We drove in separate cars across town. It’s a blur to me now. I don’t even remember what part of town. The parking lot was small, so we had to park right next to each other. She gathered us at a conference table. We sat next to each other on one side, and she sat on the other. I remember that it felt strange that the office was so open and sunlit and cluttered. Dan wrote out a check for $300 and I stared behind her head at the Xerox machine while she talked. This was just a preliminary payment, the cost of the twenty minute appointment to discuss our options about the possibility of potentially hiring her to be our mediator who might make things easier through our divorce. “Of course, you’re both going to need your own separate representation as well, which you will need to factor in to the cost to get this done,” she said. “Wait. What?” I said. Or maybe Dan said it. “Can’t you just file the paperwork and represent us both together? We have no assets. We’re not looking for a fight. We just want our kids to be ok.” “Oh no,” she said. “I will be a third party that will negotiate between your individual lawyers.”
Assets. Representation. Lawyers. Custody. Retainers. Court. Separation. Hearing. The words swirled inside my head. The room, the Xerox machines, the wall calendars and the partitions and the file cabinets began to spin outside my head.
How in the world did we get here?
What was even happening?
No. This isn’t the right thing for us. I don’t know what is the right thing. But it’s not this.
The world was ending. I knew that. What I didn’t know, was what we should do about it.
What, then, should we do?
There were lots of scripts out there for how to divorce. I’d read and heard about how sometimes things just don’t work out and sometimes it’s just best for everybody to cut one kind of tie in order to keep others intact. Famous people, pastors, theologians, therapists, motivational speakers and writers, people I admire and love, they’d all gone through the hard, hard work of navigating this road, they’d written about it with heartfelt sincerity, they’d gathered up the good and shown the grace of God through it all, they made the path almost bearable, or at least relatable for those of us who would follow behind them. They’d shared their stories of survival. I thought that following them was the hard, but right choice for us. But as Dan slid that $300 check across the wood grained laminate, I had this strange and sudden conviction. No. No. This is not the right road for us.
But what, then, should we do?
There were no famous stories of miraculous repairs for us to lean on. No memoirs to pave the road on how to get from broken relationship to new, healed, whole reunification. Sure. There were self-help books. Therapists who’d written on how to divorce-proof your marriage. There were the quiet whispers of rumors and tales of relatives who had weathered such a storm and come out on the other side whole again. But I wanted a story. I needed someone to have lived it and breathed it and had bushwhacked the way through the unmarked territory, leaving a trail for the rest of us to follow. But it wasn’t there. Only a giant mountain we had to climb that we didn’t think was even possible to climb but that we felt we should at least try to climb, even though we had no map, no trail, no gps to tell us where we are, let alone where we were headed.
What, then, should we do?
Crowds have gathered in the wilderness, have traveled the roads as they turned from stone, to gravel, to dirt, to a simple narrow trail through the brush and the trees, they have followed the sidewalk all the way to its end, they have come to their very end, to be baptized by John. They’re at the very end of themselves, and, as a last resort, they come to the end of the world only to be told by John that, yes, indeed, it is the end of the world. They’ve got nothing left but their regrets and their pain and their generational trauma, and John says to them, “yes. You’re right. This is the end. Don’t rely on your ancestry or your heritage or your 401k or your political status to get you out of this mess. You are at the end of it all.”
“What then, should we do?” The crowd asks.
“Teacher, What should we do?” the tax collectors ask.
“And we, what should we do?” The soldiers ask.
They are at the end of it all, and they know it. They are at the end of their rope and all they know to do is follow the trail until it ends somewhere in the wilderness and ask for advice from a crazed metaphor-obsessed, locust and honey-eating, camels’ hair-wearing, preacher with questionable lineage who wanders around the desert ranting about vipers and stones and axes and fire. They’re so desperate they go to him for advice. They’re so far at the end of their rope that they ask him, “What then should we do?”
“Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise,” he tells the crowd.
“Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you,” he tells the tax collectors.
“Do not extort money from anyone. Quit using threats and false accusations in order to pad your paychecks,” he tells the soldiers.
Now to us, these commands make sense, at least, to some extent. We like how they look on paper, at least. It’s good to give what you have. It’s important to have a fair and just government. We shouldn’t be threatened by soldiers who have sworn to protect us. And these commands make a lot of sense in the context of the Jewish tradition as well. Share. Don’t steal. Don’t make false statements. It’s all ten-commandments stuff.
