Of Storms and Saints

 Revelation 21:1-6a

            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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[1] Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell:  The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster (New York:  Penguin Books, 2010), 15-16. 

[2] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Amazon:  Kindle ed.), Chapter xxvii.92.

Best Seats

Mark 10:35-45

            Be careful what you ask for. 

            James and John, for example, we can fairly guess, had no idea of what they were saying when they rather glibly answered Jesus, “We are able” when he asked them if they were able to drink the cup that he would drink or be baptized with the baptism with which he was baptized.  That cup and that baptism would most definitely take them to and through suffering and good deal more.  All they knew was that they wanted two good seats in glory.  It seemed simple enough.  You know what you want; go for it. 

            But life is not so simple.  Neither is the life of Christ nor the life in Christ.  Mark’s gospel is particularly concerned with suffering, especially suffering that comes along with persecution.  Best we can tell, Mark was motivated to write his gospel to encourage a young church experiencing its first wave of big-time persecution.  And you know what that means.  It means that people were busy looking for ways to survive, because that is what every living thing is always trying to do.  And the quickest way to survive persecution is to flee it.  If that doesn’t work, renounce whatever cause it is you are being persecuted for.  Mark puts into perspective what it is about Jesus and his cause that actually makes suffering worthwhile, to put it bluntly.   Mark wants his readers to understand that Jesus is in fact the Son of God, and thus the Truth from which there is no fleeing, and thus the ultimate reason for giving one’s heart and soul and life to follow this Man.  Mark wants us to see that Jesus’ own journey led him to suffering and death, and that anyone who follows him can reasonably expect to go through the same thing.

            There is not a one of us here today that is not interested in suffering, principally in how to avoid it.  But how real is the threat of suffering brought on by persecution?   That depends.  A great many Christians in this country frequently imagine themselves to be persecuted, victimized.  What they generally mean is that they resent the fact that they cannot impose their will and their religious values upon the rest of American society with impunity.  That people with different religious ideas and customs as well as those with none are protected by the Constitution in this pluralistic, designedly secular society is onerous to them to the point that they flatly deny that this is a secular society at all.  Limits to what one can do in the name of one’s religion does not equal persecution.  But there are other pieces of contemporary life where persecution raises its head.  Bullying, for example.  My heart breaks when I read the too plentiful stories about kids who don’t fit in with their peers being bullied and badgered, sometimes to the point of suicide, or sometimes murder.  Not only kids but a great many adults are persecuted for being lesbian, gay, or transgender.  Ethnic minorities are persecuted simply for being who they are.  Race inspired persecution is something ingrained in societies and cultures the world over.  Pogroms and genocide, not to mention the slaughter of people who dare to dissent from authoritarian overlords, are no less common now than they ever have been, and are possibly increasing.  Hate groups in this country alone grew from 602 in 2000 to 1018 in 2011.  While they do not document a growth in persecution per se, these figures suggest that for a great many people in this country, the possibility of being persecuted as well was the possibility of being a persecutor is by no means insignificant.

            But general persecution, even persecution for one’s political beliefs or one’s sexual orientation or one’s racial identity, is not what Mark is talking about, though it might be connected.  Mark—and Jesus—are talking about persecution, and thus suffering, for “righteousness’ sake,” for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the Kingdom or reign of God.  An example of this today might be the suffering that a person undergoes precisely because that person takes on the forces of hate or stands up against inequality or organizes people to fight injustice or speaks up for those who are easy prey to the powers of hate and evil.  When we begin fighting oppression and injustice, speaking up for those who are essentially voiceless, threatening power structures, then quite likely we have begun doing exactly what Jesus was talking about when he talks about denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him. 

