A Meditation for Friday after the First Sunday in Lent | Polycarp, Bishop and Martyr of Smyrna, 156 | Ember Day
By The Rev. Wesley Walker
“You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God” (Psalm 40:17b).
In the 2017 film First Reformed, Rev. Toller, a Congregationalist minister in upstate New York, is tasked with the pastoral counseling of a troubled young man named Michael who is in a state of despair over the environmental degradation wrought by late capitalism. One line from their conversations has always held my attention. Rev. Toller tells the young man, “Wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously, hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope.” Perhaps the term despair is strong, but Rev. Toller’s point is that Christianity often requires us to hold things in tension and to see beyond what is in front of us. What makes the Christian story so resonant across time and space is that it is a eucatastrophe, victory won from the jaws of defeat. Any good story features dramatic reversals, of course, but the Christian story is so profound because it not only traverses from bad to good but from impossible to possible. Salvation springs from such impossibilities as a virgin womb giving birth, divinity and humanity being united in a single person, and the death of one man on the cross as a sacrifice of infinite merit. The impossible has now been made possible.
Today’s lectionary confronts us with two stories of salvation that both seem impossible in their own ways. Joseph is saved through a plethora of secondary causes: his brothers sell him into slavery, the situation with Potiphar’s wife lands him in that particular prison where he encounters Pharaoh’s baker and cupbearer, and he is given the gift and opportunity to interpret their dreams. Yet these secondary causes do not detract from the ultimate cause of providence that drives the story. Behind the secondary causes, it is God who brings Joseph up out of prison, thereby saving countless in Egypt and the surrounding region. The second lesson from today, the call of Levi, is like the Joseph story in the salvific aspect. As a tax collector, Levi has “thrown in” with the wrong side. Viewed as a traitor by many in his culture, he was relegated to the margins. The story diverges from the Joseph story, however, in that Levi’s salvation comes not through a complex network of secondary causes so much as the ultimate cause dramatically disrupting his current trajectory and rerouting him to a new path as a disciple of the Messiah. Both stories contain their own set of impossibilities: Joseph a foreigner languishing in an Egyptian prison after being falsely accused of assaulting an officer’s wife; Levi the Tax Collector stuck on the outside looking in, deemed a traitor and degenerate.
Lent is a season when we are reminded of the frailty of our natures and, therefore, the impossibilities that confront us in our earthly pilgrimage. Our struggle to pray reminds us of our absolute dependence on God. Our struggle to fast is a constant, stinging reminder of our failure to control our passions. The liturgical recitation of the Decalogue is not there as a celebratory pat on the back for what we have done; no, we repeat it week after week as a way of remembering our failure to live up to God’s perfect standards. Through this whole season, we are being catechized into the Christian story by being taught to lean into the impossibility of our current state, “an obscurity of sin and ignorance.”
When we reject the futile notions of Pelagianism, we can, with the psalmist, wait for God to make the possible out of the impossible. Today’s Psalms, 40 and 54, are excellent teachers about this kind of waiting. In Psalm 40, the psalmist must wait for God to be the actor who works salvation on their behalf. This posture is universalized into a beatitude in verse 4: “Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.” If we find ourselves stuck in the impossible, no false god of our own devising or those being proffered to us by others will be able to save us. No amount of political power, money, pleasure, or skill can save us. Only God. And when we come to that recognition, the only thing we can possibly do is place our trust in him in such a way that leads to worship. “With a freewill offering I will sacrifice to you; I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it is good. For he has delivered me from every trouble, and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies.”
Ultimately, the impossibility of grace is a comforting thing. Like Joseph in his cell, or Levi trapped on the outside of his own culture, Lent should disabuse us of the notion of self-sufficiency. This is liberating because it frees us to put our faith in the one who realizes the impossible, God. He can bring everything out of nothing; he can place life in a virgin womb, he can turn these hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. The power of the Christian faith lies in that fact that it’s so unbelievable that it must be true. Grace comes to us as impossibility.
Fr. Wesley Walker is the Rector of St. Paul’s Anglican Church (APA) in Crownsville, Maryland. He and his wife, Caroline, are parents to two sons. In his spare time, he teaches Latin and logic classes and co-hosts The Sacramentalists and The Classical Mind podcasts. He graduated from Nashotah House in spring of 2023. The readings for the preceding devotional may be located here from Forward Movement.
