"Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this." Rev. 1:17-19.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

I am Hope



       Preachers love to moan about Trinity Sunday, lamenting the inherent danger in trying to explain the mystery of God with human language and images that can’t help but fall short. Insider jokes about heresy run rampant among clergy at this time of year, as we remember forebears burned at the stake for an unhappy analogy or exiled for an expression that strayed too far from the Creeds. This year, however, we preachers have before us a subject more daunting and dangerous than describing the ineffable mystery of the divine essence. This year, eyes that would normally be trained heavenward are downcast, fixed upon yet another tragedy: the death and devastation following those terrible tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma. As suffering piles upon suffering this spring, it is hard not to let the news of it beat us down into hopelessness. One friend gave expression to these feelings of despair when she wrote, wondering how to preach today about yet another tragedy: “It seems that we used to have a disaster every few years that demanded our attention, but now there is at least one a month. Sometimes I just want to crawl into a little (comfy) hole and ignore the world for a while.” Perhaps the really dangerous subject for a sermon this week is not Trinity, but how to hold on in the face of suffering. Perhaps the really dangerous subject for a sermon this week is Hope.
          I read years ago about an interesting scientific study concerning hope and our responses to suffering. Scientists put four monkeys in a cage with a pole in the middle. At the top of the pole, they put a bunch of bananas. All of the monkeys learned how to get up that pole and grab a treat. Then the scientists added a pail of water above the pole. When a monkey started to climb the pole, the researcher would douse him with a big bucketful of cold water before he could get to the bananas. Eventually, all four of the monkeys stopped trying to climb the pole, even after the scientists removed the pail of water. At this point, the scientists added a new monkey to the cage. This monkey, of course, went straight for those bananas. But do you know what happened? One of the other monkeys would yank him down, every time, trying to save him from suffering from the cold water, even though there was no pail! As the scientists gradually replaced all of the monkeys with new ones, through several generations, even the new monkeys stopped trying to get the bananas. Those monkeys lost hope in reaching what they desired, and that lack of hope was passed down from generation to generation. Kevin Ford, who wrote about this story, drew a conclusion for us Christians in the church: “We preach and teach about bananas [that is, about hope, about God’s love for us, about Good News.] We cast a vision for eating bananas. We develop pole-climbing training programs … We read lots of books about bananas… We argue over which side of the pole the bananas should be on…But no matter what we do, nobody ever seems to get around to eating the bananas.”[1]
          Have the suffering and tragedy that surround us, the pain that pierces our own lives, taken away our desire to climb the pole? Has it robbed us of the hope that once led us to God? Are we feasting on air, longing for Love that we have forgotten how to find? How do we get our Hope back?
          St. Paul makes it sound deceptively simple in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He advises us to “boast” or to “rejoice” in our suffering: “We … boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Hmmmm. Really, Paul? Would I write a letter to Episcopalians in Moore and tell them to be happy that their homes are destroyed and their family members are dead or hurt? Would I tell the runners in Boston who lost a leg that their suffering is the real test of endurance that will give them character, just like running built up their muscles? And the parishioner who, after many years of tragedy, wrote in her questions to God, “Are the struggles in my life a test of my faith or a testament to the strength of my faith?” …. Would I tell her, “Of course! Your suffering is proof of endurance and is building up your character!”
          No, St. Paul, I would not say any of these things. But neither does Paul, really. Paul is not expressing some simple formula for mixing hope out of the ingredients of suffering. He is not offering us a mathematical equation. Paul, like the theologians who try to describe God as Trinity, is trying to express the inexpressible. He is trying to show that, when the inevitable suffering comes into our lives, God is somehow mysteriously with us in the enduring of it. Luke Timothy Johnson points out that hope, for Paul, is a way of perceiving the present based on a faith in God’s hidden presence and power among us. Hope is not wishful thinking. It is what allows us to move into the future because of the reality of God’s presence right now.[2]  If we know and accept that God’s love for us is constantly being poured out upon us through the Holy Spirit, then that love is more real than any of the sufferings that cut through our lives. Hope looks out with open eyes into a darkness where God seems absent or silent at best and demands that God speak again. God gave us all a gift in Jesus Christ—a gift of life, love and forgiveness—and nothing can take that gift away, no matter what. As Paul writes later in his letter, using another image: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38) We are in a relationship with God that can withstand anything, including our own disbelief and despair. We are not monkeys, doomed to unthinking conditioning from our environment. Paul is reminding us that we have a choice, a choice to look beyond suffering, a choice to endure, with God’s help, a choice to cultivate a relationship with God that will train us once again to climb that pole for the bananas. Will that endurance take the form of crying out to God in anger, resentment, or pain? Probably. Will that character include practices of prayer and gratitude and all of the spiritual discipline that they demand? Surely. Will that persistence look like foolishness in the eyes of the world, like gullibility in the eyes of the unbeliever? Undoubtedly. But what will we not give for Hope? God gave His very life for it.
          Hope stands beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out, “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. I am the wisp of light that shines into the dark room and turns the darkness of night into the joy of morning. I am the space in between the cry ‘Dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations’ and the whispered ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.’ When Jesus hung upon the Cross, I was there. When the disciples huddled in the Upper Room, I unlocked the door for the living Christ to enter in. I turned cowardly Peter into the Rock upon whom the Church was built. I held the hands of martyrs and slaves and pushed the shy and fearful out into the public square. When the emergency workers’ stomachs turned and their hearts sank in the face of the grisly scene before them, I clothed them with the armor of God’s strength. When the mother stood outside the locked doors of the school that held her handicapped child, frozen as the tornado approached, and unable to decide whether to stay or to go find her other two children, I led her to safety. When the little dog appeared from under the planks and bricks, I opened the hearts of a jaded nation. When the town looked out at rubble and brokenness, I showed them new buildings, buildings with a tornado shelter at every school. I am an iron pot fashioned from character and endurance, a pot that boils and bubbles through all of the pain that we feel and see, scouring away all the dross that covers the hidden love of God. I am Hope. I dance together with Love and Faith, twisting and turning on the breath of God, leaping through time, filling empty hearts, following the steps of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit whose joyful dance is my pattern, in whose communion I have my being. Join me, join God, climb the pole, dance, and feast.”


