Looking On, Looking Away

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” 

Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns."

―Matthew 16:21-23

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Dear Kate,

Ever since the residential schools announcement, 54 Christian churches across Canada have been vandalized or burned.  The complete destruction of Surrey’s St. George Coptic Orthodox Church a week ago has been especially heartbreaking.

According to a Vancouver Sun article, "the majority of Copts are Orthodox Christians, and make up the largest ethno-religious minority in Egypt, a country that is ranked No. 16 on the Open Doors 2021 World Watch List of nations for its [persecution] of Christians."  The indigenous Egyptian group came to Canada, this land of freedom and abundance, kindness and justice, only to have their home burned to the ground and the whole nation looking on and looking away.  Buried in the angry ashes were also a daycare, community outreach programs that serve 400-500 families, the homeless and motherless, the dispossessed and disenfranchised.  A prior arson attempt was made only the Wednesday before but no protection was offered since to fend off the final fury.  It was as if God has personally looked away, just as He seemed to have from the residential schools.

Yesterday I shared the news piece in church as a prayer item without leading anyone into prayer, just the same today I am writing this piece at my pastor's request (to speak "on the subject of what a faithful and Good News response to the church burning might start to look like") with no intention to write on the subject at all.  God is silent; can't you hear?  Who am I to speak when God makes not a sound?

Yet people insisted.  They insisted if one is ever to speak about something so incendiary one should speak thorough.  To bring up the topic is to bring people down, and for that an upward action can only be the most reasonable next swing of mood to settle our stomach before we head for lunch.  Before Jesus died for mankind we had Pilate stood in to wash our collective hands.  We are thirsty for facts and even more ravenous for action: now that we know the facts, the truths, let's get into action--or why lay a heavy burden on thy light brothers?  Yet there goes Pilate again, still washing--and talking too, his cosmic jest resonating ever since: "What is truth?" (John 18:38)

Frederick Buechner mused: "Contrary to the traditional view that [Pilate's] question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat. Instead of truth, Pilate has only expedience. His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient. Pilate views humankind as alone in the universe with nothing but its own courage and ingenuity to see it through. That is enough to choke up anybody. Pilate asks 'What is truth?' and for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him. The sound they make is like the sound of crickets chirping. Jesus doesn't answer Pilate's question. He just stands there. Stands, and stands there."

"For God alone my soul waits in silence," the psalmist says.  I am not afraid of Man, those who accuse you of speaking about injustice without affirming their innocence, asking hard questions without giving them easy answers, making God look good without making them look better.  I care most about how God looks at me.  The truth is we care not about the truth, only what is expedient, useful and comforting, and, to Canadians, agreeable and harmless, like a summer barbeque.  How damnable we are to stare God in the eyes and demand Truth!--and Action! Now!  This is as true as anything can be spoken about humanity.

Yet this is not how God speaks about us.  He holds us in his wholly, eternally loving gaze, holding the universe together with it.  While we are demanding from him no loose ends in our puny piece of moral fabric on hand, he lets himself be stripped naked for our shame we can't cover.  While we are drawing ourselves a map to progress beyond what we condemned as backward, perverse, especially in the lives of others that we don't care to imagine ourselves into, he goes off the charts to descend into hell and bring us back from our mutual arsons.

Sorry to offer no actionable item after inconveniencing everyone with an awkward, unnecessary topic.  I am only as evasive as Jesus was melodramatic on the cross leaving us hanging high and dry with a non-answer that is Himself. "For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation...For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him."  Anyone who has no ear for silence hears not God's voice but the crackling of Man's self-immolation.

"There is something unsettling and offensive in the notion that God was executed as a criminal.  And--such are the limits owing to human finitude and perversity--the questions such a notion might be found to resolve could not be clearly asked until the answers began to be known." (Glenn Tinder, "The Fabric of Hope")

God has answered us, first and finally and thunderously, to questions we don't even begin to know how to ask.  We are the ones being unpeaceable, unrelenting in evading the sight of the bloody cross, looking on and looking away.

Yours, Alex