The Sauntering Pilgrim

Some scriptures to me are like a sweet dessert: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15); “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God’s mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, as sure as the sunrise” (Lam. 3:22-23); “Teach us the shortness of life that we may gain wisdom of heart” (Ps. 90:12). I never have enough of them, and they’ve become to me, as they did to Jeremiah, “a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16).

Chewing on other scriptures, however, like the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30), gives me indigestion. It doesn’t make sense. Why would this humble slave, who made what he believed was a good decision to safeguard his master’s wealth, be condemned and thrown into the outer darkness? It seems pretty harsh to me, not like the God of abundant mercy I read about elsewhere, the God who gathers us home without counting our bad judgment and worse deeds against us (2 Cor. 5:19).

And what about the other slaves, who doubled their master’s wealth? Scholars who know about such things tell me they could have made such extravagant profits only by violating basic Jewish social and economic laws – laws against charging interest on loans, for example. How did these greedy and morally deficient lawbreakers deserve praise while the one who tried to do the right thing ended up being the goat of the story?

It doesn’t make sense to me until I look closer, then I find something else. I hear the voice of a little one-panel cartoon philosopher who a long time ago appeared each day in the Memphis, Tenn., Commercial Appeal. “Sometimes it’s pretty hard to do the right thing,” he said; “you don’t always know what’s gonna come of it.” Life is like that. Sometimes doing the wrong thing pays off and you get a promotion; sometimes doing the right thing backfires and you get kicked to the gutter. “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men / Gang aft agley [go oft awry]” poet Robert Burns wrote. Life offers no guarantee of praise or success for doing the right thing.

What life offers is the assurance that among the gains and losses, we may find grace. The rich get rich and the poor get poorer, and God makes the sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matt. 5:45) without respect to merit or fairness. It’s a hard reality – beyond my understanding why – that from cradle to grave we steer a difficult course between gains and losses, between a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to seek and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to throw away, and that God has made everything suitable for its time  (Eccles. 3:1-8, 11).

And so we meet the God who moves among the gains and losses with us. However narrow, crooked, and distressed our path may be, we have a shepherd who provides everything we need, who goes with us even through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps. 23) – a high priest who shared our weakness and testing and experienced our gains and losses (Heb. 4:15). God is not with us only when things go right in life. God is also with us when things go wrong, when life is unfair, when despite our best efforts we get the short end of the stick, and when we suffer for doing the right thing.

And what about the slave who for doing the right thing was thrown into the outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth? That may not be such a bad place to be in the end, for that’s where Jesus ended up. Jesus, the one who “was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account” (Isa. 53:3). Through him who was thrown to the outer darkness, the will of God would prosper, and out of his anguish he would see light (vv. 10-11).

To paraphrase a poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer: It doesn’t matter what success you’ve planned or achieved, or what condemnation you have suffered; I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t matter how the stars align for you; I want to know if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still shout to the universe, “Yes.”

When life treats you badly and unfairly, remember, “we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. [But] what we do know is this: when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). So take heart, be of good courage, Christ – the one thrown into the outer darkness – has overcome the world (John 16:33). And so will we. And so will we. ▪