Heidegger's Hammer & a Grieving Woman

The church roof was leaking so on Sunday morning the priest made an announcement asking for help to fix it. A dedicated member known for foul language approached the minister after the service and said, “I’m not much of a carpenter, but I’ll give you a hand.” The next Saturday the two went up on the roof with a stack of shingles and got to work. Just a few minutes into the project the parishioner hit his thumb with his hammer and, in a moment of pain, shouted out, “Damn it! I missed!” The priest looked at him and said, “You know one of these days God will strike you down for cursing.” The parishioner apologized and went back to work. A few minutes later, he hit his thumb again, “Damn it! I missed!” The priest looked at him and said, “One of these days God is going to strike you down for cursing.” Again the parishioner apologized and started hammering. Sure enough, a couple of swings later he hit his thumb again and yelled out “Damn it! I missed”! But before the priest could say anything, a bolt of lightning came out of the sky and struck the reverend square between the eyes. The confused parishioner looked up to the heavens from whence he heard a deep, booming voice exclaim, “Damn it! I missed!”


Martin Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the last century, would have enjoyed that joke because in his 1962 book Being and Time he used a hammer to illustrate one of his most important concepts. Heidegger believed that we don’t exist independently from this world, but rather are a part of it. As such, he wrote that there is no way for us to step back and observe what is happening in a detached manner because we are a part of what is happening. And what is happening all around us, he said, is happening so fast that we don’t really have time to think about it. Most of what we do is reaction based on instinct.

Think about your drive to church this morning. How many conscious decisions did you make? Were you aware of turning the wheel slightly in order to negotiate a curve in the road? Do you recall touching the brakes or pushing down on the accelerator? You drove here by instinct and reacted subconsciously to most of what was going on around you. Think back for a moment to the time when you were learning to drive. Do you remember how every aspect of operating a motor vehicle required intense, thoughtful action? Can you imagine if every moment and every task in life required that kind of awareness? You’d be a basket case in a matter of hours (as would everyone around you).

Heidegger states that when it comes to negotiating life we simply act. We only analyze an action after we have performed it and most often, according to Heidegger, we do this only if the action did not go as we expected. Here is where the hammer comes in. When we are hammering a nail we don’t focus on the hammer. We simply pick it up, hold it in our hand, and use it. Heidegger famously observed that we only become aware of the hammer when it is broken. That is when we stop to reflect and analyze what went wrong. Only when we have it figured out can we get back to the process on acting and reacting to life.

Heidegger’s broken hammer helps us to understand something important about today’s gospel reading where we meet a grieving woman from the town of Nain. It is about a day’s walk from Capernaum and sits on a hillside over-looking a plain. There is a spring in the heart of town which provides water for olive and fig trees. The word nain means “pleasant” and we can imagine that most of the time it was a pleasant place to live, but not on the day Jesus arrives. The town is mourning as they process toward the cemetery to bury the only son of a grieving widow.

Any time someone close to us dies it is a ‘broken hammer moment’ – a time when our unconscious acting in life and reacting to the blinding pace of everything comes to a screeching halt. We are suddenly aware of everything going on all around us. Even our experience of time itself changes. Life seems out of control in a way it didn’t the day before. It is an experience of reality that is overwhelming and often forces a grieving person to shut down in some form or fashion. We talk about life getting back to normal, but what we are really saying is that we have found a way to get back to auto-pilot; to be able to hold the hammer in our hand and use it without having to think through every detail of hammering; a time when we regain confidence in acting without thinking.

The grieving woman from the pleasant town is a long way away from that. She has been down this road before. She has buried her father. She has buried her mother. She has buried her husband. She has figured out how to pick up the hammer each time, but this time may be different. She is burying her only son. In the patriarchic society of her day, she no longer has a status. When she was born it fell to her father to protect her. That responsibility shifted to her husband when she married. When he died she became the responsibility of her son. Her identity, her status, her legal standing, her property, everything about her was tied up in him. Losing a child is never easy, but for this woman in this society it is even more devastating than we might imagine. She is now no one, alone and hopeless.

The way Luke recounts this story is somewhat puzzling. Bringing a person back to life is a big deal, don’t you think, and yet Luke presents the episode in a nonchalant manner. There is a sort of ‘ho-hum’ tone to the whole event, especially when we contrast it to how John tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Luke doesn’t record any specific teachings Jesus wrapped around this miracle; no “I am the resurrection and the life.” Pretty much what he tells us is that Jesus had compassion for the women, told her not to weep, and then directed the young man to rise. The people of Nain instantly associate Jesus with the great prophets Elijah and Elisha who each brought a person back to life. From Luke’s prospective, the event serves to elevate Jesus in the eyes of the people, but little more.

But you can be sure it meant a lot more to the woman. Her grief gives way to surprise and joy. Her identity and place and role in life are restored. Once again she can pick up the hammer – whatever that looks like for her – and do the work God has given her to do.

From my reading, the most interesting detail in Luke’s narrative is found in these six words, “Jesus gave him to his mother.” Think about what Jesus could have done. He could have invited the young man to follow him in discipleship. The young man would have come in pretty handy as Jesus and his band moved from town to town. His testimony would have been gripping, to be sure. Think of the converts he could have won. But Jesus knows that the young man is needed at home. He knows that the young man’s mother needs him both as a provider, but also to perform the function that society designated for the eldest male in the family.

