March 8, 2009

Clay Nelson

Lent 2     Mark 8:27-38

One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of Chicken Little to her class.

She came to the part of the story where Chicken Little tried to warn the farmer. She read, “…. and so Chicken Little went up to the farmer and said, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

The teacher paused then asked the class, “And what do you think that farmer said?”

One little girl raised her hand and said, “I think he said: ‘Holy cow! A talking chicken!’”

When the sky is falling, a talking chicken is the kind of diversion we hope for to cope, or do I mean to stay in denial? And the sky does seem to be falling. With the global financial meltdown everyone is affected. You can’t get much further away from Wall Street than the corner of Wellesley and Hobson and yet even we at St Matthew’s are beginning to feel its effects. Just ask Ian, our administrator, who pays the bills. Fear and caution are in the air. And of course that is not even the half of it. Global warming and its catastrophic challenges are beginning to look like our problem and not our grandkid’s. Unemployment is mushrooming worldwide threatening stability in even first world countries. North Korea wants to test long-range missiles. Iran’s enriching uranium for suspect reasons. Genocide in Sudan’s Darfur and Central Africa continues unabated and unchallenged. Mugabe’s lunacy in Zimbabwe is destabilising Southern Africa. Politically unstable Pakistan with its nuclear weapons is a serious worry. Terrorists are now targeting sports figures. And, oh yes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue ad infinitum. Depressed yet? Chicken Little may not be an alarmist after all.

If you have lived long enough such times make us look back with nostalgia at “The sky is falling!” crises of the past. I was born the year China became Red. The Cold War was hot. When Russia got the hydrogen bomb, we practiced civil defence drills to protect ourselves by climbing under our school desks. Ah those were the days. There have been lots of them since. From my American experience there were those thirteen days in October, 1961 when Khrushchev and Kennedy played chicken over missiles in Cuba. There was the whole of the Sixties and early Seventies with its assassinations, Vietnam war, race riots, burning cities, and campus unrest. New Zealand had its own share of crises. While I was enduring Nixon and Watergate you had Muldoonism dividing the country by trying to take New Zealand in the 1970s back to the 1950s. There was the Maori protest movement, which our Vicar remembers well. Time in a jail cell tends to stay with you. You were not untouched by the Vietnam War. The 1981 Springbok Tour was a seminal crisis in the consciousness of New Zealanders. The French sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the nuclear-free movement and the 1987 Recession are memorable as well.

These all paled in comparison on September 11, 2001 when four planes hijacked by 19 terrorists killed 2966 people.. This was a crisis the whole world experienced at its very core. It was the kind of crisis that fundamentally changes history because it changed us, and I am not sure for the better. Fear and paranoia prevailed jeopardising civil liberties and allowing two wars that to date have claimed an estimated 1.3 million lives. But all this was put in perspective for me only one month later.

I was diagnosed with a virulent form of prostate cancer that was in its later stages.

After surgery they found the cancer was still in my blood stream. Further tests said it had spread throughout my lymph system. I will never forget the day the sky fell in when the surgeon told me it was time to get my affairs in order. I had maybe 18 months. Since I had nothing to lose I went into an experimental research programme. After extensive testing I was told that like Mark Twain, reports of my immanent demise were greatly exaggerated. Earlier tests had given a false positive. Not once, but twice! I never believed in a physical resurrection more than the day I was given the good news. But nonetheless, two months of living under a death sentence fundamentally changed me. I think for the better. Since then the colours of autumn have never been so brilliant. The fragrances of spring have never smelled sweeter. My patience with my family and friends has never been so great. My patience with cruelty, violence; oppression and the asinine theology that supports or perpetrates it has never been so short. There is nothing quite so freeing as accepting one’s mortality. I learned it gives integrity and honesty a helping hand and, better yet, it gives one a zest for life.

Any life event can take on crisis proportions if it is experienced as sudden, intense, unexpected, or emotionally super-charged. We experience crisis as overwhelming. Leaving us without means to cope or to adjust. Somehow, we cannot make sense of what is happening or why it is happening. Without answers to those important questions, we are left helpless. We simply do not know what to do to control or master the situation. We do not know how to make it stop. Wave after wave of emotion sweeps over us and we are unable to predict when or if this awful situation is going to end.

Thus any event can be a crisis if it wipes out our ability to make sense out of what is happening. We become bereft of means for exercising some form of control on our lives. We feel helpless; the victim of events beyond reason and certainly beyond our control. It is only after we regain some sense of understanding and some sense of control that the crisis is reduced to something manageable.

So how do we manage these crises in our lives? I would suggest that we go on a bear hunt. I grant you that we have no bears in New Zealand, but it is not a problem. It is a children’s activity of which there are many variations. It is an echo game. Let’s try it now. I’ll begin it and you echo it back.

Going on a bear hunt.

Going on a bear hunt.

Gonna get a big one.

Gonna get a big one.

I’m not scared.

I’m not scared.

Cuz I got my dog.

Cuz I got my dog.

Very good. Now it continues in that vein as we leave the house in search of the bear, but along the way we encounter a variety of barriers that stop our progress like tall grass, brambles, and a river. At each barrier the response is the same. So let us continue.

Uh Oh!

Uh Oh!

Can’t go around it.

Can’t go around it.

Can’t go under it.

Can’t go under it

Can’t go over it.

Can’t go over it.

Gotta go through it.

Gotta go through it.

This is the bear hunt strategy to crisis management. Anytime we approach a crisis by avoidance we will come up short of the positive transformation it offers.

This is Jesus’ model of transformation as well. He’s playing an echo game too. He asks us to take up his cross and follow him. He challenges us not to lose sight of the goal he calls resurrection and I call transformation. Sure, it leads through death, but don’t let that stop you. Understandably the disciples and we are less than impressed. Can’t we go around it? Under it? Over it? He says, “Don’t be scared ‘cuz I’ll show you the way. We’ve got to go through it.”

Yes, it is a road of hardship and suffering, but as the sky falls around us, Lent reminds us that suffering can be redemptive. But that only happens when we are changed for the better by it. We go through the season of Lent not just to change our actions for a moment but so that our character can be changed for a lifetime.