The light of the world (sermon from Sunday, Nov 13)

Focusing

This week’s reflection was shaped in part by the fact that our liturgy included our annual observance of Remembrance Sunday, in which we joined with the world in remembering the losses suffered by our community and by communities across the world, during the Great Wars of recent history.

 

It was also shaped by the same sensitivity to the news of our own day, that was articulated this week by Deborah Sokolove of Seekers Church, in her weekly post to the Inward/Outward Together blog of the Church Of Our Saviour in Washington, D.C:

Lately, the newspaper and the scripture readings seem to be interchangeable. When Jesus warns us* about wars and uprising, nations attacking one another, earthquakes, famines, and epidemics, I might as well be reading the front page of The Washington Post. War in Ukraine! Rising inflation! Political chaos! Police brutality! Racism! New strains of COVID! Half of Pakistan under water! Drought in Arizona, Colorado, and California! I know there is more, but I just cannot keep up with all the bad news from around the world, around the country, around my own city.

As if that were not enough, it seems like every time I open my email, text message, or voicemail, my personal prayer list gets longer and longer. Recently, every day or two I learn that someone I care about is in the hospital, a beloved relative of someone I am close to has a fatal diagnosis, a member of my community has died, or a friend confides in me about their child’s troubling behavior…Meanwhile, my spouse keeps travelling back and forth across the country to help out an ailing parent, and I am still recovering from my own recent surgery. I want to cry out, “It’s all too much, Jesus! I cannot handle any more bad news.”

And then, somehow, Jesus answers me, “Stand firm, and you will win life.” And it is enough. After all, the slanting sunlight of autumn casts purple shadows under a deep, blue sky, the tree in the front yard has become a collage of red and orange jewels, various friends and relatives are still in good health as they celebrate big birthdays, another friend has passed a full year after chemo with no sign of returning cancer, other friends regain the ability to walk after successful surgeries, yet other friends are being freed from the prison of addiction, my own children and grandchild are well and happy, and the sound of my spouse playing guitar while I write fills my heart with hope. There is still good news, if only I open my eyes to see and my ears to hear it.

What good news and bad news you carrying today?

What brings you to tears of despair or joy?

What brings you hope?

Reading:  John 11:20-32

In the Gospels, Jesus is close friends with a family of three who live in a town called Bethany – two sisters, Martha and Mary, and their brother, Lazarus.  He often stays with them, and they sometimes host meals where others come to see and spend time with Jesus.  At one point, Lazarus grows very ill, and Jesus hears about it.  Before Jesus gets there to see him, Lazarus dies and is buried.  Four days after the burial, Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, and we read of his arrival.

 

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.

“Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” 

 

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

 

Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

 

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 

 

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

 

After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. 

 

Mary arrived where Jesus was, and as soon as they saw him, she fell at his feet.  “Lord,” she said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

 

Reflection

 

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

 

For both Martha and Mary, life and death are the ultimate realities, and Jesus is the difference between them – the difference between living and dying.

 

But Jesus reframes the question for them.  Gives them a new and wider perspective.  He says, in effect, “Yes, life and death are real.  They are different, and the difference between them is real.  But they are not the ultimate realities.  All things, including life and death, are held in the hand of God and are gathered up together in God’s good will for new life, and in the fulness of God’s good purpose for the well-being of all.

 

“And the question,” he goes on to suggest, “ultimately, is not whether you live or die, but whether in your living and in your dying, you are living or dying in and towards the good will of God, and towards the well-being of all.”

 

 

Not a burial nor an interment of ashes goes by, if I am leading it, that does not include this reading from the Wisdom of Solomon, one of the Apocryphal books of The Bible:

 

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster
and their going from us to be their destruction,

but they are at peace.

I love the comfort and the hope in this passage.  It’s comforting to know that those who have died, are not lost.  And that even if their passing was unquiet, too soon, violent, or sad, on the other side of the veil they are at peace.  And, as the passage goes on to say, it’s not only the negative peace of being beyond conflict and sorrow, but also the positive peace they enjoy of their lives and spirits being gathered up by God to be part of the continuing unfolding of God’s good will, and of the eternally continuing revealing of the kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.”

 

That’s the faith that we’re called to, and that is meant to make a difference in the way we live.  And it can be hard.  It’s a challenge to live that kind of peace and hope in the world – maybe these days especially.

 

 

My son was telling me about his girlfriend – his partner, binge-watching seven episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale.  And told me that after learning this, he jokingly said to her, “So that’s why you’ve been so grumpy lately – so sad and snappy.” 

 

And why not? Watching a story of the re-emergence of a  right-wing, fundamentalist, religious nationalist takeover and oppression of a society is depressing.  As is, seeing and reading news of the continuing Russian assault on Ukraine, the rise of bully leaders around the world, the breakdown of civil discourse and democracy, the polarization of society, the breakdown of institutions that serve the common good, the dominance of greed over public good and even over the good of the planet. 

 

The time we live in can easily lead us

·        to dark places,

·        to angry and fearful places,

·        to violent and hateful places,

·        or to isolated and self-protective places …

·        unless one is somehow miraculously by nature optimistic and hopeful,

·        unless one is practiced in seeking out and finding glimmers of light in any darkness,

·        unless one honestly believes that the best part of humanity is never lost, always there somehow, waiting to be nurtured and encouraged,

·        unless one believes in God and in the persistence of God’s good will for the well-being of all,

·        unless one believes in the promise of resurrection and resurrection again and resurrection again beyond the limits of what we know as life and death …

·        so that all things – including ife and death, are gathered up in God’s eternal undying desire for the well-being of all.

 

And isn’t that what we’re called to?  Called to believe.  Called to choose.  And called to live out, and live towards.

 

We live between two ways of seeing the world.  Both in their own way, true.  Each, in its own way, leading us in a particular way of living and dying.

 

In one direction, in 1919 – the year after the First Great War, which thoroughly demoralized and broke the spirit of Western society, William Butler Years wrote a poem called, ironically, “The Second Coming:”

 

“mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

It’s a poem of despair.  A vision of death defeating and overthrowing life.  And of the hand of God being rendered useless – even worse, being used and mis-used by the worst of humanity to do and to justify their evil.  And the best doing little to stop it.  Letting themselves be ineffective and useless to make a difference.

 

And in a different direction, a different poem written in 1887 by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and published posthumously in 1918, titled ‘God’s Grandeur”:

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God…

[he writes … and even though at times it seems

that all God’s glory is lost, and that the goodness

breathed into the world is undone and gone forever]

…though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and

with ah! bright wings.

 

And the question is, which vision shall we live?  Live towards?  And live into?

 

Both are true.  But which is the whole truth by which we choose and allow our lives to be shaped?

 

We know the darkness of war – the losses suffered and sacrifices made.  We know the darknesses of our own time.  And shall we let them have the upper hand?  Rule the day?

 

Or shall we remember that all things are held in the hands of God, and in the end are weighed and measured according to the ultimate reality of God’s good will and God’s eternal desire for the well-being of all.  And that we have the capacity and the calling to live in and towards that vision – to be part of the rising, part of the eternal morning, part of the new dawning day after day and year after year of the Holy Spirit of God, that never stops brooding over the bent world with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

Are we not called in our own time and in whatever way -- no matter how big or little or somewhere in between, is available to us, like others before us in theirs, to let our life and death – all our living and our dying, be given to the coming of the light, to the challenging of the darkness, and to the doing of God’s good will for peace and for the well-being of all on earth?