[1] Quoted in L. Gregory Jones, “Monkey Business,” in The Christian Century, September 9, 2008, 39.
[2] Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans (Macon, GA: Smyth and Helwys, 2001), 85.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Tower Gazing: A Reflection for Ascension Day


          I remember several years ago the debates in the news about the alternatives for rebuilding at Ground Zero in New York City. There was talk about creating an empty space there as a memorial to the victims of 9/11; there were those who wanted to rebuild exact copies of the Twin Towers; there were people who worried about the cost of it all; there were others who objected to anything being done that would disturb the sacred ground where so many had died; and there were many who were afraid that whatever they built would become a huge target for further terrorist attacks. Remembering those debates, I was interested to see on the news this week that a new tower is almost completed at One, World Trade Center. This tower is in addition to the two pools of remembrance, immense fountains that pour somberly down into the black abyss of the Twin Towers’ foundations. It is in addition to an underground museum dedicated to telling the story of the victims’ lives. This new tower instead rises toward the heavens, and, topped by a huge spire, will once again be the tallest building in North America. While the pools and the museum are a tribute to the past, a memorial to the victims, and a way of continuing to learn from the tragedy of September 11, the new tower is a clear symbol of power and hope. With the completion of construction, the people who move into the new space with their offices, will all take the mantle of power from those who have died in that place. This new tower cries out to the world that terror does not have the last word, that fear will not rule our actions, that we are in control and moving forward.

          Today we celebrate Jesus’ ascension, and searching for a contemporary metaphor, something less implausible than those ancient images of Jesus zooming up into the clouds, I thought about this new tower in New York. All of a sudden, I could see it:    

 At Ground Zero, the dark pools of water pouring down into the abyss are like the crucifixion, like “God-made-flesh” descending to earth, dying, descending even into hell. Alone, the dark pools and the suffering, dying God bring peace to the depths and give succor to our suffering, but there is no victory in them.

          The memorial museum is like our testimonies to resurrection. It gives us a new story by which to structure lost lives, a narrative of love that brings glimmers of life out of death. Yet alone, such a story is not enough to provide direction for the future. Mere glimpses of the resurrected Jesus wafting in and out of our lives to feed us or to lend a hand, if and when we recognize him, are just as tenuous and fleeting as the pictures and voices of dead loved ones given new form as heroes on museum walls.

 The new tower, on the other hand, is like the ascension, rising with power into the heavens, completing the cycle and overcoming the defeat. When we say that Jesus “ascended into heaven,” what we really mean—beyond the ancient cosmology of Jesus’ body floating up into the sky—is that God Almighty who allowed himself to be poured out into the world to live and suffer and die as one of us, has now not only shown us that sin and death cannot hold him, but has returned to a place of power and glory. The Ascension puts the Jesus that we know on earth back with the Father as ruler of Creation, in charge and in control of the future. The Ascension builds a strong tower. “The Almighty Lord, a strong tower to all who put their trust in Christ, to whom all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bow and obey: Be now and evermore your defense,” we pray in one of our collects for healing.

