Rotten in Denmark

Rotten in Denmark--October 12, 2017

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies...." [Romans 8:19-23]

Things are not okay.

There--let's just say it.  Grit your teeth, pull off the Band-Aid, and let's say it: things are not okay.

They are not okay here.  They are not okay there.  Things are not okay anywhere.

Forgive me if that sounds vaguely like the  depressing opening line of a rejected Dr. Seuss book, but we do need to be clear, crystal clear here, rather than either sticking our heads in the sand or thinking that the "Christian thing to do" is always to play the role of Pollyanna.  

No, in fact, the Scriptures themselves give us both the example and the ability to face things and say it out loud.  Things are not okay...anywhere.

That might sound hopelessly bleak as an assessment (although, again, take a look--Paul himself is saying the same thing here in Romans, about the "groaning" of this whole hurting creation that is currently in "bondage to decay"), but in truth, the recognition that Things Are Not Okay comes from a place of hope.  The followers of Jesus are people who dare to live by the hope that all creation will be put right, and because of that, we can be honest about what is out of sorts now.  In fact, the only way that things can be put right ever is by first saying out loud that they are not as they ought to be yet.  

That's why, after all, the first step in any Twelve Step program is admitting that there is a problem--or, in the language of the AA Big Book, "that our lives had become unmanageable."  Only the things we dare say out loud can be addressed and dealt with--that's why the supremely evil Voldemort in the Harry Potter books thrives on being called "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."  

And so, as Paul does here for us in his letter to the Romans, part of our calling as people of hope, part of our vocation as people being moved by Mercy into God's future, is to be able to say, like Shakespeare's Marcellus, when something is rotten in the state of Denmark...or, as Paul sees it, in all of creation.

And what, precisely, is it in creation that is "rotten"?  

Well, maybe rotten is just the right word--Paul's phrase is that all of creation is in "bondage to decay," which is to say, that death itself, Death as a "power," as a "force" you could say, is at the core of what is wrong.  Death as a Power leads us to be afraid of death--and when we are ruled by fear of death, we are then led to fear anyone and anything that we think might cause death or pain or destruction, and pretty soon that includes us fearing one another, or fearing when you have more than me because scarcity means hunger means death.  Death as a Power leads us to bend inwards, to become concerned only with self-interest, with survival rather than life in its fullness, with preserving me-and-my-group-first rather than seeing ourselves connected (as God intended) with all creation, and with all other humans.  What is rotten is our capacity as humans to destroy what God made good... to twist and bend and distort what was intended to be bountiful, abundant, and beautiful... to taint and infect and pollute what was made to be fresh and life-giving.  

The difficult thing that has to be said is that we--yes, us, human beings, including you and me--have a way of spreading death around.  We ravage our farmland with chemicals and industrial-scale demand in order to keep up with the pressure of the market, only to leave the land spent and unable to keep pace.  We kill one another with an increasing numbness to the reality of the preciousness of human life.  We let ourselves be ruled by fear of "those people," (with each of us having a different picture perhaps of who "those people" are that we want to scapegoat as causing all our problems), which leads us to indifference, hatred, or hostility.  We have collectively decided that because in our society, we should all have limitless access to screens on infinite little and big devices, all of which stream new and flashier distractions at our eyes, that it is acceptable how the rare metals needed to make our phones and tablets and such are all poisonous to the miners and cause them to get sick from thorium exposure.  Our desire to consume, and then throw away, rather than to fix what is broken, spreads death around this whole hurting creation.  And our desire to look backward wistfully to some imaginary time in our minds when things were "great", rather than to look around now and deal with what is not okay in the present moment is one more way of making it all worse by ignoring what is really wrong.

The problem is deep within... us.  The problem is something inside each of us that goes rotten--that is all bound up with the reality--and fear--of Death.  Fear of death leads us to hate other people who make us feel threatened.  Fear of death leads us to hoard... and then to get comfortable with our abundance coming at the expense of others getting to eat.  Fear of death leads us always push for more... bigger... newer... rather than finding a balance and a life inside good boundaries.  Our fear of Death makes us jerks to one another, and our denial of the consequences of that fear just makes it worse.  Played out at the micro level of your or my day-to-day life, it is that same fear that keeps us from stopping to help the stranded person by the side of the road (they might be trying to scam us!), as well as what keeps us from standing on the side of those who are threatened, vulnerable, and endangered (we don't want to risk our own comfort, livelihoods, or lives!).  We--yes, you and me--are infected with the decay from which the whole world is also crumbling, too.

That's what's rotten in the state of Denmark, and indeed the whole world.  That is what needs to be faced and dealt with.  It is our fear of "decay" and "futility," as Paul puts it, that leads us actually to infect more and more of creation with death.  We are part of the problem.  And now all of creation groans to be put right, because our actions affect the whole.

Our hope, in the face of all of that rottenness, is that God promises not to let our own ashen Midas touch be the end.  God, Paul says, is well aware of how all of creation is tainted, and how we human beings spread the sickness with which creation is groaning.  And God has promised to bring a whole new creation to birth--the same but new, ancient but fresh, original but renovated.  But that news only means something if we are willing to acknowledge that all of this is wrong in the first place.  

And that is important in all of this: even our confession, our naming, of the brokenness of creation is itself a kind of witness to its hopeful restoration.  Like C. S. Lewis was fond of pointing out, our seemingly innate sense of justice--that feeling of anger and upset when things are not "the way they are supposed to be" and when people are mistreated--is evidence that there IS in fact a "way things are supposed to be." And if we are pre-wired for justice, then it would seem that there must be a Source from which that notion of justice comes.  That, Lewis says, is part of what convinces him that God is real--our universal human sense that justice should be done... even if we cannot often agree of what that justice should look like.  If we have been built with an internal compass that agitates us when someone is taken advantage of, or oppressed, or picked on, it is a sign for us that there is a Someone who cares that justice ultimately be done, who has made us to be wired in such a way.

Today, then, there is good news:  the brokenness of creation, ourselves included, can be named--because God promises that at the last all creation will be put right and freed from being entangled with death.  And with that news, we can also be people capable of telling the other truth first--that there is something wrong with us, too, as well as with all this whole world.  The promised future God holds out for us is the very thing that enables us to have the courage and vision to say where things are broken and out of sorts now.  The promise we hold onto that "all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be made well" is the thing that gives us hope enough to say, honestly, right now that things are not okay.  And it gives us reason, as well, to spend our lives making the worlds we inhabit look even just a glimpse more like that promised future day.

Let us, in this moment, then dare to be hopeful enough to say "things are not okay" in the world around us, and then to be about God's work of living in line with the promised future when all is restored and refreshed.  Let us be courageous enough to tell the truth, and hopeful enough to bear that truth and still hold onto God's vision of new creation.

Lord God, your kingdom come... your will be done.