Jesus demonstrates a sensitivity to and respect for the place each of us has in family life. His action communicates that our daily acting has a sacred sense to it. You do not need to renounce everything and enter a monastery to be holy. You simply need to be faithful in the place where you are. You do not need to be ordained in order to carry out a special purpose for God. How you function in your family and contribute to your community is as spiritual as anything I do while wearing the clergy collar.

If we were to blend Heidegger’s thinking with Christian spirituality we would say that the goal of life is to pick up the hammer and be conscious about how we use it to the glory of God. We would develop an awareness of how all of life is lived in the presence of God. We would be attune to how our every task has a purpose in God. Nice words, I know, but not so easy to do. For most of us most of our time is spent on spiritual autopilot. Being aware of who we are in God’s eyes and how our work is done in God’s sight is not an easy discipline to master, but it is a rewarding one. It helps us to find the holy, sacred dignity to the day, the very dignity Jesus affirmed when he gave the young man back to his mother.

Faith Over a Distance

Today we learn about a person we do not meet – a Roman centurion stationed in the town of Capernaum. As his title implies, he commands a “century” of one hundred foot soldiers. There were ten centurions in a cohort, sixty in a legion. These leaders were working officers and the backbone of the Roman army. One historian from the time recorded that “centurions are required not to be bold and adventurous so much as good leaders, of steady and prudent mind, not prone to take the offensive or start fighting wantonly, but able when overwhelmed and hard-pressed to stand fast and die at their post.” Centurions were well-paid career men responsible for the discipline and drilling of the soldiers under their command.


In today’s reading, we never meet personally the Capernaum centurion nor does he have any direct lines in the narrative. We learn of him through others. We hear his words through others. Yet even in this round about way we get to know him. We learn that he owns a slave, something not uncommon in the culture and time. We learn that he “highly values” his slave - the words chosen by Luke to constitute this phrase suggest a deep, personal affection; something well beyond being a prized asset or good worker. And we learn that the slave is ill and close to death.

The centurion would have been well informed about the comings and goings of the town where he was stationed. He has heard about Jesus – about his healing powers – and knows that Jesus is in town. He wants Jesus to tend to his slave. He could have gone to meet Jesus himself, but didn’t. He could have sent some of his soldiers to ‘invite’ Jesus to come to his house, but didn’t. He sends local Jewish religious leaders to make an appeal on his behalf and they could not have made a more compelling case: “He is worthy to have you do this thing. He loves our people [and you can be sure that not many Jews would say that about most centurions] and it is he who built our synagogue for us.”

Jesus is convinced and makes his way toward the centurion’s home. Before he gets there he encounters another group sent by the Roman official with a message: “I am not worthy to have you come to my house. Only say the word and my servant will be healed. I know what it is like to give an order to a subordinate with the confidence it will be carried out. I recognize that you have the same authority in this matter.” Jesus, amazed by the centurion’s faith, effects a healing without ever meeting him or his slave.

While there is much to ponder in this story, today I am especially curious about the dynamic of distance. I am impressed that Jesus understood the good he could do without ever being present to see it in person. And I am struck that the centurion understood he (and his slave) stood to benefit greatly by being in relationship with a person he never meets directly.

This is not the normal operating dynamic of our day, is it. We want to be hands-on, face-to-face. We feel connected to a person or to an office or to an institution by having direct, first person encounters. Modern technology and communication has enabled us to be in relationship with people all around the globe and to sense that we are an intimately involved with people we have never met. We now know people from Newtown, CT, Boston, MA, and Moore, OK and have been inspired by stories of their courage, selflessness, and loss. If you watch on a regular basis, say, the Today Show, you probably have a better sense of what is happening in Matt Lauer’s life than you do in the lives of your own adult children.

The dynamic of distance has important implications for how we live out our Christian faith and life. For example, we will feel a greater sense of reward if a team from the parish works on a Habitat project than if we take up a collection and send a $150 to support that work. Because modern communication has helped us “to be there”, we are more likely to contribute to tornado relief than we are to give to a general appeal aimed at general needs we know little about.

In our day, distance creates a sense of alienation and distrust. And yet, as the story of the centurion reminds us, sometimes it is important to have faith even though there is distance; where there is no face-to-face encounter or pre-existing relationship.

I was reminded of this last week as I attended a conference for diocesan coordinators of the Episcopal Relief & Development fund. This fund has been in existence for 74 years and during that time it has enable Episcopalians to respond to domestic relief efforts and to participate in international development projects. It began in 1940 as a way to assist refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany. Today its program functions revolve around...

 alleviating hunger and improving the food supply,

 promoting health and fighting disease,

 creating economic opportunities and strengthening communities,

 and responding to disaster and rebuilding communities.

$.91 cents out of every dollar you contribute goes to program based in one of these priorities. Helping donors feel connected to the good they do is difficult, but important work. When we watched the clean water/well video the distance between our Lenten fundraising and the good it would do got a little smaller. Still, it takes faith to believe that a check is going to make a difference.

While we were focused on clean water, many Episcopal congregations got excited about the Nets for Life initiative. A $10 donation purchases a mosquito net that is hung over a sleeping area and prevents the spread of malaria. The goal was to distribute 3 million nets, but enough money was raised for 5.3 million. They have been given out in over 40 countries. Tens of thousands of people have been trained how to instruct recipients to use the nets and to fight off common diseases. Episcopal Relief & Development estimates that this program has saved the lives of 109,000 children under five years old. Increased childhood health means that parents have more time to spend working, thus creating a better standard of living for their family. Episcopal Relief & Development plans to continue to work with net recipients to address other needs, such as clean water.

