Click on title below to hear audioWhile the Dominoes Fall
While the Dominoes Fall Those of you who remember the late 50's and early 60's may remember when our country's policies were guided by something known as the "Domino Doctrine." Briefly stated, it said that we had to oppose Communism in distant lands, because if one country fell, it would destabilize the next one, and that one would fall, and that would destabilize the next one, and before long, we'd be fighting Communists on the shores of California..... As a model for foreign policy, it had some serious flaws (not the least of which was the fact that there aren't that many countries in the Pacific Ocean). But it lasted quite a while, probably because the image was so familiar. We've all seen the rows of dominoes set up, and the first one topples, and the whole string goes down. I mention it not because I'm going to discuss foreign policy this morning, but because the image of the falling dominoes seems to fit so often in our own lives. Doesn't it always seem that when bad things happen to us, they don't happen in nice, neat, isolated incidents, where we can deal with them - they happen clusters - chains of events, one bringing about the other. Listen now to the way the dominoes might fall in our own lives: "Oh, no, it's all falling apart. I didn't realize the company was in such bad shape. They've sold the division, they're closing the plant. I've lost my job. Our retirement is down the tubes, our savings are almost gone. We may lose our home. My spouse has lost respect for me - seems all we do is fight about money. My kids don't listen to me. I think they're running with a bad crowd. It's all falling down. I should have grabbed that first domino and glued it in place, propped it up, done something - but I didn't, and it fell, and it hit the next one... And now it's all flat, and I don't know where to turn." This time, I think we can all hear a few echoes. And at times like these, we pose the question - in our minds, the big question - "Why?" The book of Job gives us a picture of someone in this position. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, his whole life is coming apart. It's all falling down around him, and he doesn't understand why. The search for a "why" is, at its heart, an attempt to regain control. If we can just figure out why it's happening, then we'll know what we need to do to fix it - or maybe even prevent it. But we look at the story of Job, and we discover that it isn't that easy. Sometimes, the answers just aren't there. As Job thrashes about, looking for the answer to "why," his friends show up to comfort him - and they offer their own answers to his troubles. But what they offer is the standard, "pat" answers - the ones that come readily to mind. They're far too shallow, too trivializing of Job's very real pain - ultimately, they just don't satisfy. First up is Eliphaz, and he thinks that all Job needs is a "good talking-to" - Job needs a pep talk. "Come on, Job. Buck up! You've been the one to help so many others, and now that it's your turn at the bottom of the heap, all of a sudden you can't take it? Come on, Job! Get it together!" Bildad takes a different approach - and comes up with another "pat answer." "You know, Job, God doesn't pervert justice. If all of this bad stuff is happening to you, you must have done something! One way or another, you've brought this on yourself." But the book makes it clear that none of this is Job's fault. He's not being punished for anything. The "why" lies in something far beyond his comprehension. The hard truth, for us, from the book of Job is that sometimes there just isn't a "why" - at least not one that we can understand in this lifetime. If we're looking for our faith as a way to prevent bad things from happening to us, we're going to be disappointed. The person who views faith as simply a behavioral contract - "do good so that good will happen to you" - is going to run out of gas at this point. Job does not "deserve", in the conventional sense, the tragedies that have befallen him. And if we're looking to our faith as a way to stop the dominoes from falling, the hard truth is that we can't. And it's here that we find that the pat answers, such as Job's friends have given, do not satisfy. The pat answers don't satisfy when you're talking with a friend who has just received a terrible and frightening diagnosis. The pat answers don't satisfy, as we found out in our company this past year, when you're standing graveside with the parents who've just had to bury their twenty-two-year-old son. The pat answers don't satisfy - as Michael and his classmates discovered last year - when you're talking with the classmates who've just learned that their father, whose birthday they had celebrated the night before, was the copilot on the first plane to hit the Trade Center. The pat answers don't satisfy when the tragedy, and the pain, is that real and that intense. Sometimes there just isn't a "why," and we can't stop the dominoes from falling. Without getting into the whole subject of the theology of innocent suffering, just let me leave it at this - bad things happen to us because bad things are out there, and they happen to everybody. Evil is real, suffering is real, poverty and disease are real, and they are powerful. And our Christian faith does not give us a grant of immunity. The mere fact that we are people of faith doesn't give us a free pass - we don't get a "cosmic get-out-of-jail-free card" to allow us to bypass the painful experiences of life. This shouldn't surprise us if we've read the New Testament. Jesus was certainly no stranger to tragedy and suffering - it's not for nothing that the prophets call him "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He came to give us the ultimate answer to suffering - but the way was through facing the ultimate suffering himself. And the early apostles were certainly well-acquainted with tragedy. They were subject to the same conditions of drought, famine, disease, and so on, as everyone around them - and were persecuted, and sometimes