When I was in high school the big
thing in the world of pop Christianity was Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Life. In some ways, that book branded what it means
to be a Christian in the 21st century with its emphasis on God’s
purpose for your life. Warren
tapped into something that resonates deeply with our culture, something that
leads more people than ever to consider Jeremiah 29:11 as one of their favorite
Bible verses, “So I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to
prosper… and a future with hope.” Purpose. That’s what we’re looking for. A purpose
and a plan.
At around the same time that The Purpose-Driven Life was becoming a
best-seller, The Matrix Reloaded was
hitting theaters. The Matrix movies
might not seem to have much to do with The
Purpose-Driven Life, being as they were about a computer-driven world,
virtual reality, and the like, but at its core The Matrix is a story about fate and purpose. And in The Matrix Reloaded we get this great
line from one of my favorite actors, Hugo Weaving, who plays Agent Smith and
says, “We're not here because we're free. We're here because we're not free.
There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know,
without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that
pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us.
Purpose that binds us… We're here to take from you what you tried to take from
us. Purpose.”
I’m a child of the 90s and so you
sometimes run the risk of getting all sorts of references from my youth, but I
think I’m right in believing that this obsession with purpose is not limited to
one generation. In fact, I find people of all ages concerned with this question
in different ways. Young people who don’t know what they want to be in life.
Middle-aged folks who feel like they haven’t accomplished enough. Older folks
who have lost that sense that they are productive members of society. Finding
our purpose is sometimes a challenge.
It is particularly challenging because
purpose does not seem to be shared equitably. If you have a family, meaningful
work, a piece of land to call your own, a legacy; if you know what you want to
do or what you want to be, where you want to go school… if you have control of
your mental faculties, if you have the job you want and your loved ones are
healthy… then it’s much easier to point to your purpose. But if you have none
of these things it gets trickier. I sit across the table from people on a
regular basis who are broken and do not see any purpose for their life; some
who even wish for it all to end. These can be extremely difficult
conversations, and I understand why these people hear all the Christian
platitudes. Everyone of them has had somebody tell them, “God has a plan for
you, even if you can’t see it,” or “There is a purpose behind this.” I get why
we do this: It makes us feel better to live in a world where everything is
purposeful, where all life contributes directly to God’s big plan. But what ends
up happening when we say this to a person who is depressed or anxious or otherwise
struggling is that they hear it as “There is a plan but you can’t seem to
figure it out. What’s wrong with you?” We intend to offer hope, but so often our
intended hope only deepens others’ despair.
We can do so much better than this.
I think I set a record today by getting nearly halfway through the sermon
without getting to the scripture. So, I should clarify that this isn’t a random
rant--it is, in fact, on purpose. This is about Abraham and Sarah—the king and queen of
unexpected purpose. Most people in their seventies are ready to enjoy that
comfortable retirement, trusting in their offspring and the work they have
completed to give their life meaning. Well, with Abraham and Sarah there is no
such promise, childless as they are. These are anonymous folks, lacking in that
favorite word of mine: “potential,” and it is through such as these that God
chooses to transform the world. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can all point
to this moment of God’s intercession with Abraham and Sarah as the beginning of
their respective faith traditions. There was nothing special about these two
except that they had limited potential… which seems to be exactly what God is
looking for.
Again and again, God works through
the forgotten and rejected; the ones who are not sure what their purpose is. But,
with that said, we must also acknowledge that God doesn’t do this universally. We
should be careful, because God didn’t show up to every elderly couple in Israel; he
picked one couple, offering one promise. In our day, we see many good and
faithful people who live wonderful lives but are left with a sense of dread at
the end of their days, uncertain of what to do or even who they are. Either
every patient with Alzheimer’s has messed up God’s purpose, or our purpose-driven
life looks different than what we would expect.
At first it might seem only to
deepen our sense of purposelessness if we admit that God doesn’t give each of
us starring roles in the big plan for all of creation. First of all, that isn’t
fair. Secondly, it suggests that maybe we aren’t all that important. But when
we look at the world with honest eyes and admit that some things don’t seem
purposeful—that children dying of starvation and victims of rape and murder were
not victims for some divine message to be communicated—then we can begin to
better understand what our true purpose is as human beings. We are created to
be in relationship with God. We are created to be in his image. We are created
“good”—even if the effects of sin make our good self sometimes difficult to
find. But, more than that, we are given purpose as a body of Christ, whose
individual parts do not matter except as they contribute to the whole.
Nonetheless, the purpose we are given
Christ’s body is exceptional purpose accentuated by God’s occasional and
unexpected intervention. God doesn’t give every 90 year old a son, but when he
does it has ramifications far beyond little Abraham and little Sarah. Our lives
are small and fragile and beautiful; we need the whole community to find our
ultimate purpose.
Because of this, more realistic and
helpful than saying, “God has a plan for your life,” and laying the guilt on those
that don’t want to be part of that plan, is telling the truth: God works with
the big picture, which means God uses us in the least likely of situations, and
the moments that appear to us to be the least purposeful are exactly when and
where God shows up. God came to Abraham and Sarah out of the blue, so that they
might have purpose, yes, but that that purpose would be for the sake of all of
humanity. We think too much of ourselves as individuals and too little of the
whole human family. When God came to Abraham and Sarah it was not exclusive, as
if he came to them instead of octogenarians A, B, or C. No, God came to Abraham
and Sarah for all of us. He came so that the person with Alzheimer’s is part of
a drama of life that encompasses us all, so that the impact they have on a
caregiver, a family member, and a community may change them in turn. He came so
that a person who sees no reason to live may discover that in a community of
faith we are bigger than the sum of our parts. It’s not that God causes these
people to suffer in order for the purpose to be fulfilled; rather, it is that
suffering entered the world with sin, and, east of Eden, purpose is found in the broken body of
Christ being made whole when we come together as one community.
So, when I hear somebody tell me
that their life is without purpose—whether it’s a young person in the throes of
depression or an old-person who believes their time on earth should be spent—I
nod; I understand the feeling; and I don’t try to correct them with vague
platitudes about how God has foreseen this struggle or intentionally brought
them into the depths of despair. Instead, I usually don’t say much, but I
wonder… I wonder if purpose breaks into despair in the most desperate and
unexpected of places… I wonder if God doesn’t change the world more often
through the addict, the hopeless, and the completely lost than with the person
who has it all together… I wonder if it takes reaching the end of the line for
God to get through our thick heads—just as countless suicide survivors recount
how they discovered how much they wanted to live in exactly that moment when
they tried to take their life.
I wonder all this because of Sarah
and Abraham—nobodies; without purpose—who discover against all odds that God
has chosen them. God might not do it for all of us—especially not so
dramatically—but, then again, God might. I don’t believe that we live lives
without purpose, but I think we often fail to see it until we cast aside our
entire self and lay naked before God. It’s not pretty. I imagine it looks like
a 90-year-old giving birth, or Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac as an offering on
Mt Moriah. Purpose is elusive, but it’s there—it’s communal more than
individual; it’s for “you all” before it is for “you” alone. And that is a hope
worth hanging onto.
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