ALL SAINTS CHURCH

Some themes seem so foreign to life in New York City.  I am not sure I have ever actually seen a shepherd, except maybe on television and even then, I don’t have any recollection or impression.  Maybe the closest thing is the western cattle herder, like Clint Eastwood on Rawhide or more recently Brokeback Mountain.  The closest analogy I see is the traffic cops who direct cars around the mess of the 59th st. bridge.  I don’t know what a story about The Good Rustler or Traffic Cop would elicit in the current reader.  It might be a surprisingly good one.  The thing that gets my attention in the story is the phrase, “My sheep hear my voice.”  To me there is a real connection between  the speaker and the hearer.  There is not only a message but also a sender and a receiver who are united by the message.  An analogy between the two is established.  When I speak and you hear and understand it means that at least in that particular situation we have a common experience and enough of a common existence that we know something important about each other.  The idea that Jesus’ sheep hear his voice, speaks to me about the common humanity and common divinity that we share with Jesus and each other.  I think this is more than just an intellectual curiosity but represents the core of the gospel that the Kingdom of God is at hand and that our spiritual quests are not in vain but are intrinsic to our very nature.  Maybe there are good traffic cops, and ideally we all understand their signals and keep moving smoothly.  What a concept.

Of course we know how to complete this sentence.  Economically and politically there seems to be a lot of truth in this bon mot from FDR’s inauguration speech from 1933.  But in fact fear dominates our lives and is especially heightened when the violence at the heart of our species comes so close to home, as in the horribly gruesome massacre in Blacksburg. It is my opinion that that which is always just under the surface gets activated by these capricious and cold-blooded acts.

Does our faith give us a response that means anything?  I think so.  It seems that frequently when Jesus appears to his disciples in the midst of a crisis, the first thing he says is, “Do not be afraid.”  

This begs the question, “Why would they have been afraid of him?”  Obviously there was surprise, but do we think that he looked like a monster or a ghoul? In this case, one might imagine him saying, “Don’t be alarmed, but three days in the grave plays havoc with one’s complexion.” Or could it just be the reaction anytime we find ourselves in the presence of the deity.  We imagine that there is an angry God and that this God has come back to exact vengeance upon us.  Furthermore, we imagine that this God is angry, because we have had the audacity to try to live our lives as we have seen fit, which sometimes means cutting corners and cutting some people out, even cutting out this angry God .  We also imagine that God is angry with us because so many bad things happen so often and it must be God’s wrath and from there we interpolate our deserving behavior.

At our core, I think, we are afraid that our lives will be declared null and void, one big ‘Whoops.’  We are afraid that in snuffing out our lives that we will be relegated to the junk heap of oblivion.  All the work, all the loves, all the memories will all be lost like a crashed hard drive.  We see death as the confirmation of our meaninglessness.  We are afraid because we suspect that after all the shopping and all the meals and dishes, that when the Real One enters we will find out that we are superfluous.  

When Jesus comes into that upper room, and says don’t be afraid, he is saying that we have misinterpreted death and in so doing life too.  Death is not the end of the story; it is not God’s final word on our existence.  As we remember Jesus in the Eucharist, so God remembers each one of us on earth as in heaven.  With the advent of the risen Christ, Christians assert perfect love has come to cast out fear.  This life finds meaning when we find a God who is not angry, but who actually loves us in all of our vanity and yet tells us not to be afraid.  We can choose not to be afraid by finding perfect love, which is the eternal presence of the deity in every breath of every life.   Christians find the eternal in the Risen Christ, who accepted his mortality and thereby puts a lie to the hegemony of fear.  When we accept this Christ, we are both accepting our mortality while at the same time rejecting the meaninglessness of death.  Being surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses we press on.

This is the first blog I have written since Easter.  I managed to resist the Imus uproar (although, for the record, I am glad he was fired and only regret that it took corporate America so long to find their conscience…. seems they left it in their wallets).  Now of course, every thoughtful clergyperson is spinning gears frantically trying to explain why a good God could allow such evil.  However, that is not the topic of this reflection.  

