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The Chain
Brian Gold was out in the park with his young daughter one winter’s dusk, sledding near a cluster of upscale homes. From a distance, he sees a dark figure rushing toward his little girl, a wolf-like beast attached to a long chain. The dog leaps toward the girl, Anna, grabs her by the shoulder with his canine incisors, and shakes her like a rag dog. Brian runs toward her as if in slow motion, his snow boots impeding his progress. He reaches the dog and tries to pull it off of his daughter, but the animal snarls more fiercely and shakes her all the more. “Let go, damn you”, Gold pleads, and he takes the dog’s ear in his teeth and bites down with everything he has. It yelps and Brian feels something crack against his nose, knocking him backwards, and the dog is off, running for home, jerking its head from side to side, scattering flecks of blood on the snow.
Gold tells the story over and over, this time to his cousin, Rourke. The police won’t do anything. It’s a miracle Anna wasn’t crippled or disfigured. “The chain”, he tells Rourke, “they said the dog was chained up, no law was broken”. “What is it with Nazis and dogs?” asks Rourke. Gold isn’t Jewish–he’s a converted Catholic–but everyone thinks he’s Jewish. The kids at his video store call him “Mr. Gold”, as if he drives a rusted out Toyota just to hide his millions. But he often wonders why, when Jewish people were being packed into death trains, why didn't someone do something–grab a guard’s gun, fight back, resist? He drives to the park one evening and looks at the house where the dog lives, a sprawling expensive home with a glittering chandelier in the foyer. And he can just hear their excuses: a dog needs room to roam; if people let their kids go tearing off every which way, they have to live with the consequences. Some people are just natural born whiners.
“So”, his cousin Rourke asks, “you want me to take him out?” “You mean kill the dog? How?” “How do you want?”, says Rourke. “It felt good when you tried to bite off that mutt’s ear, didn’t it? Go out to eat with your wife at a nice restaurant, a place where they’ll remember you. Have some champagne. I’ll take care of it.” But Gold just goes to work that night.
Rourke calls him at the video store. “Scooter just buried his last bone”. “Scooter?” “That was his name. I got his collar for you–a little memento.” “Just don’t tell me any more.” “It had to be done, Brian.” Gold tells Rourke, “I won’t forget it.” “De nada”, says Rourke. “It’s over. Go in peace.”
A few months later, Rourke calls Gold with a story of his own. At a gas station on Erie Boulevard, a BMW backs out and puts a crease in Rourke’s door. He yelled at the driver, but the guy ignored him and drove off. But he got his plate. It reads “SCUSE ME”. The police track him down and ticket the driver for leaving the scene. So far, so good. But the guy has no insurance. Rourke’s got to pay for the deductible out of pocket–$800 for a lousy dent! Rourke thinks Mr. SCUSE ME should pay for it. He gets the guy's name from the insurance company and calls him up. His name is Vick and he works as a DJ at a crummy bar–retailing a little dope on the side. But he won’t pay. Rourke goes to the club for a drink, sees Vick’s smooth DJ vibe, then goes outside looking for the Beemer. He finds it, and tells Gold that he’s going back that night to give Mr. Vick a taste of his own medicine. “You can’t”, says Gold, “they’ll know it was you”. Gold understood where this story was taking him, even if Rourke hadn’t. When he said, “I’ll do it”, he felt he was reading the words from a script.
Gold picks up two gallons of redwood stain and a long hunting knife at a hardware store. He drives to the club at 11:30, backing into a space behind the building. Gold has second thoughts about using the stain. After all, it was just a dent in Rourke’s door. But he sees that sweet BMW, a car he could never afford, and he just knows that Vick is selling drugs to his own people. Maybe he will do a little something with that knife and stain. He takes a crowbar and slaps it in his hand. He can feel his rage building. He swings the bar like a bat against the car with everything he has. The shock of the blow races up his arm. He drops the crowbar and runs.
Vick finds it lying there three hours later. And he knows who has done this. He grabs the crowbar, drives straight to the apartment building where Devereaux lives, and runs up the steps screaming. “I told you next week!” and spits out a vulgarity. “I told you I’d pay you next week!” He crows the
door open and staggers into the apartment yelling for Devereaux. But Devereaux isn’t home. Young Marcel and his grandmother are. The teenager gets up and tries to push him out, but Vick shoves him away and swings that crowbar, catching Marcel right across the temple. The boy’s eyes go wide and he falls to his knees and pitches facedown. “Oh God”, says VIck, and he runs out the door and drives to his grandmother’s house. He tells her what he did and she holds his head to her lap and rocks back and forth and weeps and prays over him. Then she calls the police.
Two of Gold’s young customers come into the store “Why aren’t you kids in school?” he asks. “Friend of mine got killed”, says one. “Marcel was the best. Marcel had this thing–he could bring people together. He talked to you like you were important. Peacemaker. Marcel was a peacemaker, and that’s the best thing you can be.”
“Yes”, says Mr. Gold, “it is.” He put his hands on the counter and lowered his head. The kids saw he was grieving and how unfair it was that Marcel had been struck down with his whole life before him, all his sunny days stolen away. They touch Gold’s shoulder. “That man’ll get his”, they say. “He’ll get what’s coming to him. Count on it.”
It’s one of my favorite short stories, written by Tobias Wolff, and it’s called The Chain. It’s a real world reminder that everything we do is connected and has consequences. Have you ever heard a person telling a story, and they say, “And well, one thing led to another and …”? They’re describing a series of events, a chain of happenings, where each event triggers or influences the next, causing a chain reaction, a sequence of cause and effect. “We were just talking and one thing led to another and we ended up going out for dinner.” “I agreed to help him with the dishes, and, well, one thing led to another and I ended up staying the night.” Mr. Gold might say, “I let my cousin Rourke kill the dog that attacked my daughter, and one thing led to another, and a young man named Marcel died because of it.” Seemingly unrelated events become connected and lead you to an unexpected outcome.
