…the Name of Love among Those Who Love Poorly

Gordon Wilson worked as a draper in a town in Northern Ireland called Enniskillen.  On Remembrance Day, November 8, 1987, Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter Marie went to the center of their village to watch a parade that was to include the British Legion and local police.  They took a position next to a tall brick wall.  Gordon asked his daughter, “Will you be able to see from here?”  “Yes,” she replied.

Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion.  The Irish Republican Army had placed a forty pound bomb on the other side of the wall where Gordon and Marie were standing.  They were thrown forward and to the ground by the force of the blast.  The wall collapsed and fell on them.  Gordon found himself buried in four to six feet of rubble.  He was injured, but alive.  Five or six people around him were already dead.  Marie, also buried in debris, reached out for her father’s hand.  “Daddy, is that you?” she asked.  “Yes Marie, it’s me,” he responded, thinking to himself, “Thank God she is alright.”

All of this took place in a matter of seconds.  It was followed by a short period of complete silence that quickly gave way to screaming coming from every direction; screaming that was raw, naked, and terrifying.  Again Gordon asked his daughter, “Are you alright?”  “Yes,” she said, but then she too screamed.  Gordon was confused.  Why was his daughter screaming if she was not hurt?  Again and again he asked her if she was okay and each time she responded that she was fine.  The last time he asked her, Marie said, “Daddy, I love you very much.”  Those were her last words before slipping into a coma.  Marie had suffered catastrophic injuries and she died four hours later in a hospital.

How do you think Gordon Wilson would hear the gospel reading we heard just moments ago?  Peter asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?  As many as seven times?”  “Not seven times,” Jesus responded, “but seventy-seven times!”

Undoubtedly one of the other disciples had wronged the great Apostle and he had forgiven that person.  The Pharisees taught that we are required to forgive the offenses of another just three times and now Peter wanted some praise for his manifold and great mercies.  Jesus’ response told Peter that he was just beginning to scratch the surface of what forgiveness looks like and what it costs.

Most of us have not lost a loved one to an act of terror and therefore might not be able to comprehend fully the agony and anger to which it gives birth, but I suspect most of us would not condemn Gordon Wilson if he said, “Forgive them?”  Forget it!”  Still, you don’t have to lose your daughter to a senseless act of brutality to know how difficult forgiveness can be to muster.

It is my experience that the stranger far away and the enemy close at hand are not the ones whose blows we find most difficult to forgive because they are outsiders.  We do not give them access to our innermost being where pain cuts cruelest.  It is the people we love the most and who love us the most who are the ones who can hurt us the most.  Those who are closest to us are the ones who can cause the deepest pain.

Our greatest hurts come from those who love us, but cannot love us in the way our heart desires.  It is our father, our mother, our brother, our sister, our spouse, our children, our closest friend, our neighbor, our priest who can hurt us most and be most hurt by us.  In these primary relationships our greatest joy and our greatest pain touch each other.  Henri Nouwen, the Roman Catholic Priest and author, wrote,

“The great tragedy of human love is that it always wounds.  Why is this so?  Simply because human love is imperfect, always tainted by needs and unfulfilled desires.”

Nouwen went on to say,

“Forgiveness is the name of love among people who love poorly.”

If it is true that we love poorly, it is equally true that we forgive poorly by substituting all manner of pretenders for the real thing.  Have you ever forgiven someone saying to yourself, “Oh well, it is no big deal,” when in reality it was?  Forgiving does mean denying your hurt and suppressing your pain.  In some situations, we rationalize “I’ll just have to grin and bear it,” but forgiveness bears no resemblance to martyrdom.  Sometimes we are willing to extend forgiveness with conditions attached (i.e., “I forgive you as long as…”), but forgiveness does not mean putting a person on probation.  To forgive is not to excuse bad behavior, saying for example “boys will be boys”).  And to forgive, with the exception of small indignities, is not necessarily to forget, like when we say, “I’ll just have to pretend this little episode never happened.”

If forgiveness is not these things, what than is it?  Here are five things to ponder:

First, forgiveness involves a conscious choice to release the person who has wounded us from the sentence of our judgment, however justified that judgment might be.  It represents our decision to forgo resentment and retribution.

Second, forgiveness also means giving up our expectation of emotional restitution.  We want so badly for the person who offended us to acknowledge the wrong, to do something to mend our hurt, and to repay us for the loss of dignity and trust we have experienced.  But in most instances, the person who wronged us does not comprehend the destructive magnitude of their behavior and, in many instances, never intended to cause us harm.

