Phone Call

I got an unusual phone call yesterday.

Of course, in my line of work, most of the random phone calls that I receive are unusual in some way.  On occasion, people I have never met will leave messages on my voice mail asking questions ranging from my thoughts about to Scripture to my opinion on the godlessness of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.  I love responding to these messages, because I am always fascinated to hear people wrestle with their faith.  Needless to say, I am also entertained by people’s creative and often surprising interpretations of Scripture and theology.

The call I responded to yesterday started out like any of these other phone calls.  A woman left a message wondering where to find the story of Easter in the Bible.  Thinking it might be a quick conversation, I dialed the number and prepared to give her a simple answer to what I thought was a simple question.  But, when I tried to give her the simple answer (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20, in case you’re curious), she said “I don’t have a Bible with me.”  It quickly became clear that the call was not what I had expected.  The woman proceeded to ask me, not about Easter, but about Maundy Thursday.  She kept asking, “Why did Jesus have the Last Supper with his disciples?”  I tried to explain the liturgical, theological, and historical significance of the Church’s Eucharistic celebration, but it wasn’t making sense to her.  It seemed that I wasn’t going to be able to help her.

But when I was about to end the phone call, to tell her that I had to attend to other matters, she asked very cautiously, “Do you think that God loves me?”  Oh.  Suddenly I realized that this woman did not call the church to find out where the story of Easter is or why Jesus instituted the Lord’s supper.  She called because she had come to doubt that she was in relationship with God.  While I could have responded to her with Scripture passages and theological treatises, I called her by name and said simply, “Yes.  I know God loves you.”  And then an amazing thing happened.  Through her tears of joy, she professed that she understood everything that had mystified her only a few minutes before.  The stories of Easter and the Last Supper suddenly made sense because she had been reminded that God loved her.

Ultimately, this is what we are called to remember this evening as we celebrate Maundy Thursday.  We remember that Jesus Christ took bread and wine, called them his body and blood, and gave them to his disciples, essentially telling them, “I love you so much that I have given myself to you, not only in this bread and wine, but also in my very body.”  None of our celebrations this week make any sense unless they remind us of God’s deep and transforming love for the world.  I pray that as we enter the next three days, we will remember that love which transforms us and helps us make sense of who we are.

Fear

A few months ago, I was eating a disappointing breakfast sandwich  in a restaurant at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport when I overheard a group of people mention the word “theology.”  Being a sucker for theological inquiry, I slowed my chewing and listened a little more closely.  To my surprise, the group was not discussing Athanasius or Thomas Aquinas (the fact that this surprised me tells you a lot about who I am), but rather the Illuminati and their sinister plot to take over the world.  For those of you who are not up to date on your conspiracy theories, the Illuminati are supposedly a secret cabal of wealthy and powerful individuals bent on world domination.  While this narrative is boilerplate for any self-respecting conspiracy theorist, I was curious to hear it framed in terms of Christian theology.  The group of people I heard talking in the airport apparently believed that the Illuminati’s secret control of the world was part of God’s plan to bring the world to an end.  Several members of the group repeatedly said things like, “God has already set the plan in motion” and “It’s only a matter of time.”  When I decided I could no longer remain in the same room without holding my tongue, I abandoned my sandwich and wandered to my gate.

Though I was initially surprised by this marriage of old-school conspiracy theories to dispensationalist theology, it occurs to me that these worldviews have similar perspectives.  Those who subscribe to both of these worldviews are convinced that someone else is in complete control of the world, that there is nothing they can do to influence the course of history.  In both of these worldviews, the only solution is enlightenment; the only way we can deal with our lack of control is to realize that we have no control, to realize that the puppet strings are being held by someone else.  And I think that both of these worldviews stem primarily from fear of the unknown.  The only way some people can deal with the very human fear of uncertainty is to deny that anything is uncertain.  If it’s all part of the plan, and they realize that it’s all part of the plan, then they can take solace in their enlightened understanding of the world.  Both conspiracy theories and dispensationalist theologies, in other words, can be sources of profound comfort.

Yet, by denying the reality of uncertainty, these worldviews fail to help people deal with reality.  Not only that, the idea that God has set a definite plan in motion is not terribly Scriptural.  As I mentioned yesterday, one of the central affirmations of Christian theology is that we have free will, that we have a choice to be in relationship with God.  In fact, St. Paul argues that our reconciliation to God occurs because of Christ’s faithful obedience, because of Christ’s exercise of his freedom.  Faithfulness, therefore, is not about being certain about what is going to happen next, it is about trusting that God will be faithful to us even when we don’t know what is going to happen next.  Faithfulness is not about believing that God is controlling every aspect of our lives, it is about trusting that God is with us as we move through this life.  As you walk the way of the cross during Holy Week, I pray that you will be comforted by the fact that God is with you even in the midst of uncertainty.