executed, for their faith as well. So then, if we can't stop the dominoes from falling, the question for us then becomes, "So how do we live? How do we live while all around us, everything's falling apart? Where do we find the strength to keep going?" What does our faith have to say to these times? The apostle Paul certainly knew his share of hardship, and he gives us some insight. Toward the end of his life, while in prison, he writes to Timothy: "Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus..." He goes on to quote, probably from an early hymn, "If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him..." Here, and elsewhere, Paul keeps coming back to the same word - "endure." We think about that word, and we turn it around in our minds, and we say to ourselves, "Endure....endure....endure?? YUCK!" Because "endure" doesn't sound very enjoyable, does it? "Endure" is what paint does when you put it on a house and you don't need to paint it again for ten years. "Endure" is what Maytag washing machines do, if you can believe the ads. It's not what people do, it's what things do! But consider this: Isn't it also what seeds do? Time and time again, the Scripture uses the seed as an analogy for us, for our faith - and the analogy is a very appropriate one. And what is the first thing that a seed has to do? The seed falls to the ground, and in so doing, it is separated from the plant that gave it life - but it endures. Then comes the winter, and the cold, and the snow, and the seed gets frozen into the ground. It certainly can't do anything in that condition - but it endures. Then comes the spring, and the rain, and the mud, and the seed gets washed away down the hillside - and that, too, it endures. The seed continues to endure until finally it arrives at the time and the place where the conditions are just right. And that seed begins to send down roots, and send out leaves, and begins to grow and develop into everything that was potentially in the seed from the beginning - but which could not have been released unless it first endured. We don't know where that time and place will be for us, any more than the seed does. But we do know that in order to get there, we must first endure. But we don't endure alone. One of the central truths of our faith is the promise that God is with us, no matter what we have to endure. As our Psalm this morning says, "Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of morning, and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand will hold me fast.." As Pastor Anne put it in a recent sermon, "There is no place we can go where God isn't." And in the face of that central truth, we can have joy - even in the midst of suffering. I was also grateful for the sermon in which she explained the difference between "joy" and "happiness." "Happiness" or "unhappiness" are basically external - they are a product of what happens to us. If everything in my life is going okay, no major problems, I may be "happy." If everything is coming apart, I may be "unhappy" - maybe profoundly so. But joy is something completely different - it's not just "extreme happiness," it's a different kind of a thing altogether. Joy comes from within, and it's a product of who and what we are - and whose we are. It's a product of the presence of God in our lives, and its opposite is not "unhappiness," but "fear." Joy doesn't live at the surface, external level, where all of this stuff is happening to us. Joy lives someplace inside, someplace much deeper. For me, at least, here's where it lives:
Suddenly, that word "endure" doesn't seem quite so intimidating, does it? As Paul says, "I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, not depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." And there's another sense in which we are not alone. We are given each other, as a visible, tangible expression of God's love. God may know us and call us as individuals, but we are immediately called into a community with one another. We're called to love one another, to bear one another's burdens. The strength of this is that when one of us is in a deep valley, another is fresh from the mountaintop and able to lend a hand. As Christians, we love the "mountaintop experiences" - the times when everything seems to fall into place, we see the "big picture," and we understand how it all fits together. At those times, God seems very near. But it's important to remember that life is lived in the valleys, where the visibility isn't so good. It's there that we need each other as guides and companions on the journey. In fact, if I'm looking for a guide and companion at a low point in my life, I don't necessarily think I want someone who's lived their whole life on the mountaintop. They wouldn't be able to understand the muck and the mess that you run into in the valley. I think I want the person who's been through a few valleys of their own - who's had to hack their way through the jungle when they couldn't see where they were going. I think I want the person who's had the experience of suddenly coming to a river, and having to figure out how to get across. I want the person who's had to find the strength to keep pulling themselves up the hillside when they thought they were too tired to go on. Because that's the person who's going to understand the significance of the mountaintop, and who will know why it might be important for me to go there. There are no "quick fixes," no "pat answers" to life. There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution to the times when it seems like the dominoes are crashing down all around us. But there is the assurance, the joy, of the living God, within us, and among us. And so, go forth and live - secure in the knowledge that there is no place we can get to where God isn't, and nothing we can endure that God can't use. Go forth and live - in loving communion with God and with one another. Go forth and live - love and serve one another, bear one another's burdens, keep the faith - endure. Amen. © 2002, Bill McWilliams
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