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The prompting
of this morning's title led a friend of mine to recall an
ancient memory, concerning the summer he and his friends vacationed
on the shores of Lake Michigan. Bored by the third day, the
three boys were hungry for something to do. Which was when
they found the boat. Half-buried in the sand, it had been
clearly abandoned the previous winter. But they dug it loose,
cleaned it up, and created something of a gummy-gluey mixture
to caulk the cracks. Then they named it "Hell's Mess."
The next
morning they put out to sea, taking oars, lunches and three
coffee cans (just in case.) I was tempted to ask: "Just
in case what?" But I kept my mouth shut and let my friend
get on with his story. Since everybody wanted to row first,
they more-or-less tried doing it simultaneously. This worked
for awhile, at least until the gummy-gluey stuff failed and
the boat began to leak. Without any discussion about the need
to shift responsibilities, first one boy and then a second
took coffee cans and began to bail. My friend, who truly merits
the term "eternal optimist," kept on rowing toward
the state of Wisconsin. But eventually, even he dropped his
oars and picked up a can.
In similar
sequence (and with still no discussion over who next needed
to do what), first one boy and then the second put down his
can, jumped over the side, and began half-swimming, half-pushing
the boat toward shore. My friend said: "All the while
I kept bailing, confident that each coffee can was going to
be the one that stemmed the surge and turned the corner."
Then he added: "But that's just my nature. I'm generally
the last one to bail out on anything."
So it
goes in life. Some of us keep on bailing, after others of
us have long-since bailed out. Each of us addresses the hopelessness
of a given situation at our own pace. For some it becomes
a gut-wrenching decision.
Consider
the 84-year-old man who desperately wanted to join my church
in Livonia. For years he lived in our neighborhood, attended
many of our functions, and became acquainted with our people.
Yet every Sunday morning he got in his car and drove 20 miles
to a dying, inner-city church. The neighborhood had changed.
The membership had changed. Finally, he was the last old member
left. He felt he couldn't leave as long as they needed him,
although it was far from certain that the newly-appointed
pastor valued or even understood his sacrifice. His story
was a little bit heroic and a little bit sad. When it gradually
became more sad than heroic, he began to ask me with increasing
frequency: "How much longer do you think I should hang
in there?" And as much as I loved him as a friend and
wanted him as a parishioner, I never knew quite what to answer.
For you see, the building to which he was driving so religiously
each Sunday morning was my boyhood church.
Or consider
my preacher-friend ... closer to 54 than 84 ... who recently
raised the same question. He's been at it for 28 years (of
which, by normal human reckoning, there have been but a handful
of good years.) He moves often. But he never moves up. No
church keeps him very long. No church pays him very much.
He knows but one way to do ministry ... and figures that the
"day" for his "way" passed several years
ago. He also figures that he's "too close to the end"
to learn a new way. On bad days, he worries that he's doing
the church more harm than good. On good days, he remembers
his promise to God and counts the years he has left to be
a "good soldier."
Which,
I would have to say, has not been all that difficult for me.
As commitments go, I am still serving the same Lord ... in
the same profession ... for the same denomination ... with
the same woman ... as when I first began. Most of which has
been good. Little of which has been hard. But others have
not found it so. Some have broken commitments they have made.
And some are, even now, being broken by them. Meaning that
there may be (much as I would wish it otherwise) times for
walking away. And the church which does not understand this
will, over time, become one of the places that is walked away
from.
To those
who have already walked away, the church has tended to say
one of two words ... either a word of rejection (as in "sorry
that you had to leave, but there could no longer be a place
for you here"), or a word of reconciliation (as in "God
loves you and we love you; come, let us begin your reconstruction
together"). I would hope that we are a church of the
latter word, rather than a church of the former word. But
I fear that in our confusion over what to say, sometimes we
say nothing, and our silence is viewed as one of rejection
rather than reconciliation.
But what
about those who are still considering walking away ... giving
up ... letting go? Do we have any word for them which will
help them in their agonizing? I have yet to hear any pulpit
address that question. I have wrestled with such issues for
a long time. Only now am I beginning to develop a set of guidelines
which make sense to me. In fact, what I am about to say is
still so unformed, that I wouldn't want to lump my suggestions
under the heading of "guidelines" at all. Instead,
I would set them before you as "considerations"
on the way to a hard decision.
So let's
assume that you presently find yourself in the predicament
I describe. Let's assume that a commitment that once seemed
"right as rain" now seems "dry as dust."
Let's assume that you are feeling both burdened and pained.
And let's further assume that, at long last, you have sighted
a door ... or a sign (hinting at a door) ... that reads "this
way out." How do you know whether it is time to leave?
