Some Lessons

"Well I'm buckled up inside
It's a miracle that I'm alive
I do not think I can survive
On bread and wine alone
To think that I could have fallen
A centimeter to the left
Would not be here to see the sunset
Or have myself a time

Remember the sound of the pavement
World turned upside down
City streets unlined and empty
Not a soul around
Life goes away in a flash
Right before your eyes
If I think real hard well I reckon I've had some real good times

Well why do the hands of time
So easily unwind

Some lessons we learn the hard way
Some lessons don't come easy
That's the price we have to pay
Some lessons we learn the hard way
They don't come right off and right easy
That's why they say some lessons learned we learn the hard way"

There are songs that you come to in round about ways.  I'm not talking about those you hear on a radio or have a friend introduce you to.  I'm talking about those you learn something about first and then you have to track it down.

Some Lessons is one of those songs.

I first heard of this song through an NPR interview with the artist Melody Gardot.  The interview focused on the events of her life that led her to writing the songs on her album Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions, including the title track Some Lessons.

In November 2003, Gardot was struck by an SUV while riding her bicycle.  She sustained head, spinal, and pelvic injuries, leaving her confined to a hospital bed for a year, struggling to relearn simple tasks, over-stimulated by light and sound, and suffering from short-term memory loss.

The songs on Some Lessons were part autobiography and part therapy, dealing with the injury and her healing from it.  In the title track, she mentions her injury, in how if she had fallen just a centimeter to the left, she would not have survived.

It's a song about her gratitude to be alive.

And it's heartbreaking and beautiful.

This brings me back around to the problem of suffering.

That theological and philosophical problem of how a good God could allow so much suffering in the world.

While I can't speak to Gardot's faith, one answer she comes to in the song still rings true.

"Some lessons we learn the hard way."

Gardot reveals her appreciation for life, her gratitude just for being able to take another breath, comes from the suffering she endured.  She learned a new appreciation for something so foundational, so simple because of having to struggle for it.

While it's not a popular idea, I think we instinctively know this.  Some of our suffering comes to us because there is a lesson we have to learn.  God allows us to struggle because there is a concept he needs us to understand to prepare us for something that comes in our future.  And he knows this is the way we will learn it the most.

Those of us who are parents understand this concept.  The idea of having to let your children fail, even and especially at things that are hard and really matter, for them to internalize and learn a lesson.  It's not being a bad parent or being uncaring; it's instead the most loving thing you can do.

So, yes, God allows some struggles, some suffering, because He loves us.

This is part of Christ's example to us.  Look at what he suffered and endured.  Torture and death.  Agony and pain.  He begged "if there is another way, please take this from me."  But ultimately, he knew that then hard way was the only way.  

Some lessons.

I want to emphasize here that it is some lessons.  An important modifier.  This does not explain all suffering, all struggle, all evil.  There are struggles that yield no lesson, that are unknowable.  Products of an extremely broken world that reflect its corruption.  Those things we will never understand until far later, when pain has been completely wiped away.

But there are ones that do teach us.  Even big ones.  Struggles that slow us down, that focus us on important matters.  That humble us.  That stretch us and grow us.  And reveal our flaws, our strengths, our character.

They are the price we have to pay.

For some lessons, they remain learned the hard way.

The Massacre of the Innocents

The Fourth Day of Christmas

"Then Herod, when he saw that he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry; and he sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its districts, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying:

 'A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted,
Because they are no more.'"

Matthew 2:16-18

Massacre of the Innocents by Léon Cogniet (1824)

There's a part of the Christmas story that we do not really talk about at all.  The massacre of the innocents.  After the Magis' visit, Herod becomes so enraged that he orders the execution of all male children in Bethlehem and its districts two and under.

Joseph is warned in a dream, so he takes Mary and Jesus and begins the flight to Egypt, where they will stay for the next several years.  And to the extent that we do mention it, this is generally where our discussion ends.

In doing so, we ignore a reality of the Christmas story.  That for the great joy it brings, it also includes great suffering.  A reminder of why the Christ child had to come.

Imagine the scene in Bethlehem.  Mothers scrambling to protect their infants.  Families torn apart by soldiers looking for such a child.  The chaos in the streets as they are going door to door.

