To What Purpose?
Something can happen, and then a meaning dawns upon us well after the fact. Have you ever experienced something bad or disappointing that later turned out to be fortunate? As things take place, we only have the context we construct at the time for judging the happenings. Later, a different context can replace it.
Here is an example: In April of 1970, Apollo 13 was the third American space mission designed to land on the moon. Astronaut Ken Mattingly had trained and was chosen to serve as command module pilot. In the days leading up to launch, he was exposed to three-day measles, and so, replaced by Jack Swigert. This was a huge blow to Mattingly but turned out to be a personal tragedy with a saving result.
Two days into the mission, an oxygen tank in the service module failed. On the ground, Mattingly’s meticulous awareness of all the equipment and parts that could be re-purposed allowed him to design a kind of “life-boat” for the crew in space to engineer. This proved to be the way for all in a doomed mission to return safely to earth, when such a glorious result looked impossible.
Ken Mattingly never did break out in measles, but the threat grounded him. Had he been in space rather than at the Kennedy Space Center, figuring things out, by trial and error, with a team on the ground, the slim chance at survival could never have been conceived. Earthbound, he figured prominently in getting his fellow astronauts back to earth, alive.
Our liturgy next Sunday gives us one of the “suffering servant songs” from the prophet Isaiah. The prophet is speaking to a particular time in the history of Israel, of course: his people are in exile, Jerusalem is in ruins, the temple is destroyed. For the people of Israel, all is a disaster. Israel’s elite, the learned, and the people of skill and expertise had been exiled to Babylon, leaving only the poorest. Even so, the prophet speaks poetically of Israel, personified as a suffering servant. The figure described, held up for attention, looks to be a helpless victim, but by God’s mysterious, saving ways, the suffering one becomes the means of healing for the nations. Isaiah reveals that tucked into the suffering of an exiled Israel are the designs of God to save all the people.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed. …
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
(Isaiah 53:4-5, 11-12)
In the salvation history of Israel, Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in what will become of his people through the Babylonian captivity. In the Christian revelation, this prophecy is fulfilled in an ultimate way, as God unveils the salvation of all people through the birth, life and death of Christ Jesus. As Jesus goes to the cross, he is seen as the one who “has borne our infirmities… was wounded for our transgressions…poured out himself to death…bore the sin of many.” In the entirety of the Christ event, from his birth on, and very poignantly in his crucifixion, what Jesus endured heals us and makes us whole.
We need to realize this surprising way that God reverses things. What looks like a complete and hopeless failure can figure into God’s great triumph for our sake. While things are falling apart, we ask, “To what purpose is this happening?” Only later might it be known that it was to God’s purpose, and for the higher good in God’s designs.