Monday, June 1, 2010

Propassive

One of the purposes of this blog is to resist the temptation to thematize weekly texts. We need not be compelled to be tied by a common thread, even if it was the intention of the list-makers. Readers' rights! The unravellings of intended threads of meaning are often much more interesting than the assumed links. Writers' reads! Having said that, this week's texts exhibit a common thread I want to tag: they offer four examples of what God does with exhausted possibilities.

Case 1: Saul (Paul) recalls how he had run the course of traditional religious faith, only to find himself persecuting the God he was supposedly serving. There was no human word or institutional wisdom left to save him.

Case 2: A famine has so reduced the household of a certain widow in Zarephath that she is taking the last grain from her one remaining jar of meal to prepare a final repast before she and her son settle in to die. 

Case 3: The widow of Zarephath's son gets sick and dies.

Case 4: On entering the town of Nain, Jesus and his followers encounter a group of people carrying out a corpse.

Each of these cases is contained in a unique narrative expression of the wonder of our faith. I list these cases to gather up a sense of the finality of the impossible. To capture something of the sheer exhaustion of those who have done everything of which they are capable only to see it come to nothing. Nothing remains for the corpse to undertake nor the survivor to mend. Saul, the misguided zealot, cannot bring Stephen back to life.

Jesus was wise to know when there are times to retreat into the wilderness, not as an escape, but rather as a concession to the sole power of the Father in heaven. Such empty places of retreat carry their own kinds of struggle to be sure. But there is no battle, really, left for us, in those circumstances, to win or loose. We have already lost. Having surrendered our wills, there is nothing even for the Evil One to claim.

Nothing whatsoever. The plug has been pulled on the last life support. 

Pray with blooded brow or the repose of the lotus: the beginning of life must come from the source.

© 2010 Andy Gay