            I say “quite likely” for two reasons.  One is that not everyone who fights against injustice and oppression or who strives for justice and peace is or wants to be identified as a follower of Jesus.  To my mind, that is quite all right.  “They who are not against us are for us,” Jesus once said.  In other words, the cause of Jesus—the Kingdom or Reign of God—extends beyond the particular dues-paying adherents of Jesus.  The cause of Truth is single but its forms are manifold and its supporters far flung throughout the world and history.  The other reason is that those who pick up the sword of righteousness to strike against evil sometimes become more enamored of the sword than they are enamored of righteousness.   Those who strive against powers and principalities run the risk of becoming more self-righteous than righteous.  That is not to say they ought not to run that risk.  But the only way around the danger is to become consciousness of it, and to invest considerable energy in cleaning oneself of pride and self-justification.

            Are you beginning to see how James and John had no idea of what they were asking?  Not only were they asking for places in a kingdom where places don’t matter except in relation to selfless service, but they had no clue about the kind of courage involved in risking precisely the kind of suffering that Jesus himself had multiple times predicted would result for him.

            But we have left something dangling here, haven’t we?  What about generic suffering, suffering that is not a product of persecution, suffering that has nothing much to do with relinquishing one’s place for another, or being a willing slave, or giving one’s life as a ransom?  What about difficult, even torturous suffering, that comes to many of us simply because we are living, vulnerable creatures in this universe?  You and I would like for there to be a guaranteed way to avoid that pain and suffering, and we would pay handsome sums to buy that way if we could.  But we know better.  We know that we are not immune to suffering.  We have the choice of blaming God, protesting our innocence, railing against the injustice of the universe, or hunkering down and taking what comes.

            To be honest, I need to hear something more than either that I will suffer (I already know that) or that I might be persecuted (I know something about being bullied at least).  I get that living in the Kingdom of God means giving up self-centered competition, letting go, living life by a completely different standard from that of the world’s default.  I understand that the issue is how well I follow my Master’s example in serving rather than being served.  But what I want to know is how living in the Kingdom actually makes a difference in the way I respond to suffering, whatever form it might take.  I want to know what I do in order to “drink the cup” which Jesus drinks and to “be baptized with the baptism with which he is baptized,” which I take to mean his willingness to follow his deepest Self, consonant with his Abba’s will, wherever that took him.  How do I do that? 

            As I look back on it, I got from early childhood a very clear message—not least from the preacher of my childhood—that God was a God I could trust.  I did not have to fear being deserted by God.  I did not have to worry about whether God loved me.  And I did not have to do more than speak the holy name itself than I had the full attention of all heaven.   I suppose, as a kid in an alcoholic family, I needed that kind of assurance, because God knows at times life was terrifying, uncertain, to the point of being almost unbearably painful.  There have been some—a few—times since then that I have had to draw on all the resources I could summon in order to get me through.  I imagine that before my time on earth is up, I will have other valleys to go through, nights of sweat, and days parched and barren.  I do not know, as you cannot know, what the future holds. As Thomas Merton once prayed, “ My Lord God, I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe the desire to please you does in fact please you, and I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope I never do anything apart from that desire.  And I believe that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” 

            A young friend of mine, a singer, told me this week that when he is passing through times of great challenge and tribulation he sings a particular song that anchors him.  I said that I did not know his song, but that I had one of my own, a hymn that I have been singing for years. 

            I know not what the future hath

              Of marvel or surprise,

            Assured alone that life and death

              God’s mercy underlies.

           

            And if my heart and flesh are weak    

              To bear an untried pain,

            The bruised reed God will not break

              But strengthen and sustain.

            I know not where God’s islands lift

              Their fronded palms in air;

            I only know I cannot drift

              Beyond God’s love and care.*

            Find your song to sing, one that will keep you anchored, centered.  And, freed of worry and anxiety, look about you, not for the best seats in glory, but for someone who needs you.  They are not all that far away.

* John Greenleaf Whittier, "I know not what the future hath," in The Hymnal 1940 (New York: Church Publishing Company, 1940), 441.

© Frank Gasque Dunn 2012

Insecurity Check

Would that the Bible only said what we wish it did! Truth be told, the most ardent biblical fundamentalist secretly wishes that the story of the rich young ruler, the traditional name given to the character in today’s gospel, really didn’t say what it does. So what do we do with Bible stories and pronouncements of Jesus that we viscerally disagree with? We doctor them up so that we can agree with them. Or, I suppose, alternatively, we just choose not to listen, telling ourselves that it can’t matter much anyway.

