For awhile I’ve been mulling over Romans 8, trying to find a way to write about this mountaintop chapter, Paul at his best, up there with 1 Corinthians 13 and 15, and Philippians 4.
But I haven’t found a way in that isn’t sappy.
“In all things God works for good…”
Yeah, but chances are, the person saying that is standing outside the crash zone of cancer, or violence, or indifference.
If I am the outsider, I don’t have the right to mouth such beautiful words. Because, with the slightest bit of english, they spin from sublime to obscene.
They minimize the immensity of your loss, they belittle your pain, they invalidate what you feel.
Imagine sitting with an Alzheimered elder, who has loved you all your life, by whose gentle looks and tender touches you learned what love is. Now she looks at you with hate, suspicion, fear.
What an abyss!
A black hole so dense that even light can’t escape it!
This mortal life is pot-holed with black holes. When you shine light into the depths of sorrow and pain, it gets turned into shadow by the alchemy of suffering.
Black holes are Fridays.
Don’t sing me the songs of Zion when the smoke of 9/11 hasn’t cleared.
Don’t tell me it’s Good Friday, when my best friend just got crucified!
When someone runs from my pain through a field of golden platitudes, I want to scream, Shut up!
Maybe, instead, I’ll have the wits to say: Be still.
That’s what I think of when I read Paul’s phrase “groans too deep for words.” (Rom 8.26)—be still!
Suffering is just too deep for words. At least at first, and who knows for how long?
The great cry of the Hebrew saints in suffering was, How long?
Jesus groaned at Lazarus’ tomb. John 11 says he was greatly disturbed, deeply moved. He wept.
We can unpack those things. His bowels were wrenched splagnizomai, like somebody kicked him in the guts.
When he saw the crowds, he had [KJV: was moved with] compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matt 9:36 (NRSV)
Yes, I know at Lazarus’ grave he said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” and other positive things. Any one of a kind Child of God should feel free.
If you’re not “monogenes” [Gk one of a kind], however, then, you know, shut the ——- up.
Photo by Mary Fran
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