LIFE IS FRAGILE
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
August 09, 2020
When I was in the seminary, I had the rare fortune to spend
a semester living and studying in the Holy Land – in Jerusalem. One of the
courses that we took while we were there was Biblical Archaeology. The professor
who taught that course would repeatedly come back to a common theme: “The
fragility of life.” He kept pointing out that the reasons why the ancient Israelites built things the way they did and behaved the way they did was
grounded in a deep awareness that their lives were unstable – subject to being
upended at almost any time by forces of nature, or invading armies, or physical
sickness, or even by God.
Some of us seminary students at the time eventually began to
think of that theme as funny, because the professor kept harping on it: “The
fragility of life! The fragility of life!” We’d make jokes about that incessant
phrase.
In looking back on it, I realize that we had the privilege of
making light of that idea because we had absolutely no experience of it. We were
all young white males from the United States who already had college degrees,
and who were pursuing careers that – for whatever their difficulties or
sacrifices – would provide job security for us for the rest of our lives in a
stable institution.
We’d never had to be personally responsible for the welfare
of children or vulnerable adults. We lived in a nation that had never been
overrun by an invading force, and where there was always plenty of food and
clean water and good health care. Life as I and we knew it was not very fragile
at all. So we could joke about it.
Fast forward 32 years. I’m standing here preaching to a
nearly empty church, wearing a mask most of the time in public, having to do
most of my gatherings with groups – including family and friends – via the
internet, and having experienced periodic shortages of some kinds of food and
household items that always used to just be there.
And all of this is in the past six months, with hardly any
warning. And we won’t even speak here of climate change. All that, together
with the experiences of age, has changed my disposition about just how true is
the fact of life’s fragility, both as individuals and as communities. George
Floyd has taught us this summer a lot about how fragile is our social fabric
right here at home.
To come to terms with the fragility of life is something
that most of the world’s people have always had to do. For some of us it’s relatively
new. But it can be an awakening. In today’s Gospel of Matthew, the disciple
Peter speaks to Jesus exactly twice, both times while riding out the storm on
the Sea of Galilee, and it is very revealing to pay attention to how different
those two utterances are from him – though presumably spoken within a few
minutes of one another.
The first speech is given from a relatively confident and
skeptical Peter: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” In
other words, “Prove it!” These are the words of a man who feels safe, in spite
of the wind and the waves. From a distance they seem to be the words of a brash
fool.
The second speech is quite a bit more terse – and desperate.
As he begins to sink into the Sea, Peter says, “Lord, save me!” He is newly
awakened to the fragility of life. Ultimately that is a blessing, because being
brought to recognize what is true is life-saving. It corrects for our false
assumptions.
In this season many of us have been newly awakened to the
experience of being vulnerable, of confronting the fragility of life. That has
always been our condition; it’s just that now we’re more aware of it. That can
only be good. It can free us from relying on false promises of security, like
bank accounts or health or property or popularity or human power or physical
charm. They can all seem so sturdy, but they are very fragile.
And just as importantly, it can summon us to act in
solidarity with those whose exposure to fragility is more immediately obvious
than our own – to the victims of systemic racism and violence, to the poor and
the abused, to the isolated and the sick, to the ones excluded from families or
churches and left to fend for themselves. We are surrounded by such people all
the time. COVID-19 has been a particularly cruel teacher to most of us about
fragility these days – but a true teacher. And as our Lord has told us, truth
sets us free to better know and follow him.
At the end of the day, St. Peter gives us a wonderful
example of transformation from that boat on the stormy Sea today; a conversion
from “Lord, prove yourself to me” to “Lord, save me.” Jesus hadn’t changed in
that episode, but Peter’s awakening to the fragility of his life most certainly
had. So may it be for all of us.
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