Hope for the Hopeless

If there is one thing that gives me hope about my own feeble attempts to walk in a path towards God, it is the men who followed Jesus. You couldn’t ask for a thicker, slower, weaker, bunch of people. Time and time again, they fell on their faces in their attempts to find that path towards the universal spirit. Over and over, they failed to understand the message that was being given them until in exasperation, Jesus had to explain it to them, feeding them as if they were baby birds. And yet, as thick as they were, as slow, and as completely off the mark as they were so often, God, or Allah, or the Tao, or whatever you want to call it was able to take these morons and transform them into spiritual dynamos.

Let us take for example, this story from the Gospel According to Mark. Mark is the oldest of all the gospels being written only about 30 years after the death of Jesus. According to this account, Jesus was out by the sea, teaching large crowds of people using parables, those quaint stories which are supposed to reveal the nature of God, the universe, and everything, and which lead to the ultimate question, the answer to which is 42 according to the late Douglas Adams. There are so many people there listening to the teaching and they are so close to Jesus that he decides to do his teaching from the boat (step back, son, you’re crowding me), just off shore.

All day long he taught the crowd using parables. In one parable, he describes a farmer sewing seeds. Some of the seeds fall on the path and were immediately eaten by birds. Other seeds fell on rocky soil and sprouted, but as soon as the sun rose, they were scorched having no roots. Others fell among the weeds and thorns and were choked as soon as they sprouted, and others fell in good soil and produced good fruit. The people, and the disciples as well, have no clue what Jesus is talking about and later on, after the crowds have gone, no doubt scratching their heads, the disciples ask for an explanation. Jesus explains that the seeds are the message and that some people never get the message at all. They just don’t get it. Others get the message, and are very enthusiastic, but as soon as any hardship comes, they forget it all. Others receive the message and understand it, but they are so distracted by riches and good times, that they forget it. But there are those who hear the message and get it and transform their own lives and the world.

Then Jesus suggests that they cross to the other side of the sea, so they set off in the boat for the opposite shore. While they are out on the sea, the weather turns nasty, which can be pretty bad if you’ve ever listened to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald”. Soon waves were breaking over the boat and it was taking on water. Jesus, himself, was asleep in the stern of the boat, being able to sleep through damn near anything obviously. Pretty soon, his homies were waking him up, saying, “Hey! Get the fuck up! Can’t you see we’re in trouble here?” Jesus gets a little cross at this point, seeing as how it is hard for him to get much sleep with people bringing lepers all day to heal and crap like that, and, according to the story, tells the wind and the sea to calm down…and they do. Then he turns to his friends and lets them have it, asking them what the hell is wrong with them. Do they still lack faith? In the original Greek text Jesus asks, “Don’t you trust me?” Then the disciples look around at each other and ask, “Who the fuck is this guy that he can tell the wind and the rain what to do?”

Now it should be remembered that these twelve guys had already seen him cure a guy who was paralyzed. They’d seen him heal a guy with a crippled hand. They’d heard people who were believed to be possessed refer to him as “The Son of God”. They’d seen him heal those people. They’d seen him cure lepers. Simon Peter had seen him cure his own mother in law (whether he ever forgave him for that, I don’t know). They’d seen him go toe to toe with the Jewish leaders and answer every question thrown at him. Jesus had sent them out themselves to heal people and they had done it. And yet, after seeing all these amazing things, after believing in him enough to go about following him around listening to every word he said, they still got scared after the weather got bad. Jesus himself had so little concern that he was sleeping through the whole thing.

And, as I say over and over again, it doesn’t matter if it really went down this way. It’s not even so much a case of Jesus saying, look, you’re with me, nothing can happen. It’s more like a, don’t you get it, you can’t die. So what if the boat sinks and we’re all drowned. That’s not the end of your story. There is no end to your story. It’s just another chapter, that’s all. The whole message of Jesus was to free us from fear, fear of God, fear of death, fear of isolation. Didn’t they understand yet that they were never alone? Didn’t they understand that they were a part of the sea, and the rain, and the wind? Don’t you see that if you ever really understand that you are the wind and the rain and the sea that you can command it to stop, too?

And this was pretty early in Jesus’ mission. These guys would fuck up again and again. They would argue about who was his favorite. They would ask about whom would receive the biggest reward, thus proving how little they really understood the message. They would promise everything and deliver nothing. They would fall asleep when all Jesus wanted was someone to stay up with him for a little while. They would scatter as soon as Jesus was arrested and even flat out deny that they knew him. They would go into hiding after he died, and even after Jesus died, after all the amazing things they had seen, after seen all the healings, even people raised from the dead, after hearing all the teachings, after swearing that they believed Jesus to be the Son of the True God, The Messiah, they would fail to believe in his rising until after they had seen him themselves.

And even after they had seen the risen Christ, they still argued among one another. They still suffered from fear and doubts. From one of the ancient books not included in the authorized approved Bible, comes the story of Saint Peter-Simon Peter, the rock upon which Christ would build his church, escaping from Rome during the persecutions of Nero. According to the story, Peter is skulking out of town when he sees Jesus walking towards the city carrying a Cross. Peter recognizes him and asks what he is doing and Jesus answers that he is on his way to Rome, to be crucified for Peter yet again. Peter is so shamed by this that he returns to Rome and insists that he be crucified upside down because he does not feel worth to be crucified in the same like manner as his teacher.

Now these were the guys who were his closest friends, who traveled with him, and saw everything that Jesus did. They were privy to his thoughts and plans. They heard his most secret advanced teachings. And they failed him over and over. And yet, God, the power, the force, the Tao, still used them and transformed them and made them into amazing spiritual beings who transcended life and death and changed the world forever. This gives me so much hope.

Because I know how often I fail. I know how, in spite of all my good intentions, I hurt people and do selfish things, and fail to be the loving, accepting person I could be. I know how, in spite of all I believe in my heart and in my head, I fail to live up to those beliefs. In spite of all I believe, know, to be true, I am still crippled by fear and doubts. But deep in my heart, there is the desire to find that connection, to be a part of that universal creative power. I have that desire to be part of the healing force of the universe. And I know, that just as that power transformed those morons who followed Jesus around for the three years of his ministry, that power can transform me if I continue to keep trying.

Jesus said to knock and the door shall be opened. Ask and it shall be given. Seek and you will find. All who look for truth will find it. That is the promise. And I believe in that promise, because that power has kept every other promise so far. So I have hope for myself. I know I have not yet arrived, have not yet achieved that ultimate enlightenment that the Buddha talked about, that Lao Tzu talked about. But I know that if I keep working on it, keep the faith, and keep putting that faith in action, I will get there someday. And if I don’t in this lifetime, well, it’s only a chapter. It’s not the whole story. I’ll make it someday. If those twelve baboons could do it, then so can I.