The wailing of mothers' cries in the air.   Their anguish filling the streets.

Today, many scholars and historians question the historical accuracy of the account.  Josephus does not contain any mention of the event.  Modern biographers of Herod often dismiss the story as an invention, particularly given the comparison to Pharaoh's actions in Moses' story.  It became, then, the subject of liturgy and apocrypha.  Macrobius wrote in his Saturnalia, "When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered killed, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod's pig, than his son."  Byzantine liturgy estimates 14,000 victims, Syrian lists put the number at 64,000, and Coptic sources at 144,000.  Modern estimations think it could have been as small as a dozen or so.  There is thought that given the smaller number of infants potentially in the vicinity of Bethlehem at the time, it may not have warranted mention in Josephus' account.

Whatever the number, it remains a tragedy.

Artists through the ages have looked to capture the scene.  None have done as well as Cogniet has done above.  The other artists looked to capture the greater scene. The chaos, the massacre in total.  Leon Cogniet, a largely forgotten French artist, instead chose to focus on a single mother and child.  We still see the tragedy.  Another mother fleeing with two children.  A child dead on the ground.

But with the focus on the single mother and child, we feel what she is feeling.  The terror in her eyes as she stifles her child's cry.  Her eye's almost begging us for intervention.

For many, this still captures their modern Christmas.  This mother could be Afghani, Syrian, Yemeni, or Sudanese.  This mother could be Honduran in South Texas, her child being taken from her to be placed in a separate "detention facility."  Her being forced out of the country to a migrant tent city on the border "worse than Syrian refugee camps."

A single mother huddling in a cold, dark flat terrified of when her next meal will be.

We are called to remember them all.  At this season, yes, we are to remember the birth.  To remember the celebration.  Exceeding great joy.

But we are also called to remember the least of these.  This mother and her child on the streets of Bethlehem.

We are to remember that the coming of the Christ was to set in motion a revolution of love and justice that would eventually sweep away all tyrants and free all victims and end all wars.

"This Christmas, remember that the followers of the Christ are called not to side with empire, but to sit with the terrified, to comfort those who mourn, to join the meek and merciful and pure in heart. And to hunger and thirst for the righteousness only Jesus can bring."

That woe is me, poor child, for thee

And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing,

"Bye bye, lully, lullay."

Coventry Carol

Holy Saturday 2018

Here the whole world (stars, water, air, and field, and forest, as they were reflected in a single mind) like cast off clothes was left behind in ashes, yet with hopes that, in lenten lands, hereafter may resume them on Easter Day.

-  C.S. Lewis - 

I've been thinking a lot this week about Holy Saturday.  The day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  That period between death and resurrection.  The period between the event that causes suffering and the event that brings deliverance.  The eternity between sorrow and joy.

In thinking over what the apostles went through following Jesus and in particular imagining what they were experiencing over Holy Week, I imagine many people believe their lowest point was on Good Friday.  The day they saw their leader, their mentor, their friend, put to death in one of the most horrible ways imaginable.  They scattered to the wind in fear for their lives, many of them abandoning the group to protect themselves.  And a few outright denying their association.  They were mourning, they were scared, and in out right shock.

To me, Saturday, that next day has to be the worst.  It's that period of waiting.  Of reality setting in.  On Friday, they were experiencing everything as it was happening, perhaps holding out hope for a miracle to completely change their circumstances that day.  Perhaps in complete shock through the whole experience.

Saturday is the day everything becomes real.  Jesus died.  And for all the disciples know, he is not coming back.  It's that period we all find ourselves in, where all we can do is just wait in our suffering.  And I do not know about you, but I'm terrible at waiting.  I want solutions. I want action.  I want to change things, now.   And the fact always remains that you cannot rush this time.

The great thing is, we know the result.  That the miracle does come, and greater than they could have ever imagined (maybe if they had listened closer to Jesus during his ministry they would have the smallest inkling).  Jesus defeats death and raises from the dead!  Victory is theirs!

So if you find yourself in the waiting, in the middle of your suffering, please know, it does end.  It does get better.  Especially, for those that follow the Way, for those truly living the life He has called us to, we know the end.  Even if we do not see the victory here, we know who holds it in His hand.

It's Holy Sunday.  But Easter is Coming!