Lost voice
Two images have been stuck in my head in recent days. The first, when I spent several summer weeks in the Pacific Northwest to take a seminary course.
One day, a group of us decided to drive over to Squamish Chief to do a bit of hiking. It was an overcast morning with low-hanging clouds over the mountains and coastal inlets. When we arrived at the starting point for our hike, the parking lot was packed with tour buses disgorging tourists ready to stroll over to the base of The Chief where they would ooh and ahh over the beauty before them, get a little wet in the spray of the water falls before heading back to the climate controlled comfort of the buses.
Our guide led us beyond the tourist stop, through forest carpeted in pine needles to the most strenuous hike I’ve ever done. Most of the day my heart was in my throat as we navigated rain slick rock, searched for crevices and hand holds, and scrambled over ledges.
On the climb we depended on the experienced guide to point out those places where it was safe to put our feet or to grab for a handhold. Near the end of the hike our bodies aching, lungs gasping for breath, we broke through the clouds onto a narrow, rock strewn path near the top of Squamish Chief.
It was like breaking through the doors into heaven, with the world laid before us and beauty surrounding us.
The second image stuck in my head is a more recent one. It is the anguished face of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he visited Bucha and the site of mass graves. From the beginning of the war, many urged the young President to leave Ukraine, set up a government in exile and lead from there.
Instead, Zelenskyy chose to stay, to live a life of peril and daily threat as the primary target of Russian assassination teams, bombs and rockets. He chose a life of peril and deprivation to be with his people in this moment of existential threat.
Every day, I wonder if the words he speaks will be his last as he moves about Ukraine, not just leading his people but comforting them, sharing their sorrows and losses, as he fights alongside them to defeat their invaders so together they can re-establish a free country.
I imagine his thoughts are along the lines of Bonhoeffer’s nearly a century earlier: “I will not have a right to lead them in restoration and reconstruction if I am unwilling to suffer with them in the war.”
Both of these images are strong metaphors for the Christian life.
Too many of us are like those tourists skimming the beauties of the Northwest from the comfort of our climate controlled spaces. We are unwilling to do the hard work necessary to see the beauty of a life of faith unfurled before us. Too few of us are like Zelenskyy, as we fail to see the urgent need to leave our places of comfort and safety to wade into places of deprivation and danger to be with the suffering, the anguished, the dying and the grieving.
No wonder the church has lost her voice, her capacity to bear witness to Jesus.