What I am concerned about here is the common humanity we share.  If we share vicariously in Jesus’ death and resurrection; If we bear each other’s joys and sorrows; If we are able to say, “There but by the grace of God…” Then we know that the horrible, unimaginable evil that coursed through Cho Seung-hui mind and body is not so far away from us.   It is easy to blame God.  It is still easier to point out the deficiencies of religious explanations.  It is easy to be angry at Cho Seung-hui and at dangerously misguided gun legislation and the incompetence of authorities.

But all of these standard and understandable responses only help to deflect direct apprehension of the proximity of evil to our human condition. Just as Jesus was ‘one of us,’ so too was Cho Seung-hui one of us.  Not that we should worship the gunman, but we should recognize he ate with us, he drank with us, he breathed the same air and walked on the same ground.  He had a human mother and father and he survived a long time trying to fit in.  

I know that what I am saying is upsetting.  But as long as we choose to see these incarnations of evil as some kind of alien aberration, we miss a chance to understand something important about ourselves.  In our deep sadness, in our moral outrage, in our God-blaming cries for deliverance, we need to understand that the evil is not just out there.  We all participate; we are all in need of healing and redemption.  We all have plenty of the primitive extant in our souls.  I John says, “If we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us.”  

In our shock and horror (and believe me, I feel as raw and vulnerable and angry as anybody short of those immediately impacted), I hope that we will not choose to see evil as exclusively someone else’s problem.  I hope that we will not simply look for better laws and tighter security (which I believe we need).  But my hope is that we can use our shock and outrage to learn something profound about ourselves, our world and what it might really take to find redemption.  It certainly won’t come from denial, disowning and projecting the problem out there.  

More needs to be said, so I hope you will feel free to write your thoughts and opinions, to either challenge or develop the above.  I sense that a lot of us need to talk and share a lot more.

This is title of a Paul Simon song, circa 1973, from the album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.”  My question is, “Can things on the outside be going poorly, while on the inside you know, it’s something so right?” Today is Maundy Thursday and the Church remembers Jesus’ last supper with the disciples, where he washes their feet and gives them a new commandment, i.e to love one another.  By so many standards his life was in complete chaos and ruin. External forces were conspiring to end his life and even friends could not be trusted.  And yet one senses a quiet force of dignity and grace in this meal.  All was to be worthwhile if people could experience the freeing power of God’s love for and from each other.  

Remember the ad?  It expressed the idea that something recorded could be so realistic that it would fool your senses.  Could it be that something from the past could be represented so realistically that it could make us think that it was currently present?  Would we be wrong or could it be that for a moment that the past was present?

When I listen to Maria Callas or John Lennon or Billie Holiday (representing three of my favorite genres) I imagine them there in the room, alive again, bringing their emotion and unique perspectives to the music.  Of course in my thoughts are the feelings and friends I had when I first heard this music.  So it could be said that in a sense I have been transported to another space and time.  If someone walked into the room and silently observed me, they might interrupt and say, “Steve, where were you?” Is it real, are they really there?  It seems the answer becomes more yes than no.

We all have similar experiences at the movies, or when gazing at photo albums.  Do you ever meet an old friend after several years and instantly feel like it’s only been a day?

We were taught that there are two kinds of time, chronos and kairos.  The former can be measured by clocks and calendars; the latter is eternal or God’s time.   We move back and forth between these two experiences.  In God’s time, events from our past, personal or collective, can be made present and there is no clock or calendar.  We enter a realm where all is eternally present. Music, emotion and prayer access this realm.  It surprises us and shakes us out of our daily routine. It creates depth and perspective.  It’s what scripture means when it says, a thousand years is like a day to the Lord.  It’s what our prayer book means when it says as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. 

Tonight when we celebrate the Eucharist, we will remember that Last Supper and the words of institution.  We will do this, in remembrance of Jesus.  And when we break the bread, we will say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” We will take something that by our time happened a long time ago and make it real for us in the here and now,  more real even than the best analog recording. 

Please join us this Holy Week: See the full schedule on oour web page 

http://allsaintsnyc.org/

Tonight’s 6:30 Agape Dinner followed by a movie, should be a really nice informal evening.