Wednesday, November 8, 2017

We and a few friends had gathered for supper recently and we got talking about the huge public reaction of grief accorded to musician Gord Downie after his sad death a few weeks ago. The two old goats around the table had to admit to a generational gap between ourselves and the age bracket who really sorrowed and then celebrated the man and his music after his passing. I must confess that I wouldn’t know a Tragically Hip piece of music even if my life depended on it. My woeful ignorance means no disrespect to the man or his music or his contributions to Canadian culture.

Yet, yesterday, I felt much the same as Downie’s fans when I heard the news of former Blue Jays’ pitcher Roy Halladay who died tragically at the age of 40 in a plane crash of his small private plane that he had been flying. For some reason, it really hit me hard. “Doc”, as he was nicknamed, was one of my favourite all time ball players. I had followed him throughout his career, even cheering for him when he was traded to Philadelphia. Of course, I have never met the man, but I had gained much admiration and appreciation for not only the ball player but the kind of man he was. In fact much of the anecdotal stories about him both yesterday and today started with him being a man of faith, a good husband and father, a hard worker before they begin to tell his baseball story.

Now there were equally good people who were killed at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, including a whole family and several children. Before this terrible event they weren’t famous like Downie or Halladay. But they loved and were loved. A famous person’s death is not more tragic or more important than these folk in Texas.   These deaths are all equally sad and maddening and unfair and senseless and cruel.  We feel so powerless in their path and wish and pray for explanations to make sense and keep the chaos away.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus references a couple of tragedies that had befallen the people, one being Pilate’s execution of Galilean rebels and also a construction accident which had killed 18 people. The discussion arose when people asked some tough questions about cause-and-effect and probably the unfairness of the tragedies. Jesus did not give them particularly reassuring or pat religious answers. “Of those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:4)  He then uses these tragedies to suggest that people look more deeply into their own personal lives, take stock, and put their lives in good order and get right with God.

Jesus was not one who usually connected physical disability with sin which is not to say that sin doesn’t have its physical affects. For example, when the disciples were connecting a young man’s blindness to his own sin or the sin of his parents, Jesus knocked that theory down totally. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned” but then he gives a fresh direction by which we might deal with these tough deaths and calamities. “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9: 3)

I suppose that modern, scientific enlightenment has taught us that there is always or should be always a rational, reliable, sensible answer to every question, doubt and uncertainty which we experience as we ask how or why. Lots of luck with that!  

I believe that God has always been fighting the Chaos and endless Darkness from the second that God touched off Creation with sacred Light and Life. “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

Sometimes it seems really hard to hang on to that much trust and hope, but other times it is the only Way by which I can actually make any sense of what is happening all around you and me. 

Dale