SunMay82011
Scripture: LUKE 24:13-35
I know it’s Mother’s Day, but I want to tell you a little this morning of what I remember about my father. I remember the shape of his long fingers. The fact that he didn’t like to have his neck touched. The way he chewed his milk. The way he could gently tease: Mary was hanging his coat up one day; when it fell to the floor, he yelled, to anyone who could hear, “Mary’s throwing my clothes around.” Few days go by that I don’t miss him.
What’s so hard about death—and it’s almost too obvious to be stated—is that the body we loved is no longer present, the self we knew is no longer accessible. We miss the walks we took, the laughs we shared, maybe even the arguments we had. We miss the richness of the person who’s gone, and we wonder how we’re going to hang onto them, how we’re going to keep them present.
This is not unlike the problem the first disciples had when Jesus died. They had learned from him, shared bread and wine with him, discussed with him, worshiped with him. They knew him, they depended on him. And then he was gone. Killed. Buried. Erased.
So imagine what it must have been like to be walking along a familiar road—think Bell St. perhaps—two days after he had been buried. You’re mired in grief, shocked at how quickly everything has fallen apart, wondering what’s to become of you and your friends now that your leader’s gone. A stranger joins you on your walk, and you get to fill him in on all that’s happened in the last few days. As you get to your house, he indicates that he’s continuing on. You realize how dark it’s getting, though, and invite him to stay the night. And then, as you unburden yourself and share a simple supper together—some salmon and fresh beans, maybe—you suddenly know, without the slightest doubt, that this person is the one you’ve lost. In some strange way, he’s still there.
So this morning, I thought we might reflect on what it is that conveys the presence of the risen Christ to us as we go through our days. And I’m going to do so by means of reflecting on three dimensions of our current and recent lives. My presumption, and the church’s presumption, is that the Spirit of God hovers over and around us at every moment, and, as people of faith, our work is to discern that presence as best we can. That’s the first presumption. The second is that, as with those two long-ago disciples walking along the road to Emmaus, it’s not always easy to recognize the Holy One who walks with us
So first: how do we perceive the risen Christ walking with us in the dominant news story of the last week, the killing, this past Sunday evening (our time), of Osama bin Laden? From my perspective, it’s not as easy or clear as we might first assume. My own first reaction to his shooting—and I didn’t get the news until I had seen page one of Monday’s Plain Dealer—was “Yes! They finally got him.” He had been a poison in the world’s life for far too long. What a liberating moment!
As I began to watch TV news accounts, though, I began to squirm, because some of the reaction I saw seemed too exuberant. I admired the President’s restrained announcement of the night before: no dancing on graves there. But the party atmosphere of some of the celebrations seemed excessively gleeful to me. And when I saw photos of the front pages of two of New York’s daily newspapers, I began to sense the problem. The New York Post said “Vengeance at Last.” And the entire front page of the New York Daily News was taken up by three words: “Rot in Hell.” Is it really vengeance and rotting in hell that we’re after? Or, as I see it, is it something more like justice that we seek?
Two generations ago, one of the greatest of recent Christian theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr, reflected at length on the proper role of Christians in the midst of ethical quandaries. He was known for his notion of “Christian realism.” Niebuhr virtually sneered at idealists who advocated what they considered to be “pure” moral stances. Niebuhr knew evil’s power and believed it was paramount that Christians counter it. He argued vehemently with his more pacifist brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, contending that a pacifist stance simply lets evil go unchecked. Reinhold believed that evil needs to be vigorously countered.
At the same time, he was also hyper-aware of the tendency we all have to believe ourselves to be superior, and not to see our own faults. So Niebuhr prodded us to a kind of humility. Yes, we need to oppose evil, but always with a keen sense that in opposing that evil, we may well fall prey to the same evils we are opposing.
Using Niebuhr’s model, I would say that, from the standpoint of a Christian realist, an appropriate response to the terrorism of Osama bin Laden is to snuff it out. I don’t believe that a blithely idealistic approach to Osama—something along the lines of “if we could just talk to him, if we’d just love him, then maybe we could all get along”—would be an adequate way of derailing his brand of relentless evil. So, yes, perhaps killing him was the right thing to do.
I say that not gleefully, though, but with more like a restrained sense of necessity, because as long as killing is the solution, we fall short of the glory of God. I think some idealism needs to always to temper and shape our realism. New York City Fire Chief Peter Ganci was one of 343 firefighters killed when the twin towers fell on 9/11. At a ceremonial remembrance this week at Ground Zero, his son Christopher, himself a firefighter, said, “You stand there and it’s a constant reminder of pain.” And while he appreciated that bin Laden had finally met his just end, he added, “I gotta say, it’s bittersweet. You never want to wish, you never want to cheer for death” (The Plain Dealer, May 6, 2011, p. A6).
