We tend to see God in good, pleasant, pleasurable things. The glorious rainbow my son and I saw last week driving home from the grocery store. Sunsets, flowers. Peaceful, gentle, loving feelings.
And God is there, it is true. But Scripture isn't there to teach us that easy message of finding God in the beautiful. (Don't get me started on the 'spiritual but not religious' folk who claim they find God more in rainbows and sunsets than in churches.) Scripture's radical message is that God is also present - and perhaps even more present - in painful, difficult, terrifying, awful, hideous things. In death, decay, despair. In barrenness and sorrow. The grain of wheat that must die. The yeast that makes bread impure. The vinegar that only increases thirst. In the Crucifixion - the broken and beaten man who hung bleeding on the cross. God is in the midst of all these things. How do we find Him there?
The message of Scripture - the message of the parable of the grain of wheat and of the leaven - is not only the (rather trite) moral that "small things can make a big difference," but also that those small deaths, those moments of sorrow and thirst, are small compared to the abundance of life God's creative grace can yield out of it. The point is just as much about the death of the mustard seed as it is about its size. When we are suffering we can feel so small. We feel that our pain exists in a vast and empty and desolate place where no one can reach, no one can care. We find no meaning for any of it. It is lonely, comfortless chaos. We are tiny specks in the universe, and we are dying. Where is God?
God does not minimize human suffering. He does not deny or negate its reality. Yes, the death is real. The dark night is real. The corruption and the sorrow and the decay: they are real. But He invites us to recognize His powerful creativity in the midst of those moments: those moments when we feel there is nothing but death and barrenness, when we are most hopeless and despairing.
St. Clement points to nature as containing hints or clues - signs of God at work in the natural cycle of destruction and creation. Behold, I make all things new! The Old Testament itself reflects this dynamism: salvation is not a linear event, but an upward spiral of falling and rising and falling again. Christ Himself points to nature as revelatory of God's plan for all the world. And, as St. Paul tells us, nature, too, waits - hopes - groans for salvation.
How to be content with hope? Hope is the opposite of satisfaction, yet God tells us to be satisfied with it. Hope is not the certainty of sight. How do we live on hope in the absence of certainty? We see the signs. We trust. But there is always the seed of uncertainty. Not doubt - but uncertainty. It is as fallacious to equate doubt and uncertainty as it is to equate knowledge and belief. I believe, but I am uncertain. I am uncertain, but I do not doubt. If I were certain, I would not hope. If I were certain, my heart would not pound with anticipation, I would not turn my eyes to God with joy-filled eagerness. I am not certain: I hope. But hope, too, is a thing far more profound than ambivalence. It is a thing backed up by faith, buttressed by love. I hope because I have faith; I have faith because I love. One must love God first before one can believe in His promises, and one must believe before one can hope that those promises will be fulfilled.
The question of Genesis: will God be faithful to His promise? Will we be faithful to ours? The question is answered: God is always faithful, even when we are not. But in the midst of every human life in every age, the question must arise again. The drama of salvation must unfold. It is not a boring event with a foregone conclusion. It is a living thing. Our future with God is an open-ended event, and we press forward with excitement to see its conclusion. Can you feel the enthusiasm of the early church? Waiting, singing songs of joy, groaning with anticipation, full of the heady flux of feelings that stir in the breast of anyone asked to wait patiently before being united with the thing - the ONE - they love most in the world. Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus!
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