the scandal of particularity (theology): the difficulty of regarding a single individual human (Jesus) as being the savior for all humans

Months after we adopted Quinn, I transitioned from full to part-time teaching. Initially, the transition was more brutal than it should’ve been. Whereas I’d once taught a classroom of 75 students in my introduction to literature course, I now faced a classroom (dare I say classroom?) of five students in my night class. I stood transfixed before these five students who sat so close to me that I could literally read the notes they were scribbling in their notebooks and smell the familiar scent of Axe that wafted off of one young man whose eyes grew larger as he thumbed through our 600+ page American Lit anthology. Until then, I realized that the sum total of my teaching experience had been with larger groups. In these classrooms, my eyes would invariably scan a sea of faces, and often enough, I began to regard them as a mass, an abstract whole, a generality. But this? This wasn’t a whole; these were the individual parts, up close and in person. And it was impossible to see these parts as anything but unique and particular.

Today, I teach an audience of two. Working one-on-one with each of my grandchildren has made me acutely aware of how much you can see and understand when your sole focus in on an individual and his or her learning style. No more teaching to the middle. Every lesson, every day is tailored to Gracyn or Griffin’s particular needs and learning styles. As we lean into each other, our heads bent over the same work, this is about as real as it gets.

There’s something truly scandalous about particularity. It narrows our field of vision and closes the gap. It begs to be known more intimately and invades our personal space. If we blink hard, trying to blur the edges and transform it into some shadowy abstraction, it resists. And if we try to cast it out into some nebulous agglomerate, it refuses to be consumed. It remains scandalously particular.

In Chapter 14 of Miracles, Christian author C. S. Lewis writes of such scandal:

To be quite frank, we do not at all like the idea of a “chosen people.” Democrats by birth and education, we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true. It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concessions to this point of view. It does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree. After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who are to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers. All humanity (so far as concerns its redemption) has narrowed to that.

Lewis understood how scandalous these words were, how many would chafe at what they would see as a painfully narrow view of redemption. Indeed, the whole idea of one Jewish girl and her bethrothed, of one baby–both divine and human–is scandalous. Out of centuries of possibilities, countless people and places, God chose this time, this woman, this man, and this humble place for the birth of his son. The degree of this particularity is outrageous. This is what Hebrew scholar Walter Brueggemann would call the scandal of particularity. [The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, 1984]

As a rule, we don’t do particular very well. My students, like most politicians, preferred to speak and write in sweeping generalizations and abstractions. We’re big scale, grand scheme kind of folk. The world of abstractions can be a world of rainbows and kittens, all irridescence and spun sugar. Too often, we prefer to maintain our distance and look on from afar, for this allows us to turn away if we see something–or someone–that confuses or grieves us. For better, and often for worse, we hide behind our cloaks of generality, so we don’t become overwhelmed.

As tragic and troubling as 2020 has been, it has brought the particular directly into our households. And this isn’t altogether a bad thing. In many ways, it’s a very good thing. The scope of our lives and world seemed to shrink within our own four walls. Though we had access to the world at large through television and media, our immediate worlds were small and relational. The people within our households became our particular worlds. And this was genuinely scandalous in the sense that there were fewer outside distractions, fewer opportunities to generalize, fewer instances in which we could distance ourselves from others in our homes. At times, it was undoubtedly uncomfortable, perhaps even painful. Yet, at other times, it was wondrous and intimate, for we realized that these particulars–those people and shared moments in our own homes–were the very things that mattered most.

Certainly, I can’t speak for God, but I think he revels in this kind of particularity. After all, he gave his son to a particular mother and father, to the very human experience of living and loving and leaving. Lest we generalize and lest we make his love an abstraction, he gave us a baby. What a scandalous particularity.

photo by Collyn Ware

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
― Corrie ten Boom

In the past year, I’ve had several conversations with individuals whose trust in a better world and brighter future was tenuous at best. One admitted that she didn’t feel as though she could bring children into a world like this. Another lamented the status of our political and physical environments, claiming both were woefully inadequate to sustain any promise for the future. As I listened, I imagined the doomsday clock ticking loudly, both the hour and minute hands circling wildly and with great speed. I imagined the end coming like a thief in the night, quick and sure.

