c. 1996 Religion News Service
(Frederick Houk Borsch is bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. This article is adapted from his new book,”Outrage and Hope,”published by Trinity Press International.)
(UNDATED) God did not intervene to prevent the tragic crash Wednesday near New York of a TWA jet bound for Paris, just as he did not intervene on a dark, sleeting January afternoon in 1985, when the plane in which I was riding crashed into Boston Harbor.
But as I ponder the horror that so recently unfolded in the sky over the Atlantic, it is clear to me that in both cases, God was not absent.
Mysteriously and powerfully, God remains present, participating in what happens with us and through us, deep in the heart of life; offering faith and courage, even in the midst of tragedy.
I vividly recall that as we landed in Boston that January afternoon, the plane came in a little fast _ hot, as they say _ and farther down the runway than usual. But, surely, there could be no problem. Then, in the snowscape alongside the runway I saw one, two, then three of the turnoffs hurtle by and I knew we were in trouble.
There wasn’t a sound on the plane. Either the other passengers did not realize what was happening or they had begun to freeze as I had. I saw the last of the runway go, and we began a series of sharp bumps. My prayer was short and primitive _ that well-known one-word petition,”Help!”Then I felt the plane swerving to the left and ducked my head. There was a much heavier bump, after which we seemed to go up into the air and then slam down. My head banged into the seatback in front of me.
After the crash, my first emotion was relief. I didn’t seem injured and the plane hadn’t exploded. I looked around. One or more of the engines were roaring, and I could hear yelling from the back of the plane.
People were remarkably quiet. Remembering that there was a woman with a baby a row or two behind me, I got out of my seat and saw that they were all right. Others began moving about in the dim light. I saw water lapping several feet below the window.
There was no word from the captain or crew; the force of the crash had sheared off the cockpit and thrown its crew into the harbor. It was the engine high and mounted on the tail that was still roaring, making it difficult to be heard. I worried that it might explode and began shouting back and forth with several other passengers about how we might get a door open.
I happened to look down and saw my travel bag. Incongruously, I thought of the sermon I was to preach at the Harvard University chapel the next day. I unzipped the bag and took out my notes, realizing it would need to be a very different sermon.
When someone told us we should try to get out the back, we got up and began to move in that direction. I saw I had a life vest on, but did not remember putting it on or having been told to. Several others, however, had theirs on as well. An older woman could not find one, and we found one for her.
Suddenly people began to surge toward the front again, saying we couldn’t get out the back. I sensed panic beginning to mount, along with a determination to get out somehow. One of the flight attendants squeezed by, and several of us began to half shout at and half argue with her. Apparently she now realized that the engine blast made the back exit useless and that we would have to escape through the water.
The side door came open easily, and the escape chute inflated into a great yellow slide. I thought about trying to be a hero and helped a few people onto the chute. Then someone from behind pushed and said,”Get going.”I did and sort of waddled down the wobbling chute. It was only a gradual incline because the water was nearly up to the door. I remember thinking rather crazily that this might be fun on another kind of occasion. We were able to crawl over the slide onto the slippery wing.
From the wing top I had to wade only a few yards in thigh-deep water to reach the shore. I looked back at the huge broken machine, once so powerful, now helpless in the mud and water. The rear engine continued its wailing. It had sucked up the rear escape chute and then spewed little bits of hot rubber over the plane. The split-off front section looked as if it had been severed from the rest by a giant cleaver.
I clambered over the rocks and up onto the runway, nearly falling several times on the icy tarmac. It seemed crazy that a plane would have tried to land on anything so slick. In the distance I could see a long line of emergency vehicles coming from the direction of the terminal.
By now there was a feeling of comradeship and pride among the passengers. We were alive, and there seemed to be but a few injuries. Only later was that good feeling fractured by the news that two people had been thrown from the plane and drowned. Only slowly, too, did we begin to realize how lucky we all were. If the pilot had not swerved, we would have crashed into the landing bridge covered with lights and high-tension wires. As it was, the right wing tip had come to rest only two feet away from it. We were lucky that the landing gear had sheared off and that we had not gone further out into the water.
Was it only luck, or was there more to our survival? I heard many complimentary references to God as we made our way safely to the terminal. Several people said they had joined me in one version or another of that fox-hole prayer. And friends later assured me that God had rescued me and did not want me to die. God had been my copilot.
It is a nice image: God as the stage manager of all of life’s events, hearing our prayers and rescuing those especially favored or who still have work to do on Earth.
Such a theology works best when things turn out well. I have found myself reflecting on it as I have heard prayers for safe travel,”O God, watch over Bill and Mary who are driving to Washington today.”And later,”Thank you, Lord, for bringing Bill and Mary safely home.”It certainly can be comforting to picture the Spirit of God hovering over all the traffic intersections that those we love must cross during a trip.
But there clearly is a theological problem here, for if God has kept Bill and Mary safe, has God then not also directed or allowed others to crash _ hundreds every day? What of the hundreds on the Paris-bound jet who perished in a fireball over the Atlantic? How are we to understand the fate of the many who have died, and will die, in other plane crashes?
It is, of course, possible to maintain that those deaths are also part of God’s plan, a design too intricate for us to comprehend. But such a view is not easily maintained in the face of the agony of some deaths, of the suffering of the parents and children, husbands and wives, old people and young people whose lives ended this week as they fell from the sky.
For many in our time this view of God as the director of life’s events has, of course, gone by the boards; even among those who have retained a religious vocabulary, the very idea of a God present in this way often seems foreign.
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In biblical times mysterious divine powers were thought directly to control many events, from the daily rising of the sun, to earthquakes and plagues. Today most of us understand natural events quite differently. However difficult it may be to give a precise explanation for everything, we are trained to look for a closely knit relationship of causes and effects. We may think of God as the remote original, ultimate, or final cause of all that takes place. But God, for many people, seems further and further removed from the world of their experience.
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Although there is much that we do not understand _ of which we have not yet even dreamed _ we must ask what kind of thinking and reflection we need to do in order to have a faith that is more than just a kind of fantasy about God, a faith in a real God in a real world.
Someone once sketched out for me the difference between what he called”Theology A”and”Theology B.”Theology A goes like this:”If the children survive, if my doctor gives me a good report, if my business thrives, then I will give thanks and trust in God.”Theology B says,”Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death … you are with me.” Although I am far from having all the answers, my faith tries to follow the way of Theology B. When my plane rolled into Boston Harbor, God was not visible, but God was present nonetheless, offering faith and courage.
The God who cannot be seen is yet present as the Spirit of all that is, willing to share in all the consequences of creation _ including evil and suffering _ and seeking to transform them through love.
For some people, such a God may seem rather weak, hardly better than no God at all. But for others this is the God who is always present to the world and to whom we are always present. Whether the plane lands or goes over the end, whether we live or die, this God _ even in the valley of the shadow of death _ is always with us.
It is this presence that inspires trust and compassion, for we know that God is always working to redeem. This Spirit is present with the power to heal us spiritually and emotionally, and sometimes physically as well.
From God comes the power for life’s greatest miracle; not some contravention of the natural order, but the possibility that men and women can find the trust, in the midst of mortal frailties and tragedies, to care for one another, to struggle for fairness, and to tell of the God who shares with them. This is the God who will never leave them alone.
MJP END BORSCH