All of this is healing at a distance and it requires faith, doesn’t it. For us as givers, we must have faith that our donation will be used efficiently and effectively, that it will enhance the living conditions of another human being, and that it will be pleasing to God. The recipients must have faith that the gift will make their lives better. You can go to the Episcopal Relief & Development website to watch videos and read stories about some of the people touched by the program, but other than that we must have faith as Jesus did; that our act will be sufficient.

And most often, giving money and giving it at a distance is the best and most effective way to help. At the conference we heard the story of a saintly Episcopalian who was so moved by stories of a particular disaster and how many people had lost everything that she worked tirelessly to collect teddy bears in her community. She was so dogged and effective that after six months she filled an entire tractor trailer. She then had a shipping company haul the load to an Episcopal Church in the affected area. Well, it was a small church with a worship space, tiny hall, and two little classrooms. They had nowhere to put a truckload of stuffed animals and, in fact, had no need for a truckload of stuffed animals. The geographical distance had been overcome, but it made little actual difference.

Most often we are at our Christian best when we are present with another person. But there are times when we must have faith that our efforts overcome distance. We exercise this every Sunday when we engage the Prayers of the People. As individuals we probably know personally only a few people being prayed for. Most likely this week many of us will have direct contact with only one or two people on the list. There is a distance between us and the people we are praying for. And yet, does anyone here doubt that our prayers at a distance are not important? Does anyone doubt that our prayers at a distance do not make a difference; a difference in the lives of the people we pray for as well as a difference in us who offer the prayers?

Today’s gospel reading tells a unique story in Jesus’ ministry. This is the only time he heals at a distance a person he has not met. All of his other healings are done face-to-face. They are hands on events. Thus it is with our Christian faith and life. Most of what we do and most of what sustains us is an experience in the first person. It happens here at St. Paul’s or in our families or with our friends. Still, there are aspects of the faith that are carried out over a distance. Today we recognize that these acts are effective and celebrate God’s goodness and faithfulness in blessing our efforts to make a difference.

The Holy Spirit at St. Paul's Church

Friday nights in the fall where I grew up meant one thing: high school football. And at my school, which had a long tradition of not being very good in football, it meant cheering for our award-winning marching band. It was very good musically, but outstanding in marching. Members stepped in unison as they changed from one formation to another and then another through a series of intricate (and sometimes magical) movements and shifts. Fall Saturdays were given to watching Big 10 football on TV and back in the day halftime meant watching the marching bands of both schools compete to out-do one another. In Columbus, then as now, nothing gets the crowd going quite like when the Buckeye Band spells out “Script Ohio.”


Imagine my shock watching a marching band years ago when its members did something completely unexpected. When the performance was over, the drum major gave a signal and rather than marching off the field in dignified, uniform, organized formation, each member was set free to clear out in whatever direction and manner he or she chose. Some dashed for the nearest sideline. A few went in circles. Some jumped. Others hopped. I saw a few do cartwheels. And at least one person tumbled across the field in a zigzag fashion. I had never seen anything quite like it before, nor have I since, but do you know what… I loved it! Yes, there is much to be said for order and precision and planned intricacy, but there is also something to be said for moments of unbridled emotion released from our inner core and spilling out through every pore of our body and fiber of our being.

If there is a day in the liturgical calendar for such a thing as this, surely it is today – the Day of Pentecost. No verse of scripture has had more influence on Anglican worship than I Corinthians 14:1: “Let all things be done decently and in good order.” For fifty-one Sundays a year and Christmas Eve we are all about decency and order. But there was nothing decent about the first Pentecost. The disciples behaved in such an outlandish manner that bystanders thought they were under the influence. And there was nothing orderly about the Holy Spirit moving to and fro like a mighty, rushing wind. This was the liturgical equivalent a marching band running off the field in a free-for-all.

I must tell you that I have been to Episcopal Church services in the charismatic tradition – yes, there is such a thing – and I resisted mightily all the directions to lift up my hands in praise, to shout, and to dance about. Worship, for me, is about moving inward to that deep, quiet place in my soul where God’s Spirit dwells. It is not about moving outward and letting go of all my inhibitions so that I might be “caught up in the Spirit.”

But every now and then something happens to move me spiritually and encourages me to come out of my shell. Such a moment took place right here at St. Paul’s in January when, during a memorial service, we blew up balloons that had inside a piece of paper with our name of in it and batted them around as a way to pass the peace. It was joyous. It was colorful. It had a child-like quality to it. And it released something in each of us that led to a twenty minute peace passing that was filled with hugs and laughter and a sense of the Spirit that I long to experience again.

In his book on beauty John O’Donohue writes this:

“Reverence is not a stiff pious posture which remains frozen and lacks humor and play. To live with a sense of reverence is not to become a prisoner of dull piety. Playfulness, humor and even a sense of the anarchic are companions of reverence because they insist on the proper proportion of the human presence in the light of the eternal.”

I like St. Paul’s tradition of having a cookout after church on Pentecost Sunday. Casual clothes and gathering outside in good weather have a way bringing out our playfulness and humor, accompanied by a dash or two of anarchy. And while we can’t schedule the movement of the Holy Spirit, we can do programming in a way that opens us up to the possibility.

