X and Y, By and By
Expectant Joy is hard to see amid the pain. But it is there.
My message in case I am killed do not give up. Don't, you can't give up. If this has happened, it means that we are very strong, and they are afraid of us. We need to use this strength, and do not give up. Remember that we are very powerful and strong force which is undermined by these bad people only because we can't realise how strong we are. Everything needed for evil to prevail is the non-action of kind people. So act.
-Aelexi Navalny, 1976-2024
It was during ninth grade that I would be introduced to something that for that time, would be my kryptonite. It led to untold pain and confusion, not just on me, but on my parents. It would lead to severe shame and embarrassment.
This was the year I was introduced to algebra.
Now, math has never been my strong suit. I love science and technology and I think I would have loved being a STEM student, but for whatever reason, math took a while for me to get the hang of it. Things were different with algebra in that they were much, much worse. I remember sitting in my class with the other freshmen looking at an algebraic equation and feeling like I was reading hieroglyphics.
The thing that was tripping me up was the introduction of two values: x and y. The whole point of algebra is to figure out the value of x or y, but I just could not get the concept. The result of all of the confusion was failure-literally. I failed algebra during my first semester in high school. This was a big deal because I had never received a failing grade, but I saw a big, fat E on my report card.
The following semester, I moved to a slower algebra class, which is a nice way of saying I was going to learn the same thing all over again. But this time, things were different. All of a sudden, things made sense. The clouds had parted and the sun started shining. I don’t know if it was a different teacher or what, but now there was no equation that I couldn’t answer. When report cards rolled around the following June, I got a B on my report card.
To this day, I can’t tell you why one moment I didn’t get algebra and the next I understand it completely. All I know is that it happened.
Sometimes things happen in our lives that we just don’t understand, at least at first. It is only with the passage of time that we can come to an understanding- if we’re lucky.
At my church this Lent we are focusing on joy which is you are aware of Lent, seems rather odd. It seems odd to talk about joy in Mark 8. In verses 31-38, Jesus gathers his disciples and is talking about what is going to happen to him. He told them he would be rejected by the religious leaders and be killed. All that seemed like crazy talk to his disciples. Actually, this was more than crazy talk, it was scary talk. Peter takes him aside and starts to call Jesus out for freaking them out with all this death talk. Now it was Jesus’ turn and he started to rebuke Peter, telling him that he wasn’t focused on the things of heaven.
Peter was focused on the whole dying part and that makes sense. If a loved one starts talking about how they are going to die, you will hear everything up to when they say the word “die.” We don’t want to hear about someone we love facing death. But Peter didn’t hear all of what Jesus said. As I said, he was transfixed on the whole “my-friend-is-talking-about-his-death” thing. Not to mention that Peter and the others hoped that he would be a revolutionary who would throw off the hated Romans and free Israel. But Jesus ends his foretelling of death by saying that on the third day, he would rise again. Peter and the disciples didn’t notice that part because they didn’t understand it. It was like me trying to understand an algebraic equation: it just made no sense. They didn’t see the expectant joy that was just a seed, but would soon sprout and bring salvation to us and to all of creation.
Expectant Joy is hard to see amid the pain. But it is there. God’s joy is there reminding us that sin and death can’t have the last word. When I was in seminary learning how to preach at funerals, I remember learning that a funeral is about mourning, but it’s also about hope, hope in God, and in the defeat of death.
There are a lot of things we don’t understand; we don’t understand at times why our prayers aren’t answered. We wonder why good people are killed, while the evil prosper. We just don’t understand some things at times.
The above quote is from a documentary about Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who ended up dead in a prison camp in Russia. It is not hyperbole to say that Navalny was murdered by Russian President Vladamir Putin. And learning about his story, and his willingness to stand up to the regime even as he was poisoned a few years ago and then jailed and possibly poisoned again, successfully this time.
It’s easy at Putin’s invincibility, his willingness to shut down any challenge to his power, and using that power to terrorize another country and threaten others and wonder why is evil so popular. Why did someone good like Navanly have to die?
But that quote is filled with joy. Even if this worst would happen to him, he seemed to be a man filled with joy. Even as he suffered in jail he was able to poke fun at the judge the day before his death. Navalny, who was a professed Christian, seemed to show joy, like Paul as he wrote a letter to the Philippians while in a jail cell.
As followers of Jesus, we walk with faith and hope. We believe in God who comes in three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we don’t understand everything. For the disciples, it was hard to understand that Jesus would die. But the disciples continued to walk with Jesus to the cross, even if it didn’t make sense.
We live in a world of expectant joy even when we suffer pain, loss, and death. Joy doesn’t take the dark days away, but it does give us something to hope for when all seems lost.
When my father-in-law died in 2007, it was a shock to all of us. We had just seen him at our wedding a few weeks prior. But in all of the pain and horrible surprise, we also knew there was joy that was growing. My brother-in-law and his wife learned they were pregnant and my father-in-law knew that a grandchild was on the way- joy in the middle of pain.
When I was growing up, there was a gospel hymn that we would sing at times, called “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.” The first verse goes like this:
We are tossed and driven
on the restless sea of time;
somber skies and howling tempests
oft succeed a bright sunshine;
in that land of perfect day,
when the mists are rolled away,
we will understand it better by and by.
Sometimes we don't understand x and y. But with God's help we will, by and by.