As I reflected upon these conversations, I was truly saddened. Even in my darkest moments, I’ve never felt as though things were so bad that I didn’t want to have children or plan my future. Even as wars continued, politicians wrangled for power, and news of environmental disasters grieved the world, I found myself looking forward to better times.

If anyone may have conceded that the doomsday clock was, indeed, ticking, consider Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch resistance worker and concentration camp prisoner. Corrie and her family, members of the Dutch Reformed Church, worked with the Dutch resistance to resist Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and to hide Dutch Jews. For this work, she was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned in her own country, and later transferred to Ravensbruck, a female concentration camp in Germany. Clearly, she had cause to regard the future–hers and the world’s–with despair. And yet, she didn’t. When her future was unclear, she clung to the assurance that God was with her. She trusted that the world’s dark night of the soul wouldn’t last forever. After she was released from Ravensbruck in 1944 and reunited with surviving members of her family, she dedicated her life to reconciliation, helping Holocaust victims heal emotionally and spiritually. In spite of the pain she witnessed all around her, she hung on to the promise that God would never forsake his people, and she let go of her pain and fear. She may not have known exactly what the future held, but she did know the God to whom she entrusted it.

In the nativity story, Joseph is often portrayed as a secondary figure: the guy who got Mary into Bethlehem, who found shelter just in time, and who stood around helplessly during the birth. Imagine discovering that your betrothed is pregnant–and not with your child. If anyone had a right to doubt a hopeful future, it might have been Joseph. Faced with what appeared to be no good options, Joseph could’ve cut his losses and slunk away in shame. But in truth, he stepped up to play a leading role when he took Mary as his wife. In Matthew 1: 20-21 and 24, we read:

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins . . . When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

To assume the role of earthly father to God’s son is, perhaps, one of the biggest leading roles of all. When Joseph could only see the future through the glass darkly, God reached out to him in a dream. Joseph grabbed this promise and held on. And then he let go. He released his shame and fear, his uncertainty and pride and stepped up as both husband and father.

Every Christmas, I remember our own trip to Bethlehem in 1992. In the middle of the night, Paul and I loaded our sleeping girls into the van and made our way to the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There in a few short hours, we would meet our infant son who was being flown in from Georgia. Not flesh of our flesh, nor bone of our bone, but the son we’d already come to love and would soon adopt. Paul would never have a biological son, but he stepped in with both feet to father this baby boy whom we only knew through photos. For in truth, we had a family of five already, and adopting a fourth child came at my urging. He could’ve said no, but he didn’t. Instead, he hung on to the future that I’d imagined–a future we trusted that God would bless–and let go of any uncertainties he’d previously held.

Unquestionably, most of of us have had moments when we looked ahead and could see no light at the end of our tunnels. We may not have been able to even see our hands in front of our faces. To move forward, to embrace the future with courage and hope? Sure, we’ll just step into a tiger’s cage, ride a barrel over Niagra Falls, rappell off a skyscraper and free climb El Capitan. No problem.

None of us knows exactly what our futures hold. We can make predictions, and we can dream. But ultimately, it’s all about what we hang onto and what we let go of. We can hang onto our doubts and fears, as we let go of any hope in a better tomorrow. Or we can reach forward and hang onto God’s promises, as we let go of the pessimism that that threatens to imprison us. Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom hung on. Fathers Joseph and Paul hung on. And in doing so, all stepped assuredly into the future.

And then there’s my grandson Griffin, standing atop a sledding hill for the first time in the season. The snow was wet enough to be slick, and at the bottom of the hill stood a forbidding thicket of scrub brush. He hesitated. Then, he hung onto his grandpa as they pushed off and let go with a whoop that sailed through the frosty air.