I have been reading Mary Oliver’s new book of poems. One, titled “If I Were”, beautifully captures the connection between movement and spirit:

There are a lot of ways to dance and
to spin, sometimes it just starts my
feet first then my entire body, I am
spinning no one can see it but it is
happening. I am so glad to be alive,
I am so glad to be loving and loved.
Even if I were close to the finish,
even if I were at my final breath, I
would be here to take a stand, bereft
of such astonishments, but for them.

If I were a Sufi for sure I would be
one of the spinning kind.

What makes you spin for joy? How do you experience a sense of profound gladness for the blessings of life? When does the Spirit move in you and flow from you in a way that is anything but decent and orderly? When does a deep sense of reverence manifest itself in you through playfulness?

I think these things happened more naturally and more frequently in my life when I was young; when on a winter day I could not help but drop to the ground and make a snow angel or on a summer afternoon could do none other than climb a tree for the sheer joy of it. Maybe that is why Jesus said the Kingdom of God belongs to children. His gift of the Holy Spirit moves so much more freely through them than through us adults.

The Book of Acts tells the story of the early church. It began on this day – the Day of Pentecost. Our beginning was not decent and it was not orderly. It was a rushing wind and a wild celebration. That feeling and expression did not last forever. The same Spirit of Pentecost Day also imparted a sense of peace and calm. It gave to the church and its members the strength to live life from one day to the next, from one week to the next, from one generation to the next. But as the story of Acts unfolds, from time to time the calming, gentle Spirit of peace and quiet hope moves like a playful wind unleashing something joyous in the people in touches. It is not every day and it does not happen every time the church gathers. But it does happen… from time to time.

I love our worship life at St. Paul’s. I enjoy our decent and in good order. But every once in a while the Spirit moves us in an exhilerating way - the Old James River Jazz Band or Liberian clergy singing and dancing or celebrating the Eucharist in the midst of a brunch or batting baloons around the sancturary. Today I want to name for us these moments as Spirit-filled and Spirit-born. They are tanglible signs of our link to the first Pentecost. The Spirit is alive and present in our midst and we are glad indeed.

Annoyed by Paul's Annoyance with a Slave Girl

I don’t believe the framers of the Lectionary – the assigned scripture readings for each Sunday – took into account that today would be Mother’s Day when they choose these lessons. The reading from the Book of Acts could not be more ‘unMother’s day’ if it tried, and yet it speaks to an important global problem that surely is every mother’s concern.


Paul, Silas, and his travelling companions arrive in the city of Philippi and make their way to a “place of prayer.” On the way they meet “a slave girl who has a spirit divination” and the text tells us that her ability “brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling.” The girl follows Paul and cries out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” Every time the girl saw Paul and his companions she launched into “crying out.” After several days of this, Paul became “annoyed” and ordered the spirit to leave the girl, which it did immediately. You heard how the story unfolds from there: the slave owners are angered that their revenue stream is gone, they make legal charges against Paul and the others, the group is put in prison, the earthquake, the jailer, the baptism.

The text casts the slave girl as a minor character, but she puts a human face on what is an age-old, world-wide problem. Today she would be classified as a victim of human trafficking. It is a term which conjures up images of something that happens in foreign countries, but in fact is a tremendous problem here in America and often occurs closer to home than we might imagine. Maggie Tinsman, an Iowan Episcopalian with a deep concern for this issue, writes “Put simply, human trafficking is slavery. Force, fraud or coercion is used to compel a person to perform labor or commercial sex, and all profits belong to the trafficker.”

A 2007 report estimated that as many as 27 million people worldwide may be victims of human trafficking; most of whom are young woman and girls. Because of the underground nature of this crime it is hard to get an accurate estimate, but it is possible that as many as a million victims are right here in the United States. In our country, the overwhelming majority of runaway girls end up in human trafficking within 48 hours of leaving home.

Tinsman writes “women are forced to work in strip clubs, massage parlors, in street prostitution, and are required to advertise their services on classified websites. They are abused mentally, physically and sexually as a means of keeping them under traffickers’ control.” She goes on to say that victims of labor trafficking “may work in restaurants, as hotel housekeepers, in factories or on farms, and as nannies. These individuals are not paid, and frequently work and live under deplorable conditions. Often, these victims face language barriers, and any escape is impeded by the traffickers who maintain their victims’ documents, isolate them from the outside world and threaten to turn them over to U.S. authorities.”

Recent headlines have highlighted just how prevalent this problem is both at home and abroad. Media outlets resported on May 2 that two girls were rescued from a Saudi Arabian compound in McLean, VA. Then came the shocking news out of Cleveland where three kidnapped girls have been held in a house for ten years. On Friday, the death toll at the Bangladesh clothing factory stood at over 1,000 people – most of them women and all of them working in a horrific enviroment.

Something about the very fabric of today’s text bothers me, something beyond the way this poor girl was used and exploited. I am bothered by the way the text focuses only on the men in the story and how unfolding events affect them. Paul is annoyed. The slave owners lose their income. The crowd in the marketplace – most likely all men – riots against Paul and his companions. The men are beaten and thrown into jail. The male jailer is distraught when he thinks his prisoners have escaped. The jailer and “all his household” are baptized. Whatever women where a part of these events – starting with the slave girl – don’t seem to matter much. Who was this girl? What was her name? What happened to her after she could no longer turn a profit for her owners? Who were the women in the jailer’s household? How did they feel about getting baptized? Feminine biblical scholars point out these kinds of deficiencies in the text, but also note we are asking questions that the text’s author – a product of a male dominated society – was not equipped to discuss. They are issues that simply where not on the writer’s radar screen.

