Striking out

Christian Century, June 5, 2002 by David S. Cunningham

THE CLAIM in the Apostles' Creed that Christ "descended to the realm of the dead" has traditionally served at least two purposes. First, it extends the work of the previous phrase in the creed ("suffered, died, and was buried") by making it clear that Jesus experiences the full range of human existence. He not only suffers and experiences the "moment" of death; he also experiences death as a potential separation from the communion of others. He experiences the profound anxiety, the utter loss and the potential godforsakeness felt by those who die. His death is not a pretend death, not an apparent death for the purpose of "seeming" to be a human being, but a real death, with all the horror and terror that humans associate with it.

At the same time, the descent to the dead makes a claim about the relationship between God and the dead. Death's potential to separate us from God is, through Christ's descent to the dead, definitively overcome; God brings even the dead into participation in the divine life. As the author of the letters of Peter puts it, "This is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does" (1 Pet. 4:6). This further implies that the salvation wrought through Christ is extended through time, forward and backward, in ways that we, with our linear constructions of time, can barely imagine.

It is quite significant that Jesus' descent to the dead and his resurrection are fused into a single article of the Apostles' Creed. In some sense, these two beliefs are two sides of the same coin: Jesus' utter estrangement from God in death would be incomprehensible without the resurrection; but the resurrection would be nothing but a piece of stage magic if it were not understood as a divine response to the alienating power of death.

A "death and resurrection" motif is common in literature, and a number of novels could be used to illustrate the general principle. But it's more difficult to find novels in which this motif of death and resurrection is keyed deliberately to the death and resurrection of Jesus. More often, what some literary critics refer to as "death and resurrection" is little more than the downward slide of a particular character followed by some kind of rock-bottom experience and then a gradual rebuilding. Such novels illustrate the general point well enough, but they may do very little to help us understand how the specifically Christian belief in Jesus' descent into hell, and his resurrection into new life, can become the prototype for our own experience of alienation and reconciliation.

But at least one modern novel is able to show how characters descend into hell and rise again while keeping Jesus somewhere in the picture at all times: David James Duncan's brilliantly conceived, gripping and frequently hilarious book The Brothers K. It is a profound meditation on the great eternal themes, including death, life and, of course, baseball.

The Brothers K is a chronicle of the Chance family: Hugh and Laura (Papa and Mama) and their six children (four boys--Everett, Peter, Irwin and Kincaid--and twin daughters Beatrice and Winifred, known always as Bet and Freddy). Kincaid narrates the story, which is mostly about the relationships among all six children and their parents and then, in the second half, about the three eldest brothers.

Papa Chance is a baseball player--a phenomenally good pitcher--and a true devotee of the game. He's just about to break into the big leagues when an accident at the paper mill (where he works to supplement his meager bush-league earnings) destroys the thumb of his pitching hand. Deprived of what seemed to be everything important to him in life, he more or less gives up; he takes to moderately heavy drinking, chain smoking and sitting inertly in his chair, merely watching and commenting on the baseball games that appear on the television screen. Given what has happened to him, he is not terribly bitter--at least on the outside. But his children, and especially Kincaid, recognize that his quiet resignation is killing him.

ONE DAY, Kincaid is sitting in the pickup with his father, who is chain smoking Lucky Strikes and drinking one can of beer after another. The boy cannot get an image out of his mind: the image of Vera, a girl in his sabbath-school class, who has a hairlip and who is constantly teased in that particularly merciless way that only grade-school children can manage. But she is always the only one to volunteer to say the prayer at the end of the class, and so she always says it. And she goes on, and on, and on. Children begin by snickering; a few of the braver souls let out a guffaw from time to time; and even the teachers, Brother Beal and Sister Harg, cannot abide the ludicrousness of it all:

   "Nyearest Nyeesus!" she calls out, her voice, her whole body quivering.
   "Nank nyou! Nank nyou!, for yall nyour nyimmy nyimmy nmlessings, nand for
   nthis nay of Nhristian Nyellowshipt!" ...

   Noses blow violently; half-stifled giggles circle the room like pigeons
   trapped in a barn. Beal keeps his head bowed, but clears his throat and
   steps threateningly around his podium.