In The Absence of God.

Three of the Survivors of The Sandakan-Ranau Death March.

Writing a Good Friday sermon is difficult. The violence, injustice and incredible cruelty of the incident is overpowering. The machinations of those involved to maintain power and control, to manipulate those in charge to do their bidding and the fear-full failure of those who followed Jesus is almost impossible to accept. We struggle with the pain of this event and, perhaps most of all, the sense of abandonment experienced by Jesus – by both God and those whom he had lived amongst.

 

John presents Jesus as assured and confident throughout both his Gospel and this event. He is the symbol of one who has unbreakable faith in God. Jesus is depicted by John as an icon to be grasped as the standard of faith for all within the Johnannine community in their battle with tradition and society. On the cross there is none of the brokenness of Gethsemane and the cry of despair we find in Mark.

Even the words ‘It is finished’ (19:30) signify Jesus has confidently completed the task given to him, to make the Father known[1]. While it is often linked to the atoning for sins as if Jesus is saying: I have made the sacrifice of my body which I came to make on behalf of creation, this is not John’s point. This would certainly be the way the author of Hebrews would read it[2], but it is not John’s emphasis, nor is it mine. Instead the focus is Jesus’ faithfulness to the Father’s commission revealed even in the face of suffering which despite the confidence is real[3]. The effect is to reveal love and expose hate and so offer a new beginning. [4]

What a challenging mission this was and is. It cost Jesus his life. It cost the one who was there at the beginning of creation his being in this world, and revealed that being as the Christ of the Cosmos.  It cost beyond measure, the cruelty was beyond pain and was achieved in great silence and deep stillness.

It was the silence of being laid bare without the comfort of the felt presence of God or those who were close to him. Even if people were there, there is a deep silence in suffering separating the one suffering from all who attempt to be present. It is deep, private, harrowing and uncommunicable. There is no way anyone else can understand the depth of our personal suffering, what ever it is and how ever it manifests itself.

 

The danger is we may try and emulate the response of John’s Jesus and find ourselves unable to be as iconic, stoic or faithful as John portrays it. I doubt that that was the reality.

In 2010 I walked the Ranau to Sandakan death march for the first time. This was the march at the very end of the Second World War the Japanese army forced 2,434 prisoners of war to undertake. Only 6 survived and they men who escaped. When we walked the track we did so for a soldier who died. Mine was Padre Harold Wardle-Greenwood. He was a brave and compassionate man who cared for the dying in his group of 50 on the March. Yet, Lynette Silver writes “Harold Wardle-Greenwood had comforted the dying and disconsolate for so long that he was now broken physically and spiritually. He had lost his faith in a God who, he believed had forsaken them. Indeed,” Silver continues, “it would have taken a man of superhuman faith to have believed such death and suffering was God’s will”.

In 2012 I walked for Padre Thompson. As I sat on the top of the hill where Thompson died, I had little doubt that if it had been me that I too would have felt completely abandoned by God. The hill, even for a well fed well rested reasonably fit person was a challenge, coming after several days of walking through the intense heat, the suffocating humidity, the rain and the unceasing red gluggy mud sticking to your boots. For men who had had no nourishment, were sick with a range of debilitating illnesses and lugging twice their body weight in equipment, it must have been hell only punctuated by the sounds of shots as the guards shot another soldier and rolled them over the edge.

This was suffering that could have been avoided if appropriate action had been taken when it was planned. It was suffering that was covered up and forgotten about for over 40 years. This was suffering that was real and needless. This was suffering of the deep silence only Jesus could share for only the suffering of Jesus on the cross is able to replicate the abandonment these men felt. Keith Botterill, a survivor, comments they kept going in the hope that someone would survive to tell their story. 6 men fulfilled that hope.

John portrays Jesus as confident in God to glorify him for his faithfulness unto death, yet I wonder if that is exactly how Jesus felt? Would Jesus have been disappointed if the situation had been resolved and he had continued to live and be in the world? Would it have been a failure if the Jews and the Romans had recognised the mission of Jesus and changed their way of being?

For us who may find ourselves in the midst of the silence of an absent God, are we expected to be as iconic as Jesus and plough on with unbruised hope? Is this a realistic ask of people facing a diagnosis of cancer for themselves or someone they love; for someone who has lost their livelihood and home; for someone who despite all their efforts are unable to work or get work; for those who are burying families due to the insanity of war; or those unable to be with their family because of incarceration?