But they are on ours, or should be. We care about this slave girl. We want to know what happened to her. Her life matters. It matters every bit as much as the life of the jailer. He is saved because Paul, Silas, and the others notice him. He is brought into the Christian faith and life. He and his household are given the opportunity to be a foundational part of the first church in Philippi. They will experience the same blessing, comfort, and companionship that we experience by being a member of St. Paul’s. She is never heard from again. No one even seems to think to go looking for her to see if she can be saved and brought into the faith community. Surely she needed to know God’s love every bit as much as any of the jailer’s daughters (assuming he had some). It is tragic really.

But we live in a different time when women, young women, and girls matter and people of faith across our country are finding ways to express God’s love to victims of trafficking. The Rev. Brian McVey, rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Davenport, Iowa, has led that congregation to a unique ministry. Their parish is located just four miles from the world’s largest truck stop. Over 8,000 people pass through it every day and it is an active location for human sex trafficking. Some estimate that trafficking generates as much as $30 million dollars a year there. St. Alban’s, a parish with just 150 members and an annual budget of only $105,000, began what they call “a ministry of presence” at the truck stop. It involves being at the site and identifying themselves as members of a church who care about the people there. While it is hard to measure their impact, to date several young women have approached them for help and countless others have been educated as to the problem.

In 1997, the Rev. Becca Stevens, an Episcopal chaplain at Vanderbilt University, founded Magdalene as a residential community for women who have survived life on the streets, prostitution, trafficking, and drug addiction. They now have six homes that provide women with shelter, work, and support for up to two years. The women who come there range in age from 20-50, many were first abused sexually between the ages of 7-11, began using alcohol or drugs by 13, have been arrested on average a hundred times, and have spent about 12 years on the street prostituting. 72% who join the program are clean and sober within two-and-a-half years of joining. At the center of the community life are twenty-four spiritual principles and Magdalene stands as a powerful witness “to the truth that in the end, love is more powerful than all the forces that drive women to the streets.”

There is much that you and I can do to about human trafficking. The first thing is to educate ourselves. You can find plenty of information on the internet. Do a Google search on “Virginia human trafficking” or “Episcopal Church and human trafficking” and you will be well on your way. Talk with others here at St. Paul’s and with friends who belong to other area churches and find out if who else shares your passion for this problem. You can ‘like’ the facebook page of the Virginia Coalition against Human Trafficking and receive posts about news and events in our commonwealth. You can support ministries that are engaged in rescuing and rehabilitating victims of human trafficking. A good place to start is Thistle Farms, which is Magdalene’s job-training enterprise. It employs 40 women who create natural body and bath products that are available for sale online and at over 200 stores. They have perfect late gifts for Mother’s Day.

I have to tell you that until this week I have not paid much attention to the crime of human trafficking. I can hardly call myself a seasoned crusader. But there was something in today’s reading the kept gnawing at me. I was annoyed by Paul’s annoyance with the slave girl. The more I thought about it, and prayed about it, and mediated on it, the more I wanted to know about her and about how victimization like her’s continues in our own time. I don’t know where this sermon will take me, but I am interested in beginning a conversation with anyone who is interested in exploring the possibilities.

As I said at the beginning, this hardly strikes me as a happy topic for Mother’s Day and yet I can not imagine one any more important. As both a cheap way to marry the subject to the day, but also as a way of putting more of a human face on the reading, the slave girl had a mother. We know even less of her story that we do of her daughter’s. Did she die at an early age, forcing her child to the streets and life of slavery? Did her daughter run away and was her heart broken? Was her daughter taken from her and was she powerless to do anything about it? Was she herself a victim when she was younger? Perhaps she too was enslaved with no way out. Stories like hers, whatever the actual details may have been, are happening every day in our world, in our country, and in our commonwealth. Anything we can do that might free even one person is well worth the effort. Anything we can do that demonstrates God’s love is greater than the forces that exploit human beings is nothing less than an imperative we carry when the Good News of Jesus Christ is in our hearts.

The Man by the Pool

Let’s engage in a little time travel this morning by going back to 1975. It was the year that…


• Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were found guilty of the Watergate cover-up and the Vietnam War ended with the fall of Saigon.

• Space Mountain opened at Disney World and Busch Gardens opened in Williamsburg.

• NBC debuted a game show called The Wheel of Fortune and a weekly entertainment program called Saturday Night Live.

• Jimmy Hoffa disappeared near Detroit and Patty Hearst was on the FBI’s most wanted list.

• Fashion trends included bell bottoms, hip huggers, and mood rings.

• Pet rocks and the Rubik’s Cube were big sellers.

• One Flew over the Coo Coo’s Nest beat out Jaws for best picture.

• Muhammad Ali defeated Joe Frazier at the ‘Thrilla at Manila’ while Carton Fisk hit a dramatic extra-inning home run in Game 6 of the World Series.

• Americans and Russians docked in space and the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank to the bottom of Lake Superior.

• Olivia Newton-John sang Have You Never been Mellow, Bruce Springsteen released Born to Run, and C.W. McCall had a hit single called Convoy.

