... with God All Things Are Possible

Last summer, I got an email from my college roommate which began, "Don't freak out, but I have to tell you I just got diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer."

That one hurt. It was especially painful to read at the particular moment she sent it, as I was preparing to officiate the memorial service for another close friend, Dave, who had died from the same disease. It was hard not to ask what God was up to in this instance. Sure, with God all things are possible - including the very real possibility of losing two people in a cruel way and in fairly short order. It's not fair, that someone will likely only get to live half a life, that a couple of little kids won't remember their dad, and that the rest of us will have to find a way to fill in the other holes left behind.

Living with this kind of loss is, for better or for worse, part of the human condition, and has been since the dawn of time. As the only power in the universe big enough to exert that kind of control, it's incredibly easy to blame God for this reality. Except that it's not God's fault. It's nobody's fault. It's simply what IS. How we live with it is what really matters. That is the lesson Dave and Roomie both continue to teach: whom, and what, we have now are critically important, much more so than all the "What if...?" questions and the, "I can't handle your being sick" comments their illnesses bring bubbling up to the surface.

During the lengthy goodbye which happens around the Last Supper in John's Gospel, Thomas and Philip both ask Jesus how it's possible that they can see the Father. Jesus' answer to them is part rebuke, and part reassurance: How can you even ask this? Don’t you know me? If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen my Father, and if you believe in me and in the works I’ve done, you will do even greater works. (John 14:7-11, paraphrase mine) He continues by promising them that not only will he do anything they ask in his name, they will not be left alone. Someone else is coming, someone who will guide them into all Truth and help them to continue this relationship they’ve just barely begun. How he reinforces that point is almost disarmingly simple. “You will see me,” he says. “Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:19-20, NRSV).

That is what's possible, through God's mercy and grace: that this Jesus, who is about to voluntarily submit himself to the worst humanity has to offer, will live, and that we will continue to live right along with him.

-- Amy Spagna+