I am going
to suggest seven windows through which to view that question.
None is meant to stand alone. And all, taken together, may
not make a compelling case. In sharing them, I am not going
to say a great deal about them. Instead, I'm going to read
them ... close with an Ari Goldman story ... and then leave
you to "chew."
It may
(just may) be time to think about leaving ...
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When
you are no longer doing yourself any good. When you are
experiencing no good ... feeling no good ... and being
led to believe that, at the very deepest level of your
being, you probably are no good.
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When
you are no longer doing anybody else any good. When there
is little evidence that anybody is better off as a result
of your persevering in marriage ministry, or whatever.
When no one who is counting on your "hanging in there"
will be appreciably harmed if you don't.
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When
all that seems to be resulting from your efforts is more
harm than good, when you find yourself speaking and acting
in ways that are more indicative of your worst self than
your best self. And when, in the act of persevering, you
find yourself becoming more and more perverse.
-
When
you are hurting the body ... by being tense all the time
... sick much of the time ... abused some of the time
... and self-destructive in the darkest of times.
-
When
you are killing the soul, by the fact that more is consistently
going out from you than is coming back to you. When you
are underfed ... undernourished ... and withering (as
they say) on the vine.
-
When
you are the only one who seems to care, to the point of
discovering that without a mutuality of effort, it is
hard to accomplish anything alone.
- When,
having prayed to God, it seems that God is no longer giving
you the strength to stand. As to when that point is, I don't
really know. But I suppose it is the point when you find
that you are no longer standing.
It should
be obvious that these are some tough considerations. It should
be equally obvious that they can be applied to any number
of stay-or-leave possibilities. But since the most common
such arena is that of marriage and divorce, let's pull this
together around that issue. How do you leave a lover? There
must be "Fifty Ways To Leave A Lover," says Paul
Simon.
Slip
out the back, Jack
Get
on the bus, Gus
Make
a new plan, Fran
Toss
in the key, Lee
And
get yourself free.
And for
many, it would seem as if it were just that easy. It's not,
of course. And one suspects that Paul Simon knows it. Ari
Goldman certainly does. Ari Goldman is an Orthodox Jew ...
former religion editor of the New York Times ... mid-life
Harvard Divinity School enrollee ... published author (The
Search for God at Harvard) ... and himself, a child of
divorce. Listen to him on the latter subject, some twenty
years after the fact.
To my
mind, divorce is a deplorable breach of contract for which
children should be allowed to sue. Consider the facts. Two
people, with the best of intentions agree to create a human
being. They promise to give it love, a home, security and
happiness. Then something goes awry. They find that they
really hate each other or cannot live with each other. But,
in separating, they put themselves first. They forget about
the contract they have with the child. They rationalize
that this new state of affairs will surely be "best
for the children." Yet they never ask the children.
Didn't
my parents, by divorcing, spare me a home where fighting
and anger were the regular modes of communication? Not necessarily.
For I believe that as incompatible as they were then (and
remain to this day), they could have learned to stop shouting
and slamming doors. At least they could have learned all
of that more easily than I was able to learn to be a child
of divorce.
I feel
the force of that. I hear the pain of that. I'm not even sure
I know what to make of that. I am certain that Ari Goldman's
parents would have written the story differently. They probably
had good reasons for leaving. But there were still three Goldman
boys who felt that their marriage, bad as it was, was still
good for something. Namely, it was good for the boys.
And, employing
my list of seven considerations (especially number 2), minor
children are always enough reason to "keep on keeping
on." Especially when the issue is marital happiness ...
or lack thereof. To the lady with three kids who wanted to
know if divorce is justified, seeing as how she no longer
loves their father, the answer (from the church's perspective)
is a no-brainer. Of course it's not.
Or consider
the mother who came late of an evening to the parsonage after
I had preached a sermon earlier that morning entitled, "How
Many Times Do You Take The Prodigal Back?" She poured
out the story of this kid ... early twenties ... drop- out
... jobless ... brushes with the law ... bouts with addition
... and a growing flirtation with the neo-Nazi movement. This
kid was a real pain in the house, not to mention other areas.
But she finally reached the end of her rope. She wanted to
change the locks. She also wanted to know what I thought.
"I'm tired of hanging in there," was the way she
put it. And while she was talking to me in my study, the kid
saw her car in my driveway, causing him to take his truck
and do a lawn job all over my grass.