But if we look at these commands more deeply, if we think about the worldview in which these crowds and tax collectors and soldiers are hearing these instructions, they are being asked to act much more radically than we in our capitalist, post-industrial, democratic society take to be the norm. For these subsistence farmers, for these tax collectors trying to appease the state and keep their families fed, for these soldiers whose very survival and position in battle depends upon who they can pay off, John is telling them to do something that is not only specific to their unique situations, but also is quite radical to their understanding of their way of life. He’s telling them to live according to a completely different set of assumptions, he’s telling them to make decisions based upon an entirely divergent set of values, he’s telling them to travel a road that they have never seen before. He’s asking them to live in a way that has never been modeled for them before. At least, not modeled for folks who want to live long lives with some sense of security and not find themselves hanging on a cross outside of the city crucified by the Roman regime. Don’t make waves. Do what has always been done. Work with the system, not against it. Make the moral compromises. Accept the status quo. And maybe, you’ll be safe. Maybe, you’ll have a future. Sounds kinda familiar to our modern day lives after all.
Except these folks have reached the end. They’ve followed all the rules and they’re still hungry. They’ve worked the system the best they can and they’re still living in fear. They’ve sacrificed their bodies and their honor and the loyalty for the good of Caesar, and here they are, at the end, looking for self-help advice from a ranting preacher who insults them and tells them that it’s very very likely that they’ll be thrown into the unquenchable fire.
They’ve made a mess of their lives and they’re handing over their last $300 to a third party mediator who tells them that things are just going to get a lot worse.
What, then, should we do?
They start to think that this guy’s got the answers. This guy’s the one we’ve been waiting for. And like that divorce lawyer who has some idea of the wilderness that lay ahead for us, John tells the crowd, “I’m not the guy. Someone else is coming. I’m not even good enough for him. He’s coming, and things are just going to get wilder.”
They go to him and they ask, “What then should we do,” and he basically tells him that they need to go deeper into the wilderness, they need to go where they’ve never thought to go before, they need to go to a place in themselves where they will have to imagine the world, not as it is, but as it could be. And there’s no map for how you get there. There’s no atlas. No compass or elevation lines or geographic coordinates or script for how this has been done before. But it has been done before. Now. It’s your turn. Stop. Repent. Do it differently.
What then should we do?
Rewrite the narrative.
Live according to an entirely different code.
Do the thing that doesn’t make logical sense.
Instead of hoarding all your extras, give them away.
Instead of pocketing some for a rainy day, just take what you need.
Instead of getting what you want through fear and intimidation, just do your job and recognize that it’s enough.
Stop looking out for number one, and maybe, by looking out for someone else, you might save yourself as well.
Defy the “rules” that society tells you you must follow.
Stop taking the path of least resistance.
Refuse to be a victim of “how it must be because that is how it’s always been.”
Do something, no matter how tiny, to buck the system, to resist the powers, to do something a little differently than it’s ever been done before.
Do the thing you’ve never personally seen happen.
Do the thing that is probably impossible.
Blaze a new trail.
Write a new script.
Say, “Wait. Let’s not do this now. Let’s take some more time.”
“So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”
That last line in our Luke passage is hilarious to me. “So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” Uh, being thrown like chaff into the unquenchable fire is good? Being called a “brood of vipers” is good? Axes and fire and winnowing forks is good?
But see, the good news isn’t that everything always turns out the way we want. The good news is that we are not stuck in a narrative. We are not stuck with a script for how things must go. We are not stuck. We can stop where we are. We can say, “No. I don’t want this. This isn’t right. There has to be another way. I don’t know what it is, but it has to exist.”
That’s what repentance is. Turn around and do it differently.
Stop going down this road, and take a new one. Maybe you’ll get it wrong again, but you might learn something new from the experience. Or. Maybe. you’ll actually get it right this time.
Or maybe you’ll still end up sitting across from an overpriced mediator regretfully signing the divorce papers. In some cases, this is truly the best outcome. But like Paul, who is stuck in his own prison, you will have tried, you will have looked, you will have gone where you weren’t even sure existed, and you will have been given the peace to know that the Lord is near, even if things didn’t turn out the way that you wanted them to. Even if you have to divide the assets and negotiate the custody and you feel like you’re getting tossed into the fire with the rest of the chaff, you will have a peace from God that surpasses all understanding. A peace that says, “you tried, you went where you didn’t think you could go, you bore your heart and took the risk and you let yourself desire what you truly wanted, and even if you didn’t get to where you wanted to go, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Or maybe you’ll take one step in to the wilderness, dip one toe into the river, and find some healing there. Maybe you’ll find enough healing to take the next step. And then the next. Maybe you’ll turn around one day to find yourself someplace totally new that you never thought even existed, and you realize that you - through the grace of God - were the one who wrote your own story, who listened to God who told you, not how this story must end, but how it could end. Maybe you’ll find yourself eleven months later going as a family to pick out the family Christmas tree. Maybe you’ll be putting too many marshmallows in your hot chocolate as you sit across from each other at your scarred, but shared, dining room table.
Either way, when we step out into the unknown, when we decide that we are not going to be swayed by the scripts and outlines and stage directions from some other abusive and dominating narrative, whether it turns out with the happy ending or the broken heart, or, as is most common, a combination of both, when we go where God is calling, even into a heartbreaking wilderness, God is near. We will rejoice.
Thanks be to God.
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