|
|
|
Rev. Tom
Lenhart Let us pray. O God you are behind us and before us. Lay your hands upon me as I utter these words. And may we all feel your presence in our souls. Amen Events intrude on and change our lives. On Monday like many of you I sat in front of a window and looked out at the rain. I was fixated on the torrent of water rolling down Route 120 that was creating a class 3 whitewater run in my driveway and sending much of it into the Duck Pond. I confess I was frustrated and annoyed that this perfectly formed nor’easter had effectively washed out the front third of my driveway trapping me at home. And then out of the corner of my eye I saw an alert pop-up on my computer screen from the New York Times. I turned and quickly read the report of the unfolding horror at Virginia Tech. My mundane problems quickly found their proper place – as I began to regain a sense of perspective on the important things in life -- confronted by real tragedy and profound suffering and grief. Those events have stayed with me. Not principally because they have been at the center of our TV news reports and our front pages for the last 6 days, rather they have possessed me because of the magnitude of the tragedy and even more because of its randomness and location. The daily bombings in Iraq are horrific and the loss of a loved one there is no less painful to each family involved than to those who have lost a loved one in Blacksburg. But Blacksburg is not a war zone – it’s an enclave where we hope and believe worthwhile and exciting, indeed noble, experiences are available to our young people before they encounter the full buffeting of adult life. Those dorms and classrooms were not supposed to be killing fields. To those families who lost on Monday a loved one and to those who have lost a friend or colleague -- there are no words that fully suffice. These were God’s children -- athletes, scholars, sorority sisters, band members and teachers -- loved and loving human being all of them. All we can say as a people of faith is that there is a fundamental truth that death is not to be feared but is a mystery -- to be sure -- but one wrapped in a promise. That promise is embodied in the words of Jesus found in the gospel of John,
That is the promise to us all and especially to those grieving families – there is a place prepared for those who have died though we do not know its contours. Death -- as Christ revealed on Easter -- is not the end but the beginning of a new stage in a new dwelling surrounded by love and peace. We do not have the details -- the contours of that dwelling place -- but we have the divine promise of its existence. To paraphrase the 4th century saint, John Chrysostom,
And so it is for those lost in Blacksburg. We would not be human, however, if this Sunday we did not ask what are we to make of this tragedy coming right after Easter – after we celebrate the victory of love over hate and life over death through Jesus Christ? Easter represents the most profound gift from a God whose love for us is abiding and eternal -- so our faith says. How do we understand the events of this week? I think what we have before us is a microcosm of the whole Easter event. Easter is not the denial of the existence of evil or of unjustified suffering. Indeed, Easter arises only out of and because of the human capacity to sin. In the most fundamental sense it was not the leaders of the Temple and the Roman authorities who killed Jesus. Rather it was the capacity in all of humanity to use our divinely given freedom destructively. Why do we, God’s creation, make bad choices – why do we sin? Like Augustine, I believe that being made in the image of God means that God intended humanity to be in right (loving) relationship with God. In other words part of being human is seeking a loving connection with God. Our broken relationship with God (and with the remainder of creation) arises from the awareness that we are both free and finite. We have such amazing freedom and yet we will die no matter what we do. The awareness of this reality causes anxiety. As Reinhold Niebuhr, the great 20th Century theologian observed, “Anxiety is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of freedom and finiteness in which man is involved. Anxiety is the internal precondition of sin.”[2] Anxiety is not, however, sin though it can lead to it. Sin arises in our efforts to respond to this anxiety in ways that disturb our relationship with God and others -- for example by the idolatry of substituting ourselves for God. Sin can manifest itself in prideful acts, playing God, seeking to dominate others in corporate and political and other settings, and through imperialism, oppression and injustice -- and, of course, in senseless violence. Yet as we know Holy Week did not end on Good Friday. Hate and death – sin and evil – did not triumph -- for the darkness of Good Friday was followed by the light of Easter morning. Jesus – life, death and resurrection -- is God’s gift to creation in response to sin and evil. God does not seek to constrain human freedom, but instead to offer through Easter to humanity a fresh look at the divine image – in the person of Jesus, Son of God, who triumphs through love not power --in order that as we exercise that freedom we shall be in right relationship with God Indeed, Easter can be understood as God’s view of the best, if not the only, avenue to influence the choices made with human freedom. Our two scripture texts are reminders of our capacity to sin -- to use our freedom destructively -- but even more confirm that God has more mercy and love than we have capacity to sin. Paul and Peter -- the two rocks upon which the Christian Church was built -- were each great sinners. Paul was by his own admission the enforcer for the leaders of the Jewish community. They felt threatened by their fellow Jews, who were following Jesus and rejecting rigid observance of the ritual laws. At the leaders’ direction Paul zealously and effectively spent his early life hunting down and persecuting those who followed the so-called “way” of Jesus. As our passage from Acts reports even Ananias -- though instructed by Jesus to go to Paul -- balks briefly because of his fear of this zealot. “Lord, I have heard from many of this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem …” (Acts 9: 13) And then there is Peter. Certainly a sinner too, but one more like us, at least I will confess like me. My sins don’t generally manifest themselves in direct acts of evil. No, like Peter I fade into the