Here is a third truth about forgiveness.  The Latin word for mercy, eleison, literally means “to unbind.”  When we refuse to forgive, we hold others firmly enmeshed in the bondage of our judgment.  When we forgive, we loose others from their connection to our anger and vengefulness.  This act also frees us from the corrosive burden of anger and bitterness that eats away at the peace in our souls.  Thus, forgiveness is a gift that allows us to untie the knots that connect us to the offender while it unbinds the burden we carry inside.

Next, forgiveness must have as its goal reconciliation.  When we offer forgiveness, it is a one-way action undertaken without conditions.  Reconciliation is a two-way street where forgiveness is offered and received in such a way that restoration of a relationship is possible.

Finally, forgiveness constitutes a decision to call upon divine love in order to heal and rebuild a fractured relationship.  As we are drawn to God’s love we are compelled to imitate and express what we find.  Forgiveness is an important manifestation of the love we find in God.

All of this suggests that forgiveness is a choice to release another from internal judgment, to forego restitution, to loose emotional binds, to seek reconciliation, and to draw on God’s love.  I know that this is a lot to think about and that it makes something which is deeply emotional and painful sound as simple as following a Betty Crocker recipe.  Still, if today’s gospel tells us one thing, it is that we will not be forgiven any more than we learn to forgive.

Which brings us back to Gordon Wilson.  In an interview with the BBC, he described his last conversation with his daughter:

“She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could.  She said, ‘Daddy, I love you very much.’  Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say.”

Then, to the astonishment of listeners, Wilson went on to add,

“But I bear no ill will.  I bear no grudge.  Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life.  She was a great wee lassie.  She loved her profession.  She was a pet.  She’s dead.  She’s in heaven and we shall meet again.  I will pray for these men tonight and every night.”

The historian Jonathan Bardon wrote of this, “No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact.”

Due in part to the notoriety he received from losing his daughter, Wilson was elected to Ireland’s Senate.  He began to wonder if there was something he could do to end the violence.  He decided to meet with the leaders of the IRA because he felt Maria’s death would be in vain if it did not lead the country closer to peace.  Sitting around a table with some of the very people who executed the bombing that took Maria’s life, Wilson said this:

“I know that you have lost loved ones, just like me.  Therefore, on the grounds of our common humanity and for the love of God, is there not a better way to achieve our goals?  Surely enough is enough.  Enough blood has been spilled.”

Before his death in 1996, Wilson helped to found The Spirit of Enniskillen, a trust whose mission is to bring together Ireland’s youth in settings where they can cross boundaries in order to learn from and appreciate one another.

I suggest to you that Gordon Wilson suffered an incomparable loss.  I also suggest that, through the mercies of God, he was set loose from his deep loss.  Always remember this: forgiveness is the name of love among those who lover poorly.

Why God Cannot be Found in a Mirror

Father Joseph Grizone retired from active parish ministry in 1981 due to health concerns.  He then embarked on a second career as an author and has written numerous books, but none are better known than his nine works in what is called the ‘Joshua series.’  Joshua is a fictional character whose simple lifestyle, wisdom about life, and views of religion endear him to many folks in the small town into which he moves.  He is, in reality, Jesus visiting our present day and age. 

Like the Jesus of old, Joshua is a woodworker whose magnificent carvings are the talk of the community.  They capture the attention of two members of the clergy and each visits Joshua to commission a sculpture for the church he serves.

The first minister is one Father Jeremy K. Darby, an obese, pompous Episcopal priest, whose gothic style parish sits prominently at the north end of the town square.  Its members are among the wealthiest people in the community.  Father Darby wears expensive suits and a Roman collar.  He is chauffeured around town in a slickly polished, finely tuned foreign sedan (by the way, did I mention that the book is fiction?).  He comes to Joshua’s unassuming shop and says, “I would like a figure of the great Apostle Peter, a man for whom I have always felt a certain affinity and the greatest affection.  He was the chosen leader of the Apostles and was established by Jesus as the foundation of the Church.  I envision him as a man of great proportions and equal dignity, not unlike myself, if I may be permitted to indulge in a little vanity.”

The other minister is the Pastor Osgood Rowland who shepherds the town’s Pentecostal Church.  His congregation is poor, black, and located just outside of the city limits.  Its members are without means and scattered over a wide area of the county.  They make a great effort just to gather each Sunday for worship.  As it turns out, Pastor Rowland also requests a carved a figure of Peter for the Pentecostal Church.

Joshua works long and hard on both sculptures, trying to capture in each something that will speak powerfully to the congregation for which it is intended.  The day arrives when the works are completed and, as chance would have, both ministers arrive at the same time to pick up their figures.

Next to Father Darby Joshua places a sculpture that depicts Peter on his knees.  His three-tiered tiara is lying disrespectfully in the dirt as he caresses the head of a dying beggar.  The Episcopal priest is both horrified and offended by the rendering which is not at all like the great Apostle whom he has come to know and love and on whose life he has patterned his own. 

