“I have gone about as a
beggar, showing against my will the wound of fortune. … I have been
as a ship without sails and without rudder, driven to various harbors
and shores by the parching wind which blows from pinching poverty.
And I have appeared vile in the eyes of many....” It all but goes
without saying that the man who said that was not having a very
pleasant day. Once again, he packed up what little belongings he
had, the papers he could carry with him, the clothes on his back, and
fled for his life and liberty. Nothing in life seemed to be going
his way in the slightest.
He used to have almost
everything he wanted. The man had dreams once. Born and raised in
the Tuscan city of Fiorenza, he'd lost his parents young – by
eighteen, he was left to carry his family through life. Two years
later, he accepted the marriage his late father had arranged for him
to a kind and tolerant young woman, Gemma, a daughter of a powerful
and well-connected family, the Donatis. He himself was of noble
breeding. Four years later, he went to battle, fought in the cavalry
at Campaldino to settle the political strife that had shredded
Fiorenza since before he was born. For years, two factions –
political parties, if you will – had mistreated and abused each
other constantly: the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. But, of course,
we wouldn't know anything about two political parties ravaging each
other, would we?
Well, this young man –
twenty-four at the time – was a loyal Guelph, just like his
parents. The Guelphs stood against more encroachment by the emperor
over life in the city-states of northern and central Italy. And with
this battle to defend Fiorenza, the Guelphs had won. He returned
home in victory to his family. And six years later, the ambitious
young man joined a guild and entered the political arena himself.
And he was good at it, too – so good, so persuasive every time he
spoke, it made some people uncomfortable. He rose to superintendent
of road repair; more than that, had a seat on the main city council;
more than that, served a brief term as one of the six priors of the
city. He had wealth. He had power. He had influence. He lived the
good life, and provided for his family, and attended his church on
the regular – after all, it was only three minutes' walk from his
house.
In the meanwhile, as can
happen to any political party, a fault-line cracked open within the
world of the Guelphs. Some families began identifying themselves as
Black Guelphs; others as White. The Black Guelphs wanted to expand
the political influence of Pope Boniface VIII, who ruled the Papal
States to the south. In Fiorenza, their faction was headed by Corso
Donati, a relative of Gemma's. But Gemma and her husband, despite
family ties, were White Guelphs – they didn't want that at all.
But surely we can't relate to a political movement collapsing into
petty infighting, can we?
Well, as the feud
escalated into local political violence, the White Guelphs sent
several ambassadors to the pope, whose thug Charles of Valois was on
his way to come be a 'peacekeeper' in the city. Our man was one of
them. Pope Boniface didn't much care for him; he detained him at
Rome 'til the dirty work was done. Charles was some peacekeeper –
if by 'peacekeeper,' you mean a partisan hack who turned Fiorenza
over to the Black Guelphs, let them riot, let them destroy property,
let them kill and banish their enemies, let them take over the city
government. Once in charge, the new government levied false charges
of financial misconduct against our man, confiscated his assets, and
threatened to burn him at the stake if he came back without paying a
steep fine and groveling for mercy. Just like that, he was homeless
and penniless, separated from his family, and on the losing side of
history, it looked.
Fleeing northward to
Verona, he tried to take part in a conspiracy to regain power over
Fiorenza for the White Guelphs, but it fell apart and was crushed;
disgusted and disillusioned with the movement, he became an
independent, a party all to himself. Forced out of Verona, he went
to Bologna and tried to reestablish himself. For a few years, he had
hope – until the fragile political truce there collapsed to Black
Guelph influence, and once again, he had to flee the city, alone and
friendless. He lamented his “exile and poverty,” “all my woes
and all my misfortunes,” he called them. And he finally had to
admit: he'd lost it all; his dreams were dead.
