The Long Defeat

Three stories of hope growing out of horror

The Long Defeat

“Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. “What a huge harvest!” he said to his disciples. “How few workers! On your knees and pray for harvest hands!”” -‭‭Matthew‬ ‭9‬:‭35‬-‭38‬‬

He stood there in the chapel weeping, trying to do so without fully giving into the emotional blackhole that was sucking him in. Wiping his eyes, head bowed, he shared that he was scared of leaving the men’s shelter. He was afraid to go to live in the new apartment he had available because he knew the world he was returning to and Devils were at the door.

He sat across from me cutting into his McDonald’s pancakes with difficulty using those flimsy plastic knives and forks. As he ate, he was also piling up his own stack of sins and sufferings. Each confession felt heavier and heavier until I almost couldn’t see him. He was buried. Sexually abused as a young man, addicted to porn and meth, disabled within and without and HIV positive.

Her voice on the phone was warm, gentle and sweet, but her story was devastating. She had called to testify of Jesus rescuing her from the hell of being raped as a 6 year old girl by a relative. She spoke of blood, of her abusers’ confession, but no consequence. As a young girl she had sat in my church years ago…suffering in silence.

These stories are tales of horror.

I often think of what Gladriel said in The Fellowship of the Rings: “Together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”

This short idea encapsulates what has been termed ‘Northern Theory of Courage’ that arises out of the Nordic Sagas and their mythology. It’s a worldview of fighting for what is right or on the right side, even if you are doomed to catastrophe.

Tolkien wrote:

“I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a long defeat—though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.” -The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter: #195, 1956 to Amy Ronald.

Jesus has made his way into the middle of all three of these stories. The Shepherd sets a table to feast at in the presence of the enemies that threaten destruction. He offers the cup and the bread to those who may or may not make it out of this war alive. Life eternal is a promise, winning all our battles isn’t.

I considered carrying these people’s hellish stories part of sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Carrying his cross means being broken by the weight of sin and evil and the consequences it brings in people’s lives. It’s a small sip of a cup that only Jesus could drink to the dregs, but it is a suffering that reaching and loving others demands.

The Gospel stories tell us that hope found its way to Hades and came back from the dead, so hope grows in horror, maybe especially here. You cannot follow Jesus and not touch the fringes of the shadow of death, for here is where resurrection happens.