Next to Pastor Rowland Joshua places a sculpture of Peter standing in a toga and stole.  His left hand firmly grasps a shepherd’s staff as his right gestures with great force and determination to direct where the gathered disciples are to go.  Its focus on strong authority represents everything about religion that Pentecostals dislike. 

Both men feel certain that Joshua has made a great mistake in that the carving each was given should have been intended for the other.  Father Darby and Pastor Rowland decide to trade figures and each returns to his church happy with a carving that is familiar and comfortable to him.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus, for the first time, tells his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will be arrested, abused, and crucified.  Peter, who in last Sunday’s reading, confessed his belief that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, just moments later in this reading protests that Jesus must never undergo these things.  Jesus’ response is sharp, pointed, and blunt, “Get behind me, Satan!”  Jesus will not succumb to the temptation to alter his mission to suit his own desire or the desires of others.  His statement to Peter is a warning to all of us not to worship that which is merely a projection of our own wishes.  It is a warning that Father Darby and Pastor Rowland do not heed.

There is a story about a man who learned of the existence of a wise old monk and set out on a pilgrimage to ask him a question.  Upon his arrival, the man knelt before the monk and said, “I have but one thing to ask of you: tell me this, who is God?”  The old monk sat in silence for several days pondering the question and then said, “Come with me.”  He took the man to an elaborately carved, ivory cabinet and instructed him to open it.  With trembling hands the man reached for the cabinet and opened its doors only to find another set of doors on the inside.  “Continue,” the monk implored.  Behind these doors was another set of doors, and then another, and another.  Eventually the man came to the final door.  It was made of plain, roughly hewn wood, without any decorative carving.  “Open this door,” said the monk, “and you will find the answer to your question.”  Steadying his hand, the man touched the door and gently, slowly pulled it open.  Inside was a small, round mirror.  The man who had come such a long way was now staring at an image of his own reflection.  “Behold your god,” said the monk.  “The god you seek is no different than the god you conceive in your own mind.”

The author of the 115^th Psalm rails against those whose life work is the crafting of idols.  The psalmist says of ‘heathens’ that their idols are the works of human hands.  They have mouths, but cannot speak; eyes but cannot see; ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell, hands, but cannot feel; feet but cannot walk.  It is a mocking critique made by one whose God is in heaven and does “whatever He wills to do.”  The psalmist’s most brilliant observation is that idols bear a striking resemblance to their makers: “They make their idols like unto themselves”, the author states.

The oft quoted Congregational minister G. Campbell Morgan once said that the Jesus we want to see is not the Jesus we really need to see.  It is a sobering reminder that before we can know anything about the true and living God we have to acknowledge the concept we hold is largely a god of our own making.  I find it to true of the people I meet that the more vehemently they defend their understanding of God and what God would have us do the more likely that understanding is a projection of their own making.  It also seems to be that case that these people are more blind than others to this reality.  Grizone captures this truth brilliantly in his Darby and Rowland characters. 

It may seem odd to hear me say this, but I find that the more I pursue God the less I actually know about God.  It is one of the great paradoxes of the faith that certainty about God indicates distance while uncertainty is a sign of approaching.  It is only as our projections onto God – our self-made idols – are peeled away that we can even hope to begin to know God as God truly is… holy, shrouded in great glory and awesome mystery, yet somehow made flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Short of this, we are bound to move from idol to idol, trading one image or idea for another in a desperate attempt to find something that will speak definitively of the Great Eternal One.

Trading one image for another.  That is exactly what Father Darby and Pastor Rowland did.  Each chose a sculpture that reflected a life-long cherished belief about the Apostle Peter.  Interestingly, each found his figure had become mute.  It was as if each carving had lost its ability to communicate Peter’s cherished qualities.  It was Pastor Rowland who telephoned Father Darby to suggest they make another trade so that each would have the carving originally intended for him.  Father Darby’s chauffer drove him to the Rowland house to make the exchange.  When he arrived he was stunned to discover the poverty in which the Rowland family lived.  It dawned on him that a man so poor, yet so dedicated to faith, embodied something important about the Christian faith.  “Osgood,” he said, “I would be honored if you and your family would come to my home for supper this week.”  Pastor Rowland accepted the offer with great joy.

When Father Darby got back to the parish he placed the sculpture of the kneeling Peter in the place where the other had been.  Immediately it seemed to come alive and something about the dying beggar’s face caught Darby’s attention.  He moved closer to study it only to realize that the face was his own.  The thought of the great Apostle on his knees caring for him bothered Father Darby at first.  Surely it was beneath Peter to do such a thing.  But then tears welled up in his eyes as he began to realize that this was not beneath Peter’s dignity at all, rather it was a quality that made him great.  The self-projection of a pompous authority figure was forever smashed in an instant.  That night, in an act of humility, he donned the driver’s cap, opened the car door for his chauffer, sat behind the wheel, and drove him home.  It was the first time Peter’s life had informed his, not the other way around.