Have you ever felt that
way? Have you ever found yourself feeling all alone, or opposed at
every turn? Have you ever felt detached from the world, homeless,
unmoored, set adrift? Have you ever had it all taken away from you,
or felt like you'd lost just about everything that mattered? Have
you ever been in a situation where you just can't see how things can
possibly turn out right? Have you ever been able to identify with
“woes” and “misfortunes”? With “pinching poverty,” with
being like “a ship without sails and without rudder,” with
feeling like you appear “vile in the eyes of many”? Have you
ever wondered why all this could be happening to you? I know plenty
of you have. I know there are some in this church who may have felt
that way in the past year. I know there are some of you who may feel
that way right now. Bad things are happening to you, you're losing
all you dreamt of, things are just falling apart. And for you, I'd
like to fast-forward fourteen years and show you one more scene.
Fourteen years after
leaving Bologna, the man exiled from Fiorenza – well, I'll be
honest, he never returned to his hometown. He settled for a while in
Verona as a sad and serious man, and rediscovered his intellectual
pursuits that his political career had begun eclipsing. Before, he'd
been a minor poet in the big city. But while on the run from place
to place, he'd written a few books – not all got finished – and
then turned his attention to the magnum opus
that occurred to him. He wrote it in thirds. The first third came
out, and it was like wildfire. In Verona, he finished and published
the second part of his trilogy and started work on the third.
Already,
his fame and influence were growing; not limited to one city, he was
becoming beloved throughout the known world. The lord of the town of
Ravenna was a big fan – thought this man had become the greatest
poet in the world, his favorite writer – and invited him to leave
Verona and move there. He did, and brought two of his sons there.
Finally, his wife and daughter fled Fiorenza and joined him in
Ravenna – the first time he'd seen either in nearly seventeen
years. Within the next two years, he finished the last third of his
work. And with that, Dante Alighieri, in the final year of his life,
had secured his lasting fame.
To
this day, he's considered one of the greatest authors to ever live –
equal to Shakespeare, if not greater. His three-part epic poem, La
Commedia – “The Comedy,”
since it dared to sing of a happy ending – took an imaginative
journey from the dark woods of despair and lostness through the pains
of hell, the mountain of purgatory, and the blissful light of heaven,
closing with a face-to-face encounter with God, in the form of a
bright and infinite circle in whose depth “it conceives / all
things in a single volume bound by Love, / of which the universe is
the scattered leaves” (Paradiso
33.85-87). Dante concluded his masterpiece by describing God as “the
Love that moves the sun and the other stars” (Paradiso
33.145).
The Comedy
was eventually upgraded in title to The Divine
Comedy.
It shaped the art of Michelangelo, the writings of Milton and
Chaucer and C. S. Lewis, and the lives of millions. To this very
day, over 700 years later, there are people who publicly credit
Dante's vision for saving their lives. It left Dante himself
international acclaim and enduring praise, gave him and his family
their reunion in peace, and offered Dante influence he never could
have dreamt of. Pope Benedict XV called Dante “the most eloquent
singer of the Christian idea”; the current pope called Dante “an
artist of the greatest universal esteem” and “a prophet of hope”;
the noted poet Thomas Carlyle said, “I know nothing so intense as
Dante”; the famed author James Joyce said he loved Dante second
only to the Bible; Napoleon said his great regret was that his France
never could produce a match for Dante's “sublime mind.” A few
years ago, an Italian astronaut broadcast herself reading from The
Divine Comedy
from the International Space Station.
Dante
could never have gotten there without his dreams being crushed,
without his career being ended, without being sent on the run to
rediscover his greater passion. Without losing everything, Dante
never could have found his true life. His disillusionment was, in
the end, dispelled; he saw a glimpse, ever so fleeting, of how all
these bad things – his exile, his poverty, his woes, his
misfortunes – somehow teamed up, not against him, but in his favor.
Glory to God for a story with a happy ending – for a divine
comedy.
His
exile was not itself good. His loss and devastation were not
themselves good. And we can relate. Because there are so many times
in life when things are just not working out. Disasters happen. We
lose our homes. We suffer strokes and heart attacks. We get
diagnosed with illnesses beyond curing. Careers and plans fall
through. Loved ones die – husbands, wives, parents, children. We
labor beneath chronic pain and difficulty, tremble with the onslaught
of wounds beyond our control. And we cry out to God, and things just
seem to get worse and worse, and we don't understand what this could
possibly be for. Is it just senseless, meaningless? Is it penalty?
