The Bottom Line

(Not miraculous but miracle-less)

Introduction

Spring

Our seasons here in Wisconsin are usually well-defined. We know when it is summer and we know when it is winter. One evening in late fall we pull a cozy blanket of wool over ourselves and fall off to sleep. We wake the next morning to find ourselves all covered over with a cozy blanket of snow. It's a yearly delight, but it doesn't last long. In a typical winter, the thick layer of snow on top of us soon becomes a shroud, and winter becomes a tomb for us. By the end of February, for sure, we are all crying out: "Who shall roll away the stone before this tomb of winter?" And then one day there appears your first robin.

As a boy I was trained by an old German woman, a neighbor, to vigilantly watch for "my first robin." To this very day in my old age I still do that. It's a kind of ritual or religious experience for me. This year I saw my first robin on the 2^nd of March in southern Illinois. I was driving toward Texas with Simeon. We had stopped at one of those rest areas along the way. Lo and behold, there were those harbingers of spring all over the place. Harbingers that they are, they always come a little too early (that’s what makes them harbingers). So here in Wisconsin when you see your first robin, you know for sure that the "poor thing," is going to suffer a setback or two as it challenges winter (a set-back like last Friday with its 6-10 inches of snow -- 4/4/2000). But in the end the robin always wins. With its arrival one immediately knows the backbone of winter has been broken, and the huge stone holding spring captive in the tomb of winter is about to be rolled away.

Not long after the robin come the hearty crocus and daffodil, sometimes bumping their heads up against a snow-drift dumped on them by a late winter storm. Then come the babbling of the brook and the lapping of the Great Lake, asleep so long but now risen from the dead to sing the song of spring. Spring, like Lazarus, is being called from the tomb.

The sacrament of Spring

Spring can be sacramental; that is to say, it can point beyond itself to something greater than itself. It can give rise in us to hopes and hints that God might just perhaps be, as Scripture says, "not a God of the dead but of the living” (Mk. 12:27). Spring can engender in us hopes and hunches that God might just perhaps do what Ezekiel promised that God would do. The prophet says, “He will open our graves and have us rise from them” (37:12-13). Spring can sprout up in us hopes and hints of eternal life. "Intimations of Immortality" -- is what one of our poets (Browning or Milton) called them. Your first robin (though tiny creature that it is) becomes a harbinger not only of spring but also of that great cosmic event that will take place when “the trumpets will sound, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed" (I Cor. 15:52).

A friend writes: "I like spring a lot. It's a time when so many things are giving just the slightest inkling, the smallest sign, that perhaps things aren't really what they appear to be -- dead. Trees aren't really dead at all. Seeds aren't really lifeless pebbles. There is,” she writes, “a Lady Cardinal taking twigs, one at a time, to a secret place in the fir tree. It's the merest whisper of a promise of things to come."

This friend who liked spring so much died just before spring arrived this year 2000. She was the one I told you about, who bravely and proactively battled her ovarian cancer for two years. (She scanned the net for medically scientific cures which she brought to her doctors who took her seriously.) She’s the one also who wrote that canned Christmas letter to all her friends, speaking about what going on with all the children in the family, as those letters do. And you know how hard it is to appreciate such letters, especially if you really don’t know the other members of the family very well. But it was the last line of her Christmas letter that brought us to full attention, and to an utterly profound pause in our hearts and souls:

My struggle with Ovarian Cancer continues, and I’ve run out of options in chemotherapy drugs. My body has become very weak, and I doubt that I would be able to tolerate any more chemo. Tests show the cancer continues to grow. We had a gathering of our family, and a hospice nurse came to speak to us of the program. After the holidays, I plan to enter a hospice program.

Well, after Christmas she entered a hospice program at home. By late February the end was near. Before leaving for Texas at the beginning of March, I mustered up enough courage to go and bid her farewell. Despite all our prayers that a miracle be given her, as one was given Lazarus, she died miracle-less. She died without a miracle on the 13^th of March, just eight days short of spring. Despite all Mike’s (her husband) prayers for a miracle, no miracle was given her. “I think God is sleeping,” he said.

A stark bottom-line

(no miracles)

I have no patience with those brands of the Christian religion which feature miracle as its chief commodity, and which encourage their followers to put their trust and faith in miracles. No patience with those TV evangelists who perform miracles left and right, and on a stage besides. For there is one incontestable and stark bottom-line to all human life: life is basically without miracle. Despite the fact that some people might be saved from sickness or death by means of a miracle (as was Lazarus), life's stark bottom-line is that sooner or later God lets us all die without a miracle. On the Mount of Olives Jesus prayed for a miracle: “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from me” (Lk 22:42). But no miracle was given him. God, the Father, who let his/her very own Son die without a miracle, lets us all die without a miracle. And the real challenge of faith is: What do we do with that bottom-line?

The bold rider

It’s a huge bottom-line, as huge as the Holocaust. We remember that six million people prayed for a miracle, and six million miracles were not given! Six million people died without a miracle. What do we do with such a stark bottom-line? There is only one thing left for us to do -- and it is this: To that stark bottom-line we add this bold rider: As God always forgives us, even our grossest faults, so now we must forgive God! Forgive God what? Forgive God for not giving us our miracle. Forgive God for not giving the ones we dearly love their miracle. Forgive God for letting us all die without a miracle. Bold rider, indeed, is that, as bold as the prayer of Etty Hillesum (29 yrs) before she died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz:

Dear God, these are anxious times.... Dear God, I shall try to help You stop my strength from ebbing away.... One thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: You cannot help us; we must help You. And dear God, for that I do not hold You responsible (Search for Silence, by Elizabeth O'Connor).

The Bottom Line

Introduction

Spring

The bold rider

Conclusion