March 12, 2006

Glynn Cardy

Lent 2 
    Mark 8:31-38

I love tigers. I love their colour, their size, their majesty, and, above all, how they move. I've never seen one in the wild. Of course, I've seen them in the zoo, but zoos usually feel like visiting time at Paremoremo. Its television and the cinema that brings me face to face with tigers.

The tiger is graceful, awesome, and beautiful. It is also powerful, deadly, and to be feared. The tiger embodies both life and death, and I suspect that is part of its appeal.

We have entered Lent, those forty days from Ash Wednesday until Palm Sunday, a sombre and sober time in the Church's calendar when we reflect upon our impermanence and the grace that sustains us. It is about death and life.

On a hillside in Northland there is a tree. It stands alone in a windswept paddock looking out to sea. It's a pohutukawa, and it's very old. It has stood its ground for perhaps two hundred years. Flourishing in good seasons, hanging on in bad. “Beautiful” is not a word that comes to mind when one first sees it. Twisted by wind, charred by lightning, and chewed on by insects. Human beings have chopped branches, stapled barbed wire to it using it as a corner post for a fence line, and nailed signs on it on three sides: NO HUNTING; NO TRESPASSING; and PLEASE SHUT THE GATE. No matter what, in dry seasons or wet, in heat and cold, it has continued. There is rot and death in it by the ground. But at the greening tips of its upper branches there is the outreach of life. I respect this old tree. For it's age, yes. And for its steadfastness in taking whatever is thrown at it. Most of all, I admire its capacity for self-healing beyond all accidents and assaults. There is a will in it – toward continuing to be, come what may.

Lent is a time when we take stock of what is, without fooling ourselves. We think about our world at its worst – war, murder, destruction, abuse, cruelty … and how the worst taints us, disturbing our eyes and our dreams, and seducing us with the simplistic notions of fighting war with war, murder with murder, destruction with destruction. We think too about our worst, our suffering and the suffering of those close to us.

Lent is also a time when, in the light of our stock take, we dream of what the world and our small part of it might be. We dream of the triumph of never-say-die faith, grace-filled actions, and above all the power of love over the love of power. We dream of having the courage of that windswept tree and still being able to sprout tender shoots come what may.

Most of us have experienced death. It has sometimes come as a friend, to take an old mate away from pain. It has also come as an enemy, stalking us, and pouncing on the one we loved, devastating us with its speed and finality. In the aftermath of death we have good days and bad days. On the good days we are strong. The sun is shining. Hope is in the air. The future is before us. On the bad days we feel brittle. Life is clouded. The air is stagnant. The past is oppressively in the present.

There is a tiger that meets us on the good days, and a tiger that meets us on the bad days. The good day tiger is that tenacious tiger of life. On these days we determine that the qualities in our loved ones will not die - that stories of beauty, love and hope will predominate. Death will not have the final word. Laughter, kindness, and courage will not be beaten by the grave, or by the guns of human hate, but will live on.

On these days we commit ourselves to live out in our lives that laughter, kindness, and courage, come what may. Terrible things have happened to us, and we have every right to feel miserable and depressed. Yet, in spite of it all, we still reach, albeit tentatively, for the best there can be. We call on the might of the tiger to help us hold on, to defeat the powers of gloom, and regain our grace and sense of life.

The bad day tiger is the tiger of despair. On these days we ask, “Why me? It is unfair.” Our beloved one is suffering or dead. And they should not be. Death has slunk into our lives, like a thieving predator, and snatched them away. Death and destruction pollutes our world, contaminating our relationships, making us fearful. When we eat our meals, walk the dog, and tend the garden, sorrow is our constant companion. It seems so easy to sit down, in the mud of nothingness, and let life cease. We live with this tiger which stalks us and makes us miserable. We try to tame it, but feel that it has tamed us.

These two tigers, of the good days and of the bad days, wrestle within. They fight. Sometimes one is on top, and sometimes the other. This was the Lenten wilderness Jesus endured for 40 days with the wild beasts [Mark 1:12].

The child listened to his grandfather explain about the tigers, and the child understood his beloved Granp was talking about his sad days and his glad days. But the child, as children often will, needed to know the end of the story.

“Granp, which tiger will win?”

The old man paused, looked him lovingly in the eyes and said, “The one you feed.”