Most of the time a sermon addresses the obvious. Today I want to address something not so obvious. Rather than look at the rich young ruler (so called because Matthew says he was young and Luke says he was a ruler and all of them say he was rich), who to my mind is a very attractive fellow—Mark says that Jesus, looking on him, loved him—I invite you instead to study the disciples. Mark pictures them as within earshot of the conversation between Jesus and the young man. He does not tell us if the disciples were paying attention or not, or how they reacted to the incident, whether shocked or nonchalant. What Mark does tell us is that Jesus uses the incident as a “teaching moment.” He looks around and says to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples are astonished, perplexed, puzzled at his words. Why? Some things never change. And one of them is that cultures the world over fix it so that the rich and powerful appear to be the darlings of God. People get to believing that. Hence we get the religion of prosperity, which you may see in full display in the religion section of Barnes and Noble or on a special book rack in your local Giant. Get close to God and you will prosper: that is the message. And the corollary is if you prosper, you must be close to God. To tell a rich person today (and, by the world’s standards, everyone in this church today is rich) that wealth blocks the doorway to the kingdom of God does not go down any better than it did in the first century. The decks are loaded in favor of the rich, and everyone with any gumption knows it.

So what is with Jesus?  Well, let’s not ask that question, at least not yet. Let’s ask another one. What is with the Kingdom of God? That is what this story is really about. Wealth would not be important at all if it weren’t somehow implicated in keeping someone out of this utterly desirable “kingdom.” Well, in the first place, what Jesus calls the “kingdom of God” is not a piece of geography either in this world or in any other. It is not “heaven” if by “heaven” you mean life after death. Even in Matthew’s gospel where the phrase “the kingdom of heaven” is used, neither Jesus nor the gospel writers are talking about the afterlife. The realm of God, the commonwealth of God, the reign of God is a transformed life, a transformed world, a re-created society of re-created persons. The domain of God is a vast realignment of relationships, a rearranging of values, the Ace played that whisks away the tricks of humans to protect ourselves, to insulate ourselves, to survive.  First among those tricks is acquisition. Whatever we acquire, we tell ourselves, is what will help us to live, to win, to be acceptable, and ultimately to survive, maybe even to be like gods. That is what snatching that fruit in the Garden of Eden story is about. That is why Pharaohs were buried with their treasures. That is why the poor spend the few crumbs they have on lotteries, not out of desperation so much as to participate in a society that tells them relentlessly that to acquire is to survive. That is what drives the drug trade, what fuels organized crime, what our entire political system is built on. That is, in fact, what most—not all—people mean when they talk endlessly about “the American dream:” it is the dream of acquiring what one wants and thinks one needs in order to be successful. 

A quick reading of the gospels will reveal
the difference between the Cross and Money

This trick of acquiring tricks us into thinking that not only things but spiritual qualities can be acquired, like outfits in a wardrobe or necklaces in a jewelry box. Hence, we not infrequently imagine, as does the man in the gospel story, that we can rack up spiritual points too. “I have kept all these commandments since my youth,” we might say. We are in good shape. We have the grades to prove it. 

That is the way our human world is constructed. And that is why the disciples are so shocked when Jesus says that it will be hard for those with riches to enter the kingdom of God. That kingdom is a present reality. It is here. It is now. It transcends time and death for sure, for it is clearly not of this world. But God has pitched tent in the field of human history and started serving a huge banquet in that tent, to which you have been invited. The only hitch is you have to go through certain “insecurity” procedures to get in. Empty your pockets. Take everything out of your briefcase.  Computers, iPods, iPads, iPhones, checkbooks, stocks, bonds, insurance, licenses, diplomas. No belt, no shoes, no backpack. 

What might an "insecurity check" look like? 

