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| End of the Line |
He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20) Thus ends the last book of the Bible. This is the end, not only how the story ends. Somehow this is also our desire, the desire of the Church, of “all the saints” (Rev. 22:21) Why would we desire the end?
The end is the coming of the Lord, the final setting things right that will bring God’s justice and God’s mercy and bring an end to the murder, mayhem, sin, and shenanigans that come with the rule of men. Confronted with all that is wrong in the world, we raise our eyes and pray, Come, Lord Jesus! Come fix this mess; repair what is broken.
We take this language from the rhetoric of our time, which resorts often to claiming things are broken. Our justice system is broken. Our education system is broken. But men are not machines, and human society is organic not mechanical. Cars and computers break; human beings fail. We fail early and often, and every program of human design requiring human participation will reflect this shortfall. “It” is not broken; we are fallen.
At the beginning of our life, we expect and become better – stronger, smarter, bigger, wiser, more and more capable of more and more marvels. We mature and identify what needs improvement about ourselves, and by focusing our attention and our efforts, maybe even obtaining help, sometimes we can turn our weakness into strength.
Sometimes, however, we cannot modify ourselves this way; our best and repeated efforts fail. This happens not only in extraordinary efforts like achieving a record in pole-vaulting or learning to write poetry in Chinese. Sometimes our recurring failures are basic, like doing our job or loving our spouse.
In a high-speed, high-functioning society, this sometimes magnifies unsatisfactory results to the level of catastrophe. In any one human life, such failure is catastrophe. Hence our prayer, Come, Lord Jesus! Get me out of this mess.
Standing honestly before the Lord, however, we realize that He did not promise to “fix” what is broken around us. With time and grace, we object less to what is wrong with the world and more to what is wrong with ourselves. We lament our failures, our inabilities, our disabilities we cannot repair or reform. We grieve the damage we have done and the opportunities we have squandered. Into this irreparable mess steps Jesus, God’s Word become flesh.
Recall that at Cana they were desperate. They had no wine. Jesus provided the best wine, which they never would have enjoyed if their inferior wine had lasted. They would not have known Jesus was there, much less learned what He is here to do. When all our efforts fall flat, our best and our worst, that is when God’s work occurs for us. What happens after our failure is better than if we had never failed in the first place; our success would not only have been insufficient, but also catastrophic.
God comes to where we fall. Christ is the sun that comes with healing rays (Mal 3:20a), rejoicing only the injured and disabled, the chill and the sick. For any and all who stand athwart their world in triumph, that same sun is blazing like an oven (Mal 3:19).
Wounds and weakness are where God happens, where our rescue happens. To turn away from catastrophes of our own making is to turn our back on the Lord who comes. To look at failure and fault and reject the people who “allowed this to happen” is to reject the good wine that only comes when we turn to Christ in desperation. God fills empty vessels and empty hands.
We are not broken in need of fixing; our best efforts and our world are not broken waiting for us to repair them. We are wounded, unable to rescue ourselves from the deadly field where we have fallen. We await a savior.
What He brings when he comes to save us is better than anything we can imagine, much less achieve. He comes with His gifts and his grace and makes us glad we fell, glad we failed, happy to have been helpless. It is a mistake to ignore or avoid our desperation. We can and should go there, stand precisely there, and call out: Come, Lord Jesus! Do not wait for, much less wish for, the end.
Monsignor Smith
