The Wait Is Over

NOTE: What follows is the longest Express posting to date; it is also the most personal. If you can’t, or choose not to make your way to its end, I won't be offended.
This one likely isn't about your spiritual journey; it’s about mine. I wrote this one for me, to have it out there, to put this stuff on the record. If you benefit from it, praise God. If not, praise God that I wrote it.
And if you want to comment, great; I will welcome the feedback (point of fact, I’m rather eager for feedback on this one). But if you don’t say a thing, that’s okay, too. Again, this one’s for me.

Thanks,
Bill

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In November 1999 began the most disgusting, despicable experience of my life.

Someone submitted an ethics complaint against me to our regional church body. The complaint was groundless. I knew it. The people of our congregation knew it. I suspect that in his heart, the person who made the complaint also knew it was groundless.

But that didn’t really matter. Shortly after his filing, the complainant became irrelevant when the regional church body discarded his charges in order to pursue allegations of its own creation.

It took nearly nine months to process those recast charges, the result being what in reality was an ecclesiastical slap on my pastoral wrist that was deposited in my denominational personnel file. But I did not accept the outcome. I filed an extensive, well documented appeal, which in my opinion proved official misconduct and abuse of power among regional church officials involved in the process.

The result of the first appeal was effectively a press of the charges’ “moot” button; it declared them without effect, but still on my record. I did not accept that outcome, either – principally because phony charges were still on my record and because in its decision the appellate body had failed even to acknowledge my claims of official misconduct. So, following more rigamarole at the regional level, I wrote a second appeal, equally well documented, which I presented to our general church. By now, the case was nearly two years old.

The general church not only dismissed my appeal claims (though, I must grant, they offered two or three paragraphs that actually referenced their existence), it also returned the original, heretofore-mooted punishment to active status.... Yeah, that appeal turned out well.

After the general church decision, I made a few attempts to be heard and consulted more than one attorney about potential legal action against the denomination, but there was simply no room in those inns. However unfair and unethical their actions, I was told, there was nothing I could do.

Since August 2001 I have profoundly resented my denomination, especially its leaders who participated in my case. In my head and heart I have replayed hearings, reread appeals, and revisited my own actions again and again, always coming to the same conclusions: What happened to me was wrong. Justice demanded that I pursue accountability.

Then today happened.


This afternoon I worked on the second sermon in a series on spiritual surrender I’m preaching during these weeks before Easter. The sermon references my favorite biblical character, Job, with whose story of personal disaster I identified intensely during the active years of my ethics case. As those long months rolled on, I developed the aphorism “The Wait for 38” as a nod to the chapter in the Bible book wherein God at last responds to Job’s many angry protests.

See, Job, too, believed he had been unjustly persecuted, though he considered God to be his accuser, whereas mine had a distinctly human face. Our essential grievance was the same, however: Injustice – indefensible, but correctable injustice – had been done. God, get in here.

“The Wait for 38" was my rhetorical anticipation of success. I believed there would come a day when my record would be cleared and the officials responsible for my hell would face appropriate consequences. Years passed without so much as a whisper of such an outcome, but I held on to the expectation of eventual vindication...like Job.

During today’s sermon prep, I reaffirmed the relevance of Job’s story to mine, but also identified my misapplication of its teaching. While I still believe – and will always believe – the ethics case cast me as a Job-like figure, unjustly abused and mistreated, I now believe I have been wrong to claim him as evidence of my approaching exoneration.

What begins in chapter 38 of Job is the end of an appeal, not a resolution to the central conflict. God’s forceful intrusion into Job’s pursuit of justice has the effect of a judicial gag order on compliant attorneys, or a camp counselor’s raised hand to a room of noisy kids: instant silence. God doesn’t explain injustice, doesn’t defend divine (in)action in the matter, doesn’t do anything that, for the previous 37 chapters, Job had sought.

Instead, God’s two lengthy litanies of questions to Job – most of the form, “Can you do this: ________ ? I can.” – compel Job to repentant spiritual knees. In total surrender to divine designs, he gives up his protest and says to God,

“And I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me....I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”

Why does he repent? Because he had wrongly believed he understood the ways of the world; he thought he knew how the system operated.... He didn’t.

Contrary to his way of thinking, injustice isn’t always corrected, disaster often strikes the undeserving, offenders don’t always get what’s coming to them, and people of privilege haven’t always earned what has come to them. Justice, at least the stuff of Job’s derivation, is of sorely limited value when trying to explain the way things really are.

So, now what, Job?

Enter today’s epiphany.

In the story, Job gives up his quest for justice the instant he realizes its core irrelevance. It’s not the justice is bad objective (read the rest of the Bible, for God’s sake!); it’s that justice isn’t what Job thinks it is – it’s what God thinks it is. And Job doesn’t have standing to argue the point. He may continue the fight – result: unending frustration – or move on, accepting the world as it is, not as he wants it to be. Job moves on, which is what I have decided to do.

For all the years of my ethics case I kept intimate company with Job. I read the story several times, just to buddy up to my partner in pain. But today I realized that if my ambition is to follow Job’s lead, I, too, have to give up. I have to give up my grudges, give up my anger, give up resentment, give up my belief that justice requires a cleared record and an apologetic church leadership. However much merited, those results are simply never going to happen; they’re not the way this world operates. Justice in my case will come – perhaps already has – but not on my terms.

So within the next week I expect to write letters of conclusion to the regional church officials whose actions so repulsed me all those years ago. I will apologize for my mistakes and for my role in the case's constant caustic character. I will tell them that for me, the case is now over. I will tell them that I no longer hold their actions against them, that I will no longer avoid events simply to prevent a chance encounter with them, that I will speak to them when feasible, and even address them without the harsh formality of “Pastor ____” or “Doctor _____” (trust me, that’s a big step). I will tell them that I am moving on, and am now open to interaction/conversation that is not tainted by previous issues.

I won’t issue forgiveness – that requires their confession and repentance, which is another result that will never happen – but I will offer to start a new kind of relationship.

Of course, those leaders may not accept my offer – after all, in my case writings and hearings I was quite the ferocious adversary, one whom many would find it difficult to trust on the basis of a single letter – plus, I am not about to confess to their original charges. I am repenting of attitudes and angers, not of my insistence of innocence and injustice. But I will make an offer.

It’s time to move on, FINALLY time to move on. I have at last reached, read, and resolved chapter 38. Thank you, Job.


Pray with me:
God...Thank you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.