Today’s reading ends with an invitation, which is also one of Jesus’ most important teachings:  “If you want to become my follower you must deny yourself, pick up my cross, and follow me.  For if you love your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake you will find true life.”  It is as if Jesus is saying, “Do not make my life to be little more than a reflection of yours.  Your life is to be a reflection of mine.”

Outside In or Inside Out?

David Letterman has made famous the Top Ten List.  I don’t know who came up with this one, but here ten things ministers never hear in church, but wish they did:

10. Your sermon was so enthralling I didn’t even notice that it lasted 25 minutes.

9.   I got here early just to make sure I could find a place to park.

8.   I can play golf any other day of the week.  On Sundays I would much rather be in church.

7.   I’ve decided to give our church the $500 a month I used to send to TV evangelists.

6.   What do I have to do to become the teacher for the Junior High Sunday School class?

5. I say the diocesan minimum salary guidelines are nowhere near generous enough.

4.   Father, we’d like to send you to a seminar in the Bahamas.

3.   I just love it when we sing hymns I’ve never heard before!

2.   Since we’re all here, let’s start the service early.

1.   Hey!  It’s my turn to sit in the front pew.

Well, since we’re talking about things you don’t often hear in church, try this one on for size: Jesus really blew it in today’s gospel reading.  There are not many times when you can say that, but today is one of them.

Just before the reading begins, some religious leaders attack Jesus because his followers do not observe all the ancient rituals and traditions.  Specifically, they do not go through a ceremonial washing of hands prior to eating.  We hear in this morning’s reading how Jesus turns this attack into a time of teaching and challenge.  In a previous confrontation, Jesus said these religious leaders are like white-washed tombs – clean and tidy on the outside, but full of dead bones on the inside.  Here Jesus elaborates on this theme, saying that it is not what you eat that makes you unclean in God’s eyes, it’s what you say and do.  It is not your outward appearance that makes you holy, but rather inner transformation.  What God sees is not the outer description of who you are – gender, race, ethnicity, class, education, and the like – but the inner state of your heart and how that affects your actions.

Well, this teaching of Jesus is wonderful news for the crowds that follow him and not such good news for religious specialists who fall back on their training in, what those of us who participated in this summer’s survey of the first books of the bible learned to be, a very complex set of exacting rules and regulations regarding ceremonies and rituals.  Imagine how liberating it must have been to be freed from that and pointed toward a holiness grounded in actual ethical behavior rather than strict adherence to religious practices.

At least one person was listening to Jesus and becomes empowered by his words.  She is a mother whose daughter is “tormented by a demon.”  She is also a Canaanite, which means she was not born as one of the Chosen People of Israel.  We read this summer about how Judah (one of Jacob’s twelve sons) married a Canaanite woman and was somewhat shunned by the family as a result.  Such things simply were not done.  It was akin to marrying out of your station and class.  But this particular woman must have heard in Jesus’ words something that gave her hope he would treat her differently.  If a person’s heart is what really matters to God, then she reasoned the external differences could be be eclipsed.

So she approaches Jesus and asks for help.  What does he do?  Amazingly, at first, nothing.  He ignores her, but she keeps pressing for attention.  The disciples think her to be a problem and a pest and they try to persuade Jesus to do something, anything.  He responds to them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  In other words, this is not a part of my mission.  Put starkly, he says she is not worthy of my time.  And yet still the woman persists.  She kneels in front of Jesus and begs, “Lord, help me.”  His response is harsh and it is shocking.  Looking down at the Canaanite woman, Jesus says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 

How incredibly insulting is that!  Then as now, being called a dog is no compliment.  How can these words be spoken by the same person who just verses before said, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles”?  Through baptism we enter into a covenant with Jesus to respect the dignity of every human being.  This does not seem to be a good example of that, does it. 

Some scholars defend Jesus by suggesting he was merely testing the woman’s faith and resolve.  Others posit that he was engaging her in a kind of clever banter favored by teachers of that era.  Frankly, the cold, hard truth is that Jesus just plain blows it on this one.

The grace that is to be found in this story emanates not from Jesus, but from the woman’s gritty determination.  Had it been me, I would have sulked away after receiving such a dismissive put-down.  Perhaps some of you would have errupted with a steam of angry words and cursing.  The Canaanite woman does neither.  The writer Ambrose Robinson says, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.”  For this woman, clearly the thing more important than the fear of further insult is her daughter’s overriding need and so she finds the courage to say, “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

For Jesus, this moment becomes a conversion story of sorts.  In an instance he perceives that his focus has been too narrow and too provincial.  His eyes are opened to the wider world around him and he perceives that his mission is to build faith and respond to it, whenever it appears, wherever it might be, in whomever it can be found.  Jesus marvels at the woman’s faith and grants her request immediately.