night when things get sticky or difficult. Like Peter, I don’t raise my voice and act when I confront oppression, injustice and other forms of evil. It has been said that one of President Kennedy’s favorite quotes came from Dante’s Inferno, where it was observed “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in the time of moral crisis remain neutral.” That was Peter on the night of Jesus’ betrayal. What happens to these world-class sinners? Despite their grievous sins --persecuting and denying Jesus -- the resurrected Christ forgave them. In the afterglow of Easter, Peter is given the opportunity to affirm three times his love of Jesus – just as he had denied him three times on the night of his betrayal. Paul is blinded on the road to Damascus but given his sight back to serve as a voice, proclaiming Christ to the Gentiles. Jesus does not demand of them a pound of flesh – no, they are forgiven without regard to merit. That is the gift that we too receive. God’s love manifests itself in our being forgiven no matter what we have done. And that forgiveness bears no expiration date. We do not earn and often don’t merit it but forgiveness is there. All we have to do is accept it by loving God. That is the great gift of Easter. Thus, in God's eyes each day is a new day for us. Our sins are forgiven. But that is just the start of this new day. Having been forgiven -- we like Paul and Peter in our two texts are called to use our freedom to make better choices -- to turn away from sin to live as God would have us live. How do we do better? Where do we look? Our texts suggest that figuring out how we are called to use our freedom turns on knowing God and knowing self. As we have discussed the last few Sundays to know God is not to seek to prove the existence of God in some analytical way. It can’t be done. The great minds over the centuries have sought to prove God and have been unsuccessful. It is not to say that in knowing God we dispense with our reason and analytical powers we don’t. We simply must recognize their limits. In the end knowing God is about belief. To paraphrase the gospel of John --blessed are those who have seen and believe, but blessed too are those who have not seen but have come to believe. Barbara Brown Taylor, the Episcopal priest and writer, described belief as
To believe is to trust that God unqualifiedly loves us and to be able to respond like Peter “yes, Lord you know that I love you.” As Taylor's metaphor --of stepping out on to a rope bridge -- rightly suggests, belief is not passive. The challenge for us is to take that step on to the rope bridge. Jesus does not acknowledge Peter’s affirmations of love for him with a verbal pat on the back. No, Jesus says to Peter, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep” -- love creation and me. Belief is only true belief when manifested in action – in loving service to others. And those others are not limited to those like us or to those we like. No, we are to tend and feed Jesus’ lambs and sheep – that is all people. We are to feed and tend both our neighbors and our enemies. Belief in the resurrected Christ mandates that we serve others when they are loveable and likeable and when they are not. Our freedom is to be exercised in such service -- that is what our faith demands. That is God’s example to us at Easter. But we are, of course, not all the same. We have different talents and skills. Few, if any, of us could go to Calcutta and serve the lepers and others as Mother Teresa did. To use our freedom in service to belief – involves knowing self. Sounds like it would be an easy task. Who do we know best but ourselves? But, of course, often there is nothing more difficult than figuring out who we are. So often we become caught up in undertaking the “shoulds” of life -- fulfilling those expectations that are thrust upon us by our culture, our family or our circumstances. We never fully learn who we are and what our talents and interests are. Recently a young man lamented to me that he was working more than 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, and was questioning his life. He noted that he often ate dinner -- soup or cereal -- on his way to bed. He poignantly observed that his parents -- ordinary hard working folk -- don’t make enough to do the things they want. He on the other hand makes more than he needs and yet has no time to do anything. How many lawyers, investment bankers, businessmen and women should be making beautiful furniture or working outside, not in an office 70 hours or more a week. And the challenge of understanding self becomes no easier as life moves on and responsibilities mount. But we do know, I submit, when we are truly being ourselves and acting out of our beliefs -- using our freedom as God hopes we will. Those are the moments of true joy in our lives. Not moments of pleasure but of joy -- when we are suffused with a sense of inner completeness and of communion with the divine. In February of 1943 in the predawn darkness the US troop ship the Dorchester sailing in the Pacific was torpedoed and sinking. The ship did not carry enough life jackets for the troops being taken to the war front. On board were four chaplains from four different faiths. As the passengers gathered on the deck to jump into the frigid waters the four chaplains took off their life jackets and gave them to those without them. The chaplains then moved to the bow of the boat linked arms and went down with the ship. The reports from the survivors repeatedly describe the four standing on the bow -- as the waters covered it -- as calm, serene and joyous. In that magnificent act they were living out their faith. Of course, moments of joy come in less heroic settings. Some years ago I stood by a stage in school auditorium. On the stage students were receiving awards for achievement. In the shadows stood a teacher who despite enormous wealth continued to teach the challenged – those for whom learning was difficult. As each child walked across that stage his face in the shadows beamed with joy. Many you too find moments of joy this day and everyday. Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep -- so the living Christ reminds us. Amen [1] Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon, eds., Life Prayers (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996) p. 341 [2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1(Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1964) p. 182 [3] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1993) pp. 93-94 |
|
