The Other Tragedy
June 17, 1979
“He was not able to perform any miracles there...He was greatly surprised because the people did not have faith.”
Picture on the movie screen of your imagination a tragedy. What do you see? A grinding car crash, a tornado blowing a house away, the face of someone you love suffering, or perhaps a personal tragedy only you know? Events such as these are tragedies, but today I want us to struggle with another kind of tragedy. This other kind of tragedy may already be making us its victims without our realizing it. Indeed, Mark’s account of Jesus being rejected in his hometown Nazareth by his friends and family might be called a case history of the other tragedy.
Jesus has been traveling across Gailiee. Everywhere he goes people are astounded. Sick bodies get well; guilty consciences are eased. People, because of him, see themselves, each other, and God in a new way. This way brings new hope for facing their living and dying. And then he goes home. At this point the other tragedy happens. Now, the people in Nazareth did not lose their wealth, as there is no indication that Jerusalem stock market failed. And they did not lose their health, as no mention is made of an illnesss epidemic. The tragedy is that nothing happened. Because of the people’s denseness, dumbness, and stubbornness, nothing happened. They couldn’t believe this guy had known for years could show or teach them anything they didn’t already know. How can Joseph and Mary’s runny-nosed kid do any miracles? They were victims of not something bad happening but of nothing happening when something great and wonderful could have happened.
A good definition of this other tragedy was given by Wallace Hamilton, a famous Methodist preacher of the last generation. Hamilton said: “Tragedy is not always something bad that happens. Tragedy is also something good that could happen but does not.” And it is this other tragedy which creeps silently into your and my life doing its malignant damage before we even know it.”
Why did the other tragedy happen in Nazareth; why and how does it happen here? I would like to share some of my hunches with you.
1. One day Charline Brown, Lucy, and Linus were lying on a hillside watching cloud formations. Lucy says, “Look at that cloud over there. It reminds me of the outline of the map of British Honduras.” To this Linus says, “Yes it does. How about that one next to it. I can see the profile of Leonardo Da Vinci in it.” They ask Charlie what he sees. Forlornly, Charlie Brown answers: “Well, I was going to say that I saw a ducky and a horse, but I think I changed my mind.”
I think the people in Nazareth were victims of the other tragedy because they did not have the eyes to see or sensitivity to understand what God was doing right in front of them in this all too familiar Jesus. After all, they had known him all of his life. Maybe they would have listened to some high-powered evangelist shipped in or some athlete talk about God but no way with the carpenter’s son. So, he could do no miracles there.
Tragedy is not just something bad that happens, but also it is something good and wonderful that could, should, and might happen, but does not. And I believe we fall victims of it because we refuse to open our eyes and sensitivity to the miracles that happen around us every day in the midst of the ordinary. Allow me a personal example of how this dawned on me.
Last year, our second son, Andrew, was born. Dianne and I attended the prenatal course given at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham. If you go through this training and you want to do so, the husband is allowed to scrub and go into the delivery room to see the child actually born. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. But in order to keep my options open, I attended the class with Dianne. After a couple of false labor dry runs to the hospital, the big day finally came when Dr. Howe said the baby really was coming. I did fine in the labor room talking with Dianne and holding her hand when the contractions came. It didn’t hurt me a bit. Then the time came to go to the delivery room. They wheeled her out and tossed me a scrub suit. At that point I wasn’t so sure. All I could remember were the jokes about father-attended deliveries taking longer because the doctor had to take time to sew up the father’s head when he passed out and hit the floor. I, nevertheless, went in. I was seated on a swivel stool beside Dianne’s head. I was told to swivel toward the wall if things got to be more than I could handle. In that 15-minute span of time, I was totally absorbed and amazed. There was not one inch or ounce of me left to be squeamish. I was awe-filled at the sight of our son’s birth. He came into the world with his eyes open crying softly. The doctor placed him on Dianne’s stomach and we began to get acquainted with our son.
What a tragedy of missed joy had I not gone into see, hear, and touch. I may never go into another delivery room again. Dianne assures me that I won’t with her. Yet never again will I hear of a child’s birth that I will not relive a bit of that experience. There were not thunderbolts or violins but a realization. God did not create life one time aeons ago and then retire to the seashore of the universe. In a real way, the birth of a new life is an occasion where God’s creative life-giving process continues, a life-giving process that he allows his children to share in.
To be sensitive to God’s ongoing life-giving process helps us realize that his earth is not a hunk of rock hurling through a cold, careless space but is the result of a loving creator, father God. The creative love of God goes on. Each morning God recreates the first day with the victory of light over darkness, something over nothing, order over chaos. Morning breaks like the first day.
Life has its bad tragedies. The deaths and pain come. But God forbid that you and I become so intensive that we fail to enjoy the births, each day of life and light God gives us. Tragedy is not just something bad that happens. It is also something good and wonderful that ought, could, and should happen but fails to happen because we are insensitive to what God does every day in front of our faces.
2. Why is it that citizens of Nazareth failed and citizens of Huntsville fail to see what God does in the midst of our lives every day? Simply put, we people have a bad habit of looking in the wrong places for God and a life worth living.
Bible scholars tell us that Mark’s Gospel emphasizes the failure of people, even his disciples, to recognize that Jesus was the messiah, the special one the people had be waiting for to straighten out their lives. These people considered themselves the chosen people of God and it humiliated them beyond our comprehension to be subject to the Roman government that controlled their land. They looked for and awaited a messiah that would be a kind of combination magic man, Caesar, and General Patton to kick the Romans out and put them in and on top. How in the world could this hometown kid Jesus be anything special? Some of them probably remember when he was a runny-nosed kid. They wanted God to make contact with them but they just had no idea he would do it so simply and close to home. They were looking at the places of kings and conquerors and he was a carpenter’s son. Furthermore, this Jesus kept talking about having to die. They wanted their messiah to kill not die.