While there is much that we can say about this episode, this morning I am drawn to the woman’s secondary status in that society and her patient, persistent response to Jesus’ resistance.  It has something to say to the people of Ferguson, MO as they demand justice for the shooting death of Michael Brown.  It says there is a right way to persist and many that are wrong.  It also says it may take time and patience for peoples’ eyes to be opened so that a willingness to facilitate justice emerges.  Looting and rioting do not enable this.  But based on the way the Ferguson police have conducted themselves, something is amiss in this town.  Something has been simmering for a long time and hopefully the weight of public attention will demand that everything there be brought into the light.

The woman’s response also says something about what is transpiring in Iraq.  America, understandably exhausted by its long, protracted military involvement in the region, has been loathe to reengage in the current crisis.  But it is clear that the United States cannot turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding as a radical, Islamic group seeks to institute totalitarian rule through genocide. 

Perhaps the most difficult struggle we face in the face of these kinds of challenges is the temptation to become jaded; to shrug our shoulders, pull the covers up close to our faces, and say it has nothing to do with us.  Because today’s reading holds that even the dogs deserves the crumbs that fall from the master’s table, we Christians have an obligation to stand with all who are treated no better.

For me, at least, how we make our stand matters.  I thought about this when I read a quote falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut making the rounds on social media this past week: 

“Be soft.  Do not let the world make you hard.  Do not let pain make you hate.  Do not let bitterness steal you sweetness.  Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”

There is something in this that captures the essence of the Canaanite woman, don’t you think.  It is not enough to stand and fight.  You must stand in a place of hope and peace and faith grounded in a strong belief that the world is a beautiful place, knowing that no amount of ugliness will make you an ugly person.  After all, it is not what is on the outside affecting a person that makes him or her clean or unclean, it is what is on the inside that matters most.  We are not reactive people who respond in kind, but kind people who respond with God’s love that fills our hearts.  Others may choose to live outside in, but we are a people who live inside out.

 

 

Resentment

A magician worked on a cruise ship and because he had a different audience each week he could get away with doing the same tricks over and over and over.  There was one problem, however.  The ship’s captain owned a parrot and the parrot always watched the shows.  Eventually it figured out how the magician did all his tricks and during performances began to squawk out things like “Look, it’s not the same hat!”, “He’s hiding the flowers under the table”, and “the entire deck is made up of the ace of spades.”  Well, as you can imagine the magician was furious, but because the parrot belonged to the captain there was nothing he could do.  Then one day the ship hit an iceberg and sank.  As fate would have it, the magician and parrot found themselves alone together drifting on a piece of wood.  They stared at each other with hatred but did not utter a word.  This went on for an entire day and then another and then another.  On the fourth day adrift, the parrot broke down and said, “OK, I give up.  What did you do with the ship?”

There is little we enjoy more than seeing a know-it-all, self-promoting, glory-hogging, show-boating so-and-so get taken down a peg or two.  There is nothing quite as satisfying as witnessing the downfall of those who think they are better than the rest of us.  There is something deliciously tasty about the governor’s trial going on in Richmond.  Who doesn’t want to peak behind the ‘Ken and Barbie curtain’ in order to see the mess that was couple’s real life?  Most Cleveland Browns fans are praying that Johnny Manziel (their rookie quarterback) will be able to walk on water while the rest of the world will be tuning in in hopes that he sinks like a stone in some glorious fashion.

If you understand this sentiment than you have tapped into a dynamic woven into two of today’s readings from Scripture. 

First, there is Joseph, the youngest of twelve brothers and his father’s favorite.  He enjoys snitching on his siblings, telling them about dreams he has where they bow down to him, and parading around in a special coat his dad made for him.  By the time he tracks them to field where they are tending to the flock, the brothers have had enough of Joseph’s act.  At first they plan to kill him, but eventually decide to sell him to a caravan of traders.  If you put yourself in their shoes you would believe that Joseph got what was coming to him.

And then there is Peter, the rock on whom Jesus will build his church.  The twelve disciples are in a boat, struggling all night to make headway in a storm.  As morning approaches they look out over the water and see a ghost walking toward them.  They are terrified.  The figure shouts out to them, “It is me, Jesus.”  That is when Peter pushes himself once again into the limelight and says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to walk on the water with you.”  He steps out of the boat and onto the water, walking toward Jesus.  Only when he looks down and sees what he is doing does he begin to sink.  You have to think that the eleven disciples back in the boat were chuckling under their breath as they whispered to one another, “Who does he think he is?”