I think Christopher Ganci captures the ambivalence perfectly. Yes, it’s good that we’re rid of such a scourge as Osama, but no, it’s not something to rejoice over. Jim Wallis, the founder and editor of Sojourners, said the same thing in a blog entry this week. He acknowledged relief that the “apostle of hate” was now gone, but added, “It is never a Christian response to celebrate the death of another human being” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/how-should-we-respond-to-bin-laden-death_b_856548.html). Jonathan Merritt, a writer on faith and culture, agrees. Relief, rather than celebration, is the most appropriate response, in his eyes. He quotes from the prophet Ezekiel: “As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek. 33:11; http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/current-events/op-ed-blog/25463-should-christians-celebrate-the-death-of-osama-bin-laden).
I understand, I think, why such celebrations proliferated. We Americans have felt, for some time, as though we’re living in a kind of nightmare. The brutal attack of 9/11 made us feel vulnerable in a way we hadn’t for a long time or perhaps ever. For at least the last decade, the American psyche has felt deeply wounded. So when a palpable victory comes along, the overwhelming desire is to celebrate it. We need always to ask ourselves, though, whether our reactions are appropriate to the moment, and whether they’re true to Jesus.
So when we take a step back and ask where it is that the risen Christ walks with us in this chapter of our national journey, it seems to me we gratefully acknowledge that a force for evil has been quelled. We express relief that such a prolifically malevolent leader has been stopped, and with such little collateral damage. At the same time, though, if we listen carefully, we hear the voice of that Christ saying “That, by itself, is not enough,” a voice calling us to a renewed desire to make peace, to “break down the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14), and to quell the inequalities that continue to stalk our world. Christ always tempers our realism with a nudge to confess, and a push to seek a better way. With that full and nuanced voice, I think, we see Christ walking with us this week.
Now let’s shift gears entirely—we probably should have a series of 30-second ads or a little dish of sorbet to mark a new course. A mere two days before the killing of Osama, as you may remember, there was a wedding of some note. Prince William married Kate Middleton in the “wedding of the century” at Westminster Abbey in London. And what a “do” it was. A stunning couple, an equally fetching best man and maid of honor—I think I have a little thing for Pippa Middleton after seeing her in that gorgeous dress she wore!—a beautiful service, and pomp and circumstance as only the British can do: it all made for a striking celebration.
In the sermon delivered by John Chartres, the Bishop of London, he memorably said, “Every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.” What a captivating way to see the marriages and partnerships—from this standpoint, we’d say it’s not just heterosexual marriages—into which we enter—each as a royal occasion, because God watches over them all. Maybe that’s the way we’re invited to look at all our families—as royal processions of regal beauty.
As Niebuhr reminded us earlier, of course, we always have to be realists. Some marriages were simply not meant to be: there would be little point in preserving them. And even in the marriages that are meant to be, we’re going to be hounded by arguments and different ways of looking at things. We’re going to differ about where to vacation, how to raise our children, what work we’re to do, how chores should be parceled out, and on and on.
At the same time, though, every marriage, and every partnership, has about it a royal cast. Or to put it in terms of our scripture story this morning, every marriage has holy Christ walking in its midst. What would it be like if those were the eyes with which we looked at our spouses and partners and families?
On the day Mary and I were married, almost twenty-four years ago, my mother and father officiated at the service. Shortly before the service was to begin, my mother walked into the room in which Mary was getting ready. Mary’s parents were there, as well as her wedding party. My mother said aloud, “Have you ever seen such a beautiful bride?” And without missing a beat, Mary’s father said, “Just once.” In that moment, and even until this day, he saw in his wife of now almost sixty years a deep beauty that captivated and entranced him, and to which he has been committed ever since. And in that moment, and in all such moments, we say, the risen Christ walks and enchants.
And lastly, what of this Mother’s Day? You may know the story of the little girl who was sitting one day watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. Suddenly she noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast to her brunette hair. She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, “Mom, why are some of your hairs white?” Her mother replied, “Well every time you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white.” The little girl thought about this revelation for a moment, and finally asked, “Momma, how come all of Grandma’s hairs are white?”
Mothering, and fathering, are humbling experiences. So it behooves us to look for the risen Christ walking with us on the journey. Here, too, we come back to the observation of the Bishop of London: each relationship between parent and child, no matter how troubled, no matter how challenging, has about it a royal tint.
So on this day when we celebrate mothers and motherhood, when we honor the family as the locus of so much richness, may we look with the eyes that see royalty everywhere. May we look with the eyes that see the risen Christ walking in our midst. May we never forget that God blesses each moment with grace and peace. And may we bless each other with radiance and love.