• Gas cost 44 cents a gallon and the average price of a new car was $4,250. A movie ticket cost a dollar and U.S. debt stood at $551 billion dollars.

• I was in the ninth grade.

1975. It seems like a long time ago… and for good reason. It was 38 years ago.

I mention all of this to give us some perspective on a person we meet in today’s gospel reading. He is a man who has been ill for 38 years. We don’t know the nature of what troubles him, only that it affects his ability to walk. At some point he pinned his hopes for a cure on a local superstition. He spent his days at the side of a Jerusalem pool said to have miraculous healing power. From time to time its water would stir – legend had it that an angel caused this to happen – and the first person to enter the water after the stirring would be healed. You can imagine that quite a few sick people believed that the only way to get better was to get in that water first.

I remember talking about this story as a teenager in Sunday school. One of my friends remarked that if he had lived in Jerusalem at the time he would have hidden behind a pillar, chucked a rock into the pool, and reveled in the mayhem he created as invalids fought it out to get in the water. Cruel as his practical joke would have been, it provides some insight as to the role these pool-side people played in the greater society. They were looked on as being helpless and hopeless, pitied and pathetic.

Donald Capps, in his book Jesus the Village Psychiatrist, contends that this man’s condition was attributable to psychological factors more than medical factors. He notes that when faced with great danger we can deflect the threat by attacking if we think we can prevail against it (the fight response). If we judge the threat to be beyond our resources, our options become escape (flight), self-inhibition (freeze), or collapse (faint). Capps believes that some traumatic episode happened in the man’s life 38 years earlier and initiated a collapse response that manifested itself through impaired mobility up to the day Jesus encountered him.

Think about all that has happened in your life since 1975; all that you have learned, accomplished, and experienced. If you can imagine what it would be like to have had your life put on hold from 1975 until today then you will have some insight into the life of the man by the pool. He deemed that whatever threatened him back in the day – a family problem, a work problem, a relational problem, a legal problem, whatever – to be so overwhelming that he simply collapsed into illness as a way to avoid it.

When Jesus meets him he poses what at first seems like an astounding question: “Do you want to be made well?” The obvious answer is “Of course I do. Who wants to be ill for 38 years?” I might have asked an even more obvious question: “What is the matter with you? Why are you hanging out by this pool and pinning all your hopes on superstitious nonsense?” or even worse, “Why are you faking this problem, you miserable, lazy slacker?” Jesus approaches the man not with condemnation or criticism, but with possibility: “Do you want to be made well?”

Notice how the man’s response reveals his deep, inner sense of helplessness and victimization: “I don’t have anyone to put me in the water and as I make my way to it someone else always gets their first.” In his mind he can’t be made well because he has no one to help him and because there is a limited supply of wellness that other people have better access to thus denying it to him. He believes himself powerless in the face of his situation. But Jesus does not believe this about him. In just seven words Jesus tells the man to do three things: “Stand up”, “Pick up your mat,” and “Walk!” As the man does these three things his 38 year-long collapse comes to an end.

John’s Gospel indicates that the man is made well, but no where does it suggest that this was some kind of a miracle – a suspending of natural laws in order to affect a cure. What it suggests is that faith in God and faith in oneself are a powerful and potent combination necessary to get one’s life going again after a setback. Jesus demonstrates God’s deep desire not the lay blame but to offer new life. His focus was not on what happened to the man nor did he comment on why it had been prolonged for nearly four decades. Rather, he pointed to the possibility of a new start, of literally and figuratively getting back on your feet again. And the man, for his part, exhibited faith in himself: I can stand up, I can carry my load, I can move forward from this point toward a better life.

One of the most significant changes I have witnessed in our society since 1975 is the manner in which patients take an active role in their medical treatment. We no long sit back passively and expect a trained professional to make us better. When faced with a health crisis we now research and educate ourselves about its many facets and dimensions as well as various treatment options and plans. Flight, freeze, and faint are no longer the order of the day. We fight; we attack that which threatens us. This faith in ourselves, combined with faith in God’s desire to bring us to a place of health, are (as I said earlier) a powerful and potent combination.

Time and again I have witnessed people have their life rocked to the core. Sometimes it comes about through the loss of a job, other times as a result of a broken relationship, and still other times through the death of a loved one. There are many different ways to lie beside the pool waiting for the water to stir and hoping that someone else will do for you what you do not believe you can do for yourself. That wait can be interminable. But I have seen countless people find faith in themselves and in God and as a result stand up, carry their load, and get moving forward in life once again.

For that man by the pool, whatever happened to him 38 years earlier he deemed to be more than he could handle. And then one day he realized that with God’s help he had the ability to take it on. For you and for me, there will be times in our life when we will feel overwhelmed; times when flight, freeze, or faint are our only options. But then in time we will come to sense that with God on our side no challenge is too big for us to overcome.

There is no shame by getting knocked down by one of life’s heavy blows. There will be times – many times perhaps – when life will hit us with more than we can handle. Each of us knows what it is like to take the equivilent of what in boxing they call the “8-count.” Being knocked down is one thing, staying down in another. The man by the pool serves to remind us that healing is in our hands and in our faith. Jesus reminds us that God is always with us to restore life, vitality, possibility, and hope. Thank God for the times God has come to each one of us and in some form or fashion said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk.”