I suspect that when you boil it all down, the same emotion is driving both Joseph’s brothers and the eleven disciples: the emotion of resentment.  While guilt is anger directed at oneself, resentment is anger directed at another for something either they did or did not do.  Both groups resented the special treatment received by one of their members.  The brothers resented Joseph for lording it over them.  I suspect that the disciples resented Peter for taking center stage. 

Some resentments are justified, like when we are offended by a governor and his wife who misuse an elected position to feather their own nest.  Other resentments are not worth the time, like when we are upset by all the attention given to a star athlete who has yet to prove himself.  But all resentments are more destructive to the person who holds them than they are to person who inspires them.  Friedrich Nietzche said that nothing on earth consumes a person more quickly than the passion of resentment.  Alcoholics’ Anonymous teaches that holding on to resentment in order to hurt another person is like drinking poison in hopes that person will die.

Here is something we should recognize about Joseph’s brothers and the eleven disciples: ultimately, what they resent is the ‘success’ of another.  Joseph did not ask to be the favorite son.  That was his father’s decision.  He did not ask to rule over his brothers one day.  That will be God’s decision.  Peter did not ask to lead the church.  That was Jesus’ decision.  He was not showing off when he went out of the water, he just wanted to be close to his Lord. 

Do you know who Dave Winer is?  He has been called one of the 25 most influential people on the web and one of the 10 inventories of internet technology no one has heard of.   Winer developed RSS, which stands for “Real Simple Syndication”, the software behind blogging, podcasting, and much of today’s content distribution.   Back in the day he was a simple programmer doing mindless work as just one more interchangeable part of a long line of people writing code.  But he was able to see something in the web’s potential that others could not.  He wanted to open up its potential to everyone by freeing it from the control of billion dollar business like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle.  He quit his job, formed his own software company, and then developed RSS.   Do you know what Dave Winer says should be written on his gravestone?  “Who does he think he is?”  He writes on his blog that you cannot begin to imagine the demeaning and condescending things people have said to him or about him on account of his success.  Resentment runs deep in his critics. 

I am convinced that each of us is born with a distinctive temperament and set of gifts that are God given.  Through baptism I believe we acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit to activate these gifts for service in God’s kingdom for the welfare and benefit of all.  Each of us has a job to do.  Each of us has a role to play.  We don’t measure ourselves against others, rather we evaluate ourselves based on how God has equipped us and on what God has called us to do.  Think about Jesus’ parable of the talents.  What the person given five talents was able to do was not compared to the achievements of the person given ten.  The person with five talents was judged based on faithfulness, not volume or outcome.   So, if this is true (and I think it is), there is no place for resentment of the success of another.

After graduating from seminary I served as an assistant to two different rectors.  Let me just say that they were very different people.  One was threatened by the things I did well.  He became uneasy if I did something that earned the praise of others.  I have known narcissistic priests where everything had to be about them, but this person was not like that.  He was more neurotic where everything that happened around him caused him to question his own worth and value.  In that environment I found it very difficult to discover, develop, and use my gifts.  The other priest I served delighted in the gifts and achievements of his staff.  When one of us shined bright he beamed.  I have always appreciated his witness and way and have tried to emulate it as best I can. 

We are here, each one of us, to build up, not to tear down.  I love the imagery of the proper preface in the Eucharistic prayer that says, “through Jesus Christ…, in whom we are built up as living stones of a holy temple.”  It suggests that we each have a place and a part.  It says that each of our places and parts is determined by Jesus.  And it hints that we may need help from others to figure out exactly where that place is and exactly what that part is to be. 

Let me leave you with this quote from Henri Nouwen:

Did I offer peace today?  Did I bring a smile to someone’s face?  Did I say words of healing?  Did I let go of my anger and resentment?  Did I forgive?  Did I love?  These are the real questions.  I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

Communion Happens

Well, it’s good to be home after a week’s vacation.  Did that sound like I meant it?  I had a wonderful time driving a black Cameo convertible around the Pacific Northwest.  I saw breath-taking sites, ate wonderful food, met interesting people, and (thanks to booking with Travelocity) stayed in some sketchy hotel accommodations.  I also had a lot of time to read – something I enjoy doing when I am on vacation. 

On the flight home I finished a book titled After Visiting Friends.  It was written by Michael Hainey, a deputy editor for GQ magazine who is in his early 40’s.  The book chronicles his attempt to discover the circumstances of his father’s death, which happened when Hainey was just a boy.  A wonderful writer, he uses words to paint vivid portraits of his family members as well as the people he meets in attempt to uncover the truth.  Perhaps my favorite description was a of a records bureaucrat who moved with the speed of football linebacker walking off the field after an overtime loss.

