There were three of them, teenagers who grew up on the slopes, skiing every chance they could. The snow had been falling heavily, the air sharp with cold. This wasn’t wet snow, the kind for snowballs and carrot nosed men; these trillions of crystals, fractals of ice, formed to a fine powder—the perfect conditions for two well waxed runners, clipped to heavy boots. So these teenagers went to the local slopes, running the black diamonds that they had long ago mastered. And then, one of them looked across the ropes to the virgin snow, untouched on the other side. They knew these mountains, where the slopes eventually met a road beneath. What if they skied there? They could do it, they had the skills, so they slipped under the rope and went down. Half way along the path some snow above knocked loose, a wave of white descending, wrapping their legs in the icy mix. They looked around. That was it, nothing to worry about. They dug out and continued down the slope until they came to the road and hitched a ride back to the slopes.
Let’s do it again, one of them suggested. “You know, I’m good,” another said. Later, reflecting on that moment, he said it wasn’t fear, it wasn’t any conscious choice. He just felt a bit tired, not in the mood. So the other two went up the lift, leaving the one below to pick them up after the run. Later, after he’d waited around the lodge, he went to pick up his friends. They weren’t there. They probably hitched a ride, he thought. It was only that night, when one of their mothers called in search of her son, that he realized what had happened. That second run had triggered a fatal avalanche and one friend in that three had survived on the basis of a mere whim.
I have never experienced something so close, so dramatic, but there have been many times when I have missed an accident by moments. My response to this reality of life’s fragility and caprice could be to protect myself in every way I can. I could avoid all dangers, buy the car with the highest safety rating, take every preventative measure to keep from illness. And there are plenty who do such things—working to control our world so that no harm can come, no accidents happen. This has, in many ways, been the modern impulse. But we know, deep down, that there is no safety, only concealment. And in the dark of its concealment, the danger only grows more hideous. What problems solved have born greater problems? What house cleared of a demon had become host to seven more spirits worse than the first (Luke 11:24-62)?
We do not need solutions, we need rescue. This is the situation we see across the plain of human reality. Take our ecological crisis. Our life upon the earth has resulted in its undoing. And yet, as we have become aware of this, the standard response has been one of repeating the patterns of destruction in new forms. Instead of reducing our consumption, we have made it “green”; instead of learning to live without the power of engines, we have replaced mining for coal and oil to mining lithium and copper. And we will be stuck in such a cycle as long as we carry out programs of control in response to our fragile condition.
What are we to do? In a word, give thanks. Though the human plight is not solvable through human action, this does not mean that we are without rescue. Our hope isn’t in our newest technology, an advancement in our knowledge, a straightening out of our politics. Instead, our help comes from the outside, an apocalyptic possibility we couldn’t make possible. The announcement of this hope, writes Fleming Rutledge, “is an electrifying bulletin from somewhere else, over against and independent of anything, religious or otherwise, that we human beings could ever have dreamed up or projected out of our own wishes.” What is this announcement, this apocalyptic possibility that has entered the human scene? Paul puts it this way: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth, preaching on this passage from Ephesians, wrote of a situation much like the story with which I opened this reflection:
“You probably all know the legend of the rider who crossed the frozen Lake of Constance by night without knowing it. When he reached opposite shore and was told whence he came, he broke down horrified. This is the human situation when the sky opens and the earth is bright, when we may hear: By grace you have been saved! In such a moment we are like that terrified rider. What happened? I was doomed and miraculously escaped and now I am safe. You ask, Do we really live in such danger? Yes, we live on the brink of death. But we have been saved. Look at our Savior, and at our salvation! Look at Jesus on the cross.”
Our lives are fragile, they are tenuous, and yet we cannot save ourselves from that state. Instead, we can look to the cross, to that self-offering of love and let it transform us. It is in what Rutledge calls the “irreligious and unimaginable humiliation of the Son of God” that we find “the apocalyptic event.” And what is revealed in this event? God’s great love for the whole cosmos. It is by looking at that unimaginable act that we see what we could never do and our only response can be gratitude, lived thanksgiving for this grace we could never have made possible.
In the embrace of that love and gift, life will continue to be fragile; our creaturely existence will still have all the marks of time and limit. Sometimes we will be among those who make it down the ski run, thankful for the chance decision that saved us. At other times we will be the ones caught in the accident; the ones whose bodies fell into disorder and disease. In all of these conditions, though, our lives will be held in the light and love of the God who comes alongside us, who entered our suffering, met death, and conquered it. This means we no longer have to control the chaos of the world or seek safety from its chances and changes. “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s,” St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome. This is a truth that allows us to embrace life in a new and bold way, one that can welcome goodness and beauty and truth without having to secure them and control them. By grace, we have been saved from ourselves. By grace, we are free to be what we are, fragile and finite human beings—nothing more, nothing less.