What difference, you might ask, does the Ascension make in our daily lives? Is it just a theological concept, another line in the Creed? Jesus tells the disciples that his ascension makes them into his witnesses, into “martyrion,” who are called to proclaim forgiveness of sins to all nations. I thought about these disciples as I watched the gaggle of reporters on TV gawking up at the hundred and some floors of this amazing skyscraper. I could imagine myself at Ground Zero, as well, first peering into the depths of one of those huge black pools. Lost in a sad reverie, I hear a voice saying to me, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

“Of course,” I say to myself as I shake my head to clear away the gloomy thoughts. “I’m like the women at the tomb, expecting death, when God brings Life.” Had I forgotten so soon? I preached on this at Easter!” Chastened, then, I look up instead at the tall tower, topped by a silver spire that shines in the sunlight, reflecting more divine Glory than the spires of the grandest cathedrals. My heart swells with hope for the future and with patriotic pride as I associate myself and my nation with the strength that this spire represents. Like Gollum who cannot tear his eyes away from his precious ring, I stand and stare, as if entranced with the vision of Power. Then I hear the voice again: “Anne, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This spire and this tower will be here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Until it is no more. Your job is to testify right now and not to stare and gloat. Go home and wait for the power of the Spirit.”

Life under the shadow of the spire, like life under an ascended Lord, is less a life of pride and reflected Glory than it is a life wrapped up in God. We pray in today’s collect that Christ ascended far above the heavens “that he might fill all things.” As Joseph Britton points out, if all things “are now filled by Christ’s presence, then the consequence for Christian living is that nothing and no one can be taken as insignificant or of no importance. Our commitment to God means that we are also committed to what God is committed to: the whole of creation, as it has been filled by Christ’s presence.”[1] A spiritual director encouraged me just last week to put a sign over my desk that reads: “How is the transforming power/love of God being made real in the relationship/activity/task that you are now engaged in?” She encouraged me to examine in the light of God’s transforming power, all of the seemingly unimportant daily tasks, chats, and empty gestures that I shrug off every day as I long instead for a glimpse of Glory. I haven’t started this spiritual discipline yet, but this Ascension Sunday has given me renewed incentive. I’m going to look out—not up, not down—but out into the world, into a world filled with Christ. What, in my actions and interactions, opens, rather than closes, doors for God’s healing, reconciling, forgiving, and creating work to go on? Like the 26,000 iron and steel workers who forged the grand new tower, I have a role to play in the structure of the Kingdom, one small widget at a time.



[1] Joseph Britton on Ephesians 1 in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2, 514.

Friday, May 3, 2013

The Peace of Christ



A two-year-old shot by her five-year-old brother this week here in Kentucky. The recent bombings in Boston. The threat of war with North Korea and now with Syria. The worst bloodshed in Iraq in years. Stories about domestic violence…As I listened to the news and read the papers this week, I joined with you in your yearning for peace, as you asked God: Why can’t we have peace on earth? Will there be peace? How can we work toward peace? Will all in the world live in peace? Perhaps it was the contrast with the fun and lighthearted festivities of Derby, but the world seemed to be especially fraught this week with threats of violence all around.
We joke, of course, about the empty-headed beauty pageant contestant who is coached to simper, “World peace,” when asked what issue she cares most about. The seeming impossibility of “world peace” makes wishing for it almost a farce; the vagueness of it is overwhelming. What is “peace,” after all? Is it merely an absence of violence, an end to war? Or does it have concrete, positive qualities of its own? Or does it flow from an inner kind of calm within individual hearts? I was talking with the Preschoolers about Jesus’ peace several weeks ago, and after talking for awhile, I asked them what peace is. One little girl raised her hand confidently: “It’s a piece, like a piece of pie,” she proclaimed, as if nothing could be more obvious. Before we can pray for it—or work for it—we need to know what it is!
For the Old Testament prophets, who often speak of peace, it is “shalom,” a wholeness, a kind of right relationship that comes to us when God dwells among and with us here on earth. It includes peace among the nations, the absence of war, stemming from God’s justice and righteousness being carried out on earth. Listen to those famous and beautiful words from the prophet Micah: “God shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” Here, God’s peace comes from right and fair division of resources in a world where fear is no more. I certainly long for that kind of peace, and Micah’s words prod and encourage me to want to work for a more just world in which everyone can live without fear. It is no accident that we have “Peace and Justice” commissions in our churches: the two are inseparable. This kind of peace sounds satisfyingly concrete, if challenging to achieve—something that we can try to attain through social work, politics, and economics, as well as prayer.
Jesus, however, seems to tell us in today’s Gospel lesson that he has already given us peace: “Peace is my farewell to you,” he plainly says. “My peace is my gift to you, and I do not give it to you as the world gives it. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be fearful.” Once again, we hear peace being associated with an absence of fear … but what kind of peace is Jesus talking about here? It doesn’t seem to be real-life farms and fig trees or even real-life lack of violence. Christians have known violence since the crucifixion itself, and the lives of the disciples are anything but peaceful! Yet over two thousand years later, after crusades and wars, conflicts and power struggles, we joyously continue to offer this peace to one another every Sunday: “The peace of Christ be always with you!” we cry.
In today’s reading from John, the disciples are far from peace-filled. They have just heard that Jesus, their Lord, their teacher, the one whom they have left home and livelihood to follow, is about to go away. They will be left alone. His own heart breaking, too, Jesus gives his friends a parting gift, a heartfelt and valuable bequest, like grandma’s ring, or dad’s letters from war, or even a rich uncle’s pile of money in the bank—something meant to continue on in the world with us after a loved-one’s departure. Except Jesus’ bequest cannot be held in the palm of the hand; it is not given “as the world gives.” It comes by way of the Holy Spirit—an intangible bequest of peace, peace that will ease fearful and troubled hearts.
I wonder if the disciples understand what Jesus is offering them any better than we do. The little boy with whom I read every week at Zachary Taylor was doing a reading comprehension exercise this week with me about a little girl whose grandmother down in Louisiana gives her an injured bird to keep, telling her that it will be her bird. When the bird’s leg is healed, the grandmother then tells her to let it go. The little girl balks. “I thought that you gave me this bird to keep!” she cries. The grandmother explains that she will always have the memory of the bird, but that the real bird needs to get back to its life in the bayou. At the end of the story, the little girl rather suddenly appears happy to have a mere feather from that bird to take home with her from her travels. My young reading student just didn’t understand why that little girl was supposed to be happy with a dumb old feather, when she really wanted the bird. He just couldn’t wrap his head around this story. If I were one of the disciples, I think that I might have felt the same way about this gift of peace that Jesus is promising. This promise of peace would seem like a mere feather of the fullness of life that I had enjoyed in Jesus’ presence.
When I think about it, though, I can see that while the gift of peace that Jesus offers us is not a singing bird that we can hold in our hands, it still has profound value as the silent place marked by a delicate feather. I once wrote a poem about the Trinity, in which I expressed a longing to hold onto God:
I hold out stiff
and awkward arms
but all I catch
are sweaty handfuls
of images that drift
like lonely feathers
from my fingers,
spinning slowly,
slipping softly
to that secret space
between thought and word
where Three can be One

