In the Middle

The scriptures referred to are Titus 2:11-14.

There are a number of articles on the internet devoted to listing what episode or episodes of a beloved TV program you should show to someone to get them hooked on it as well. In other words, what episodes are both really good and also representative of the kind of stories it specializes in, and that show off the characters and their relationships best. These are almost never the pilot episode. They figure that if the viewer likes one of the later episodes, then and only then will he or she be interested enough to go back and see the series from the beginning.

And if you think about it, mathematically you are more likely to find good stuff in the middle than at either end. Rarely is a pilot a great episode. The writers, director and cast are still trying out things to see what works. Rarely does a popular series end on top of its game but usually it is a season or two past its prime. A TV series is considered successful if it gets to its 100^th episode, because then it can be sold into syndication. But if you take out the first and last episodes, you still have 98 left and odds are you will find the really good ones among them.

The same is true of life. We don't remember our earliest days and that's good. If you could it would be like comedian Stephen Wright's diary he supposedly kept as a newborn. “Day 1—Still tired from the move. Day 2—Everyone talks to me like I'm an idiot.” Seriously, though, would you want to remember being totally helpless and only being able to communicate, whether tired, hungry, afraid, cold, lonely or in need of changing, by crying and hoping the adults would guess right. Scientists think that at age 4 our brain purges our early memories since we do not need to remember learning to walk, talk, dress ourselves, take ourselves to the potty, etc. It may have been wonderful for your parents to witness, but it would feel pretty mundane and laborious to us. Your best days and years are yet to come.

Likewise, your best days are unlikely to be your last, unless you win the Olympics, the Emmy, the Grammy, the Oscar, and the Tony in rapid succession in the prime of your life and die suddenly and painlessly in your sleep basking in the afterglow of your acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. Only a fifth of people die suddenly and without warning. Sadly, most of us will succumb to a chronic illness that will affect us for the last several years of our life. Our best days, healthwise at least, will have been behind us.

So our best days are somewhere in between our first and our last. Which is good. We will spend most of our lives in the middle of them, when we have a great deal of personal agency and a minimal amount of restrictions to what we can do. In fact, we spend most of our time in the middle of the history of things. My generation was the first to see a man walk on the moon but the moon landing was the culmination of many years' work. The Soviet Union had crash landed an unmanned craft called Luna 2 on the moon in 1959. We didn't put a man on it until 1969. And the technology behind it goes back farther, to the German V-2 rockets of World War 2. Similarly, we celebrate the birth of a baby but it doesn't come out of nowhere. It was gestating for 9 months. And the component parts existed in its parents before they came together at conception. For that matter, parts of the DNA go back thousands of years to our earliest ancestors.

In our passage from Galatians Paul writes that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.” Jesus did not appear when he did by a fluke. It was part of God's plan. But why then?

One answer is the Roman empire. There were empires before it but they tended to be smaller and more localized. Most were roughly the size of today's nations and they were primarily in the Middle or Far East. Rome' s empire not only covered a lot of territory, ringing the entire Mediterranean Sea but it connected Europe, Asia Minor and Africa: West, East and South. The Romans built roads and successfully fought piracy, making trade and travel easier. Their might ensured peace from one end of the empire to the other. The Romans wisely decided that instead of imposing their native Latin, they'd keep the Greek spread by Alexander's successors as the lingua franca, so people all over the empire could communicate with each other, despite their nationality.

All this made it possible for the apostles to spread the gospel by traveling and to oversee churches by sending and receiving letters. Paul chalked up about 10,000 miles over 30 years. And because of the Jewish diaspora, he found a ready audience in the major cities of the Empire. And the surprising side effect was that there were Gentiles who were exposed to Judaism and who worshiped Yahweh, though they didn't convert. These Godfearers, as they were called, were enthusiastic adopters of the Christian faith Paul preached in the synagogues. All in all, it's debatable whether Christianity would have spread as fast and as far as it did had Jesus come into the world before the Roman Empire came together or after it fractured.

But even so, the way of the gospel had to be prepared for. The Hebrew Bible is the saga of God working with one people to teach them what kind of God he is and what he expects from us. Some parts they readily get: God will protect his people. Some parts they can't seem to get the hang of: God expects loyalty and demands justice and mercy, especially in regards to the poor and disadvantaged. Also they missed the parts where God expressed his concern for all people, not just those he chose to work through. They did pick up the idea of the Messiah, an anointed prophet, priest and/or king whom God would send to establish his kingdom. But again they missed or ignored the parts where he would suffer for the sins of the world. God was preparing his people and the world for his son.

So when Jesus came, it was not the beginning of God's work to save us, nor was it the end. It was the middle. It was pivotal and absolutely necessary to the whole enterprise but it was not like God had been cooling his heels till then.

And it was not like the whole thing was over after Jesus had taught, died and rose again. He commissioned his students to go throughout the world and teach folks about him and make new students. It was the beginning of a new phase of what God was doing.

We know how this story ends: with God recreating his world as a paradise. Some Christians think we are at the end but not quite. I don't see any beasts with 7 heads rising out of the sea, nor all the rivers turning to blood. And we are certainly not at the point where there is no death or mourning or crying or pain. We are somewhere in the middle.