The opening sentence of today’s gospel story is surprising. “Some Pharisees came and said to Jesus, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’” Do you hear the surprise? Some Pharisees said … Well, wait a minute. I thought the Pharisees hated Jesus? And he isn’t so crazy about them, either. He calls the Pharisees, the hyper-religious right, the Christian nationalists, he calls them “blind guides”, “white washed tombs”, hypocrites. And they, in return, conspire to have Jesus killed. So there’s no love lost between Jesus and the Pharisees, and yet these are the very people who show up at his doorstep to warn him about evil King Herod. Yes, on the one hand they belong to the same tribe–as the comedian Jon Stewart calls his fellow Jews–but on the other hand, they don’t. So why are they helping Jesus out? Someone wondered if the Pharisees were just hedging their bets. They want to play both sides of the fence. If Jesus is the Christ, then they have done him a favor by warning him If he’s not the Messiah, then nobody else will ever know that they tried to warn him.
Maybe that’s us in this Lenten season. We’re happy to be Christians as long as being Christian doesn’t mean doing something that makes us look intolerant or gets us into trouble. And we’re happy to follow Jesus, if that just means wearing a cross around our necks. And we’re happy to support the government, even if we don’t agree with policies that rub up against our morals. We’re happy to immerse ourselves in the dominant culture, even if that means not shielding our kids from unhealthy or even malevolent influences in popular media. You see, we think we can be both Christian and American, both faithful to Christ and embrace the world completely; we think we can be Jesus’ friend without losing our place in Herod’s court.
In his book, Craddock Stories, there’s a time when the Tennessee preacher and seminary professor, Fred Craddock, goes to South Carolina to speak at a conference. Between engagements, he wanted to clear his head so he drove out of town into the sticks. He came to a low country cemetery and got out of his car and started reading grave markers. Every grave was marked with a concrete slab that covered the full length and wide of the grave, because the soil was so shallow with a sandy bottom.
Then he came to one family’s plot. All the graves were lined up in a row: Small graves for the children, larger ones for the adults, but all lined up. Fred looked down the row, and saw one grave was oblique, crosswise, or as they say down South, “catty-wampus” or slanted. Lengthwise, it took up the place of three graves. And he couldn’t figure it out? Was it carelessness? Some disaster? Another man was walking through the cemetery, and came up to Fred. “You’re looking at that grave, aren’t you?” He said, “I knew that fellow. We were in the same church.”
“Why was he buried at this angle?” asked Fred. “Well”, said the man, “the family wanted it and the church agreed.” “But why?” “‘Cause that’s the kind of guy he was. He was cross about everything. We never knew him pleased about anything, at home or church. “Why’s she doing that?” “He’s the wrong one to be doing that job!” “Why’d they ask him to do that?” All the time. And the family decided they wouldn’t try to change him just because he was dead, so they buried him crosswise.”
Fred thought, and said, “Well, that’s an awful thing to do.” And the man said, “They wanted it to be a witness. The family said if God wants to straighten him out, God can straighten him out. But he left here just like he lived.”
We want to get along. We don’t want to alienate our family, our friends, our neighbors, our tribe. Just like the Pharisees. Jesus knows they have a foot in each camp, so he gives them a message for King Herod. You tell that fox for me”, he says to them. That’s how we live our lives. We think we can control the fox, bow down to the fox, deal with him from Monday to Friday, but also stay true to our beliefs on Sunday. Until one day we have to choose sides. Herod is a fox, says Jesus, and if you think you can serve two masters if you think you can handle it all, you’d better be careful. Given the chance, Herod will eat you alive, take everything you have, and leave you completely empty.
The fox is in the henhouse. Have you ever heard that expression? You work 60 to 80 hours a week to get ahead, neglecting your family and
spouse, but when the budget gets tight, the fox will lay you off in a heartbeat.
The fox is in the henhouse. Your credit cars promise “priceless” memories, but the fox only delivers more debt and worry.
The fox is in the henhouse. Politicians paint one another as liars and unpatriotic dream killers, but all they deliver is continual alarm, distrust, division, and fear.
The fox is in the henhouse. If you don’t think the fox is real, look at what happened to the Pharisees. Forty years after Jesus, their holiest house was left desolate as the Roman armies they had compromised with destroyed their Jerusalem temple–just as Jesus said they would.
I grew up watching M*A*S*H*, the longest running television program at the time. A mobile hospital staffed by crackpot doctors. But there was also a chaplain, Father Mulcahy, a genial Catholic priest. During one episode, Father Mulcahy becomes attracted to a nurse, He has taken vows of priesthood–poverty, chastity, obedience. But he has fallen in love. The screenwriter said that episode centered around that storyline, that struggle and Father Mulcahy finally says no to her and yes to God. “I had an awful time selling that script”, said the screenwriter. The producers said, “Just change the ending, make it more realistic.” “What would make it more realistic?” he asked. “He goes for the nurse! He disavows his priesthood! Don’t you understand what people want?”, they demanded. And the writer said no.
Lent, I think, is about the choices we make. How one decision leads to another and another and another. It’s about living with the fox–but not giving in to him. This is the world we live in. These are the challenges we face. But remember whose tribe you belong to. “We are citizens of heaven”, says St. Paul. Being in that tribe trumps every other tribe to which we may belong.
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