May 6, 2005
Irony
Easter 7A 05.08.05 Jn 17.1-11
I’ve told this story before and on many occasions, but it’s frequently handy, and I rather like it. It’s about the way the Russians celebrate April Fool’s Day something like many other peoples of the world celebrate Mardi Gras — parties, parades, dancing in the streets, bizarre costumes — the zanier, the better.
I once caught a view of this holiday hooliganism on TV. The scene was in a financial district not unlike our own Wall Street. The camera zoomed in on a sign hung across the massive entrance doors of a tall building. The voice-over translated the sign: “Our Elevators Are Broken. Please Use The Ones Across The Street.”
This kind of irony is at the heart of the gospel, especially the gospel for today (Jn 17.1-11). It’s a spin on the old question about whether prayer is answered. It fools one because it’s foolish, not in the sense of wasteful or meaningless, but in the more profound sense that it’s ironic and thus reaches deeply into the senses of our humor.
Irony can be very strange and unnerving. It is nevertheless a profoundly and frustratingly pleasant dimension of humor. Some define it as an inconsistency in manners or in the arrangement of events. Some view it as a way to get the upper hand by smart-mouthing one’s way out of trouble. But the literati refine the definition to mean a marvelously subtle humor-become-painfully-exclusive simply by stating the obvious in such a way that mystifies everybody but the inner circle who claim, somehow, to get it. (But probably don’t.)
An illustration of this irony shows up in that conundrum scene of Jesus with his disciples gathered around him, asking him about parables. “To you,” he confides, “it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others, they are in parables so that seeing, they may not see, and hearing, they may not understand” (Lk 8.10). The Greek word for parables is “riddles” or “puzzles.” So Jesus says of his parables that they are riddles, and that they are riddles on purpose so that just when you think you’re getting it, you’re not, lest you sneak into the kingdom of God the easy way, by the back door.
Another way of putting this is to say that parables may not be used as crutches to create faith, but that they and all the other forms of humor and mystery and foolishness remain utter nonsense until they are seen and heard and understood through faith. Such, of course, is the very life blood of the good news we proclaim. Such vests us all in the comic apparel of those who willingly become fools for Christ. Being faithful and having a good sense of humor, indeed, a good sense of your own humor so that you can take a risk now and then, are not all that far apart.
John’s Gospel at this Eucharist this morning offers a part of what has been called Jesus’ great “high-priestly prayer” to God that the work he has done and is willing to die for and which he is about to release when he leaves, that this work and ministry be continued in the world. He asks God to give us — of all people — the same authority that God has given to him — the authority of truth, the authority of love, the authority of justice — that we might become one as he and his Father are one in order that through us, as it has been through him, the world might then know indeed — again, through us, through the church as his disciples — who is indeed in its midst.
This, of course, is the language of grace. The religious always recognize it. They often even claim it as their own as if they somehow define it in the creeds and liturgies. But only the faithful understand it. Only the faithful know it and know that it comes only from God.
Looking again at Jesus’ prayer, we remember that most prayer is not only directed to God, but expected to be answered by God. But not this time. Where’s the irony? Here’s the irony. To be sure, this great high-priestly prayer is offered to God, just as should be every prayer. But the answer this time depends not on God, but on us, on you and on me. Now, if you will, talk about irony, the irony of God who perhaps can be better known as the God of irony.
That God would leave so much in our hands, would so be willing to commission us, should not now at this late date surprise us. After all, over and over again, he illustrates himself as a shepherd, a reckless shepherd who would abandon ninety-nine nearsighted sheep to go after one. He appears as a vintner who would pay a full day’s wages to a grape picker who worked only half an hour at sundown. He allows his son to drop off for a nap on the fantail of a boat at sea during a hurricane. He even commissions an internal revenue agent named Matthew to take more interest in your salvation than in your income tax.
We are merely the current installment on that splendid wild and crazy ride down the kingdom road, the yellow brick road of irony.
An apocryphal story recounts some angels talking with Jesus. They ask what are his post-Ascension plans for commissioning someone to carry on his work. They ask him just who are to be his heirs, the ones who will tell the story. He answers, Well, I’ve called out a small community, where the women are all strong, the men are all good-looking, and the children are all above average. (That’s where Garrison Keillor got the idea.)
The angels fall into a respectful silence. Then one blurts out, “Is that all? What if they fail?” “Yes,” Jesus answers, “that’s all. I have no other plan.”
No other plan. Only the grandest plan of all. A loving community of reasonable people imagined into free being by God to be respectful of him and his creation, and, of course, imagined equally as free not so to be. A grandest plan of all and for which… God waits.
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine doing that yourself? A plan in which that God who lit the fuse for the Big Bang simply waits, waits for us to say “Yes.” Waits for us to become a community bound by love, not agreement, by covenant, not by canon law, by hope and faith, not by race and neighborhood and sex, by compassion and service, not by budgets, but by humility and even in conflict nourished by mutual respect, not by the simple merit of circumstance, and certainly not by orthodoxy, but simply by the grace of God and for those who move over, let go and let God.
Such is the language of grace. So let us not merely become proficient in that language, but let us come to understand it. Let us not be satisfied merely to be a religious people, but let us become a faithful people and dare to risk ourselves as Jesus’ only plan and ultimately — ironically — as the answer to his prayer.