Is it a lesson? Is it an exposure of the dark void at the heart of
the world? And sometimes, to cope with it, we're tempted to brush it
all aside, put on a happy face, and proclaim that it's all good. We
give our stoic stamp of approval. But these are not good things.
And the first step is to be honest like Dante was honest.
In
today's passage, Paul makes mention of “those
who love God”
(Romans 8:28). That was the commandment given to Israel long ago:
“Hear, O
Israel, the LORD
your God, the LORD
is one. You shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
might”
(Deuteronomy 6:4-5). That was the key to the spirituality of God's
ancient people, the words they came to recite in prayer several times
every day. But Israel just couldn't do it, this greatest
commandment. But Paul reminds us that we trust Jesus. In trusting
Jesus, we're spiritually fused to him, embedded in him, melded with
him closer than any conjoined twin – that's what faith is all
about. His love flows into us. His Spirit flies in, fulfilling the
law in us, letting us honestly address God as a closely beloved
father, 'Abba.'
And although our love is like a drippy spigot weak in pressure, what
counts is that it's installed and connected to the water main of
Jesus.
And
for people connected to the main, people fused to Jesus and declared
heirs of the whole universe through him, all the junk we have to deal
with just doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem like anyone should
deserve it, but least of all us. Is this the thanks we get for
trying to live our lives right? For making an effort to clear out
the pipes of love and let it flow? Are we thereby emptied of all our
dreams, broken and fractured? Is it all just a big cosmic joke with
a punchline falling flat? What are we to make of it when things
shatter and we lose it all? Or when we just seem to be stuck in
exile, when we're driven from home and family and health and love?
Or when we can't make ends meet, or when we're cordially invited to
the funeral of all our dreams?
Dante
can relate. But Dante was called to something bigger than his
dreams. And so are we. Paul defines us, not just as “those
who love God,”
but as people who are “called
according to purpose”
(Romans 8:28). He describes us as “those
whom [God] foreknew,”
people he engaged a relationship with before we ever emerged on the
world's scene, just like Jeremiah the prophet was: “Before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I
consecrated you: I appointed you a prophet to the nations”
(Jeremiah 1:5). And Paul says that's for us, too. All those
connected and fused to Jesus are the people God knew before he formed
us, and whom God consecrated from the start. That's what he means
when he says were were “predestined”
– it means 'set apart in advance,' consecrated before birth like
Jeremiah.
And
just the same, we have an appointment: Paul tells us that “those
whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he
also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified”
(Romans 8:30). Our purpose, our advance consecration, involves being
set right and made big – bigger than all the sum of our dreams.
But it happens, Paul says, through ultimately being “conformed
to the image of [God's] Son, that he might be the firstborn of many
brothers”
(Romans 8:29). Our purpose reaches its climax in being made like
Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, the Man on the Mission.
So
just like Dante had a purpose he was called to, we too are “called
according to purpose”
(Romans 8:28). And here's the thing about how God works when he has
a calling and a purpose for somebody. See, it was not a good thing
that the Black Guelphs exiled Dante. It was not good that they
confiscated his property. It was not good that they separated him
from his family. It was not good that his career got ruined, that he
had to travel around begging, that he had to live on the run, that
failure dogged him every way he turned. None of those things were,
in themselves, good. But God rearranged those deadly shards and made
them his jigsaw puzzle. Few individual pieces were good, but God
worked them together for
good. God worked them together for the good of Dante himself, and
what's more, good to all Western civilization through him.
It's
just like how it wasn't good that Joseph's brothers sold him into
slavery, wasn't good that Potiphar's wife falsely accused him, wasn't
good that he went to prison, wasn't good that he was forgotten there
for years; but God worked it all together for
good – good to Joseph, and good to Egypt, and good to the family of
Jacob, and through them, good to the world. And it's just like how
it was not good for Judas to betray Jesus, or for the high priest to
condemn him, or for Pilate to turn him over to the executioners –
but God worked it all together for
good – good to Jesus in resurrection to glory, and absolutely good
to us sinners he was sent to seek and save.