That secret space, too, is the home of Peace. Rowan Williams points out that Christ’s peace enters most easily into places that we leave empty and silent. Think of Jesus meeting the woman who has been caught in adultery. She is about to be stoned to death for her sin—a violent punishment if ever there was one. Jesus stops the violence not by hollering at her accusers or by pushing them away or by reasoning with them or by using more clever language than they do. He merely kneels down and starts writing in the dust. He takes a “breathing space” for God’s peace to enter in. Williams says that he is hesitating in order to root himself in God’s peace. He does not draw a line in the sand or fix an interpretation. He does not tell the woman who she is and what her fate should be. He waits long enough for her to see herself differently, and “when he lifts his head, there is both judgment and release.”[1]
God’s peace, brought to us by the Holy Spirit and bequeathed to us by Jesus, is indeed an active peace, a peace as active as Jesus’ own presence in the world. It is a peace that is stealthily pulling compassion and forgiveness and joy out from underneath pain and injustice and condemnation, just like Jesus did. Rick Morley describes this gift of peace beautifully: “Jesus brings … the kind of peace that walks on water, that stills the storm, and fills our jars to the brim with the finest of wines. The kind of peace that brings sight to the blind, restores hearing to the deaf, and tells the lame to get up and go home. The kind of peace that comes to a tomb and renders it empty. That kind of peace.”[2] By sharing his peace with us, Jesus shares his power to transform from the inside out.
Williams points out that violence is a communication of hatred, fear, or contempt. If we are to be bearers of the peace of Christ, a space that offers forgiveness and compassion, then our communication needs “breathing spaces.” Can we learn to stop drawing lines in the sand? To breathe before we retaliate? To pause before we condemn? There is a confession of faith from the Reformed Church of France that reads:
“Christ is risen. He is present among all people, and to serve them, he recruits his Church, without taking into account our differences. He acts through humankind in history, in order to lead it to its End, to a universe reconciled in love. Thus, I believe neither in fatalism nor in war, nor in hatred, nor in catastrophe, nor in death, because I believe that Jesus frees us to make free decisions. Thanks to him, my life has meaning, as does the universe.”[3] The gift of Peace, like God, creates Something out of Nothing; it transforms with a whisper. It is the most powerful of Gifts.


[1] Rowan Williams, Writing in the Dust,78.
[2] Rick Morley, “A Peace of Marvel,” found at http://www.rickmorley.com/archives/2578?
[3] Confession de foi de Montpellier, 1969. My own translation.