This is the paradox and challenge of Advent: to hang on and let go. But just ask Griffin, it’s well worth the ride.

for Griffin

I stand at the door, eyes locked
on the ceiling, eyes of a stranger,
and then she cries...
Oh my God, help me!
Where a child would have cried Mama!
Where a child would have believed Mama!
she bit the towel and called on God
and I saw her life stretch out...
I saw her torn in childbirth,
and I saw her, at that moment,
in her own death and I knew that she knew.
--Anne Sexton, "Pain for a Daughter"

In Sexton’s poem, she writes about her daughter who has lost her pony to distemper and, in her loss, consoles herself by visiting the neighbors’ thoroughbred. He inadvertently stands on her foot, and she limps home having lost three toenails, her riding boot filling with blood. She sits on the toilet as her father attempts to clean and disinfect her wounds. At the end of the poem, Sexton, the mother, stands helplessly in the doorway watching the entire ordeal. Clearly, she witnesses genuine pain as her daughter cries out to God for help. But the real pain, she knows, will come later as her child-daughter becomes an adult who will bear a child and ultimately face death. The fact that she sees this very adult awareness in her daughter’s eyes is, perhaps, the most painful moment of all.

The first time I taught this poem in an introductory literature course, I could barely read the final lines aloud. Sexton’s words had literally sucked the life from me. As the young mother of an infant daughter, I hadn’t yet imagined her as a mother and woman who would experience the pain and loss of life. And truthfully, I didn’t want to. Better to think of her swaddled in the pink blanket her grandmother had given her, safe in her crib. Better to believe that, armed with a regulation carseat and up-to-date immunization records, I could protect her from the world at large. Better to believe that I could take her adult pain away as efficiently as I could apply Bandaids and administer teaspoons of Tylenol.

In the season of Advent, I often find myself thinking about what Mary really knew about the life and death of the child she would bear. She may not have known that her son would be scourged and crucified, but she did know that he would be both fully human and fully divine, both her son and God’s. She had to know that the world’s eyes would eventually be on him and that his heavenly father would ask great things of him. This awareness alone is daunting. And as she watched Jesus grow into a full understanding of who he was and what he was destined to do, she must have had moments–like any mother–during which she cried out, “If only I spare him this pain!”

Last week, Griffin and I were working on his daily math lesson. It was a new concept and a challenging one, at that. Finally in desperation, he dropped his pencil and said, “This is too hard! And I know 3rd grade math will be even harder!” Tears had formed in the corners of his eyes, and he blinked hard. So did I. Because in that moment, I knew that he knew. I could see his life stretch out before him, the boy-child becoming a man, the days when all things seemed possible–the world at his fingertips–growing increasingly more tarnished by the realities of the adulthood. I could see that the boy who dressed and talked like a rodeo circuit bull-rider would soon see that this was just a childhood fantasy, the death of which would leave a real and painful scar. It was a small thing, this tough math problem. Still, it took on larger, more significant proportions as we both considered it.

Generally speaking, we look forward to the future, to better days ahead. 2021 has got to be better than 2020, we think. Certainly, we’ll leave the coronavirus behind eventually, and life will return to some kind of normal. And in those moments when we see that pandemic-free future, we rest assured that better days glow brightly along the horizon. Still, as adults, we know what the world knows: that we’ll ultimately immunize the world, open up restaurants, schools, and workplaces, and live maskless days–until the next virus or war or environmental disaster. We know that we know.

This awareness could bury us, or it could be yet another reminder of how broken our world is and how desperately we need a a savior. Sexton hears her daughter cry out to God, when, in the past, she would’ve cried out to her. As Griffin struggled with two-digit subtraction, I could imagine the times when he, too, will cry out to God, for his pain will be greater than that which his mom or grandma can remedy. Today, we cry out to scientists and politicians, to policy makers and academics. We raise our collective voices to the world and hope for better days ahead.

But we would do well to cry out to God. First and foremost, we would do well to remember that we’ll only have days of earthly respite. We need a savior whose comfort and peace offer so much more than this. In this season of Advent, we can see the light of Christ emerging from the darkness. And yet, we know that this light will ultimately be extinguished. We can see Christ’s life and death stretch out before him.

The promise of Advent, however, is the promise of return: the light that reemerges, the resurrection of hope. We know that we know. And this makes all the difference.