Why do we feel that the middle is not as important as the beginning or the end? Yes, nothing happens without a beginning and all things end but it's in the middle that things develop. You are not the person you were as a baby or as a child, though some traits persist. You are hopefully not the same person you were when you were in your teens or your 20s. I think it is fortunate that I did not get ordained in my 20s, though that was originally my intention. I think I have more understanding of people and of life now. I have experience of life outside ministry.

In the middle is where growth happens. It is where we apply and modify what we were taught. It is where experience and preparation meet and either intertwine or clash. It is where we can confirm the direction of our life or change it. Paul's life and career were going very differently before he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. I daresay all of the apostles had envisioned quite different lives before meeting Jesus. For that matter as they were following Jesus but before his crucifixion they probably saw the conclusion of their discipleship under him in a different way. But the middle is where the plot twists lie.

We wouldn't have watched any more Star Wars movies if Luke had become a farmer like his uncle. Who would care about Peter Parker had he noticed and avoided that radioactive spider? The Bible would be very different if Moses had not investigated the burning bush or had David backed down from facing a giant Philistine.

How would your life have been different had not something changed in the middle of it? What would it have been like had you not met your spouse or not taken a key job or not left your hometown? How would it be different if you hadn't heard of Jesus or hadn't joined the church?

It's in the middle that the arc of a character's story turns to either tragedy or triumph. We will know whether Kylo Ren continues along the path of the dark side of the Force or turns to the light before the end of the next Star Wars film, not after the closing credits. Even in the case of the thief on the cross, we learn of his change of heart before he died, not on a note found on him afterward.

And that's the point. As long as you are alive, you can change. It gets harder as you get older but it can be done. Every second of your life is a second chance to do something right or turn your life around. Jesus is very big on second chances.

We find ourselves as Christians somewhere in the middle of God's plan to redeem humanity. In our Eucharistic prayer we look back at Christ's death and resurrection while looking forward to his coming again. We are living, however, between the two. And Jesus told us to spend this time spreading the good news and inviting people into the kingdom and loving and taking care of one another.

He didn't get real specific on how to do that either. We are left to decide which way or ways we should communicate the good news, make disciples and show God's love in our actions towards others.

Christians have always been on the cutting edge of ways to communicate the gospel. Besides preaching in churches, they have used catchy music (Luther, the Salvation Army, Christian rock bands), printed material (Bible translations, tracts, magazines), visual material (painting, comic books, posters, bumper stickers), performances (plays, movies, radio, TV), and the internet (apps, literally millions of websites for denominations, individual churches and ministries, blogs and vlogs). There may be new ways to do so being developed as we speak and Christians will be using them.

Besides founding churches, Christians have started specialized ministries serving patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices, motorcycle and racing enthusiasts, athletes, the homeless, prisoners, migrant workers, the hearing impaired, the military, rodeo workers, even adult film workers.

Christians have shown the love of Christ for others in hospitals, medical missions and clinics, in all levels of education, in setting up shelters for the homeless, for refugees, for those dealing with substance abuse, and for abandoned and runaway children, and even in the National Parks.

Human life is so widespread, varied and complex that the Spirit of God equips us with an array of gifts, skills and walks of life that we might reach everyone. And one way to do so is to remember that almost everyone you meet is in the middle of something. They are in the middle of their adolescence, or their early adulthood, or middle age or old age. They are in the middle of dating, or a relationship, or a marriage, or a breakup or a bereavement. They are in the middle of schooling, or looking for a job, or establishing a career, or changing careers, or retirement. They are in the middle of caring for children, or caring for a parent, or caring for grandchildren, or caring for a spouse, or being cared for themselves. They are in the middle of financial problems, or legal problems, or family problems or personal problems. And so are we. We are somewhere in the middle of one or several of those things and we can minister to folks stuck in the middle with us and even be ministered to by them.

We spend the vast majority of our existence in the middle of some stage of life or process or transition. And it helps to realize that and not be so obsessed with beginnings and endings. I may be wrong about this but I sometimes wonder if some people who cheat on their spouses do so because they want to recapture the excitement of the first days of love or a relationship. Maybe they just don't like being in the middle of a relationship, when you have to do the hard work of maintaining what you've built and nurturing what you've planted and the slow routine of growth. The truth is if you don't pay attention to things in the middle, the end is almost guaranteed to be a bad one. I've never understood guys who thought fathering children was manly but being there for the kids and raising them and doing your best to see them grow into successful adults is not. Which is harder?

To get through the middle, you need perseverance and, paradoxically, flexibility. Giving up won't help but neither will rigidly doing the exact same thing over and over if it isn't working. Remember that it's in the middle that change can take place. And it's where you build towards the ending. You don't get remembered for simply being born unless you are Dolly the sheep clone. It's what you do after that which makes people sorry when you die.

For Christians it's what we do after being born again that makes Jesus say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” It is during that time that we will encounter and serve Jesus in the least of his siblings, those lacking the physical and social basics of life. It is during that time that we grow in Christ and produce fruit.

Some day this life will end. But we know that Jesus will usher us into a new phase of our eternal life. And that will never end. So let us drop our obsession with endings and let go of our nostalgia for beginnings. God is from everlasting to everlasting. God is infinite. We will never find an end to God or the riches he has for us. We will always be in the middle of of discovering how loving and wonderful and good he is. And that's a great place to be.