I’m not even sure that to get into the kingdom we can hold on to our rings and earrings. I’m not even sure that we can hold on to our clothes! (Now are you beginning to get nervous?) Seriously. Jesus was not joking when he said, “Except you become as children, you will never enter the kingdom.” Nor was he joking when he told one person, “You must be begotten from above,” meaning, “You have to begin all over again.” The realm of God is lived wholly differently.

Jesus does not say that it is impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom, but rather that it is quite hard for them (us?) to do so. Some point out that the little tiny passageway in a Jerusalem gate big enough for one or may two small persons to walk through, called a “needle’s eye” is what Jesus meant when he imagined stuffing a camel into one. The camel would hardly think it a possibility, or even a good idea, but rather a stupid thing to try (if I may speak for camels). But I think Jesus probably meant something more like an actual camel being squeezed through something as small as a real needle’s eye: not only is it hard, it is something you just don’t really have any business trying to do.  It does not fit.   

So what does fit? What is fit? Who is fit for the domain of God? Believe it or not, you are. You get to choose what you will do when you go through “insecurity” checks. Just like the rich young man in the gospel story, you and I may either empty our lives and ourselves, or we can go away grieving because it is just so hard to do that. Either response, of course, assumes that we really want to live the life of God. You must be thinking, “So where is the good news in any of this, especially for us relatively affluent Americans?” The good news is that all things are possible to God. And this generous, loving, beneficent God who sends rain on the just and unjust alike, has no agenda to kick you out or keep you out of God’s life. It is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, as Jesus once put it. Nothing that I read in the gospel or elsewhere tells us that Jesus gave the young man twenty-four hours to dispose of all his possessions. What might have happened if he had said, “OK, Good Master, I’m going to start today. Don’t know how long it might take me to get there—but let me get started.”  That is not in the Bible, but suppose it were. Might the young man have ended the story differently?

Niko Katzanzakis' epitaph:
 "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing; I am free."

I once was reading a book which suggested that it might be a good idea to go through my house and look at all the things I was attached to with the thought of giving them away. So I did. At first it scared the bejeezes out of me. I looked at paintings I adored, furniture I treasured, and cases and cases of books I could never live without. I imagined myself giving a particular painting (still my favorite) called “The Juggler” to a young man in my parish who was a pretty good juggler. I imagined parting with my books, and giving away Mama’s antique love seat. Just the very thought of doing all that began to make my heart feel lighter. I took a step that day towards the kingdom. Since then I have discovered what the sages of the world have long been saying—that letting go is the only human problem there is, and when we do it we begin to approach that splendid place of nothing which is true freedom. Katzanzakis’s tombstone bears the words, “I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free.” That, ironically, is what the kingdom of God is about, and why it is that at the center of our faith stands a naked man on a cross. That cross hangs over our altars and over our doors because at every possible entrance to the kingdom we are reminded that the quintessential quality of God’s life is giving—giving one’s life—profligate, prodigal, limitless giving. And we generally don’t become like God in one leap, but rather in incremental steps. Two per cent of our income this year, five next year, ten in a few years, and more and more as time goes on in proportion to how much we are blessed to get. We take a step and get better at it. We take another step and get even better at it. Then we begin to feel the joy. We find ourselves tipping waiters more generously, looking for causes that we can support to make our world better, seeking out occasions to affirm a young person or to support an older one. Step by baby step, we have become children, taking on the characteristics of our Creator Parent.  

Then one day, when Jesus turns and glances at us, we might find it in us to speak this truth: Lo, we have left everything and followed you. And that day will be the day that we will truly have come home to that surprising kingdom where many who were last shall be first.

"His disciples said, 'When will you become revealed to us
and when shall we see You?' 
Jesus said, 'When you disrobe without being ashamed
and take up your garments and place them under your feet
 like little children and tread on them,
then [will you see] the Son of the Living One
and you will not be afraid.'"
Gospel of Thomas 37

A sermon based on Mark 10:17-31, Proper 23 Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary

© Frank Gasque Dunn 2012, revised 2018

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