A Command... to Love One Another

Here is a true story from a former parishioner in Richmond. This past week was Dwight’s birthday. He is the father of three very rambunctious boys. Just as he was about to blow out the candles on his cake the oldest stopped him. “Dad, what are you going to wish for?” “Hummm,” he said reflectively, “I can’t decide. Either a plush, green lawn free of weeds, or a head full of hair, or an evening where my boys get along and don’t argue or wrestle.” The oldest thought for a moment and then said, “Better go with the green grass.”


If you grew up with a sibling or two, chances are your parents admonished you on more than one occasion to get along. I have two sisters and during our childhood it was always two against one, although the allegiances were never fixed hard and fast. Our bickering and harsh treatment of one another was a terrible source of frustration for our parents and more than once they laid down the law that we had to stop fighting.

Being ordered to be nice is perhaps the least productive way to accomplish a change in behavior and yet that is what Jesus does in today’s gospel reading. Do you recognize the setting? It is Maundy Thursday. Jesus has gathered his followers in the Upper Room. They are eating the Passover meal. Jesus has shared with them the bread and wine of his body and blood. He has washed their feet… all of them; even Peter’s, who protested, and even Judas’, who was about to betray him. Then he tells them this: “I am not going to be with you much longer, so listen up. I am giving you a new commandment… love one another as I have loved you.”

Did you watch the college men’s basketball tournament last month? If so, you know that Louisville won the championship after Kevin Ware, one of their players, suffered a gruesome broken leg during a nationally televised game. The nature of the injury shocked everyone, especially Ware’s teammates who cried openly while he was being treated on the court. They came to his side as he was taken from the arena and Kevin had one thing he wanted to tell them: win the championship. In effect his message was ‘if you care about me, honor me by winning it all.’

When Jesus tells his followers to love one another as he loved them he is letting them know what they have to do if they want to honor him: “The love that you have for me you must now demonstrate in the way you treat one another.” But make no mistake about it, the ‘commandment’ part of what Jesus said is important too. Yes, each disciple wanted to honor Jesus, but he could hardly have picked a more challenging way for them to do it.

You see, the disciples were anything but a homogenous group. There was a former tax-collector (read, capitulator with the occupying Roman government) and a zealot (read, insurgent bent on overthrowing the government). There were folks from Nazareth and there was Nathaniel, an educated elitist who believed people from Nazareth were backwater hicks. One disciple was a doctor, several others were fishermen. Think of it as white collar verses blue collar. There was Peter – older, boisterous, impetuous – and there was John – a quiet, reflective youth. As a group they were given to bickering about who among them was the greatest. The mother of two brothers lobbied for her boys to receive special honor in Jesus’ kingdom. As a group, they were not predisposed to love one another by virtue of similarity, nor where they inclined to love one another because they were told to do so.

And yet they did. Through the power and the grace of God they became a people whose love for one another overflowed into a love for the whole world. In and through their actions the Gospel of Jesus Christ became a message and a force that could not be stopped.

When I look at the church today (and when I look at myself) I recognize how it is easy for us to love as Christ loved those people with whom we are naturally affectioned and find easy to love. And I recognize in the church (and in myself) how difficult it is to love as Christ loved those people who are greatly differnet from us or who have challenging personalities.

One year to the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King gave a speech at Riverside Church in New York City to a group of clergy and laity concerned about the war in Vietnam. For King, the war was a symptom of a deeper malady in the American spirit and he called on each of us to turn away from the “militarism and violence” inside ourselves:

“This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is really a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love of all men. This oft-misunderstood and misinterpreted concept so readily dismissed by… the world as a weak and cowardly force – has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of a sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door that leads to ultimate reality.

Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.”

King went on to quote Arnold Toynbee, who said, “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.”

King’s words, from a different time with a different struggle, still seem to say something challenging in our day. He calls on us not to domesticate Jesus’ new commandment into something as tame as ‘neighborly concern’, although this is an aspect of how we live into the commandment. The love that King lifted up is more risky, more costly, and ultimately more victorious. It transforms the world first by transforming us.

St. Augustine wrote:

“The soul is weighed in the balance by what delights her. Delight or enjoyment sets the soul in her ordered place. Where delight is, there is the treasure."

We can be sure that Jesus’ disciples did not delight in loving one another. At first, it was something they did simply because they were told to do so. But the funny thing is that sometimes the heart has a way of falling in line with the hands and the feet. In other words, act out of love often enough and at some point you will find yourself being filled with love.

John Ohmer, a colleague of mine in the Diocese of Virginia, now serves as rector of a parish that had left the diocese a few years ago. Many chose not to leave, some have come back, and together they are forging a new path for this historic congregation. Here is how John describes who they now are and what they do:

“Speaking at least for The Falls Church Episcopal, we really mean it when we say ‘the Episcopal Church welcomes you’ – we mean absolutely everyone: gay or straight, conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican, young or old, rich or poor, divorced, married, single, black, white, Latino, Asian, full-of-faith or full-of-doubts, lifelong Christian or never having stepped foot in a church in your life. It doesn’t make any difference because we don’t define ourselves by our differences – we define ourselves by what we have in common – and that’s our faith in God, love for one another, and service to the community.”

That parish, like ours I think, is stretching itself far beyond the easy love of neighborly concern.

Had it been Jesus’ birthday at the Last Supper, and had a disciple asked him what he was wishing for before he blew out the candles, Jesus might just have said, “That you all will love one another as I have loved you.” “How about we keep your vineyard weeded and pruned,” the disciple might have said back.

