both the death throes and the birth pangs as God brings re-creation and renewal to the world?
No comments:
Post a Comment