WHEN THE CAR BREAKS DOWN

There is a story about a traveling salesman whose car breaks down in farm country. There are no motels around and so he is forced to ask a poor farmer and his family to put him up for the night. They do so gladly. They share their meager meal and show him where he can sleep in the hayloft of the barn. Before leaving the stranger for the night, the humble host says, "If there's anything you think you need, just tell us what it is and we'll come out and show you how to get along without it."

           

The farmer’s message to the travelling salesman is very simple: the more clutter we add to our lives, the more cluttered our life becomes and we begin to lose focus. We begin to lose sight of what is truly important and valuable. We begin to believe that we cannot possibly live with less now that we have learned to live with more. And if by happenstance we are forced to live with less than with what we have become accustomed, we verge on panic.

           

Okay, maybe I exaggerate a bit here. Maybe. But my point, or the one I want to make, is that our life of faith is very much like the rest of our life. The lived life is to be simple. We do not really need much to live and even live well. Creature comforts may make us more comfortable but they do not guarantee that our life will be easier or even better or more satisfying. All they guarantee is that our life will be more expensive to maintain and the more we have the more expensive it will become.

           

The same is true, in a way, when it comes to our faith. The more we add to our life of faith and the more we demand in the way or explanation or understanding, the more complicated our life of faith becomes. That does not mean that we should not want to understand what we believe and why. It is simply to say that, to paraphrase the farmer, the Holy Spirit will say to us whenever those questions arise, "If there's anything you think you need to understand, just tell me what it is and I'll show you how you can get along without understanding."

           

Take Easter as an example. We believe in Easter, in what happened, in the resurrection. Do we understand it? Not in the least. Oh, sometimes we think we do, but we really do not. The most we can say about Easter, as we say this Sunday and all throughout the Easter season, is "Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia." In truth, the only thing we can really say with any understanding is "Alleluia!" Any more clutters what we believe and what we understand about Easter. But we say more anyway because we seem to want to say more.

           

We should resist that temptation as it only gets us into trouble. That is not to say that we should not try to understand our faith, that we should not understand Easter or the Easter message. It is simply to say that we should not think the more we understand the stronger our faith will be. It is simply to say that as in life, so in faith, less is, more often than not, more.

           

Happy Easter -- or better: Alleluia!