Mennonite Weekly Review

“Life is short, but God is long.” These surprising words by Langston Hughes are from his group of poems called “Harlem Songs.” When sung (put to music by Gwyneth Walker), the choristers are to make sounds and hand gestures to mimic the playing of tambourines. “Life” [stop] “is” [stop] “short” [stop; and sopranos go up an octave] “but God is l — o — n — g.” I can bear witness: It’s a riotous praise song that raises you right over any nagging worries. For a few minutes, at least, you forget about “But what can I depend on?” and “Can I count on anything?”

Stackley

We don’t know if hymn writer Edward Mote lived through anything like last spring’s Cyclone Nargis or a Mississippi hurricane or a Sechuan earthquake or a Kansas tornado. But he certainly nailed it (speaking of Jesus Christ) when he wrote the words that Christians often sing: “His oath, his covenant and blood support me in the ’whelming flood. When all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay.”

It’s human nature to seek stability and permanence. Naturally we’re skittish about ambiguity and “not knowing for sure.” We are seduced by people who offer total insurance or dogmatic answers or pat solutions. We want surety and guarantees even while comprehending — especially as we add year to year — that there simply ain’t no such thing apart from that Solid Rock referred to by Edward Mote.

This text from the Letter to the Hebrews beckons us toward assurance. Whatever we have to put up with in this world, we anticipate and are promised another “city.” However vulnerable we feel — physically, financially, emotionally — there is something more. “God is long.” We have it on good authority: God, speaking through Jesus Christ, says, “I am with you, I am with you always, I am with you till the end of the world.”

What lasts?

During the Stalinist years in the former Soviet Union, priests (notably Eastern Orthodox) were murdered, Christians (including many Mennonites) were banished to labor camps and frequently “disappeared,” and church buildings were commonly demolished. One such church was within view of the Kremlin in Moscow. Down it came. The government sought to replace it with a 100-story “People’s Palace” but found that the ground would not support such a structure. So they built a swimming pool instead.

During the years (approximately the 1920s to the 1980s) of the government’s suppressing of religion, Christians in Moscow would come secretly to the swimming pool to baptize their children. Then, in the 1990s, with democratization and with official renewed interest in religion in general and Christianity in particular, people could again worship openly. The swimming pool has now been replaced —with a church. What lasts?

A pilgrim people

Could this story illustrate some of the words in this Hebrews 13 text — being willing to “go outside the camp”? Does our banishment (temporary or even permanent) from popular or prevailing culture re-enforce the fact that “this world is not our home”? Do those words in the Letter to the Hebrews add meaning to our being a pilgrim people, sometimes disdained and discredited, sent outside the camp — just as Jesus was, to the place of his execution?

Whatever it is that we hold dear, whatever we tend to clutch, the pilgrim stance is to hold that thing loosely, knowing that we have a lasting “city” whose builder and maker is God.

Like two bookends to this letter, Heb. 1:12 (“your years will never end”) and Heb. 13:8 (“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever”) inform us about the eternalness of our Source of Being, whom we call God.

Muriel T. Stackley,, a member of Rainbow Mennonite Church in Kansas City, Kan., is a retired editor and pastor. Her e-mail address is murielts15 (at) gmail.com.