Yes, John, you can hold Jesus up as a model but remember Jesus was human as well as divine and felt every abandonment by his friends, every lash of tongue and whip, and every hammer blow, just like those others who were crucified at the same time. He too would have felt submerged in the abyss of a silent God. 

Where does that leave us? Do we join with John and see Jesus the icon of suffering we are to emulate or do we to look beneath the story and see the struggle of a human being deeply broken by a death he would rather have avoided? How do we make sense of his and our suffering? How do we hang on when we are dying, in whatever form that particular death takes, and hope in hope itself.

We can appeal to the resurrection as the evidence of hope but is that always possible, or do we lose sight of Sunday while we are alone in Friday?

There are no quick answers. Yes, John’s Jesus shows how to grasp the hope but be not disappointed if you find yourself incapable of doing so. Jesus has already done it on your behalf for he is the only one who knows the depth of God’s silence you feel. Hang onto him.

Typical Man

Is the following story typically male or what?

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An elderly man who went out to fetch a morning newspaper ended up driving nearly 400 miles after getting lost and taking a wrong turn onto a major Australian highway, police said on Wednesday. The man, 81-year-old Eric Steward, eventually stopped and asked for directions after driving for nine hours, from the New South Wales country town of Yass to Geelong in the southern Victoria state.

Steward, who did not know where he was, eventually approached a policeman at a petrol station and asked for help late Wednesday.

"This little old man came up to me saying he was lost. He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife," said Victorian Police Senior Constable Clayton Smith.

Steward, who was reunited with his family on Wednesday, said he took the wrong turn and just kept on going.

"I just went out on the road to have a drive, a nice peaceful drive," he told reporters, adding he did not need a satellite navigation device as he'd only been lost once.

Doesn't everybody take 9 hours to get the paper?

No need for a GPS when all you want is a nice quiet drive!

Leadership is for Everyone

Over the last couple of weeks the media focus on certain high profile sportsmen and their behaviour may have proved Groucho Marx right when he said,  ‘Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men -- the other 999 follow women’.  The truth in his humour may give us pause to think about how we treat others, for our treatment of others defines whether we are in fact leaders or followers, whether we make a difference, whether we are the difference we want to make, or whether we cause collateral damage because we choose the wrong leaders.  If, as sociologists say, each of us influence somewhere around 10,000 people over our lives then the choice between leadership and tagging along for the ride becomes one we need to give serious thought to.

In today’s reading from Acts (Acts 1:15-17,21-26) we have an example of leadership being exercised right at the beginning of the Christian community.  It is only a few short weeks since Jesus was crucified and left the disciples and his followers alone.  Judas, one of the twelve chosen to represent the twelve tribes of Israel has committed suicide and something needs to be done to put the order in balance.  He needed to be replaced to maintain the groups integrity.

Up steps Peter, Peter, considering his impetuous displays and his failure in the heat of the cold Good Friday morning seems the most unlikely to be the one anyone would follow.  But leadership is not a right but a gift and they all knew that it was Peter whom Jesus had gifted with the role of leadership. 

They had all heard Jesus in conversation with Peter and knew what his role would be.  They accepted it, although as time went on that didn’t mean Peter the leader wasn’t challenged by others including Paul about some of his management decisions.  Leadership is about taking people with you to places they perhaps would not have gone, management is the skill to support that journey.  Peter had the first because of his charisma and passion and because he was gifted the leadership by Jesus. The other he should have left to those with the gift.

Peter was surprising as a leader, showing attributes that on a first read of his character appeared not to be there.  As a fisherman he would have no doubt run a tight ship aware that if it’s not done right we don’t eat.  In that scenario he was the boss, the one making the decisions.  But here, at the very beginning of the Christian church Peter exhibits the benefit of at least three years in the best leadership school available, the presence of Jesus.

And here we see one of the key truths about leadership and that is people only learn what you have taught them in your absence – in your absence people learn, remember, act on what they learnt while you were with them.  While Jesus was there he was the leader and Peter and the others weren’t aware of what they had learnt because they had no need to practice it. 

