On the Comeback Trail (II): On Loss

   Every human being spends his or her life learning how to deal (more-or-less) gracefully with loss.  As young children, we lose our security blankets and our pets.  We grow older and leave mom behind to get on the school bus to begin a new life.  We dream of becoming an astronaut or a professional baseball player, or the president, until we realize that honor doesn't come from great jobs, but by simply being a great person.  We encounter our first loves and our first betrayals.  We grow out of clothes and lose our wristwatches.  Our team loses the soccer tournament and we don't get selected as starters on the basketball team.  We take a "C" in algebra and that cute little guy or girl refuses to go with us to the Homecoming Dance.  We leave the security of school to go to college or a job or the military or something else, realizing that our youth is slipping away into adulthood and adult responsibilities.  We fall in and out of love, with most of us finding Mr. or Ms. "Right", and giving up the independence of our former ways for the good of starting a new family.  A child is born and more freedom is given away to raise and mentor the next generation.  We place these children on the school bus in a few years, and vicariously suffer the same losses we suffered as children.  Over time we may lose one or another of our jobs, our appendixes or gallbladders, loved ones (parents, peers, children) who finish their earthly travails; we make bad picks on the stock market, fail at entrepreneurial ventures, and slowly whittle away the days of our lives until one morning we wake up and we are old.  We retire from our jobs, our body slowly betrays us as we can no longer see or her or run or walk like we used to, we lose more acquaintances to death, we sell the big house needed to raise our families in order to go into a condominium or retirement home.  Skipping to the end, ultimately the only thing left to give up is our very selves in the sleep of death--where we lose even ourselves to the passing nature of this world.

   Our whole life is a dress rehearsal for the 'big loss' at the end.  We have our faith in something more, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that in order to pass into the here-after, we have to give up absolutely everything to embrace it.  Every loss, therefore, can be seen as a 'little death' and another step towards ultimate freedom in belonging to God.  The Christian tradition repeats this insight over and over and over, encouraging us to take to heart the passing nature of this world and to inspire us to look to things that are eternal.  Take the following insights from scripture:

• Mark 8:35 - Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.
• Luke 9:23 - If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
• John 22: 24 -  Amen, amen I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.
• Romans 12: 1 -  I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
• Philippians 1: 21 - For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
• 2 Corinthians 1: 3-5 - Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
• 2 Corinthians 12: 9 - But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  I therefore boast even more gladly in my weaknesses, so the the power of Christ may rest upon me.
• 1 Peter 4: 1-11 - Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

How do we respond to loss?  Sadness can be appropriate.  It is honest, for a joy, a gift, a grace has passed from us.  Look at what Job's (1: 21) attitude is:

"Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked I shall go back again.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!"

Came forth... go back.   Gave... taken away.  These verbs help explain that the earthly experience humans share is a net-zero gain round-trip in this world.  Just as we are born and we die, we come into the world with nothing and go back with nothing.  The only thing we leave with is the experience granted us from space and time, and the promise of God's reunion of body and soul in the eternity lying beyond space-time.

   Loss isn't easy, but it is the Christian way.  Christ himself did not see it beneath his dignity to suffer our death at the hands of cruel and mindless men.  He spread his arms upon the cross, not to grasp the world, but to let go.  Indeed, in the physiology of crucifixion, one scientist shows very elegantly (figure to the right) that his body--all he had left--became a weight used against him as he struggled up and down to breathe... to stay alive (paradoxically, to expel air from the lungs), one must scoot 'up' the cross, maneuvering the tortured wrists into something of a grasping configuration, further tormenting arm and shoulder muscles (which as illustrated here include a dislocation of the right shoulder).  When the victim of crucifixion is exhausted, he stops moving, suffocating under his own body weight, pulmonary edema, cardiac tamponade, and with repsiratory and cardiac failure.  Our Lord made his death a "Job moment", returning praise to the Father as he proclaimed, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!"  Entering the total God-forsakenness of death, Jesus descended into hell (Sheol) to join and collect up all those awaiting the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

   Christ's death was not a typical martyr's death... there's more here.  Martyrs are very conscious of God's presence in their actions.  It is the motivation  and inspiration and courage from living faith in God that leads them to their sacrifices in hope and not despair.  Martyr's sacrifices are commendable and their losses in the eyes of the world total, but they do so with an eye to the good that lies beyond, never leaving the loving oversight God's vision.  But there was something very different--even greater--with Jesus' death.  His sacrifice was not simply physical or mental to enable passage into a new realm of being, but it was totally spiritual as well.  His death resulted in God's entry into the farthest depths of death itself.  Unlike a human martyr, letting go of life to embrace something else... God's kingdom, when God died on that day, Jesus freely entered a state of total forsakenness before the Father.  He died not merely in his human nature or divine nature (natures cannot be separated from a person), the Second Person of the Trinity, really, truly experienced in a way that no other human being could the totality of darkness which those who go out from God as created beings could experience.  This total darkness encompasses all the loss we could possibly encounter... loss of our material goods, loss of our name and identity, loss of life itself, but most importantly, the loss of relationship and intimacy with God.  This is why Jesus' victory over death is not only a physical victory for us who fear the dissociation of our bodies and souls and the dis-integration that follows, but it is also a moral victory over the death and separation from God that takes place by way of sin. 

   Ironically, Jesus' "going out" seems to be just the opposite of Job's "coming forth... going back" and "the Lord gave and has taken away".  In 'going out' from God, Jesus is depleted, only to return in glory.  Conversely, we have the illusion of this life away from God being full, only to be emptied out again when we take that last hearse ride.  Does the seeming-backwardness of this pattern in human experience suggest that perhaps our perspective isn't necessarily the best one?

   This reasoning still doesn't make loss easy, but it does reveal a tiny nugget of God's wisdom in allowing loss to be part of the human experience.  Loss prepares us for greater glory.  What else might God have in store for those who are committed to "coming back" to him using the pattern and habit of trust guided by faith?  Of this wisdom, scripture explains, ...eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has the human mind conceived of what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed through the Spirit, for the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.  (1 Corinthians 2:9)

  The next "comeback" installment on will be out, probably, on Wednesday.