Tom Dorsey’s father was a minister and
his mother a piano teacher. He learned
to play blues piano as a young man, and after studying music formally in
Chicago, began to play rent parties under a variety of names. Soon
he was recording music, and in the mid-20s began to record gospel as well. In 1928, the height of his secular
career was the release of a raunchy blues song, the name of which is best left
unmentioned here, which ended up selling seven million copies. Not too long after that, he played at the
National Baptist Convention and became the band-leader of two churches,
effectively ending his secular career.
In the meantime, he had married a fine
woman named Nettie, and she became pregnant with their first child. In August of 1932, he left her at home
in Chicago and traveled to be the featured soloist at a large revival in St.
Louis. After the first night, Dorsey
received a telegram that said simply, “Your wife just died.” He raced home and
learned that she had given birth to a son before dying in childbirth. The next
day his son died as well, and he buried them in the same casket.
That kind of suffering is difficult to comprehend,
unless you’ve been through it, and I suspect it was no different for Jesus’
disciples. They'd come to the temple and
were gawking at it and all—my, what big stones you have!—and Jesus laid a
bombshell on them: “Uh . . . guys? I
hate to tell you this, but all these things you see? There'll come a time when not one stone will
be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
And I can imagine the amazement, maybe even a little disbelief, because
even though it wouldn't be complete for another thirty years, the Temple was
one impressive structure. The inner
sanctum, the holiest of holies itself, was surrounded by successive courtyards,
with all kinds of columns and such, and its outer wall soared over the Kidron
valley, culminating in the pinnacle, where the devil took Jesus during his
testing.
It was one imposing building, all right,
so I don't blame the disciples if they were just a tad skeptical . . . “Teacher,
when will this be?” they asked (maybe they wanted to make sure they were out of
the way) “What will be the sign?” And we have to pause and make sure we
understand exactly what Jesus is talking about. When the disciples ask “when will this be,” the
“this” they’re talking about is the destruction of the Temple, not the end times, at least in the
passage we read. He's talking about the destruction
of the Temple, which we know occurred in 70 C.E., about forty years later. It's understandable we might think it's about
the end times, because in the other two
versions of the story, in Mark and Matthew, it is, he's talking about the second coming, but not here. Luke, writing about fifteen or twenty years
after the destruction, perhaps heard the story differently or edited it
differently, we don't know, but here he's predicting the Temple’s doom.
And they ask for a sign, and he warns them
not to trust anyone who gives them one, who says they know when it's going down: “Beware that you’re not led astray; for many
will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go
after them.” Don’t listen to them, he says, don't expend your time and energy
following them, because they will not know.
There are going to be wars and insurrections, but don't be scared when
you hear of them, ‘cause the temple’s end isn't going to happen just then. Nations will rise against nations, kingdoms
against kingdoms, there’ll be famines and earthquakes, and dreadful portents in
the skies.
And the thing is, all these events took
place in the run up to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Recall that the reason for it all was a
Jewish insurrection against their Roman overlords; by one count, there were
fifteen would-be leaders, people who said “I am he,” who tried to gain a
following in the decades before the destruction. And four emperors succeeded one another
during that period, accompanied by insurrection and violence Over in Acts, Luke himself writes of famines and an earthquake, and the historian
Josephus describes signs in the heavens
in the form of a sword-shaped star and a comet, both of which appeared during
the burning of the temple.
But Jesus isn’t finished yet; he begins
to get personal, saying that before all this happens, before the final invasion
and burning, Jesus’ followers will undergo great persecution, great suffering: you will be arrested, he says, handed over to
synagogues and prisons, and brought before kings and governors because of my
name. You will be betrayed by family
members, by parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, and some of you will be put
to death. And once again, Luke describes
these things over in Acts, and this kind of thing can happen during times of upheaval, times of rebellion. Family members split by the conflict turn on
one another—recall that it happened in the Civil War—and neighbors turn
neighbors over to the police. All of
this can occur in the run-up to rebellion.
But right in the middle of his
description, Jesus says something odd: if they are persecuted, if they are arrested,
it will give them “an opportunity to testify.”
An opportunity to testify . .
. What in the world could he mean by that?
Does he expect them to start preaching
to their persecutors, to try to convert
their captors in the midst of their extreme suffering?
In Thomas Dorsey’s grief, he withdrew
into himself and refused to write or play music for a long time, so long that
his friends and relatives despaired of him ever coming out. Then one day, a feeling of peace washed over him, and a tune
he swore he'd never heard before began to run through his head.
He went to his piano and began to play, and before the night was out,
he'd written lyrics and recorded what would become his best known hymn, beloved
by millions. “Precious Lord, take my
hand, lead me on, let me stand; I am tired, I am weak, I am worn . . .” The hymn was surely his testimony about a God
who could be called on to stand by us in times of suffering and pain.
Jesus is saying that suffering is an
opportunity to testify, to witness to the Good News, by means of a steadfast
reliance on the mercy of God. Tom Dorsey
was paralyzed with grief, he was suffering something fierce, but from it came a powerful witness to faith in God. Jesus predicts extreme suffering for his disciples,
yet in the midst of it all, they will have an opportunity to express—in words if necessary—their trust in God.
Does this mean God is the author of suffering? Does God engineer suffering so that the
Gospel might be spread? Of course not,
as Paul might say. Jesus doesn’t even hint at that, despite the ancient belief
that God causes everything, good and bad.
He just describes what's going to happen, and notes that it will be an
opportunity for witness. And don't worry
about what you're going to say or do, don't study up in it, ‘cause whatever it
is, it’ll come from the Spirit, that is, it'll come from the heart, which is
where the Spirit resides.
And of course, that was what Tom Dorsey experienced, wasn't it? A melody came to him, out of the blue, and though
it had been written by George Allen nearly a century before, it seemed he'd
never heard it before, and maybe he hadn’t,
maybe it was brought to him by the Spirit, or perhaps it came from some
deep, long-forgotten memory, but what did it matter? I'd wager that either way, it was the work of
the Spirit of God.
But testimony is not the only thing in
play here. Jesus tells them that some of
them will be put to death, then turns around and says that not a hair of their
heads will perish. And of course he’s
talking about the imperishable part, that part that is union with God: “By your
endurance you will gain your souls.”
Richard Rohr defines suffering as
whenever we’re not in control, whenever we are powerless, helpless before an
overwhelming force. And we can see that
in the suffering Jesus’ predicts for his followers: they had no control over
what would happen to them, they would be in the grip of irresistible
power. That was what it was like for
Dorsey as well, he was powerless to save his wife, powerless to alter the
outcome, he wasn't even there. And of
course, that is how it feels when a loved one dies, or when when we lose a job,
or are persecuted for our race or sexual orientation or religious beliefs. We get a churning in our guts, a feeling that we cannot do anything about it,
that's it is hopeless.
Rohr writes that times like these, times
of intense suffering, can also be times of transformation, of spiritual advancement. Suffering, he says, is a primary spiritual teacher “more than any
Bible, church, minister, sacrament, or theologian.” When we are inside of suffering, we have a
much stronger possibility of surrendering our ego and “opening up to the whole
field of life.” In other words, we are
much more open to being led.
I think that's what Jesus means here by
“gaining our souls.” I don't think he's
talking about the sweet bye-and-bye, about what happens to us after we die. He's talking about the deepening of our spirituality,
a coming closer to God in the here and now.
The mystics speak of the spiritual journey as going inward, drawing
nearer to that still, small space within where dwells the spark of God. Through suffering and pain, we can further
this closeness, this awareness, this absolute union with God. In their words, we can gain our souls. Amen.
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