It is tragic that we too are often so busy looking for happiness and the end of the rainbow with stuff and status that we miss the quite simple and close ways, namely people, through whom God gets his love to us daily. Recently I was visiting in the home of some church members with small children. While there, the phone rang. The little five-year-old boy barreled over to answer it. His face was aglow as he picked the receiver, then it fell: Mom, it’s for you. It’s JUST Daddy.” How often do we have the ‘oh it’s just you’ attitude toward our husband, wife, children, or parents? The odds are that among these relations are the persons who will love you more, longer, and unreservedly than anyone else on earth. There you will find the love you hunger for. There you will find persons whose lives will be profoundly enriched because you love them. Yet the tragedy is that we often miss it. We are out someplace also trying to find happiness when it is really right back at home in Nazareth waiting for us.
We give our life and healthy to quotas, timelines and due dates on the job. We expend great energy and money to learn to play golf or tennis, to tie knots or do ceramics. Then we go home with what’s left of us. It is painful, sometimes with tragic dimensions, when marriages end in divorce. Yet there are times when this must be. Still, there is just as great of tragedy possible for marriages that never make it to the courts. The tragedy here is not something bad happening between the couple but the tragedy nothing special ever happening between them because one or both are emotionally and/or physically absent somewhere else looking for happiness in places that will never give it.
This may all sound like warmed over Dear Abby hearts and flowers stuff. We all agree that husbands, wives, parents, and children ought to try harder with each other. But I am saying something that goes deeper. It has to do with a fundamental of Christian belief about life. It has to do with the theological doctrine of “incarnation.” “Incarnation” comes from the Latin word carns-carnis meaning flesh or skin. Christian faith proclaims that God’s love for the world came alive in the flesh and blood life of Jesus: ‘the word became flesh and dwelt among us,’ as John says. That’s what the people in Nazareth failed to recognize that day. And what we fail to recognize is that incarnation did not stop with Jesus. God still uses human beings to get his love and help into the world. Just like God the creator goes on creating life each day, he goes on coming alive in the love of his sons and daughters each day. He gets his love to me through people around me. And believe it or not, he gets his love to others through me. Like people in Jesus’ day, we hunger for God’s nearness. The tragedy is that we look for it on the mountain tops and in magic messiahs when it is there waiting on us in the face of something we love and who loves us. Happiness comes not from achieves and stuff accumulated but relationships shared.
I heard a Presbyterian minister speak on the problems he had faced with his family. He said: “When things start going wrong at home, I realized something. Each time I visit a family in my congregation, before I ring the bell I always say a short prayer that my presence in that home will be a blessing. I realized that the only home I didn’t try to be a blessing in was my own.” Tragedy is not always something bad that happens. Sometimes it is something wonderful that could and should happen between us and those who love us the most and need us the most but doesn’t because we are too busy looking for happiness elsewhere. Don’t let the ‘just you’ tragedy happen in your home that happened in Jesus’ hometown.
3. Mark is to the point. He says that Jesus basically bombed in Nazareth because the people didn’t believe anything that could happen. They just didn’t expect much. And that for me is the third reason for the other tragedy: we just don’t expect much.
I’d like to think about this in relation to the being Christ’s church. Week in and week out we go to church. Our highest hope is that we will get out on time and with luck that we might get out a little early. Seldom do we consider that at church we might get a new burst of God’s presence and direction in our lives. I don’t know who’s to blame? Perhaps, we are victims of too many boring sermons, tight-lipped sung hymns , and late Saturday nights. None of this is bad. The tragedy is that something good, wonderful, and amazing could happen as we gather together as Christ’s people but our ho-hum attitude prevents it. I wonder what would happen to us if we started expecting, even praying for, God to do something special in our lives as his church?
We live in a world where a person dies from hunger every 12 seconds, a world where stuff matters more than people, where the unwritten law is you can do anything you can get by with, where look out for number one and get the other guy before he gets you is the rule. All that is scary. And the only place I hear much calling those things into question is the church. We are not loud and we aren’t much, be we are the best I see around. In light of this, the greatest tragedy is not that we might try to do something about hunger or honesty in business and government and fail. The tragedy would be that we would be so afraid of failing that we not even try. A tragic church is not one that tries great things and fail, but one that tries nothing and succeeds. Tragedy with the church is not that we expect too much from it but we don’t expect enough.
There is a story of a monk years ago in a European cathedral. His responsibility was to care for the great organ of the church. One day he was approached by a stranger who asked to play the great instrument. The monk scoffed: “Foolish man, only the masters are allowed to play this organ.” The stranger kept on insisting and finally the monk agreed to let him play a few measures to get rid of him. The monk was amazed because he had never heard his organ played with such skill and artistry. When the stranger finished, spellbound, the monk asked who he was. “I am Johann Sebastian Bach” was the quiet answer. The shocked monk said: “Mon Dieu, to think that I almost failed to let the master use my instrument.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God can use the instruments of our lives to get his love into the world; he can use the instrument of his church to call people to live like brothers and sisters instead of ignoring each other to death. The tragedy would be that God could do something wonderful in us and through us, and we let our insensitivity, our misplaced priorities, and our lack of expectation prevent it.