Hainey’s mother is a stoic type whose life has become very drab and regimented.  She keeps her emotions to herself, never says I love you, and whenever her son comes to visit gives him only a brief, half-hearted, one-armed embrace.  Toward the end of the book, Hainey’s grandmother (his mother’s mother) passes away.  He was very close to her throughout his life, but even the death of her mother seems not to faze his mother.

But as Mike is driving her and his girlfriend, Brooke, from the cemetery after the burial, his mother does something that, to my reading, is completely out of character.  They notice a herd of twenty-to-thirty deer grazing in a corner of the cemetery and Hainey pulls over the car.  Its occupants silently watch the creatures as they eat. 

Let me read for you the passage from After Visiting Friends:

Then mom says, “Where’s the Ritz?”

She’d packed snacks – Ritz crackers, a tin of Planters, bottles of water.  “It’s going to be a long day,” she said in the morning, before we left the house for the funeral home.  “It’s good to have something to keep your energy up.”

From the back seat, Brooke hands her a sleeve of crackers sealed in brown wax paper.

My mother opens the door and the next thing I know, she’s walking into the field.

She clutches the crackers in her outstretched arm, like she’s a missionary holding her crucifix aloft, approaching the weary natives on the riverbank, her birch-bark canoe put ashore behind her.  The deer go on eating.  My mother walks toward a large buck in the center of the herd, his head crowned with a broad rack of antlers.  He lifts his head and considers her.  My mother stands less than an antler’s worth away.  My mother looks at him and then opens her tube of crackers and places one in her palm.  The buck shifts toward her, lowers his head, and slowly, gently, nuzzles the cracker from my mother’s hand.  He chews it, orangey flakes falling from his wet black lips.  My mother reaches out and touches the thick of his neck.  The buck is motionless as she strokes him softly.  And then my mother offers up to him another cracker and once again he eats it from her palm.  My mother looks back toward us, a smile on her face.

Brooke says, “I think you better go help your mother.”

I go to my mother like a man navigating a minefield.  I don’t want to spook them.

By the time I get to my mother the deer have formed a soft circle around her.  But they’re polite.  Standing there, waiting patiently for a Ritz.  My mother beams.

“Take some, Mike,” and she gives me a fistful.

I start to hand out the crackers.  Wet tongues snatch them from my hand. 

Hainey describes a magical moment initiated by the least likely person in the book to engage in something like this.  His mother, after all, is the person who goes down to the basement every day to make sure the sump-pump is still working.  What she says next caught me completely off-guard and is the reason I wanted to share this passage with you:

When we’re out of crackers, my mother says to the deer, “Sorry, guys.  Holy Communion is over.”

From her wax paper sleeve she shakes the crumbs into her palm, scatters the remains over the meadows.

There is more than a little of today’s gospel reading in that story, isn’t there.  The gospel begins with Jesus getting into a boat and setting off for a deserted place so that he can be by himself.  It is no wonder that he wants to be alone.  In the verses just before today’s assigned reading Jesus learns that John the Baptist has been beheaded by King Herod.  The solitude he seeks he will not find.  The crowds who follow move to the place he intends to set shore.  When Jesus makes landfall they are already there waiting for him.  The text tells us that Jesus has compassion for them and cures their sick.

When it is evening, the disciples urge Jesus to send everyone to nearby villages to get something to eat.  What follows has strong Eucharistic overtones.  Jesus takes the little food they have, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it.  Everyone – and the numbers are in the thousands – gets something to eat and has enough.  No one is left out and nothing is left to waist.  Even the crumbs are picked up.

While there is much that can be said about this story, let me say this: communion can happen any place at any time anywhere. 

The rite and ritual we engage on Sunday morning is helpful in that it makes communion a regular feature of the rhythm of our week.  It strengthens and sustains us in ways we would miss if we did not participate in it on a consistent basis.  But, when we ask in Eucharistic Prayer C, “Open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world about us,” we are proclaiming that this moment in church is not an end unto itself.  It is meant to enable us to identify better the opportunities for communion that present themselves all of the time in our daily life and drudgery.

There seems to be some common elements to these kinds of ‘communion’.  Some or all may be present.  There are people.  There is food.  There is thankfulness.  There is sharing.  Barriers are overcome, obstacles navigated, challenges yield to possibilities.  Typically, it involves something innocuous like a Ritz cracker more than, say, a Ruth’s Chris steak.  Whatever it is, it is an intersection of people with one another and with creation.  It is a moment in which the divine is unmistakably present.  We say of sacraments that they are a visible means of an invisible grace.  When communion happens, no matter what form or shape it takes, there is grace.  Always there is grace.

