Amazing Grace and Other Such Suffering

The next few days will be critical for me.

On Tuesday I will be having back surgery.  Spinal Stenosis is the diagnosis, affecting L3, L4, and L5.  Lumbar decompression surgery, a lamenotomy, is the cure.  Basically, because of aging the passage ways in my spine have narrowed and my nerves are getting pinched off.  This causes pain in my legs and a loss of functions such as muscle control and balance.  I can only walk short distances.  The surgery should fix that.  But, there will be pain and suffering with recovery.  I've been forewarned that I  need to avoid getting discouraged and losing heart because of the suffering that will come.  The pain will subside in time.  The symptoms will not immediately abate following surgery, in part because of the swelling.  But give it time, live through the suffering, and eventually a new and better reality will emerge.

"My President Sang Amazing Grace".  Joan Baez recorded that song remembering the events in Charleston and Barrack Obama's message.

A young man came to a house of prayer
They did not ask what brought him there
He was not friend, he was not kin
But they opened the door and let him in

And for an hour the stranger stayed
He sat with them and seemed to pray
But then the young man drew a gun
And killed nine people, old and young

In Charleston in the month of June
The mourners gathered in a room
The President came to speak some words
And the cameras rolled and the nation heard

But no words could say what must be said
For all the living and the dead
So on that day and in that place
The President sang Amazing Grace
The President sang Amazing Grace

We argued where to lay the blame
On one man's hate or our nation's shame
Some sickness of the mind or soul
And how the wounds might be made whole

But no words could say what must be said
For all the living and the dead
So on that day and in that place
The President sang Amazing Grace
My President sang Amazing Grace

Songwriters: Zoe Mulford

Why do we sing of grace at a time of suffering?

There is a truth that we do not like to acknowledge.  We'd like grace to be a wonderful, happy, blessed and "amazing" experience.  And yet the truth is that suffering is intimately connected to grace.  Grace is a transformative power, but such change only comes in response to suffering and brings with it suffering as the status quo is shaken.  

Perhaps this is the 'costly grace' of which Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote.  I'd suggest there actually is no 'cheap grace'.  Because grace is never experienced apart from suffering.

Whether its in the basement of a church in Charleston, or in my old neighborhood in Minneapolis, the racist powers are on display in our world.  Systemic evil.  We'd like to change it.  And we'd like for that change to come apart from suffering.  It won't.  

Confession, repentance, and penance are necessary suffering.  The hardest words I've ever spoke are "I am an alcoholic."  And the pain our nation is experiencing is similar.  "We are still racist."  When Obama was elected many of us embraced the hope that racism had finally gone away.  After all, we elected a black president, didn't we?  But that presidency triggered the deep divide that remains part of the American soul.  It rips us to the core.  

Grace awaits us, but will not come without suffering.  Healing happens but it comes at a cost.

"Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus knew that grace came at a cost.  Grace and a cross.  "Take up your cross and follow me."

But don't be naive.  Evil will not simply go away.  One of the most distressing things about the Book of Revelation is that it speaks of the great and final battle that will be fought to destroy for all time the powers of evil.  Distressing in that to the end of the age, evil will remain with us.  Racism is not going away.  Nor any of the other plagues that haunt the human experience and soul.

Grace is not the period that marks the end of suffering but the liberation and transformation that we experience in the midst of it, a transcendent experience of rising above it.

Our nation is reeling under the pain and suffering of racism.  But in the midst of the suffering grace will abound.  And where grace abounds suffering is redemptive.  It is hard to say, but the suffering and death of one like Dr. Martin Luther King is at one and the same time both a great evil and a grace filled event redemptive in its scope.  Grace is the power by which goodness rises to the top like cream separates from the milk.  

One final thought.  If we face this struggle with the conviction that we must defeat evil for all time we will be deeply disappointed and lose heart.  Our challenge is to live by grace which means rising above the suffering and pain and being transformed.  Goodness and grace in this way is not the lack of evil, but a response to evil.  The most grace filled words Jesus ever spoke were "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."  These words spoken from the cross in the midst of great suffering are redemptive and transformative, both to Jesus as he spoke them, and to all who hear them. 

No Justification. Not even the economy.

160 years ago slavery, and the overt racism behind it, was justified on the basis of the economy.  And violence against those who would change it was justified.  The Bible was used to justify it. 

Not much has changed.  We have a president who, while claiming he is not racist, lambasts the country with one racist thing after another.  David Duke and other white supremacists see this.  They love it.  People who are Muslim, or Hispanic, or Black feel this.  Crowds at political rallies chant "Send them back!".  Racist.  By the way, sending  minorities back to their country of origin is a central theme of the Aryan Nations.  White, Christian, Nationalism is just a contemporary manifestation of the basic tenets of the white supremacist agenda.  The Church of Jesus Christ Christian is what the Aryan Nations under Richard Butler belonged to.  As a country we should abhor all this, reject it, and work to overcome it.  Racism has no place in a free society.  Racism is sinful.  White Christian Nationalism, if it is not checked, may well destroy both the Church and the Nation.  It is that contrary to both democracy and freedom, as well as the message of Jesus Christ. 

But the economy is good.

The economy was good for slave owners in the South.  It did not justify slavery.  Hitler's rise to power in Germany was closely associated with economic recovery from the Great Depression and the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles.  Bottom line was that Hitler was 'good for the economy'.  That hardly justified the Holocaust. 

Two things are reprehensible about the current state of affairs.  That otherwise good people will continue to support Trump, in spite of his racists attacks, is one of them.  That otherwise good people will oppose any effort to control access to guns as a means of responding to the myriad of mass shootings in our country is another.  And in the most recent shooting in El Paso the two issues are married together. 

But the economy is good.  And we like to collect guns.  So to hell with the loss of life.  We're content to send our "thoughts and prayers".  I can't help but believe that God despises our 'thoughts and prayers'. 

But the economy is good.

Except if you're a farmer or any other of the people affected by Trump's trade wars.

But we don't much care about other people's economic plight.  The economy wasn't good for the slaves in the South.  Just the plantation owners. 

There is no moral justification for racism.  There is no moral justification for callused indifference to the loss of human life.  There is no moral justification for caring more for the economy than the lives and well being of human beings.  No Justification.  None.

I struggle with how to respond.  I live in North Idaho.  Trump is popular here.   Racism is common place.  Guns are BIG.  I tend to politely, quietly, often silently, disagree.  And in doing so I'm part of the problem. 

I have to work with these people, whether in the cabinet shop or when I reopen my own business.  And I hesitate to address the issue head on in my preaching or teaching at church, lest the offerings tank. 

But economic considerations are no justification for doing nothing. 

I can become politically active.  The struggle is that in Idaho, my voice is drowned out by the vast majority in this redder than red state.  My vote counts not at all, except as a protest.  And there is a reason white supremacists have chosen to settle here: racism is widely accepted in this predominantly white society. 

But at least the economy is good.