March 19, 2006 - Romans 7:13-25 

The Wilderness of Despair 

The Rev. Jonathan Hutchison – Vicar, St. David's, Bean Blossom, Indiana

A few weeks ago, we talked about Jesus’ time in the wilderness as a model for our own struggles with various forms of temptation. Today, we’ll consider the wilderness of this Lenten season from another perspective; the wilderness as a place where we encounter our own shadows, our inner darkness which we would rather project outward onto others. It is a place of mourning for what sometimes allow ourselves to be. It is a place of wild beasts, a place of struggle and sometimes, a place of despair.

Now, I know that words like "struggle" and "despair" are liable to make some folks shift around in their seats. After all, church is supposed to be a comfort to us, isn’t it? You’ve heard me talk about Herman, the spiritual teacher of our youth? He put a lot of emphasis on the Love Commandment of Christ…and that was right and good. But as a seminarian, I was trying to make sense of the crucifixion and I could never get him to talk about that. He said the Church was wrong to dwell all that negativity. Looking back, I think Herman was reluctant to acknowledge and deal with the shadow side of humankind.

Maybe some of you are beginning to think you should have stayed in bed this morning. Who wants to wants to hear the preacher talking about struggle and despair and shadows? Maybe some of you came to church this morning all too aware of those things, seeking refuge from sickness and secrets and headlines about the war. Maybe you were hoping for some Good News. I don’t blame you…I need to hear some Good News, too. But we don’t get resurrection without crucifixion first. You don’t get healing without suffering first, because the suffering is what lets you know something’s wrong, something needs to be fixed.

An abscess is a cavity formed in the tissues of the body as a result of infection, filled with dead matter and bacteria. The area around it becomes inflamed, which causes pain. An untreated abscess presents a threat of wider infection. So for relief and safety, an abscess may have to be lanced and drained, which can hurt like the Devil. But if we avoid the pain of treatment, the pain we already feel is liable to get worse, even as we endanger ourselves. I would submit to you that painful feelings such as remorse and despair (which can feel like, but is not the same as a lack of faith) are symptoms which help us diagnose our spiritual ills. They are not to be avoided in the Church, but named and dealt with. And Lent is a powerful time for that to happen.

According to the Bible, despair is an extremely important part of faith. Moses, Job, the Psalmist, the Apostle Paul in today's reading from Romans and even Jesus gave voice to it. If these heroes of scripture can bring their most desolate feelings before God, who are we to banish them from our own life of faith? After all, that very faith arises from an event that begins with the terrible mystery of Good Friday, when the power of sin and death and evil is revealed in its appalling fullness.

The dictionary defines despair as the loss of hope, but that's just a bit too hopeless for me. I don't think despair rules out hope. The Hebrew word used in the Old Testament speaks of "desperation". The New Testament Greek word means, "to be at a loss." These are much closer to the truth and suggest a greater degree of faith. The wilderness is the place where we must face the painful fact that we are at a loss how to manage our lives, where we realize how desperate we truly are for a way out of our human predicament. But these are the realizations of those who still believe that a way exists, and that some greater than ourselves can provide it. We might even say that we must know despair in order to come to genuine faith (I remind you that the best definition of “faith” is trust).

When we sing our closing hymn this morning, consider these lines, written by the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer as he awaited death in a Nazi prison;

And when the cup you give is filled to brimming with bitter suffering, hard to understand,

we take it gladly, trusting though with trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand.

For some reason, the hymn writer who adapted these words, changed them to read “we take it thankfully, without trembling…” I think Bonhoeffer had it right; it is not without trembling, but trusting though with trembling. Faith is not about serenely rising above it all, but finding God’s abiding presence in the depths of our experience, in times of futility and terror, frailty and transgression.

It's important to say, also, that despair is not an end-state condition. Indeed, it seems to function as a catalyst for change. Perhaps we need to welcome such powerful feelings as a gift from God, given for their potential to move us forward into more authentic faith. If not for the devastating realization that he was complicit in the evils of slavery, could John Newton have written “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see”? As a general rule, alcoholics and addicts must "hit bottom" before recovery can begin, because only then can they acknowledge that life has become unmanageable without God’s help.

Saul of Tarsus, the self-righteous persecutor of the early Christians, was sure he was going God's work. Then Christ appeared to him on the Damascus road and Saul saw himself for the vicious, violent man he was. Overcome with despair at the truth, he was blinded and paralyzed into inactivity, unable to do anything but listen. This opened the way for a complete transformation to take place. Saul became Paul, so on fire for the gospel that he became the greatest evangelist who ever lived, a man who experienced exalted spiritual states.

But even so, despair was not through with this man. The deeper his love for Christ, the greater his conviction of God’s goodness, the more he was tormented by his personal failure to live what he preached. Turning again to Romans 7, Paul agonizes, "in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do…So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand…Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"

And he gives the answer of hard-won faith, a faith that has more than once seen how Grace conquers despair. He exults, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" It is the Spirit of Christ, given in baptism, dwelling in you and me, that enables us to see and admit the fix we are in, and to feel the pain of it fully. It is that same indwelling Spirit that stays with us through the struggle, forgiving the things which have brought us to the point of despair, and helping us fashion new lives more prone to joy.

Each in our own way, must endure our sojourn in the wilderness with the wild beasts of unworthy thoughts and deeds, of things done and left undone. Jesus stayed there forty days and nights. Forty is Bible code for "a very long time", which actually means something more like “never ending”. Like Paul, conversion is ongoing, purification continuous. Struggle is par for the course and despair a fitting response to our own wounds and those of this world. I’m sorry if that doesn't seem very comforting, but very little of real value in this life seems to come easily. Besides, life is going to hurt whether we are faithful or no. The difference is that like Bonhoeffer, we as people of faith, receive all that life brings “gladly, trusting though with trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand.” AMEN