"Tell me about that blanket!"
I love this scene from Dead Poets Society! Todd’s awkward, introspective manner gives way to the poet finding his voice. Mr Keating courageously calls to it.
“Truth like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.”
“Stay with that blanket. Tell me about that blanket.”
A blanket is a comforter, something that will keep you warm when you are cold or help you feel safe. When my kids were young, they would curl “monkey blankey” in their arm, hold it against their face, and the deep heaving breaths signaled the end of the tears. All is well, all will be well (borrowing from Julian of Norwich).
The blanket he describes, like Job’s friends, is a “miserable comforter.” It covers his face, but his feet are still cold. He pulls at it, stretches it, but it is never enough for any of us. Face hidden, still cold, still afraid and wailing, crying, and screaming. “Tell me about that blanket.” It is a miserable comforter.
Of course Job came to mind. The three friends offered religious piety, certitude, simplicity- an algorithm reducing God to a simplistic construct of reward and punishment. A law. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of this in Cost of Dicipleship. “He (Jesus) fulflils the law down to the last iota. But that means that he must die, he alone understands the true nature of the law as God's law: the law is not itself God, nor is God the law. It was the error of Israel to put the law in God's place, to make the law their God and their God a law.”
Paul writes in Romans 8 of Jesus Christ coming to do what the law could not do. Job cried out for a friend, mediator, and comforter. The religion and the law of the three friends left Job with his feet cold and wresting with a truth that did nothing to comfort him.
But we have been given the Spirit of Christ, the comforter. Job longed for His coming; “ I know that My Redeemer lives. And He shall stand at last on the earth (Job 19).” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of this Redeemer in Cost of Discipleship, “God asked nothing about our virtues or our vices, for in his sight even our virtue was ungodliness. God’s love sought out his enemies who needed it, and whom he deemed worthy of it…Perfect all-inclusive love is the act of the Father, it is also the act of the sons of God, as it was the act of the only-begotten Son.” Love seeks redemption. Love deems us worthy of it.
Our comfort, the comfort of others, is not in the territory marking, inscribed stones of law clinched in a fist. It is not religion or simplistic thinking. Our comfort, and our ability to comfort, is found in the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, we have the life and hope that the truth of law could not satisfy.
Trying to grasp truth through the law leaves you in angst. It will never cover you or comfort you. You will never measure up or be worthy enough. Your feet will always be cold. But how beautiful are the feet of the one who brings good news (Isaiah 52)! Rachel Held Evans summed it up this way in Searching for Sunday: “ This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.” Jesus’s love is now given to us through His Spirit. He will never leave us. And as He loved, He has equipped us to love. So now, oddballs, like me, like the fictional Todd, can find comfort in the acceptance and love offered simply because we need it.
Those wailing, crying, screaming people that we know, the ones that look to this mumbled truth and find no comfort and no rest, we can tell them about our blanket, our Comforter. We are completely covered, robed, ensconced in Christ and His love. “So, comfort one another with these words, we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thesselonians 4).” We are not alone, tugging at a truth that will never be enough. Jesus is our rest; the wrestling match is over.
For the Lord your God is living among you.
He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
With his love, he will calm all your fears.
He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”
Zephaniah 3:17
We are comforted, like a child with “monkey-blankey.” We are not alone. He sings us to sleep. The deep heaving breaths can come. “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well (Julian of Norwich).”
