Four
years ago I went to the church sanctuary in the middle of the night. The drama of my life had become stranded,
written into a corner in act three. My
prayers devolved into angry sentence fragments as I groaned for some sense that,
as we say, “things would turn out.” Such
endings—and trust in them--do not come cheap.
But they are vital. One writer has said, "eschatology always wins" the argument. The end has, as we say, “the last word;” it is what makes sense of our conflicts.
I now
marvel at the imaginative grace to envision endings when our lives have been
written into tight spots. Shakespeare in
his last play, The Tempest, intimates
that his entire corpus is somehow only the beginning. “What is past is
prologue.” Through his character, Prospero, the greatest of playwrights vicariously
says goodbye to the “Globe”—both his Globe Theater and soon the globe of the
world. His painful departure from
writing may be “forgiven,” “relieved by prayer,” and seen as a kind of “prologue”
to even more profound stories of forgiveness.
Children used
to contact C. S. Lewis soliciting more Narnia stories, because they were suffering
the nostalgia that all readers feel when a good book finally comes to an
end. In the last book of the series,
echoing Shakespeare, Lewis speaks into our terror of full-stop endings.
All their life…had only been the
cover and the title page; now at last they were Beginning Chapter One of the
Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which
every chapter is better than the one before.
Thus,
the death of Lewis’ Pevensie children marks, not the just end of their story,
but another portal into a new beginning. Yet, the grand story to come is no mere sequel.
It is about entering more deeply into
the reality that spawned the first story from the beginning. Far from cycling back over the same ground,
it ascends to always greater and surprising heights.
Lord Tennyson’s
poems end, by his request, with a piece describing human death as a kind of
nautical journey. One puts out to sea, crossing the sand bar at the mouth of a
port. The ending, then, becomes a departure
on a new voyage.
One can hear
these nautical metaphors at work in Paul’s prison experiences. Rather than seeing prison or execution as a
meaningless dead end, he envisions himself on the cusp of new
possibilities. He fantasizes of “departure
to be with Christ,” but he knows that continued ministry is what really
matters. Yet, whatever happens—in all circumstances—whether in life or in death--
things will “turn out”—quite literally “disembark” for his deliverance. (Philippians
1:19-23)
Deep within the
grammar of Paul’s usage is a profound reversal of the ending. The metaphor of
departure gives way to the image of disembarkation into new places of ministry. Things, like passengers, as we say, “turn
out.” Those who preach Christ suppose they can stir up—literally “raise”-- trouble
for Paul while he “lays himself outstretched” in prison. (1:16) But Paul knows that his current imprisonment
will “turn out” in the same way it had turned out for him and Silas in
Philippi’s own jail. (Acts 16) People may try to literally “raise” trouble, but
it will not be trouble that is finally raised. Christ will be magnified in
Paul’s body either by life or death. It
is the body of Christ which shall be raised—disembarking the grave. This future reality has somehow already seeped
into Paul’s life and imagination. For Paul, the church’s losses mysteriously become
gain in a grand reversal of ordinary narratives. “Somehow, he mystically attains the greatest
reversal—the resurrection of the dead.” (Philippians 3:11)
That night four years ago when I was praying
in the church sanctuary I found myself in that season of life where ambitions typically
turn into crushing responsibilities, investments typically remain debts, parents become like
children, children become strangers, supporters become critics, and the body turns
to mush. I could not think
my way out of any of this profound and bitter grief. What
mattered most at that time was the blanket of protection others prayed over me and
the mystical grace of being able to feel
again that there is a way out. At an imaginative level I was able to
reconnect with the feeling that somehow the very ship on which I’ve been stuck will
inevitably disembark to new possibilities. Not
that I have attained all this. But I
now press on with a renewed sense that Christ will carry to completion what he
began in me.
Christ’s presence mysteriously saturated
Paul’s imagination, rescuing from him from terrifying boredom and the fantasies
about death that tore him and his desires in two. He does not fall victim to shame in
prison because neither he nor we need be stuck in perpetual dénouement leading to full
stop, deconstructionist endings. The exciting
part of life in Christ is not over. It
never will be.
Pain tempts us to
write entirely new prison escapes, bifurcating our lives, leaving all the
characters we fruitfully minister to in an unfinished novel.
Or perhaps like Virgil we can choose to end our Aeneid in rage with our swords in the enemies whom we blame for
messing up our version of Roman peace. Far
better is the ending of the film adaptation of Steven King’s great jailbreak
story, The Shawshank Redemption, in which the prison-keeper kills himself
because the protagonist escapes. But
Paul goes further, imagining the liberation of his warden as well as
himself. He stops the Philippian jailer
before he can kill himself. (Acts 16) The Philippian gate-keeper in turn becomes
a convert, and Paul’s subsequent letter to his church testifies that once again
prison guards have come to hear Paul’s good news that dead ends have been
declared null and void. (Philippians 1:13)
So, we “wait on
the Lord,” whenever we feel like we have been written into a corner. We “shall
again see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” It’s a hard developmental task to trust in
the Spirit’s help while we are in pain.
Just as hard may be learning to trust that the blanket of prayer others
lay over us will "turn out" for our deliverance.
(Philippians 1:19) Yet, there probably is not any other path to the
renewal of our narrative imagination. We
have to once more behold the Lord who in the end “makes everything new.”
