Barsk lanfredag af William H. Willimon



http://www.chapel.duke.edu/sermons/April14s.htm



A Sense of An Ending



April 14, 1995

Good Friday Evening



Literary critic, Frank Kermodie (Sense of An Ending)

says that each of us lives eager for an ending.  We

can't bear reality with no finality. Kermodie

illustrates: "What does a clock say?"



Tick-tock. Of course, a clock doesn't "say" anything,

but we, hearing the ceaseless ticking of the clock in

the hall, we say, "The clock says 'tick-tock'." We thus

turn the clock's ticking into a story, a story with a

plot. "The clock says 'tick-tock. Aristotle defined

"plot" as a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every

beginning "tick," provokes a narrative crisis, a muddled

middle where some dilemma is cast, some crisis needing

resolution, demanding an ending in which the anxiety is

resolved, finished into a satisfying, bearable "tock."

The clock says "tick" but then graciously says "tock."



We can't bear to live in that indeterminate, anxiety-

full, middle ground. We can't bear an initial "tick"

without a resolving "tock."



In homiletics classes we teach our budding preachers to

create some crisis in the beginning of a sermon, thereby

to throw the congregation into some anxious middle

wondering "where are we going with this sermon?" Then,

in the last five minutes, satisfy the need for an

ending. Resolve the conflict. I've got it all together

for them. Everybody loves an ending.



So J. W. Krutch says, "All works of art...have a happy

end (The Tragic Fallacy, 1929). Even if the last act of

a play contains a sad event, say the death of Romeo,

Krutch says we gladly accept its resolution, even if it

is tragic, so desperate are we for a conclusion, an

ending. "We must be and we are glad that Juliet dies and

glad that Lear is turned out into the storm," claims

Krutch.



Milton said he wrote poetry to "justify the ways of God

to man" which may be the function of all art; to give

life a satisfactory end, to find some means of enduring

the present by knowing the future. We can bear almost

any present if we think we know how it will end, even if

its end is tragic or comic.  We just can't bear a "tick"

without it being quickly followed by some final "tock."



Never mind that no clock "says" "tick-tock," that only

art is, in its ending, grand deception. Stories are

lies, an artificial (though quite artful) imposition of

an order upon human experience that is usually not there

at all in experience itself. In real life, unlike the

theater or a novel, endings are rare. In our lust to

impose some kind of plot on our disordered experience,

we "make sense" by imposing last acts of plays, last

chapters of novels, even though we read the novel or

watch the play in pure present which has no end, or at

least any end we know of. We must "make" sense,

(Nicholas Lasch, Easter in Ordinary)



There is always that awkward moment in any autobiography

when the autobiographer attempts to explain his or her

life, admits that he or she really doesn't have the

slightest idea what his or her life means because the

autobiographer's life is still unfolding. There is no

end.



Thus all autobiographies are lies, a kind of

trivialising of the past, a false imposition of plot by

someone who, because there is no end, must manufacture

one. We just can't bear to live without a sense of the

end.



I am trying to denote my own dis-ease on this dark night

of nights. There are certain facts of this past day.

Jesus, after a trial of sorts, was stripped, whipped,

and dragged out to be crucified. Nails were driven

through the sinew and bone of his hands and feet. And

he, after hours of agony, died.  This, we know.



And now it is night. Caesar has had his way. Democracy

in action, has had its say. "Crucify him," we called

with the mob. As he dies, his last breath were the

words, "It is finished."



Is it? If this be the end, then you had best bow very

low to Caesar's images, for the State is omnipotent. If

this be the end, the final "tock" demanded by the

opening, convulsive, bloody "tick," then you had best

check the latest opinion polls before you dare utter a

word, for the majority rules.  Get a bottle, take a

pill, buy a gun for evil rules, if this is the end, the

last act of the play.



We have marched up Calvary dressed in our human best,

and there we have done our naked human worst. He hangs

there.



And so do we. We have here, crucified between our

inflated ideals and our bloody reality. Look what we've

done to our Lord. Can anything be done with the mess

we've made? We can't set it right. We've tried to set it

right and it ended in a cross. I can't fix it up for you

in this sermon, even if you allowed me thirty minutes

instead of fifteen. I don't have some end for this, some

theologically satisfying "tock" to your dark "tick."

I've got no blessed bread and wine to offer as

benediction tonight. Anything I might "explain" to you

would be an unbearable, artistic lie, trivialization of

the horror that happened at noon, a final, obscene

imposition of human fantasy upon bloody human reality.



We were discussing evil in class one day. Why do the

righteous suffer? What means the pain? And I explained

to the class various philosophies of theodicy,

justifying the ways of God to humanity.  Tying it up,

and with an explanatory, intellectual bow.



I caught myself in mid-sentence. Wait. This is obscene.

How dare we "explain" such awesome, deconstructing evil?

Let's wheel in some victim, say some soul in the last

stages of cancer of the bone, wheel her in, hold hands

around the gurney and see if we can then talk of evil in

its flesh-and-blood effects.



This night we dare not rush to an ending. Tonight, I'll

offer you no benediction, no "tock" for this Golgotha

"tick." Let us sit in silence, in the gathering dark,

rub our noses in the bloody results of our

righteousness, and then silently scurry into the dark,

there to pray for God's ending of this tragedy, there to

beg for God's final redemption of the mess we've made.