Southborough L'Abri News / Prayer Letter, April, 2004

In Easter week this year it was hard for many of us to avoid the talk about Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. The publicity had begun to accumulate over a year ago in the form of outrage and indignation. It was “anti-Semitic”. He had “ignored modern scholarship”. He was “out of his field”. What the film does, of course, is to put the physical suffering of Jesus front and center – in your face. Other films of Jesus’ life have drawn together many different themes of his life and teaching, with varying levels of faithfulness to the Biblical account. With this film, his suffering is almost all that there is for the whole length of the film -- proportionally much more than the New Testament accounts of those same hours. Some have criticized it because it does not explain why he suffered so. They have a point. It could leave you with the perverse hatred of the Jewish leaders and the ghoulish cruelty of the Roman soldiers as the only explanation. But many people have been hated and treated with cruelty. Why has Jesus’ death been so important?

I often wonder about how the account of Jesus’ life and death can be best communicated to our society with its enormous historical and philosophical separation from the thinking and actions of Jesus. Of course there could be many ways, but my hope for Mel Gibson’s film is that it would raise some vital questions: What in the world was all that suffering and brutality about? Why did it happen? What did it have to do with God? Was there no other way? No other way to do what? What does it have to do with us? My sense is that many people who think of the cross as a piece of jewelry and have a vague memory of the story of Jesus, were shocked and that this might be a good thing.

There are other ways that Jesus’ story has been told. Jesus was a misunderstood idealist, crushed by the system. His death was sad; the tragic end of what would have been a promising life as a teacher. Judas was somehow the hero. This telling fits much better into modern sensibilities. It stimulates our idealism and our sentimentality and it doesn’t disturb us much.

But the New Testament does not tell the story this way. Instead there was a profound inevitability and purposefulness about his horrible death which makes it very disturbing, because it must mean something very important. He set his face to go to Jerusalem to face it. It was something that he came to “accomplish”. He came not to be served but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many. No one took his life from him. He laid it down of his own accord. John the Baptist even introduced him as the sacrificial Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. In the Bible we see a purpose for his death which scarcely appears on the modern horizon.

There is much nervousness in talking about evil today, simply because it seems such a heavy, certain and absolute a word to use in a pluralistic society. There is even more reluctance to use a word which refers to the localization of evil within us – “sin”. Be sure that this is not because there is no evil around or within us, as if evil had disappeared with modern Progress. It is because we have lost the ability to talk about it and to know what we are speaking about. This inability is why so many are mystified by the suffering of Jesus and incredulous that this death might have anything to do with them.

I remember a man saying to me, “I didn’t ask Jesus to die for me; I think that’s highly manipulative”. Of course he was right – if evil and sin are not very serious problems. Whole religious traditions deny that the crucifixion of Jesus took place. The Qur’an says that it did not happen. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said Jesus could not have possibly suffered. Buddhists like D.T. Suzuki saw no need for Jesus to die and contrasted the agony of the crucifixion to the harmony represented by the symbol of the Buddha meditating.

Evil and sin are the problems to which Jesus’ death and resurrection were the solution. If sin is not a serious problem, his death was superfluous if not manipulative as well. Yet today, most people are reasonably sure that sin and evil are not their own problem. This is why I pray that Mel Gibson’s film, which did not show a superfluous or manipulative Jesus, will raise some questions. The only way to make sense of it is to start to make some connections between the big picture of evil out there in the world with the evil in which we each have a share.

A lot has happened since I wrote the last letter. We had a wonderful winter term with two great helpers, Nickaela and Aaron. The student group was hard working, hard studying and formed a good community among themselves. A good number of them were able to stay for at least a large part of the term. It is always a great joy to see the integration of the students’ studying and their life with all of us together here.

However, most of the high drama was reserved for us as workers. Joe got us off to a start. I will let him tell his account of it:

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Thank you so much for your prayers over the past term. As many of you know I started experiencing symptoms of angina, and on February 12 was hurried off to have an angiogram and then angioplasty to a 3mm blockage to one of the main veins to my heart. Sadly, upon entry a vein was nicked during the procedure and I lost a lot of blood resulting in a hematoma and quite literally came near death twice during the evening after the procedure. In all this I definitely felt fear when all the ER people were doing their thing, yet afterward I realized that I experienced not fear in death as our risen Savior is there even as we approach seeming nothingness. The quiet knowledge of “His never leaving, nor forsaking” was a reality. I shall echo Dick as Providence had it that we would have two of the most wonderful helpers to stand in for Sue and me during the following weeks of recuperation. Sue is recuperating too, and has been a loving help in all of this. A few weeks later I rejoined the term in progress and very thankfully I am now well (with a new diet). Thank you again for your prayers for this branch and for me.

With love, Joe Morrell.
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Mardi also has been sick most of the winter. She got pneumonia and bronchitis, one or the other of which hung on for most of the winter. She is feeling a lot better now, but we hope that her immune system gets caught up.

If you remember previous letters, you will recall that Mark and Terri Ryan, as Australians, have been having a hard time getting their visa extended in what ought to have been a routine procedure. Because of initial confusions and an enormous backlog at the Immigration Service, there is a real danger that they may not be able to stay in the country. We just received another discouraging letter, but any real communication with them is impossible, so we do not yet know what to do. If they have to leave, we would see it as an extraordinary set-back for the work. Please pray urgently that something may open up for them soon.

Pray for this upcoming term, this is already booked almost full with students; pray that God’s power would be at work here in the students’ lives and in ours. We have no way of knowing now what their real issues will be. Ask God for his help.

Pray for Nickaela who is back this term and Jaclyn who will be joining her as a helper.

Pray for our finances to keep us with food on our tables and needed work done on the houses.

Pray for the speaking that we will be doing both here in our lectures and in other places. I will be speaking in Dallas on May 28 and New York on June 17-18. Mardi will be in Madison Wisconsin on June 19 at the National Women’s Studies Association, as the representative Christian on a forum about “Women’s Spirituality”.

Pray also for the upcoming L’Abri conference in Vancouver, B.C. Myself, Mardi, Mark and Terri Ryan (if they are still with us!) as well as our son Ben and Nickaela will all be traveling to Canada to join with other L’Abri staff from Swiss, Dutch and Canadian L’Abri’s. Pray for safety as we all travel and for energy and fruitfulness as we lecture, talk informally and endeavor to serve all who attend the conference.

Thank God for his faithfulness to us – in preserving Joe’s life, in bringing us wonderful students, in providing for us financially and in being present here in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Dick Keyes