I read years ago about an interesting scientific study concerning learned responses to suffering. Scientists put four monkeys in a cage with a pole in the middle. At the top of the pole, they hung a bunch of bananas. All of the monkeys learned how to climb up that pole and grab a treat. Then the scientists added a pail of water above the pole. When a monkey started to climb the pole, the researcher would douse him with a big bucketful of cold water before he could get to the bananas. Eventually, all four of the monkeys stopped trying to climb the pole, even after the scientists removed the pail of water. At this point, the scientists added a new monkey to the cage. This monkey, of course, went straight for those bananas. Can you guess what happened? One of the other monkeys would yank him down, every time, trying to save him from suffering from the cold water, even though there was no pail! As the scientists gradually replaced all of the monkeys with new ones, through several generations, even the new monkeys stopped trying to get the bananas. Those monkeys lost hope in reaching what they desired, and that lack of hope was passed down from generation to generation.[1]
Have the suffering and tragedy that surround us, the pain that pierces our own lives, taken away our desire to climb the pole? If we look around at our half-empty churches, at our general malaise and despair, it certainly seems that we have given up. When everything is so hard, why try? When children are dying, who cares about a committee meeting? When our lives and our country are so fractured, who wants to get up on a Sunday morning and sit in a pew? When there are so many problems begging for solutions, do we really want to hear a sermon on the Trinity? Has suffering robbed us of the hope that once led us to God? Are we gulping air, longing for a Feast that we have forgotten how to find? Kevin Ford draws a conclusion for us Christians in the church from the monkey experiment. Ford writes, “We preach and teach about bananas [that is, about hope, about God’s love for us, about Good News.] We cast a vision for eating bananas. We develop pole-climbing training programs … We read lots of books about bananas… We argue over which side of the pole the bananas should be on…But no matter what we do, nobody ever seems to get around to eating the bananas.”[2]
Let’s see today if our readings can help us bite into any bananas. At first, St. Paul doesn’t seem helpful at all. In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul advises us to “boast” or to “rejoice” in our suffering: “We … boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Hmmmm. Really, Paul? Would I write a letter to Marshall Fire survivors and tell them to be happy that their homes are destroyed and their finances ruined? Would I tell the parents of children in Uvalde that they have been given a test of endurance that will give them character?
No, St. Paul, I wouldn’t say these things. But neither does Paul, really. Paul isn’t expressing some simple formula for mixing hope out of the ingredients of suffering. He isn’t offering us a mathematical equation to get to the bananas. Paul is like the theologians who try to describe God as Trinity. He is trying to express the inexpressible. Hope, for Paul, is a way of perceiving events based on a faith in God’s hidden presence and power among us. Hope isn’t wishful thinking. It’s what allows us to move into the future because of the reality of God’s presence right now.[3] As Paul writes later in his letter, using another image: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[4] Paul’s own personal experience has convinced him that God climbs the pole with us, even when the water comes crashing down on our heads.
I was struck by Jesus’ words, too, in today’s Gospel. Jesus’ disciples, when confronted with the reality of his approaching crucifixion, can also bear no more. The death of their Lord is unacceptable, a crushing blow to their faith. Yet Jesus doesn’t roll his eyes or shake his finger at them for their lack of fortitude and comprehension. Jesus understands them. “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” Jesus tenderly offers. One scholar explains that Jesus “didn’t burden their frightened, skittish, saturated souls … Instead, he promised them the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of ongoing revelation. That Spirit would slowly guide the disciples — and by extension, all of us — into a fuller knowledge and comprehension of everything Jesus left unsaid.”[5] I think that we, too, can relax into the loving arms of a God who understands, a Triune God who is relationship. We can rest our weary minds and bodies, taking the food that God gives us, the food of his own body and blood, a food sweeter than the ripest banana.
Last but not least, I think that it is helpful to remember the Wisdom of Wisdom herself. In today’s reading from Proverbs, God’s Wisdom speaks in a voice that we Christians identify with the Holy Spirit, even with Christ himself. Verses 29-31 can also be translated, “I was [God’s] delight day by day, playing before him in every moment, playing in his inhabited world, my delighting in the offspring of [humankind.]” Yes, God is at play with God, at play with Creation! God delights in the mutuality of play. Play holds “Creator and creation together, through the common bond of delight.”[6] When we can bear no more sadness, can we open our hearts in wonder to a God who plays? When we had evacuated our house during the Marshall Fire, we took refuge with my daughter’s family in Denver. Playing with my toddler granddaughter did more to free me from stress than anything else. I wonder what would it be like to let God approach me in the same way?
We’re in a relationship with a God who can withstand anything, including our own despair. We aren’t monkeys, doomed to unthinking conditioning from our environment. We have a choice, a choice to seek a relationship with God, who will train us once again to take and eat the food that fulfills. We can find solace in crying out to God in anger, resentment, or pain. We can choose to invest in practices of prayer and gratitude and even holy play. Will our choices look like foolishness in the eyes of the world, like gullibility in the eyes of the unbeliever? Undoubtedly. But what will we not give to taste the Love for which we long? God in Christ gave His very life for that Love. When despair beats you down into the pavement like a hot summer sun, melt into the dance of mutual delight that is our Triune God. Play, rest, and feast with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[1] Quoted in L. Gregory Jones, “Monkey Business,” in The Christian Century, September 9, 2008, 39.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2001), 85.
[4] Romans 8:38.
[5] Debie Thomas, “The Trinity—So What?” https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2251-the-trinity-so-what
[6] William Brown, Wisdom’s Wonder: Character, Creation, and Crisis in the Bible’s Wisdom Literature, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans. 2014), 51.
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