The Mess of History

I've just been reviewing the Christ Plays in History section to see what I underlined and starred as I was reading it in fits and starts during the course of our move. I was quite obviously struck by the repeated acknowledgements in this section that history is a mess and by the various ways Eugene found to reinforce that God is present with us in those conditions as they are. It's become clearer to me in recent years that God sanctifies us in the circumstances and relationships in which we find ourselves -- as opposed to sanctifying us merely theoretically or sanctifying us somewhere else. It's strange, isn't it? I long for God to do his sanctifying work in me, but I do my best to divorce that work from the realities of ministry, the obtuseness and carelessness of churches, the agonies and loneliness of unemployment, the exhaustion and disarray of moving. As though there's some rarefied plane of my life where the REAL work of sanctification happens in a neat and tidy and very spiritual way.

This came home to me in my fun little retail job last winter and spring, especially during the Christmas rush. With any luck, the men's department was in perfect order when I left in the evening. Everything folded and stacked and hanging just so. It was easy to be Christlike when the department was like that. But by about 30 minutes after the store opened, the place was always a mess, and it pretty much stayed a mess until all those pesky customers cleared out. When all the gloves were in a pile on the floor, being Christlike to the very people who'd thrown them on the floor was, I thought, asking a bit much. Who were these boorish folks anyway?!

I didn't want to be sanctified under conditions like those, or a lot of other conditions in my life over the last few years. I wanted to alter the circumstances or the people somehow and then get sanctified. I want to be, for example, a person who forgives as I've been forgiven, but I want that without having to forgive these people in this situation. But that's not how it works. We're sanctified in history and in the mess of history. What's happening right now is the raw material for the work God wants to do in us and through us, as Jesus' own life and work -- and especially his suffering -- seems to have demonstrated pretty clearly.