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| Preaching and the Mystery Index Before getting to the Mystery Index, let me say a few words about the Misery Index, which got me thinking about mystery — and its link to misery — in the first place. The idea of a Misery Index has been around for a long time — since the early ’70s. It’s actually an economic bellwether that’s determined by factoring inflation and unemployment. Economists reason that when unemployment and inflation are high, that generally spells misery for consumers. I found a chart that compares the Misery Index by presidential administrations since Truman. The Misery Index as an average per administration was at its lowest during the Eisenhower years at 6.26. From best to worst, after Eisenhower, are Johnson, Kennedy, Truman, George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Nixon, Reagan and Ford. The country’s highest Misery Index was during the Carter administration. Carter had famously declared in 1976, when running against Ford, that anyone who was presiding over a country with a Misery Index of 13.67 didn’t even have a right to ask people to elect him to the office of president. So the country installed Carter in the Oval Office, and four years later, when the Misery Index was at a historic and never-since-duplicated high of almost 22, they booted him out. The current Misery Index (May 2009) is 8.16, which gives you an idea of how miserable things were in 1980. Misery. We’re fascinated by it. Forbes compiles an annual list of the “10 Most Miserable Cities in America.” Its most recent judgment is that Stockton, California, is the most miserable city in America right now, followed by Memphis, Chicago, Cleveland, Modesto, Flint, Detroit, Buffalo, Miami and St. Louis. This ranking is based on a number of economic and livability factors, and some studies show that when misery runs high, a soaring crime rate is sure to follow, showing up in the statistics about a year later. If you’d like some music to go with your misery, you can get Discordia or Traitors, albums produced on the Anarchos record label by Misery Index, a death-grind/hard-core punk band. Its jarring, loud and wailing music draws its inspiration from the despair of the postmodern ethos. I can listen to it for about three seconds before thumbing my iPod wheel back to — something else, which I know begs the question of why it’s on my iPod in the first place. Research. Misery Index makes Metallica, Rage Against the Machine and Rob Zombie sound like elevator music by comparison. The whole idea of misery is on my mind because online news and the blogosphere are full of it. Obama is guessing — and he’s got a lot of support on this — that the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 were the worst of it, and we’re all going to be happy again soon. Meanwhile, we’re called to reflect on how one preaches when people are miserable. You know what I’m talking about because people in your congregation have lost their jobs, their homes, their retirement packages. They’ve watched their stock portfolios plunge in value, and many are delaying retirement because they simply can’t afford to retire right now. People are struggling to make ends meet. How does that preach? This brings me to the Mystery Index, which is suggested to me by what I remember of Gabriel Marcel’s ruminations on the general subject. How one can keep faith and have hope when utterly miserable has got to be the greatest mystery of all time. Marcel, a philosopher and playwright, has been dead for more than 25 years now, but he’s still worth a read. Called by some a Christian existentialist, he addresses our subject in his book The Mystery of Being, originally delivered as the Gifford Lectures at Harvard. Although Marcel doesn’t refer to a Mystery Index, in my thinking the Mystery Index is determined by the factors of faith (what Marcel calls “creative fidelity”) and hope. His ideas about being and having, availability and nonavailability are worth review. He says that too often people talk about trying to “have” this or that, when in fact, it isn’t a question of having something, such as love or hope, but being love and hope. A key component in this mystery is how we relate to others. When we make ourselves available to others, we link ourselves with their world and experience. We are present to them and for them, in communication with them. We are at their disposal when they’re in need. They aren’t alone. When we are present to others, i.e., available to others, they are enabled, or empowered, to be faith and to be hope in miserable times. The problem with faith is that it must be constant and must have someone or something as its object. While God is the ultimate object of faith, our preaching helps mediate that object. As for hope, Marcel argues that a person who is hope doesn’t accept the current situation as final. Hope isn’t fixed on any particular method of deliverance. Surgery to remove a cancer, for example, may not produce a desired result. But as a person of hope whose hope isn’t linked to a particular soteriological methodology, regardless of a surgical outcome, I am not shaken. This doesn’t mean that hope is passive or merely a form of stoicism or resignation. Hope might be called “active patience,” and one who is hope is one who knows that God is for him or her, in partnership with him or her. Our preaching must aim to elevate the Mystery Index, the mystery of faith and hope. It must be a sign that we are making ourselves available to others, helping miserable people become mysterious people! That is, people who understand that their constant faith in God is not misplaced. People of faith and hope are people whose hope and faith shall not go unrewarded. The alternative is despair, which says that there is nothing — really — worth living for. The reward of faith and hope is that, well, yes, there is much in my current and future reality worth living for. And, by God, I am going to do it. I am going to live — in faith and in hope. In mystery. Even if I have to do it in Stockton.
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