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Proper
14
Year A RCL |
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Track 1
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I want to begin by
wrapping up a thought I introduced last week.
Last week, I mentioned in
my sermon that the narrative we hear in the gospel lessons for last week and
this week take place within a day of Jesus’ life. Not only that, it is the day on which Jesus
hears about the death of his cousin John the Baptist at the hands of a cruel
man seeking to preserve his own reputation—Herod.
Last week we heard about
the feeding of the five thousand men, besides women and children. But recall how it began: We are told that upon hearing the news of
John’s death, Jesus withdrew in a boat to a
deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on
foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw the crowd and went about the
work of healing and feeding.
Jesus
finds his time interrupted, and while he was gracious, this week, Jesus is more
forceful:
Jesus made
the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.
We all know that moment, or at least we have
retrospectively recognized those moments, when we are dismissed by
someone. Sometimes it happens
graciously; sometimes not. Still Jesus does so, and for the second time in 24
hours, Jesus is making it clear that he needs to be alone.
He was
trying to get time to himself. I believe
that, in his humanity, he was trying to come to terms with grief.
The experience of grief,
and its own way of overwhelming us, is universal to the human experience, even
as it is expressed in a myriad of different ways. One way in which we experience grief is to
sometimes sense within ourselves a constriction of our empathy toward
others. It is almost a sense of pulling
back from identifying with the plight of others, as though we do not have the
emotional and relational reserves to handle the chances and changes of
another’s life in addition to our own. Another
way we experience grief—which I think may be more common because of the way in
which we order modern society—is to find ourselves having to act as though
grief is not a large part our life, and we seem to go through the weeks and
months following a loss as the walking wounded.
Sometimes it shows to others, sometimes it does not. We go to work, we spend time with friends, we
perform any number of tasks, as we also try to put our lives back
together. The work of grief takes a
significant amount of labor on our part, even with God’s help, work that might
be invisible to the rest of the world.
And if I am honest, I
relate with Jesus more in this story than in many others. In a recent experience of grief, I found it
necessary to take significant time to be alone.
I felt as though my mental capabilities were cut in half and clouded. It took longer to do tasks. I cut social engagements when I felt like I
needed to. It took time to discover what
the new normal would look like.
Jesus still manages to do
great things for people, but it seems to me that the fatigue he might be
feeling propels him to be alone with God in prayer.
It does not take long
before our attention is brought again to the works of power that Jesus performs
in his ministry, but I suggest it is equally important to note these pauses
Jesus had to take. In Jesus’ own times
of need and solitude, we see what full divinity looks like when it is dwelling
in full humanity. And, at least to me,
Jesus’ experience seems utterly familiar.
Perhaps it does to you, too.
Yesterday, actually, was
personally a day of such pauses in grief.
This sermon came in fits and false starts even up to a few hours ago.
I have been watching the
increasingly terrible situation in Iraq for the past few weeks, which this week
truly took a turn for the worst as Islamic militants with the group known as
ISIS began the systematic slaughter of Christians, other religious minorities,
and Muslims who do not agree with them.
ISIS has posted videos of the executions to the web, as well as some
pictures, which are truly horrifying.
You know which of the victims are Christian because, after their
execution, the bodies were hung on makeshift crosses. Families
who fled the cities after being given the ultimatum to convert, pay a special
tax, or be executed, are
stranded in the wilderness and dying of thirst and hunger. Some families are reported to have thrown
their children off a mountain to their deaths to save them from either dying
slowly of dehydration or from being beheaded. The Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, Andrew White,
reports that a child he baptized was
cut in half by members of ISIS.
[This article addresses the question of “what can
we do?” The article contains links for donations to relief organizations, to
which I’d add the Foundation for Relief and
Reconciliation in the Middle East.]
Add to Iraq the long list
of tragic or frightening world events that occupy our thoughts and news
feeds. Israel and Gaza. Refugee children at our border—not to forget the
children who did not escape the violence in their homeland. Ukraine and Russia. South Sudan.
There are others. All of these
take a toll, and are then added to our own list of private tragedies and
hardships.
It is no wonder that so
many of us experience a type of burnout on compassion. It is no wonder that we sometimes find apathy
a preferable option.
And when I speak to people
it seems like I’m hearing that faith can be kept—at least in terms of
believing—but where is hope?
It seems like it’s one
thing to have enough faith to get out of the boat and walk on water—but what do
we do when we do not know how long we have to walk before we meet Jesus’ hand
in a way we will recognize?
And it’s one thing to want
to talk about Peter walking on water, but what do we do when one’s view of the
world seems more attuned to the plight of Joseph at the bottom of a pit.
It is somewhat difficult
to tease apart hope and faith.
And yet while hope seems
to be talked about less often, Hope does
something, the same way that faith and love do.
And over this week I have
been thinking about the difference between hope in the Christian sense and
optimism. It seems paradoxical, but I
find myself hopeful even though I will not call myself an optimist.
Optimism is defined as hopefulness
and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. So far that could match the Christian hope in
a very broad sense. But there is also
the optimistic principle that we live in the best of all possible worlds. To my
ears, optimism seems to remain focused on the conduct of this fallen world,
which will often disappoint us.
Christian hope is something different.
The catechism in the Book of Common Prayer notes that the Christian hope “is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the
coming of Christ in glory, and
the completion of God's purpose for the world.”
Hope in this sense takes a
longer view, beyond this world, and fixes our hope in the consummation of God’s
purpose and the reckoning that comes with it, instead of seating hope in the
here and now, where both justice and love seem so easily thwarted.
It is a common criticism of Christianity that says that
believers are led to care too much about the afterlife at the expense of the
work Christ has given us to do in caring for others. I agree with this critique. As MLK said "Any religion that purports to care about the
souls of men but doesn't care about the social conditions that damn him or the
economic conditions that strangle him is a moribund religion awaiting
burial." In talking about hope in
such a final sense—attuned to the notion that we are heading to a decisive End
that we do not yet see—I do not mean that Christians should return to a state
of simply waiting on God to fix things on our behalf.
Yet to
undercut any conversation about the purpose to which we are moving does not
serve us well. We lose the long view God
has given us as the hope for our world.
If we lose that, we lose one of the grandest proclamations we have that
undergirds much of the optimism we find in this world.
There will be times when
our optimism will line up with the Christian hope. And there will be times when our optimism is
dashed because it does not hold a view as expansive as the hope we have in
Christ—and the world will thwart our best expectations. I suggest that we would be well-served to
learn how to discern the difference and hold fast to hope and faith in God
instead of a lesser vision and short-term goal—still always acting in
accordance to our hope in Christ and seeking the Good that God puts before us
to enact.
In that way, perhaps waves
and strong winds of this world may appear less frightening, and our grief and
frustration find expression through a God who understands our own need for
comfort. And so we too can walk these
stormy waters, seeking the hand of Christ who beckons us forward.
Amen.
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