Within the Mess of History

Within the Mess of History--November 21, 2017

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." [John 1:14]

I know.  This has a way of hitting our ears as a "Christmas verse," the kind of thing that we aren't supposed to trot out and talk about until late December, and usually within a ten-foot radius of a porcelain Nativity set. And yes, this is verse from John's Gospel is describing the birth of Jesus, or the closest we get to any kind of story of Jesus' birth, since just a few verses later Jesus erupts onto the scene in John's Gospel as a full-grown adult.

But I need us to talk about this verse for a moment--I need you to think it out with me and help me think it through, without getting swept up in sentimentality or hearing it just as a sermon on mangers and shepherds (about which, of course, John doesn't say a thing).

I need to us to spend some time simmering with this passage without the pumpkin spice, peppermint, or egg-nog flavoring we would impose on it in December, and we need to think about what it means, quite simply, that--as John would have us believe--the living God crashes right into the mess of human history, in all of its muddiness, ambiguity, and paradox.

John the Gospel writer is interested in Jesus' birth, not so much as a story to have children re-enact in a yearly pageant, but as a way of saying that the infinite God chooses to get bogged down, waist-deep, in the quagmire of history.  And the Jesus we meet in the Gospels--John's and the other three alike--is one who is able to embrace people who are still tangled up in the mess themselves, often on different "sides" at the same time.  His own followers include Roman hirelings like the tax collector Matthew/Levi on the one hand, and at least one former (?) violent revolutionary against the Romans, Simon "the Zealot." He sits and discusses things civilly and honestly with the religious teachers, the Pharisees, and the experts in the law, and at the same time, he invites himself over to the parties of the unrespectable and unacceptable "tax collectors and sinners," even getting himself something of a reputation for being a glutton and a drunk for his way of enjoying their festivities.  He associates with the strictest of the rule-keepers, and then gets "caught" encouraging disregard for basic rules like Sabbath.  He eats at table with both the very rich and the very poor.  He includes among his followers those who cared about only "Israelites First" and then also deliberately crosses borders to go heal outsiders, outcasts, and Gentile foreigners, without checking their membership cards first to make sure they were on an approved list and eligible for his help. 

These events are not up for debate--they are simply culled from the stories of the Gospels.  In other words, whether we like it or not, and whether we know what to make of it or not, Jesus shows us a God who enters into history precisely in history's messiness, whose presence reaches to people who found themselves on all sorts of sides, sometimes quite opposing toward one another.  And yet Jesus met them where they were.   When John says that "the Word became flesh and lived among us," it is clear that the "us" is a pretty wide and diverse group.

I find this both deeply comforting and also quite challenging to make sense of, because I also get the sense from Jesus that there are times when it does matter to know where the side of "right" is.  I get the sense from Jesus--yes, from none other than this same Jesus--that there are times when Jesus' followers should be able to say, "this is the right side of history to be on."  Jesus, for as much as he is able to enter the mess of things and meet people where they were, also unapologetically took stands and confronted people, making no bones about upsetting the Respectable Religious Crowd, whether healing on the Sabbath, writing in the dirt to the sound of rocks dropping around him to protect a woman who was about to be killed by a mob, or deliberately provoking his hometown congregation to tell them that God loved foreigners (see Luke 4, and notice the turn from v. 16-22 to v. 23-30).  There is no question: there were times in the life of Jesus when Jesus was clear that there was a right side to be on--and (shockingly!) that it was not the side of the Respectable Religious Crowd as often as they might have thought!

And so, we have to be able to say, at least sometimes, that there is a "right side of history" to be on.  We have to be able to say that the Nazi war machine was wicked and evil, and that it was not right or "ok" to let it continue.  We have to be able to say that segregation in our own history was not ok, and that it never was, no matter how many "Christian" preachers and churchgoers all had gotten comfortable with it.  We have to be able to say that the Civil War was fought over whether it was permissible to own human beings or not, and that the God of the Exodus has a stake in that question and does in fact have a policy on slavery. We have to be able to say that apartheid in South Africa was wrong--not just unpleasant or against someone's preferences, but wrong.  There are times when we have to be able to say, "Yes, there is a right and a wrong side on this one," and there are times when we have to find the courage to say it when the emperor is wearing no clothes.  

We live in times when it is easy (and increasingly popular) to play the "what-about..." game, where I respond to your criticism on "my" side by bringing up an unrelated bad thing on "your" side by saying, "Well, what about...?" and creating a false-equivalency.  We live in a day when Moses says to Pharaoh, "God says you have to let the Hebrew slaves go," and Pharaoh says back, "Well, what about that time you fought an Egyptian?  You're not perfect... we've all done stuff we're not proud of, and there's blame to go around on both sides here, so I'll keep the slaves. "  And in the midst of those times, Moses has to say, "No--these things are not just morally equivalent."