Now, now was different.  They were alone, fearful of both the present and the future, unsure of how the authorities and the synagogue was going to deal with them and needing to act decisively and quickly to regain control of those who were looking at them for direction and hope. Walter Lippman puts it this way:

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.

This is a lesson society needs to revisit in terms of leading children into adulthood.  Parents are pivotal leaders whose presence teaches their children how to be in the world. The modeling of right thinking and subsequently right behaviour is more powerful than any education program, which can be instituted by any government, educational system or body.

You may have seen the story about the boy in an American college school who was refused his graduation certificate because he went to another schools formal where dancing would occur.  Apparently some years earlier, I presume on enrolment at this college, he signed a contract which explicitly banned such activity.  Now in the last year of school he wanted to go and have fun with a girl at a dance.  The school outlined the implications, but he went and then he and his family complained.  While the rule may have been verging on the ridiculous is not the issue.  He had made a commitment which he followed while it suited him.  When it didn’t he complained.  My concern was the response of the parents – they failed to lead.  Why didn’t they remind the young man that a commitment is just that and until that commitment no longer applies i.e. when he leaves school, then he needs to be a man of his word and abide by what he agreed to.  They didn’t and he will be the loser because of it.

One of the best ads on tv makes this point in terms of alcohol and binge drinking. It’s the one where subsequent generations of men at a barbecue ask the pre-teen son to get another beer from the fridge.  The boy becomes the man and perpetuates the problem.  As parents and community leaders our behaviour is our leadership – we aren’t meant to be perfect, for like Peter we stuff up but we, like him, need to keep stepping up aware of our failures but remaining always the leader.

Peter and the ten disciples stand up and speak, not as those taking leadership but as ones seeking leadership.  Note that the issue at hand, the replacement of Judas, is discussed in and by the community. US Senator and one time Presidential aspirant, ELIZABETH DOLE, comments that

What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it. (oh if only!!!!)

 

That is just what Peter does – he draws around him the community and lays out the problem.  He does not impose a solution but seeks direction.  Modern day leaders always seem more intent on imposing decisions or consulting only to justify their decisions as the appropriate one.

Leadership is not imposing, it is seeking direction by the community you represent.

It was discussed and two nominees agreed upon.  We are not privy to how that occurred but I am sure it was full and frank and had its political overtones, but no-one was imposed, and to ensure that was the case they made the decision by a lottery, drawing of the name out of the hat, by lot.  This practice was an accepted method for accepting God’s will.  Note, I said accepting, not choosing God’s will.

Today Christians spend much time discerning God’s will, and often it is an individual decision much like that of the politicians decision making process, if it suits me then it must be God’s will, if it suits me it must be good for the country.  This ploy of attaching God’s will, the will of the creator, sustainer and redeemer of the world with our personal need to be fulfilled and valued is at the very least misdirected and at the worst simply wrong.  Hebraic theology, as found throughout the Psalms has little to say about personal wellbeing for its sake alone, it is only ever achieved through complete and unflinching faith in God, particularly when God seems to be absent, silent and simply not available as in times of national danger, sickness, injustice, poverty and the normal travails of life and often over a very long period of one’s life.  Jesus never deviated from this and we find him on the cross, quoting Psalm 22 but still remaining faithful when his personal wellbeing was being ravaged by injustice.

70 times in the Old and New Testaments casting lots is referred to, albeit this is the last time it is mentioned in the New Testament, but the practice did not necessarily cease.  It was used because there could be no manipulation by the people involved, it was deemed that God, who is sovereign overall watches over and supervises the process so that whatever the outcome is it is his outcome, there can be no dissatisfaction because there was no-one–else involved but God himself.

And there was no grumbling recorded at the outcome.  Peter had demonstrated leadership well learnt and well implemented, he had accepted the role Jesus had groomed him for and remembered much more than he thought he had learnt.  The community also stepped up and participated in discerning God’s will and Matthais became a member of the leadership group. But he already was – leadership isn’t individual, it is communal – the community leads and endorses those who lead and he was apart of that community.  The danger in our age is that we do in fact get the leaders, and the society we deserve, because we fail to see and fulfill our leadership role.

Peter and that first Christian community reminds us that if we want a different world we must lead in the one we see around us today. As Gandhi said, ‘Be (or lead) the change you want see in the world’. It is up to you.