Control and Chaos

The crown of righteousness awaits me,
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award to me on that day, and not only to me,
but to all who have longed for his appearance.
The Pharisees might well have believed that these words were spoken about them
Undoubtedly, they did believe it
But the Pharisees had a problem, a problem Jesus points to repeatedly in the Gospels.
The problem with the Pharisees was that they believed that life was really simple.
Difficult, surely, but essentially simple.
Only one thing was needed for success: Follow the Law.
And there was a Law for everything, how to get up in the morning, how to get dressed, how to eat, how to work, how to pray, how to raise a family, how to wash dishes, how to procreate, how to get sick and how to die. Pay your tithes, fast twice a week and there you are. Righteous. It was difficult to live a good pharisaical life, but ultimately quite simple.
Follow the Law to the letter and you will have in your possession all the holiness you can possibly handle. All the holiness you could possibly need
And the Pharisees were very successful.
They were successful because they appealed to a craven desire of humanity for one thing above all others: Control.
We love control.
Control lets us in on what’s what, who’s in, who’s out, where we should be, when we should x and when we should y, what others are doing or should be doing.
Control helps us to put the world into boxes, neat, labeled boxes that organize our aimless existences into the genus and species of neatly arranged specimens of life.
Control gives us power by enabling us to predict and maintain.
Control gives us the authority to shut others out or welcome them in according to our neatly perceived categories.
Control ultimately makes us omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, gods. And our deification would undoubtedly be complete …
If only life were simpler
If only there was a rule
If only a formula could be maintained.
If only there was a Law to follow.
But we know, we know don’t we, that while there are categories, corollaries, catchphrases,
There is also chaos
Chaos that looks like fumbling for words as you hastily turn the pages of the ritual book, looking for something to say to the 27 year old mother who is dying of cancer in the bed in front of you while her husband and 4 year old son look on helplessly. hopelessly
Chaos that looks like randomness in the up and down quarks of our quantum imaginations, a universe that propels itself ever onward, helplessly, hopelessly
Chaos that sounds like the relentless ticking of a clock as you sit with a mother and father as they confront the drug addiction of their 17 year old son. He cannot speak. He is in shock. He is frozen with the deepening paralysis of someone knowing. He cannot respond and so time ticks, ticks away as you all sit helplessly, hopelessly
Chaos that feels like the trickle of cold water down your spine, the cold water of recognition as you face the same temptation again and again, that secret part of yourself that simply cannot go away, but cannot be ignored. After forty years it continues to rise up in you like flood waters and the chill of shame, known all too well for all too long makes you wonder helplessly, hopelessly if there ever will be, ever can be forgiveness
Chaos that works like a vice of guilt and pain inflicting old memories, incising old wounds, igniting old flames that will never die, that cannot be fixed, cannot be controlled, leaving our family members, our parishioners, our friends wandering helplessly, hopelessly toward Babylon
How foolish I was to think that it could all be fixed, all of this chaos could be repaired if I just had the right words, the right prescription, the right answer, the right box.
And in the midst of this chaos what can our stance be? Like the tax collector, to look down, to beat our breasts, to say Lord have mercy on me, a control freak, a Pharisee, a sinner.
And to hopefully realize that the Lord hears the cry of the poor, and we are the poor
And in this stance we are reminded of one thing, one supremely important thing; God is the only one in control
God is in control of all our irrational fears, all our desperate unknowns, all our duplicitous discernments, all our tumultuous turmoil
God is in control of everything in our lives, our hurts and pains, our inclinations, our habits, our addictions and our healing
God is in control of our health, our well-being, our sanity, our sanctity
God is in control of our breath, our beating hearts, our generating minds
God is in control because God is in the chaos, our chaos is his control
Our lawlessness is his benevolence
Our bewilderment, his wisdom
Our sin is God’s opportunity, the opportunity to tell us that we cannot control everything, that we depend upon him, his power, his goodness, his mercy
That is what we call mystery. Today, every day we gather here, we stand before a great mystery, the mystery of God’s involvement with our world.
We like to control it, this mystery, what happens here. We certainly have our Laws, our tastes, our stylistic sensibilities. We have liturgists, theologians, ministers. We have the rules and we have the desire to make those rules stick. We seem ultimately to be in control, until chaos breaks in and standing with impunity before God and every person here, the priest holds up what in every controlled environment would seem to be mere bread, common wine and say:
Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to this supper.
Then, chaos breaks out, our control is lost, we are seized and possessed by the Body of Christ and we are God’s chosen ones, happy indeed. And only in the chaotic aftermath of the mysterium fidei can we truly say, truly know that:
the crown of righteousness awaits me,
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award to me on that day, and not only to me,
but to all who have longed for his appearance.