Or consider
a divorced friend of mine who is currently attending services
at what I euphemistically refer to as "The Church of
What's Happening Now." He likes it because the minister
is liberal ... more liberal than me. His complaint with other
churches is that they make him feel guilty. To be specific,
they make him feel guilty about his divorce. It's not that
they say so in so many words. "It's just part of the
package," is how he puts it. He believes that when the
church lays on all that " 'til death do us part"
language ... at a time when most people don't understand such
commitments (or themselves for that matter) ... the church
is setting people up for a fall. In other words, if the church
tells you that you are supposed to hang in there forever,
and you can't, the church is partly to blame for what happens.
To be sure, the church isn't responsible for your divorce.
But it's at least partly the church's fault that you feel
so darn bad about it afterward.
And time
would fail me, were I to tell you of others who have asked,
in the wake of a difficult marriage ... a difficult family
situation ... a difficult friendship ... a difficult calling
... or some other once-happy commitment gone sour ... "How
much longer do I have to hang in there?"
It's one
of the toughest questions I face as a pastor. For to a society
that seems to regard commitments as hastily-purchased articles
of clothing which can be taken back to the "return desk"
at will (and for virtually any reason), I find myself wanting
to say some hard-line words about perseverance and permanence.
But to my struggling parishioners, whose pain I have borne,
whose burdens I have shared, and whose guilt level is already
such that I would rather not add any more to it, I find myself
wanting to say: "Sometimes it's all right to walk away."
It's the age-old debate, so familiar to everyone in my profession.
When do you preach law? And when do you preach grace?
For it
is clear that ours is a hard-line, high-expectation gospel.
It asks of us more than the world does. It expects of us more
than the world does. It thinks nothing of requiring that we
go beyond convenience ... beyond comfort ... even beyond happiness
... in holding fast to the deepest commitment in our lives.
The term "second mile" was coined to describe a
level of perseverance which is clearly out-of-the-ordinary
for the average bloke, but well within the scope of what is
expected of Christians. Much of the advice in Paul's letters
takes the form of encouragement, offered to those who are
about to drop out, fall away from, or quit on some significant
venture. To which Paul's word ... simply and repetitively
given ... is "Don't."
Concerning
the marriage commitment, Paul says (in capsule form): I'm
not really much in favor of marriage for myself, but if you
get yourself in that state, you ought to stay in that state.
Jesus' own anti-divorce word is as strong a word as he delivers
to anybody about anything. And the number of New Testament
warnings about "falling away" convey an impression
that treating commitments lightly is much frowned upon. The
ethic of the first-century church is clearly a "perseverance
ethic," to the degree that the great festival "Te
Deum" of the early church exalts both "the glorious
company of the apostles" and "the goodly fellowship
of the martyrs." And the ultimate model of the Christ-like
life is that we who walk in the way of Jesus are following
the one who hung-in-there until he hung- up- there!
Still,
people leave. They leave justifiably or not. They leave with
an eye to the guidelines or with a blatant disregard for guidelines.
They leave after careful planning or on a whim in the middle
of the night. Whatever be the case, they let go. They split.
They cease hanging in there. They stop bailing and bail out.
Are they bad people? Should guilt consume them? Should censure
be visited upon them? Should vengeance be taken against them?
Listen
to Ari Goldman:
For
years I harbored a fantasy that I would one day get married
and invite all my relatives on both my mother's and father's
sides to a festive wedding banquet and it would be up to
me to make the seating arrangements. My mother and my father
would be at the same table. My aunt, who for years, filled
my ears with ugly gossip about my grandmother, would be
seated next to her. The family members who disliked each
other the most would have to look at each other forcing
them to smile and be polite. The main course would be rib
steak and the table would be set with steak knives so sharp
that they would reflect the light dancing off the chandeliers.
Then, in the middle of the meal, just as the family (in
the midst of their collective politeness) would be lifting
their knives to cut into the steak, I would sneak outside
and pull the main power switch Suddenly the hall would be
plunged into total darkness. And I would sit back and see
who, if anyone, would survive.
It's an
interesting fantasy. But not a very biblical one. For time
and again, Jesus suggests consideration of a similar fantasy
... a wedding feast. And Jesus says that when everything is
the way that God intends it to be, everybody is going to be
there ...
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the saint and the sinner
-
the just and the judged
-
the righteous and the unrighteous
-
those who abandon ship early and those who are bailing
yet
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the leavers and the left
-
his side, her side
-
the right side, the left side
-
the inside and the outside
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Paul Simon ... Carly Simon ... Simple Simon ... Ari Goldman.
And at
the dramatic moment we shall all be plunged into light (not
darkness) and will use our razor-sharp steak knives on the
succulent ribs of the fatted calf rather than on the cold,
hard hearts of each other.
And this
shall have been made possible -- not because we hung in there
with each other -- but because God (in His infinite mercy)
hung in there with us.
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