They are all around us. As obvious as the nose on your face. Like the sky above us, we all live “under the circumstances”. Why, just in the last few weeks, circumstances seem to be in a tailspin. The coronavirus outbreak, the stock market plunge, the end of our twenty-year war in Afghanistan, and the upcoming elections. Underneath all these obvious changes, the climate keeps changing for the worse, the population keeps expanding and refugees can’t find a home.
Speaking of refugees, Jesus lived his life under such circumstances. He knew them and accepted them for what they were worth. They were the givens. The Creed lists a few: “born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried….” Of course, there were more circumstances in his life than those, but those were enough to send any man to his grave. Which, in fact, is exactly what happened.
So, his story is not too different from ours. The opening verb describes each one of us to the T: “born”. That’s what you might call the first condition — we all came to life under the circumstances of birth. [There were certain circumstances that led to our conception, but let’s not get into that here.] We have all, in some form or fashion, “suffered”. If not under Pontius Pilate, we’ve had to live as political creatures under circumstances that are less than ideal. We’ve even had things happen to us that seemed at the time like crucifixions of sorts.
And since you are reading this, it means you probably haven’t quite experienced the last episode — the final circumstance of death. Those are the basic circumstances of life. The question is: what are we to do about them — these circumstances? Some people would rather deny them. “Under no circumstance” becomes their watchword for never admitting that life has certain limits and bounds. They’d rather be caught dead than declaring that we have to live under circumstances that stifle human capability. Circumstances change, you know. And they do. They can even be changed. But what about birth and suffering and death? Can we change those or can we face them head on?
William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses is a collection of poignant stories that speak mightily to the human condition. In one of the stories, Delta Autumn, he writes “There are good men everywhere, at all times. Most men are. Some are just unlucky, because most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be. And I’ve known some that even the circumstances couldn’t stop.”
Prince Hamlet tried to warn us about “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to…” During the original lent thing and all the circumstances appertaining thereunto, Jesus set his flesh and blood toward what seemed a bitter end. And all we are supposed to do is limit the liabilities of our existence and give up chocolates for forty days.