Worthlessness and the pattern of hope: an Advent meditation

In the spirit of Advent, I recently re-read CS Lewis's essay, "The Grand Miracle". This is not an obvious Advent reading, but a great one because in it Lewis hangs the meaning and purpose of all things on the Incarnation.

The story of the Incarnation, Lewis argues, is a story of descent and resurrection, and this particular motif sets the pattern for the entire natural (and supernatural) world. Seeds die in the soil to be reborn into great plants and trees. Likewise, many things in our spiritual lives must be killed and broken in order to become bright and strong and splendid.

Watching early daylight pierce the mist to invade a dark stand of forest outside my window, I felt deep gratitude for this universal pattern of light invading the darkness. But turning inward, I had to admit I felt areas of darkness for which I held no tangible hope of light and redemption.

Human life seems to entail an increasing reckoning with dreams and hopes that will never reach fruition. Youth is blessed with almost ubiquitous potential. Anything is possible. At the point you realize one of those hopes has fallen from that bright realm of possibility, a weight of sadness lands like a flake of snow in the night. We feel the slow pressing down of hope under accumulated sadness and the cold dark, not of waiting or yearning, but of forced giving up.

I pondered deep wounds incurably frozen behind the passage of time, but paradoxically present. "Will the light someday shine even here?"

This morning I happened upon Isaiah 49☨, because I wanted to read out of the sorrow, up into all that messianic hopeful stuff in the Isaiah 50s. I wanted to find the inflection point of hope and savor it a bit.

Chapter 49 begins with some wonderful Christmas hope from the messianic Servant's mouth: "The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword...and he said to me, 'You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.'"

But the next verse—4—befuddled me: "And I [the Lord's Servant] said, 'Uselessly I tired in vain, and for nothing I gave my strength. On account of this my judgment is from the Lord, and my toil before my God.'"

I am well-accustomed to the accounts of Jesus' profound suffering, and the many challenges that hindered his public ministry. Perhaps I tend to think more about his exemplary stamina and less about his actual discouragement, because he seemed to be aware that his task was ultimately to be a sacrifice. Whether I should or not, I tend to imagine Jesus facing immense hardship along with certain hope, not actually facing hopelessness.

But Isaiah 49:4 is a clear prophetic expression of God's suffering Servant undergoing hopelessness. He's not saying, "This is hard, this is painful, but it's worth it." He's saying, "I don't have the comfort that this pain will be worth anything in the end. I'm suffering for nothing."

This discouragement I understand. And it's exactly this feeling that has been the source of my most painful experience of separation from God. I wish I had noticed during that time the second statement, "my judgment is from the Lord, and my toil before my God." The Messiah at least still believed God would witness his useless pain, and that would mean something.

However, I believe he suffered real hopelessness. It should be asked, was he actually failing, or just needing to check his perspective and do a little spiritual-emotional bootstrapping? Arguably, he experienced real failure. He was actually rejected, both overall by his nation, and over and over in many particular instances.

When I've experienced hopelessness, I've suffered on top of that black weight the shame that my suffering is also a consequence of my own warped perspective. If I could just think in a more godly way, my inner critic whispers, I'd see the real value in the situation and be encouraged. (Talk about pointless suffering.)

But here is the beautiful thing for me in Isaiah 49: God's comforting response to his beloved suffering Servant can both legitimize the real failure (rejection by the Israelite nation) and at the same time overcome it:

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant, to establish the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the dispersed of Israel; behold, I have given you for a covenant of a race, as a light for the nations, for you to be for deliverance unto the end of the earth... Sanctify the one treating his life as worthless... Say to the ones in bonds, "Come forth!" and to the ones in darkness, "Be uncovered!"

In short, hope of redemption doesn't lie solely in the undoing of the wound or failure you see. You can grieve it. God doesn't de-legitimize hardship. God's pattern of hope changes the "about-ness" of hardship. Don't be surprised if you hear those same words, "It is too small a thing..." Because you are bound up in the same pattern as the Servant.

It is possible to see a particular aim as hopeless, but that does not mean the pain spent on that aim is worthless. The thing you desired may not come back to life. The dying and resurrecting is going on inside of you. If you're feeling the sting of suffering poisoned with the fear it is also needless and worthless, just know that God and CS Lewis disagree (and who else's opinion do you need, really?).

Advent isn't chiefly about gifts—material or divine. Advent is an archetype, the fulcrum of the universe where light overcomes darkness. Advent is about the implications—the hope of that universal pattern pervading all things, material and divine, displaying God's power in them.

Light overcomes darkness always and everywhere, even in the human heart. Failure is real. Death is real. But the pattern of hope co-opts them. It takes time, often long and painful time. But God's universal Advent pattern always means hope for the hopeless, including Jesus himself.

Sanctify our worthlessness, O Lord.

☨ Bible quotes from ESV and Greek interlinear

Photo credit: Kevin Dooley

Watch for the Butler

Last night I dreamed I and a small group of others were planning to sneak into a palatial house to steal something from an evil organization headquartered there. The emotional tenor of the dream was sad, almost hopeless. The task seemed unlikely to succeed, perhaps impossible, because of the power and control of those we were opposing.

Sure enough, before we were even inside, the butler opened the door and identified us. He knew exactly what we were trying to do. We were found out before we even began.

But then he smiled. He didn't turn us in, or take us captive. He led us into the household, up circuitous carpeted stairs and down a long hallway, to a very different place from where we'd hoped to go to carry out the theft.

It turned out that he too opposed the household, and was subverting it from the inside, under the guise of one of its most trusted servants. He had been waiting for us. Rather than helping us steal anything, though, he set us to work doing other tasks he determined--things that led to other things, endless secret projects to subvert the power and control of the household. Some of the tasks were hard to understand, but they linked strategically over time into an elaborate, brilliant plan.

That plan of his design would prove far more significant and damaging to the household than our initial simplistic theft, doomed to fail. Only with the butler's help were we able to infiltrate the place, be kept safe and undetected, and be given the information necessary to overthrow the household completely and finally.

After waking up, memory of the past few days returned, and I realized without question the origin of the dream. The day before, the Holy Spirit had been much on my mind. I had been asking Him for help and for courage to face the daunting, seemingly impossible tasks I perceived needed doing in the world around me. And in the preceding days, I'd also been encountering unexpected people and circumstances that revealed amazing opportunities I never could have planned, opportunities to build the coming benevolent kingdom and subvert the present kingdom of darkness.

My sleeping imagination had synthesized a deep truth for me. Most of the things I initially feel need doing, often darkened by hampered hopes, are what He uses just to get me to that ominous door. That is where He meets me--and the rest of us who share the mission.

He brings us into the presence of "enemies" (rarely human ones), and teaches us the when and where and how of the intricacies of bringing His kingdom. It is detail work--exactly the right word spoken, the right wire cut, a certain beam removed, to topple the prisons that hold His loved ones, and set an entire world free.

The dream itself felt like a secret message, an encoded communique of encouragement to keep moving forward watching for those covert rendezvous, where the mission as I understand it may change drastically. Thank God it's usually deeper and infinitely more complex and coordinated than the simplistic things I formulate in my own understanding.