Well, that’s not entirely the truth. For us humans, there has always been some kind of “big bad.” It’s been with us so long, we buried it in our stories ... but it’s always been there. And in our stories, there have always been heroes to fight it. Knights to battle the dragons. Dark Knights to combat the criminals.
But it was Buffy and her “Scooby Gang” who first called it the “Big Bad.” And it was never just the monsters they fought each week. It was something truly big. Something world-shattering.
So what is the "big bad"?
For the answer, let's look at this week's scriptures; they're packed full of the Big Bad.
Like with Hagar in Genesis, it’s the realization that you and your child are not going to survive. Even those you thought were your friends seek to harm you, and your family shuns you. It’s knowing, now that your family and friends have turned against you, that no one stands with you. It’s facing the inescapable death by dehydration when there is no longer any water.
Like the Psalmist this week, it’s the drowning when the mighty waters rise above us. It’s the sure knowledge that no knight, whatever his or her stripe, can save us from what is to come. It is there, in the moment we realize all is lost, the moment when clarity shows us there is no escape, that ...
... we need to remember there is another.
If we have been waiting for just the right time, there is no more margin for waiting. It is the day of our trouble. We need to call on The Lord. In Jeremiah, he declares that if he tries to withhold the message of God, it becomes like "a burning fire shut up in his bones," a fire he cannot hold in. That message, the one so hot no one can contain it, is that God continues to care about us, cares enough to "deliver the life of the needy from the hands of the evildoers."
The pandemic is bad ... but it’s not the Big Bad.
Death has been the Big Bad for us for so long —the biggest, the true inescapable fate— for as long as recorded history. But that time has ended. Jeremiah’s bone-burning message eventually took human form as the Messiah. And it was His sacrifice —the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus— that turned what was once an inescapable prison into a mere way-station.
That’s why, in the day of our troubles —facing our own world-shattering Big Bad— we can confidently call on The Lord ... knowing in our very bones the Big Bad isn’t really so big.
It can never overcome the Big Good.
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Different versions of this reflection appeared in 2017 as Burning Bones and the Big Bad and in 2014 as The Big Bad.
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FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 7 (12) (June 21, 2020)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu//texts.php?id=147
Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Jeremiah 20:7-13
Psalm 69:7-10, (11-15), 16-18
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
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We continue to remain on hold for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. In the meantime, keep safe and keep in touch. Read the scriptures and pray.
Blessings,
Steve
PS: If you want to, feel free to drop me a line (stephen.c.orr@gmail.com). I’ll write back.
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