Home. All you want is home. You have seen too much pain and loss on this neverending commute. You remember their eyes: the tears, the fear, the betrayal, the resignation, the life vanishing. You have seen love and compassion as well, but brokenness has been too much. Your mind is frayed and your spirit is raw. You want to see the sky and the sun. You are tired of the darkness and harsh lights of these underground caves. You want to go home.
The train leaves the last station before your own. You see the blur and then enter the darkness of the tunnel. You exhale a sigh of relief and lean your head back against the window. You close your eyes for a moment. You hear the murmuring prayer of the young man who has been with you from that first stop.
The train lurches and your eyes shoot open to see the fluorescent lights flicker then die. The train groans as it comes to a stop. There is a crackle from the PA system. There was a mechanical failure. They are working on it, but passengers should expect a lengthy delay.
You hear a passenger swear while another lets out a sigh of exasperation. Emergency lights flash on and cast eerie shadows all over the car. You look around. Everyone looks pale, ragged. The young man praying sits across from you. His piston knees are pumping harder than they have before. Then the emergency lights fail.
You are not going home. You are trapped underground with the ghosts of all the day's heartbreak. There is no light. There is not even the blur. All is darkness.
I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.
The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.