It ought
never to be true of the Church that we live in a bubble, unfazed by what is
going on in the world around us. I
cannot imagine that there is anyone here today that has not in some way been
touched by the effects of Superstorm Sandy.
And yet I can well imagine that we could put all that aside and
concentrate on All Saints, our glorious litany, our marvelous sacraments of
baptism and eucharist with not so much as a word about Sandy.
Tragically,
the Church sometimes goes to the other extreme.
We are so overcome with the scale of human tragedy in such experiences
as 9/11, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, and various catastrophes (wars
come to mind), that frequently we stop everything to address the concerns that
arise out of those crises. Because we
often fail to connect what is happening in the outer world and what we are
focusing on and celebrating in church, people rightly get the idea that what
gets us worked up in church is really not terribly relevant to life’s real
concerns.
There really is a connection between the devastation
of a storm like Sandy and what we are celebrating on the Feast of All
Saints. In fact there is more than one
connection—indeed a whole string of connections.
Suffering
Most
obviously, there is a connection called suffering. The much misunderstood and misappropriated
Book of Revelation assumes that the Christian community will continue to
undergo great suffering. Most scholars
believe that Revelation indeed was written during one of the waves of
persecution when the Early Church was threatened to the point of possible
annihilation in some places. Surely it
is clearly written to encourage perseverance during times of great duress.
Most of the
time, in my experience, we miss this element of All Saints. If we are paying attention, we might hear the
phrase, “these are they who have come out of the great tribulation. They have made their robes white in the blood
of the Lamb.” That passage is not even
read today, though it sometimes makes it into the All Saints celebration. It refers, of course, to the host of martyrs
that have given their lives because they clung steadfastly to their faith in
Christ Jesus. Some of them we remember[ed[]
in the Litany [that we frequently use to begin][that began] the Liturgy [on All
Saints] [this morning]. Names like
Jawani Luwum, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero bring not only themselves to
mind but scores of others who have similarly died for their faith.
Not all
suffering, of course, is martyrdom, and not all suffering arises from
persecution. Indeed not all people of
faith suffer for their faith, and not all who suffer are people of faith. Yet the deep bond between suffering and faith
abides because few things help us to get through suffering, to endure it, and
possibly even to transform it more than faith.
You know this. And you
particularly know it if you have hung around the Christian community for very
long. Prayers and hymns remind us of it
continually. Collects in the Book of
Common Prayer resound with phrases like, “suffer patiently for the truth’s
sake,” “…those who, following the example of their Savior, laid down their
lives for their friends…,” “proclaim Christ in suffering and joy alike,” “who,
in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick
and dying, and loved not their own lives, even unto death….” Who has not dwelt on the words of Negro
spirituals, songs of exhortation that have kept people hoping and living during
impossibly difficult times? A host of
hymns and spiritual songs attest to the strength of faith to pull us through
with words like, “…who trusts in God’s unchanging love builds on a rock that
naught can move,” and “why should I feel
discouraged,…when Jesus is my portion?”
An event
like Hurricane Sandy exposes our weaknesses.
Suddenly people realize they should never have built houses on barrier
islands. We quickly learn that the
things we are so dependent on—electricity and all that it makes possible, like
cell phone service, internet communication, transportation, food distribution,
potable water supplies—may disappear within minutes. Nature wallops us. Rain and wind can completely tear up the most
stable infrastructure in a couple of hours.
Life is wrecked. Life is
lost. We have seen it time and again in
the last year or so. Haiti, New Zealand,
Japan, and just last week the Philippines have endured major earthquakes. Many people seem to have the idea that
suffering is something that should not happen in the world. Inadequate and primitive theology tries to
assign blame, on the theory that God directly wills such disasters (though one
would imagine that God would have better aim than is apparently the case). Blame, shmame. We are quite lucky if we don’t get clobbered
by one thing or another. And suffer we
shall.
We have to
be careful when talking about suffering.
It is easy to lump all suffering together and speak of it as if it is
all of one kind. It is not. Some things are clearly worse than
others. But what is true for all the saints
and martyrs, as well as for the shopkeeper with rotting food in New York City
last week, is that suffering is the only thing capable of cracking our
persistent fantasy of being self-sufficient.
Suffering, even a little bit of it, takes us down a buttonhole or
two. Intense suffering makes us realize
just how vulnerable we are. Prolonged
suffering will either make us find our inner strength or drive us to despair.