But as it is, Jesus did not make a wish, he gave a command. It is so tempting to make this one easier to follow by removing its teeth. We neuter it and make it palitable, but in the process rob it of its ability to transform the world and to transform us. The victory of Christ over sin and hate is watered down to just being pleasant. And being pleasant didn’t win the world for Christ nor does it strike me as worthy of commanding when it is little more than demonstrating nice manners. No, the love that Jesus shows each one of us demands nothing less than putting our old nature and our old ways and our old self to death so that we might live for him who died for us. If we take the commandment seriously it will be the most difficult thing we do in life, but also the best. In time, through the grace of God, what begins as command will become our delight and in the process it will change the world around us.

The Shepherding Instinct

 

  I informed the Vestry last winter that Al Reese and I entered into a joint business venture. We built an ice skating rink in the middle of a field on the outskirts of downtown Suffolk. It seemed like a good idea at the time, given that there is no where in the Tidewater area for people to skate. The day before we were set to open, Al and I stood in the field surveying our project. Just then we happened to see a shepherd leading his flock through the field. Rather than go around our rink, the shepherd decided to drive his flock across it. The sheep, having never seen ice before, naturally were afraid and refused to move. Desperate, the shepherd used his crook to tug the sheep to the other side. That is when Al turned to me and said, “Would you look at that, the shepherd is trying to pull the wool over our ice.” I dissolved our business partnership immediately and the matter is now in the courts.

As I said at the beginning of the service, the Fourth Sunday after Easter is known as ‘Good Shepherd’ Sunday. The Collect for the Day and the assigned readings point to one of the most enduring images in the bible. I imagine that most of us here have never seen a shepherd at work, let alone done the work of a shepherd first hand, and yet we still understand much of the meaning conveyed by the metaphor.

I enjoy watching “Through the Wormhole”, a cable TV show narrated by Morgan Freeman that attempts to stay current with all the latest theories regarding reality. In short, we live in a universe that is much, more complex than we ever imagined. Some theorists hypothesize the existence of multiple universes separated by thin membranes. While I am not advocating for this idea, I will tell you that as I watch these shows I find my faith both affirmed and challenged.

The more we come to understand the complexities of reality the more I am convinced that an intelligence beyond our imagining is behind it all; bringing it into being and sustaining it. That is what affirms my faith. The challenge is this: the more complex we know reality to be the more difficult I find it to believe that this powerful, intelligent Creator is intimately connected to you or to me. Given that reality is so big and so vast and so complex, how can a Creator be concerned with and related to each and every specific aspect of it?

For people of faith, our answer to that question is not laid out in a concrete theory or mathematical formula. Rather, it points to this day and lifts up another reality: that from the beginning of the faith people of faith have experienced God’s intimate presence in their lives. One of the ways they have described this sensation is captured in the simple phrase, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”

No person of faith has ever proclaimed, “The Lord is the C.E.O.”: a remote person in a far off city isolated in a lavish office at the top of a high, inaccessible tower whose influence and control filters down through many, many layers and intermediaries. Our experience of God is personal. It is intimate. And any theory of reality needs to account for it.

We sense in God what today I want to call ‘the shepherding instinct.’ We are most keenly aware of God’s presence when we are fearful, hurting, or in danger. It is during these moments in the dark valley that we are most aware we are not alone. We sense that God does not abandon us in our moment of need, but is with us to see us through.

We human beings who are created in God’s image have this shepherding instinct woven into our very nature. This week we saw it so clearly when, within seconds after deadly explosions killed and maimed people at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, folks nearby rushed toward danger to help the injured. We saw it also in the small town of West, Texas where firefighters and first responders risked life and lost life to protect others. When God created humanity in God’s own image, God looked on it and proclaimed it “very good.” As we witnessed countless selfless, heroic acts this past week we can understand why. God sees in us God’s own shepherding instinct.

I see it in less dramatic manifestations in our own faith community time and time again; like yesterday at a ceremony to award Hack Gallotta the rank of Eagle Scout. As one person said, ‘It is not an honor your earn, but one you grow into.” While Hack deserves all the credit in the world, I couldn’t help but think he did not grow into being an Eagle Scout on his own. Dozens of men, women, and peers supported and encouraged him along the way. It is one way the shepherding instinct manifests itself in, around, and through us.

Last Saturday evening I saw the instinct as it came out in a slightly different manner. Senior Warden Grier Ferguson appeared at my front door minutes before six in the evening. He had tried to call, but unbeknownst to me my phone was on silence… ah, the blessing of being on vacation. It seems the Wallers had taken some food to Dr. Thomas’ home as a part of our Loaves and Fishes Ministry and learned that he wanted to receive communion. When the Wallers couldn’t get a hold of me they called Grier. I drove up to Chuckatuck and spent some time with Doc and his family. As we passed through the kitchen, Katherine, his daughter, pointed out the food that Roy and Shirley had brought and expressed how grateful the family was for it. I looked at it only briefly but continue to see it in my mind’s eye because it is a sacramental expression of the shepherding instinct – an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace in each one of us.

This day we celebrate and give thanks for God’s shepherding instinct; for how God leads us through life, cares for us, protects us, heals us, and one day brings us home. We give thanks for every time another person has incarnated God’s shepherding instinct through their own life. And this day we lift up ourselves and pray that the shepherding instinct might grow in us so that we can manifest God’s life and love through our very lives.