I learned early on in
life that sometimes a friendship can be forged that surprises everybody but the
two that own it. It happened to me, I think, for the first time when I
was a junior in high school when five of us started a band called the “Harmona
Cats” to “star” in the Stars of Tomorrow Talent of Wyoming. Earnest was
the son of a Pentecostal pastor and played the piano like I had never heard it
played. From classical to rag time, jazz to spiritual, boogie-woogie to
rock and roll. All that was needed was a suggested song and Earnest took
off. A dozen or so years later, when Andrea Crouch came on the scene, I
was reminded of Earnest, once again. I remember how Earnest had helped me
in my early development of playing the bass fiddle by ear, introducing me to
the “slap” string and key recognitions on the fly. Every Monday and Thursday
evening Earnest and I became inseparable for two years, until graduation.
I regret that I never followed up on Earnest after I left for college.
Yet I will never forget the evening of practice when we shared with each other
the struggles, fears, suspicions, and speculations of he being born black and
my being born white. Without expressing it, that night solidified a
friendship, at least on my part, to this hour.
That relationship
surfaced again the other night when patrolling my e-mails and found a friend
suggestion I take a looks at a video of Gohan and Aochan. It seems they
lived side by side for months, at times even curling up next to one another as
they sleep. Such behavior is, perhaps, natural among creatures sharing
habitats—except that Gohan and Aochan should have naturally been predator and
prey. Gohan was a three and a half inch dwarf hamster, and her companion,
Aochan, a rat snake. The hamster, who was jokingly named “meal” in Japanese,
was originally given to Aochan as dinner after the snake refused to eat frozen
mice. But instead of dining, Aochan decided to make friends. Much to the
zookeeper’s surprise, the two began sharing a cage. Gohan would even climb onto
Aochan’s back to take a nap.
The thought of
such a relationship is one that fascinates in its complexity (if not an
accident waiting to happen). Though the friend who sent me this story assured
me that unusual bondings have occurred throughout the animal kingdom without
bad endings, I still find myself leery of the Timber Rattler’s and Copper
Head’s intentions we experience on occasion at Quiet Rest. Can a snake really
surrender its natural instincts to hunt? What happens when Gohan gets in his
way or makes him mad, or when the zookeeper is running late feeding the
reptiles? Can the nature of a snake remain reversed because of a relationship?
In a
significant prophecy of the coming Messiah (literally, anointed one) and His
ensuing reign, Isaiah describes a scene full of similarly unusual relationships
in his chapter 11: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down
with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little
child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie
down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near
the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will
be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”
On many levels
it is a scene that is unimaginable. Personally, I would no sooner trust the
cobra than I would trust the one who suggests I allow any one of my
grandchildren to play near it. Yet the vision speaks of a dramatic change in
nature throughout God’s kingdom, where the aggressiveness and cruelty that are
so much a part of our world will be forever changed. If I’ve got my eschatology
and beyond right, I will look at the relationship of Gohan and Aochan and not
fear the hamster’s trust of the snake. It seems to be with good reason that I
ascribe such a reality as something God promises in the future, in heaven, when
nature as I know it has passed away. Wow, there will be no more death or
mourning or crying or pain; the wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard
will lie down with the goat, for the old order of things will have passed away.
I’m confessing that this is indeed an image of things to come. But could it not
also be something more?
As I’m focusing
intently on the Christian story these days, I’m finding afresh that it tells
something about the coming of the Messiah that brings this scene to life even
now. The Incarnation—the coming of Jesus into creation—turns things on earth
upside-down. Like the brutal outlaw in one of Flannery O’Connor’s short
stories, the Misfit, recognizes, there is something about the Incarnation that
has “thrown everything off balance.” The mere presence of the source of all
matter in my present midst, the Incarnate Christ coming to me in flesh and
blood introduces a possibility of grace that changes the nature of everything.
O’Conner goes on to say: “If He did what He said, then its nothing for you to
do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then its nothing
for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best you can—by
killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to
him.” But I really get hold of what Isaiah depicts when he says it’s a world a
world where lions and vipers will not kill; young lambs will rest peacefully
beside predators, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as
the waters cover the sea” It is unnatural for a wolf not to harm a defenseless
lamb or a snake not to bite the hand that invades its nest. Is it any more
natural that I should be able to defy my human nature? That I should claim the
old has gone and left a new creation in its place? That I should find myself
born a second time from above?
Yet to bow before the
person of Christ—in life, in prayer, in relationship, in community—is to lay my
life at the feet of the One who is both Lamb and Lion in a way that overturns
these very notions of nature. In his work Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton finds fault
with the way this is often envisioned. “It is constantly assured,” he writes
“…that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But
that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is
simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The
real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal
ferocity?”
Father, God, these
things are a mystery. Yet, Christ achieves them all. I find His
invitation, every day, to be one of fierce hope of transformation and the
gentle assurance of new life on earth and as it will one day be in heaven. I
confess it is He alone who can reverse the nature of the snake; He is both Lamb
and Lion. Amen
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