Paul Walker, “Life is Hard. The Gospel is Easy.”
I don’t know what it’s like to be a dog, or an amoeba, or an oak tree, but I do know what it is like to be a human being. Presumably, so do you. Being a human being is hard. That’s my conclusion. We humans are subject to so many issues from within and from without. Life is hard. Like the Grateful Dead say, “If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.”
Jerry and company share this anthropology with none other than Holy Writ. The bible says that “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward.” This is not to deny that life is full of joy and blessing and deliverance and numinous beauty. Of course it is. There were days last week where the beauty was almost too much to bear.
There is, however, no earthly Eden – the flaming swords still bar the entrance. And if you try to construct an Eden, you will always find a snake in the garden. It’s hard to be a human being. Which is one reason that Halloween is so darn fun! You can stop being human – you can dress up like a vampire or a werewolf or a dragon or a dinosaur. It’s a momentary escape hatch from the ever-turning wheel.
People have been trying to figure out how to live this hard human life ever since the Garden of Eden, where sin came into the picture with all of its concomitant pain and struggle. This is what is going on in today’s gospel. A guy is trying to figure out how to live. He’s heard that Jesus knows a thing or two about living; lots of people follow him around and listen to what he has to say. The guy might have even heard Jesus say that He came so that we might have life, and have it abundantly.
So, he asks Jesus, “Which commandment is first of all?”, which in common vernacular translates to “What is the most important thing in life?” And Jesus answers, “Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” In other words – this is the how to live life: love God and love other people.
I remember being in an existential swivet in my early 20’s trying to figure out life. Most people in the 20’s feel this, especially now, when they have been force fed the mantra that they can do anything they want in life as long as they follow their passion. That is a really dumb thing to say to somebody. It has a paralyzing effect.
What if I have lots of passions? What if I have no passion? What if my passion is to sit on the sofa all day and stream episodes of Seinfeld? It also assumes that the human being can just translate passion into action. That is a totally naïve view of the hardness of being human. There are way too many blockages. Because, if the thunder don’t get you, the lightning will.
In any case, I was headed to law school when Christie said “No, let’s go to Haiti instead.” Which we did. And there I decided to become an episcopal priest, to which Christie said, “I didn’t sign up for that.” Well, we are still together and it has worked out okay so far. And at least I’m not a lawyer. Kidding! In fact, being a minister does not make a person any closer to Jesus’ insight about living life (or the Kingdom of God for that matter) than being a lawyer. Or being anything at all. Or being nothing at all.
Sure, it’s nice to have a meaningful vocation, and obviously you need a way to put food on the table, but in relation to life’s real meaning, all of that is penultimate at best. You are not what you do, which is a great relief to hear in a culture of productivity. Love is what is most important. And in the end, it’s all that you can’t leave behind.
Of course, the love that Jesus talks about has a specific focus, direction, object. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s called the Summary of the Law: aka – the most important thing in life. When you understand that, then, like the man in the scripture, “you are not far from the Kingdom of God.”
It’s true that when you love God and others you will experience joy and fulfillment. But it’s also true that you will fail on both counts. When it comes to loving others, the challenges are manifold, aren’t they? Thornton Wilder describes a mother who loves her daughter in The Bridge of San Luis Rey. But her “love” is really idolization and it drives her daughter a continent away.
She finally realized that her love for her daughter was “not without tyranny; she loved her daughter not for her daughter’s sake, but for her own.” But even this realization didn’t change things. “She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond; but the passion was too fierce to cope with.”
On a lighter note, but in the same vein, in a NYT interview last week, the insightful comedian David Sedaris says “Who doesn’t walk through the airport and think, Oh, that person looks awful; look at her legs; what made her think it was a good idea to get a tattoo there? I would never say it…. But I refuse to believe that we are not all jerks in our brains.”
That’s also a bible insight. St. Paul reminds us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that no one truly seeks for God. No one, that is, except One. The One who not just explained the summary of the Law, but was the summary of the Law. The One who fulfilled the Law for us because we could not. The One who went to the cross for our sake, where the thunder got him and the lightning too. His death is what we call the Passion of Christ. His passion, it turns out, is for sinners with jerky brains. His passion is for people like you and me.
The gospel – what I’ve just told you – is the true and only balm for the hardness of being human. Life is hard but the gospel is easy. You don’t have to get near the Kingdom of God, because in Jesus Christ the Kingdom of God has come to you. And lo and behold, He loves you with all of His heart, all of His soul, all of His mind, and all of His strength, which He expended on Calvary’s hill for you.
Amen.