For my granddaughter, Gracyn

It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

I would be lying if I said that I’ve lived Merton’s words. I wish that I could say that I’ve been much more interested in being than doing, that I’ve rested in the quiet of my own being more than in the things I’ve done. If I were to score my level of being throughout my adult life, well let’s just say that my average score would be painfully low. And don’t get me started about the Christmas season. It’s a miracle, indeed, that I haven’t self-combusted as I’ve shopped, shipped, baked, wrapped, and decorated. Seriously, a D- for the season would be generous.

God asked–and continues to ask–many of his most unlikely servants to do things they weren’t especially prepared for, things that required talent and aptitude they didn’t have. And we read story after story of these folk who accomplished great things for God’s kingdom. But with Mary, God asks her to be, to become the holy receptacle into which he plants his most precious seed and knits his most wonderful work: Christ. In Luke 1: 38, we read:

And Mary said, “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.”

May it be done to me–not let me do. Each Advent season, I marvel at Mary’s quick consent to settle down in the quiet of her own being, to be God’s handmaiden. She is the woman I’d like to be when I grow up.

This fall, I’ve been homeschooling my two grandchildren. It goes without saying that most days are filled with doing: 2nd grade math, reading, science, social studies, penmanship and spelling AND 6th grade math, reading and writing, science, social studies, spelling and beginning Spanish. Even at my most experienced point in teaching, I never had this many preps. Each day, I hope I haven’t forgotten something. And as a veteran doer, I have folders and charts–all the teacher things that are standard tools of the trade.

A few days ago, I’d finished with Griffin who had gone to the garage to work with Grandpa. Gracyn and I worked to complete the subjects she hadn’t yet started. When we’d finished, I gathered up papers to put in her folders and cleaned up our work area. It was then that I noticed she’d moved to the kitchen bar where she planted herself on a stool. It became clear that she just wanted to talk and pass the time with me. I was struck with the fact that I had to DO nothing. I just had to let it be done to me: the sweet conversation, the time alone with an 11-year-old who—for 30 precious minutes—made me feel more like a friend and confidante than a grandma. As I sat there, I let it be done to me. I became a willing receptacle for all she wanted to give me, for I was acutely aware that this was what I was called to be.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton explains that when he prays, he seeks a point vierge or virgin point at the center of his being. He describes this as a point untouched [by sin and] by illusion, a point of pure truth . . . which belongs entirely to God. . . . As I sat and let Gracyn’s presence wash over and through me, I realized that I’d reached a point vierge. This time belonged entirely to God who had blessed me with an experience untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth. Like Mary, I found that I could only utter, How can this be?

As the days before Christmas crowd in upon me, one day crashing into the next, the hours filled with final shopping, wrapping, and mailing Christmas cards, no doubt I’ll find myself a doer more times than I’d care to admit. But this Advent season, I vow to simply be. I will be ever mindful of those point vierges which come only when I can stop doing.

And when, in the middle of a lesson on telling time to the half hour, my grandson gasps as he reports that there are three squirrels on a one branch in the ash tree outside, I’ll let his wonder be done to me. I’ll stifle the teacher-in-me and channel Mary. For I’ll understand the futility of measuring my worth by everything I’ve done. I’ll really try to settle down in the quiet of my own being.

photo by Collyn Ware

The Way of Things
 
As the sun slips below the ridge,
the day dissolves into the tree line,
a smudge pot of coral
then the palest yellow and near-blue.
 
In the cabin, I look out at the timber.
I can barely see the white tips of his antlers
pierce the dusk.
When he moves, he parts the nettles.
He makes a way, this young buck,
his dun-slicked back like the hull of a cargo ship
pushing the night forward.
 
It’s the way of things:
this pushing the next thing forward,
the inevitable, first as a suggestion
and then as a thing of its own.
 
It’s the way of things:
the darkness on a steady course,
time its lodestar.
 
For in the blink of an eye,
the day who spent the hours with abandon—
light and color painting the world with such a broad and lovely brush—
succumbs.
 
Then the buck beds down in the cedar thicket,
and the hills tremble with coyotes.
Cold so clear it shines
crowns the world.
 
But in the blink of an eye,
the thickets stir again.
The hills simmer all golden and garnet,
and every stone is jeweled with frost.
 
It’s the way of things:
the day refusing to die,
germinating in the ash heap,
and promising—like a sleeping seed—
its return.