Chaplain's Corner

It was a Sunday afternoon at the end of October, 2008, my wife and I were sitting in our living room watching Bill Moyer’s Journal on Prairie Public Television.  He was interviewing a fellow named Mark Johnson who had just recently produced PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC, a documentary about how music can unite diverse people.  During the interview Mark Johnson spoke of the hope he has that through music the distance and difference might be bridged and that people of diverse backgrounds and situations might be brought together.  Let me share just a bit of the interview at this point from the transcript of the broadcast.

BILL MOYERS: Did anybody ever say to you, “Mark, don’t be naïve”?

MARK JOHNSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But to me, naïve is thinking that there’s any other choice. You know? The only choice we have is to come together. And to inspire each other because that’s the way that we’ll create a better world for us now and for the kids tomorrow. And the other truth is, I mean, you know, a lot of people are living in a world of fear. But we don’t even know how long we’re going to be in this world. So there’s really no reason to fear anything. The most important thing is while we’re here, let’s make a difference together. That’s what Playing for Change is trying to represent.

Now frankly, I am inclined to think that Mark Johnson is a bit naïve.  My own understanding of the root causes of the distance and distrust and barriers that exist between people in our world could not be so easily mitigated as by getting folks together to make music.  But I do like the one statement Mark makes, “But to me, naïve is thinking that there’s any other choice.” 

“But to me, naïve is thinking that there’s any other choice.”  Now the choice that Mark has made is not to sit back and just assume that nothing will ever change the predicament our race is in.  I have a lot of respect for his dissatisfaction with just accepting that the ways we have tried to deal with the animosity and friction in our world and the conclusion that they are the only ways there are and we must be satisfied that they work or fail to work, whatever the case may be.

Frankly, the longing Mark has to unite people is a holy one.  This longing is one that is shared by millions, yet, the old divisions continue to exist and new divisions appear.  Music does have a mystical way of uniting people.  Just think of a concert at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg.  Ten thousand people find their way into the MTS Center week after week to hear an old or a new recording artist who is making his/her way across the country.  If the ticket holders were polled, in any one crowd you would find Christians and Jews and Moslems and a variety of other religions.  You would find people of Aboriginal origins and people of African origins and people from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Australia and South and Central America.  In that crowd you would find Liberals and Conservatives and New Democrats.  There would be young people, middle aged people and older adults.  There would certainly be diversity all brought together by music.  As beautiful as those moments are, they are unfortunately just moments and it is naïve to believe that music can some how resolve the age long patterns of animosity and malice that keep our world divided.  Music may clam the “savage beast” of human malice and hatred, but it is naive to believe that somehow music will resolve the problems and dispel the malice and hatred.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, it is the commemoration of possibly the most significant event in human history.  It is the day that God incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, gave his life as a sacrifice for the sins of all humanity.  You would think that if anything could unite our race, it would be such an act.  Consider the Bible’s claims about this event.

In those few hours, as Jesus was nailed to the cross and died, a plan that was conceived before the creation of the world reached its culmination.  The sin that had so infected the human race from the day Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, was propitiated (the wrath of God was appeased).  I don’t often use technical theological language in my columns, but at this juncture it is important.  God’s wrath was stirred by Adam and Eve’s rebellion.  The rebellion of the race and each individual in the race from that first sin on fueled God’s wrath.   God’s wrath was absolutely righteous.  Sin spits in the face of God’s holiness.  Sin is a crass, flippant, indifference to all that is right and good and holy – all that God is.  The nature of the affront is so severe that those who are guilty, and that is every human being, deserve to die, not just temporally and physically, but spiritually and eternally.

Propitiation satisfied the justice God’s wrath demands; for it provides satisfaction.  The sacrifice of God incarnate, of Jesus the Son of God, who was as holy as God himself, completely untainted by the vileness of sin, satisfied God’s justice, appeased God’s holy and righteous wrath and open the door for the divine graces of forgiveness, mercy and love to flow to sinners.

From the time Adam and Eve sinned, the common and consistent choice people have made is to attempt to propitiate God’s wrath through ritual and self defined acts of righteousness.  The thinking being:  If I have offended God and stirred his wrath, then I must appease the wrath I stirred up.  This thinking however reflects a much too elevated opinion of our capacity as humans.  God has always rejected our attempts to appease his wrath.  This was why God rejected Cain’s sacrifice of the fruit of his gardens.  He has rejected the attempts because the attempts, like the sin that stirred His wrath, are an affront to his holiness for they fall short of satisfying the just demands of God’s law.

Happily for us, God’s nature and desire results in his providing us with a different choice, a choice that can appease His wrath and open the door to renewed union with Him.  Mark Johnson’s statement “But to me, naïve is thinking that there’s any other choice” reminds me that as a race, we need to stop being so naïve as to believe that we can devise some means of appeasing God’s wrath.  Millenniums of time and literally billions of individuals have attempted in their own way to appease God’s wrath, all have failed for they were naïve, believing that this was the only way.  There is another choice; it is to choose God’s way, to embrace his provision for the problem, it is to accept the fact that the very reason Jesus came into our world and died that first Good Friday was to solve our problem.  It was to propitiate God’s wrath and open the door for God’s graces to flow to any who would chose this new alternative, any who would chose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.  “Naïve is thinking that there’s any other choice”  may we end our naivety and embrace God’s choice, his offer of saving grace made available to us through the substitutionary, satisfying death of Jesus and the subsequent resurrection which we celebrate this coming weekend.  Blessings!