Providence
That brings
us to a second connection. There is an
answer to suffering, but it is not an answer to the question of why we suffer. The answer is to place suffering in the
larger context of the relationship of God and the world, and specifically the
relationship of God and human beings.
The name I give to the nature of God in relationship with the world and
us is “Providence.” God provides.
God is a present reality in every situation, from the least to the most
significant, in which we find ourselves.
That is vastly different from saying that God plans or wills the stuff
that happens to us. But there is no
place we can go where God is not, and nothing that can happen to us that can
seal us off from God’s caring presence.
That is a basic truth that you can rely on. And how do you know it is true? Because the divine reality—God—lives in you
whoever you are and wherever you go. It
is not that God must come to you to help or save you. God is already in, with, under, over, beside,
in front of and behind you, nearer than the air you breathe. The provident, caring God is in it with
you. If anything makes a saint, it is
knowing that truth and wearing it daily, like an old, comfortable pair of
shoes. Knowing it and living it, day
after day, until it becomes like an old wristwatch, if you are still familiar
with such a thing: something that you
keep noticing and depending on throughout the day, unconscious or dimly
conscious of just how much it is a part of you, and something that you miss the
moment you take it off, never having guessed how much attention you really paid
to it. That is the way it is with God’s
Providence.
I’ll never
forget the night I was in the shower in my college dorm and heard the awful
sound of crunching, dragging metal, a collision, as it turned out, of a train
barreling down the RF&P tracks through Ashland, Virginia, with the
automobile of two first-year students.
The college chapel was packed for the funeral of the one who was
killed. I don’t know who the homilist
was that day, but I’ll never forget his message. The death of Henry, he said,
was tragic, senseless, and totally unnecessary.
But even in the midst of tragic, senseless, and unnecessary events, the
holy God is walking, stirring, bringing about forgiveness and redemption and
healing, giving birth and nurturing us.
Such is the provident God.
Hope
And so we
come to hope, a third connection. This week a plethora of stories has come in
the wake of Sandy attesting to selflessness, sharing, sacrifice,
deliverance. People wonder aloud why it
takes a disaster to bring us together.
Wonder we may, but that is what disasters do—always have, always
will. In her recent book A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit
writes
Disaster requires an ability to
embrace contradiction in both the minds of those undergoing it and those trying
to understand it from afar. In each
disaster, there is suffering, there are psychic scars that will be felt most
when the emergency is over. There are
deaths and losses. Satisfactions,
newborn social bonds, and liberations are often also profound. Of course one factor in the gap between the
usual accounts of disaster and the actual experience is that those accounts
focus on the small percentage of people who are wounded, killed, orphaned, and
otherwise devastated, often in the epicenter of the disaster, along with the
officials involved. Surrounding them,
often in the same city and neighborhood, is a periphery of many more who are largely undamaged but profoundly
disrupted, and it is the disruptive power of disaster that matters here, the
ability of disasters to topple old orders and open new possibilities. This broader effect is what disaster does to
society. In the moment of disaster, the old order no longer exists, and people
improvise rescues, shelters, and communities.
Thereafter, a struggle takes place over whether the old order with all
its shortcomings and injustices will be reimposed, or a new one, perhaps more
oppressive and perhaps more just and free, like the disaster utopia, will
arise.[1]
I don’t
know that it can be said of all the saints that they consciously held the hope
of a new heaven and a new earth; but I do know that the Christian hope is
profoundly anchored in the belief that we are on our way with Christ to a more
just society. Some have always imagined
that to be another world after this one.
Others have imagined it as a possibility in this world. The verdict is still out on that one. Perhaps it is both. But the saints in the Book of Revelation hold
palm branches in their hands because they are victorious. They know that their victory is not something
that was planned and executed by smart generals in culture wars, but rather a
victory that came when the Lamb of God moved heaven and earth to bring humanity
into community with God. There is no
more mourning or crying or pain any more, nor death, because the one seated on
the throne is making all things new.
That is the hope that sustains the saints. Ironically it is also the hope that something
will arise from each new disaster, pushing us towards a new heaven and a new
earth, not least a combination of both right here in this life.
The home of
God is with mortals. God is dwelling
with us. The Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end. Though they may
lose everything, the saints will dwell secure; for all shall be well, and all
shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. [2]
© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2012
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