See
how this goes? Fitting together for good is not what things
naturally tend to do on their own. Dump the ugly pieces out of the
box, see if they line up all pretty. They don't. They're just a
pile of ugly sharp little bits. But God designed them to fit
together; and, what's more, to fit into a picture that turns out
beautiful in the end. It's God who takes the initiative, and reveals
the intention he had for them all along, which explains his allowing
them in the first place. It's just like Joseph told his brothers:
“You meant
evil against me, but God meant it for good”
(Genesis 50:20). So much so, that Joseph can describe God at work
through
the disastrous actions of the wicked brothers: through them selling
him into slavery, “God
sent
me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep
alive for you many survivors”
(Genesis 45:7; cf. Psalm 105:17).
God
takes the initiative in designing the pieces so that, ugly as they
are on their own, he can fit them together into a beautiful picture,
to which each offers its own curious contribution we seldom could
have guessed. And that's because we have so little idea what the
'good' looks like. It's God's initiative, so it's God's definition.
We just don't know what all this 'good' is going to include. It's
like Dante wrote:
Predestination!
O how deep your source
is rooted past the reach of every
vision
that cannot plumb the whole of the
First Cause!
Mortals,
be slow to judge! Not even we
who look on God in Heaven know, as
yet,
how many He will choose for
ecstasy.
And
sweet it is to lack this knowledge still,
for in this good is our own good
refined,
willing whatever God Himself may
will. (Paradiso
20.130-138).
Plenty
of painful and distressing things may befall us. We have little in
the way of promise that they won't. But we do have this promise:
that God has designed the ugly and misshapen pieces for the sake of a
bigger design we don't see, and he will allow nothing to enter our
lives that cannot be fitted into and indeed contribute to this larger
purpose. Or, as Paul says it, “we
know that all things work together for good to those who love God,
who are called according to purpose”
(Romans 8:28). That is God's promise to us: that every piece,
however sharp, will find its fit for you if you are among the lovers
of God with a mission and calling to answer in your life. And that
holds true whether or not you can start to see the pieces fit
together now, or whether or not you'll begin to see the connection
next month, or even if it will look like just a heap of disconnected
chaos and miscellaneous nonsense until you stand at eternity's
threshold and the puzzle is done.
I
can't tell you what that puzzle looks like. I can't tell you exactly
how the sharp and jagged piece you're dealing with now fits with the
one next to it, or what that connection is. I can't tell you how or
when those local pieces will, once fitted together, start looking
pretty, start producing a good outcome for you. I can't tell you
whether it's this side of eternity or not that you'll begin seeing
that. Answering those questions, Dante would say, is beyond the
purview of even the saints in heaven, let alone the saints on earth.
And the questions whose answers are hid from us are certainly
annoying, I won't deny that. But maybe it can be “sweet” for us
to “lack this knowledge still,” and deepen our faith to “will
whatever God himself may will.”
Is
that consolation if you're facing chronic pain? Yes – your pain
and its results will somehow, some way, have a place in a bigger and
beautiful picture; just keep the spigot of love turned on, keep
loving God, keep seeking and serving God's call according to purpose.
Is this consolation if you're caring for a loved one with dementia?
Yes – even that will fit into the puzzle. What about if you lose
your home, like Dante? He's proof that God can work even that,
combined with all the rest of your experiences, together for good.
What about in the case of grief and separation? Yes – if that
enters your life, that take that as God's declaration that he can
somehow work it together with the rest for a good outcome; just keep
loving God, keep answering his call, keep going deeper in this
mission that will bless and save the world. Because that is the core
of our call in Christ.
This
is the guarantee: For all our little tragedies, and indeed through
them, by means of them, we have this God-given promise that they will
turn out to make up a divine comedy indeed – a story with the
happiest ending of all. So all our journey through, may we trust, as
Dante would advise us, in a “grace abounding that shall make us fit
/ to fix our eyes on the Eternal Light / until our vision is consumed
in it!” (cf. Paradiso
33.82-84). May we fix our eyes on the Eternal Light of Grace who will work
all our tragedies together into a good and divine comedy that knows no end. Amen.
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