And yet... as much as we can see such things with clarity, they are messy at the same time.  If it was the "right" side of history to oppose the Nazis in World War II, at the same time, is there some conversation we have to have about the death and destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?  If the "right" side of history was to end slavery the United States, at the same time, mustn't we also acknowledge and face the horror of all that bloodshed on battlefields from Gettysburg to Antietam?  The moments at which we are self-assured of being on the "right" side of history sometimes also come with a terrible, even horrifying cost to them.  And that's part of the mess, too--everybody always assumes that their side is the "right" side, and thus that they are on the "right side of history."  But just because the Nazis or American slave-owners thought they were right, had a feeling of righteousness about their actions, or had even mangled some Bible verses to prop up their mindset, it doesn't mean they really were right.  But acknowledging that also means acknowledging that history is often messier to interpret than simply "having a feeling" that you are on the "right side of history."

For that matter, the same God who takes a stand against Pharaoh and takes sides in the Exodus also reveals a face in Jesus that loves sinners while they are sinners and who embraces even the worst in us, while we are still fully of ugliness in our souls.  The same God who, I am convinced, said "NO!" to Nazism also loved and still loves the old German lady I once knew who grew up in Hitler's era and remembered what it was like to have no food and no hope after the first Great War.  The same God who, I believe, led Dr. King's movement to resist segregation, over against the efforts of the KKK and Jim Crow lawmakers, also still went to a cross for the people who wore the white hoods and passed despicable laws while saluting their flag.  The same Christ who stopped the crowd holding rocks to stone the woman caught in adultery in John 8 also loved and gave his life for the angry lynch-mob, too.  The God we meet in Jesus--this "Word" who became "flesh" and lived among us--comes right into the thick of the mess that runs right through each one of us. 

And this is the conundrum in which I find myself (and which I believe we all find ourselves in if we take our following of Jesus seriously at all): we believe in a God who both enters into history in all its messiness, and who does, at least sometimes, say Yes to things and No to other things within that history... within the flow of our lives and the events which become our histories.  And while sometimes it is painfully clear (or should be painfully clear) where the God we meet in Christ stands, sometimes we also are so convinced of our "rightness" that we are unable to see that Christ is there... as well as over here, and that Jesus called both tax collectors and revolutionaries to follow him.  Sometimes we only see what "the right side of history" was all along in hindsight, and sometimes, we are afraid of seeing clearly because we know it will mean upending what we have grown comfortable with accommodating.

And sometimes--at least I will say this for myself--we/I are cowards who do not want to take a step into something scary by taking a stand when it is costly or unpopular.  We might have let the crowd stone the woman caught in adultery, because of fear of upsetting the Respectable Religious Crowd.  We might have left the man with the withered hand to suffer, or given the cold shoulder to the woman at the well.  Jesus is brave; I am a scaredy-cat.

This is the mess that is human history.  And the scandal of the Gospel is that the God who stands above the mess to take sides against Pharaoh and free slaves also enters into history as One of us to embrace humanity from within the mess.  That means even when we have clarity about rightness and wrongness of sides, the God whose face is Jesus loves people who are on the opposite side... without excusing or equating sides and saying they don't matter anymore.  Jesus loves the people I totally disagree with--and sometimes the people I totally disagree with are totally wrong, and sometimes they are right and I just don't see or admit it yet.  But part of the Christian faith is also daring to believe in a God who loves people who are on the wrong side of history as well as those who will be vindicated to have been on the right side.  

I wish sometimes that things could be simpler--that the Bible would just give us every answer to every question and that God's love would only be for the people who agreed with the right answers.  But that is not the way the Scriptures themselves show us God.  No, instead, we get John the Gospel writer saying that the Word became flesh, and lived among us... entering the mess, redeeming the mess, and loving the mess, while also being able to say "yes" to what is good and just and to say "no" to the Pharaohs and angry religious lynch-mobs.

When days come that I can make no progress walking forward or seeing clearly, or when I wish that everybody would just "see it my way," I am reminded of this line of John's--that the Word became flesh, and lived among us, right here in the mess... and he brings both grace and truth.

Lord Jesus, where we are in the wrong, correct us. Where we are in the right, confirm us.  Where we are paralyzed by confusion, move us.  Where we are tangled in the mess, meet us.