This morning’s Old Testament lesson contains what for me is one of the powerful and poignant episodes in all of Scripture.  It is the night before Jacob is to meet his brother Esau whom he cheated out of the birth right years earlier.  At that time, Esau swore he would kill his brother given the chance, so Jacob fled far away.  But now, with Jacob returning home, Esau has his chance.  Jacob spends the night alone, by a brook, and there becomes engaged in a wrestling match with another.  At first it is not at all clear who this person is.  Is it his brother or perhaps one of his soldiers?  Is it a river troll – they were common in Jewish mythology?  Is it an angel sent from God?  At daybreak the wrestler wants to leave, but Jacob will not let go.  The wrestler strikes a blow to Jacob’s hip, dislocating it, but still Jacob clings to his adversary.  He insists of a blessing.  The blessing is this: his name is changed from Jacob (which in Hebrew means to cheat) to Israel (which means one who has striven with God and with humans and has prevailed).  Jacob comes to realize that all night long (and perhaps all of his life) he has been wrestling with God.

Jacob’s experience is also a kind of communion, but one very different from the feeding of the five thousand and certainly very different from the feeding of the deer.  First and foremost, this communion is contentious. 

The other book I read on vacation was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  It is the story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete interred as a POW by the Japanese in World War II.  His experience, first set adrift on a life raft in the vast Pacific Ocean and then as a POW, was absolutely horrific beyond words.  How he survived is hard to imagine.  When he came home after the war he found it difficult to reengage life.  He became, among other things, a raging alcoholic.  His wife left him, but then came back.  Eventually she got him to go to a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles.  He walked out.  She got him to go a second time.  Allow me to read for you another passage: 

What God asks of men, Graham said, is faith.  His invisibility is the truest test of that faith.  To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.

Louis shone with sweat.  He felt accused, cornered, pressed by a frantic urge to flee.  As Graham asked for heads to bow and eyes to close, Louis stood abruptly and rushed to the street, towing [his wife] behind him.  “Nobody leaving”, said Graham.  “You can leave while I’m preaching, but not now.  Everybody is still and quite.  Every head bowed, every eye closed.”  He asked the faithful to come forward.

Louis pushed past the congregants in his row, charging for the exit.  His mind was tumbling.  He felt enraged, violent, on the edge of explosion.  He wanted to hit someone.

As he reached the aisle, he stopped.  [His wife], the rows of bowed heads, the sawdust under foot, the tent around him, all disappeared.  A memory long beaten back, the memory from which he had run the evening before, was upon him.

Louis was on the raft.  There was gentle Phil crumped up before him.  Mac’s breathing skeleton, endless ocean stretching away in every direction, the sun lying on them, the cunning body of sharks, waiting, circling.  He was a body on a raft, dying of thirst.  He felt words whisper from his swollen lips. It was a promise thrown at heaven, a promise he had not kept, a promise he had allowed himself to forget until just this instant: If you will save me, I will serve you forever.  And then, standing under a circus tent on a clear night in downtown Los Angeles, Louis felt rain falling.

It was the last flashback he would ever have.  Louis let go of his [his wife] and turned toward Graham.  He felt supremely alive.  He began walking.

“This is it,” said Graham.  “God has spoken to you.  You come on.”

[His wife] kept her eyes on Louis all the way home.  When they entered the apartment, Louis went straight to his cache of liquor.  It was the time of night when the need usually took hold of him, but for the first time in years, Louis had no desire to drink.  He carried the bottles to the kitchen sink, opened them, and poured the contents into the drain.  Then he hurried through the apartment, gathering packs of cigarettes, the secret stash of girlie magazines, everything that was a part of his ruined years.  He heaved it all down the trash chute.

In the morning he woke feeling cleansed…  That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.

Zamperini’s certainly was a contentious communion that, like Jacob’s, was life changing.

I have given this sermon the less than clever title “Communion Happens”.  There are communions we might miss if our eyes are not open to see the hand of God at work in the world about us and there are communions me want to resist because they involve God’s deep desire to touch some aspect of the brokenness of our lives.  I have known both.  It is possible to walk past the former and to walk away from the latter.   It is possible to ignore the wonder and mystery of life.  It is possible to avoid at all costs personal transformation and healing.  As people of faith we seek to find moments of communion at every moment in our lives in every place we are through every way it might present itself.  We are a Eucharistic people who sense and believe that God the Holy One is in our midst.  It is a truth both fabulous and frightening, both awesome and awful.  But never forget that communion is always enveloped in grace.  Sometimes that grace is amazing, other times it can be painful.  I always keep in my mind the image of Jacob – now Israel – limping into the sunrise over the Promised Land and returning home, an injury marking his struggle through life but finally healed and whole.  Communion happens and when we partake of it we are better for it.  All praise to the One for each and every time God reaches out to us… in mystery, in wonder, in challenge, in need.