| Listen to this from poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns." One commentator has suggested that the two great opposing poles that stretch our disciplines and strengths are the poles of wonder and suffering. Wonder and suffering.
It's pretty easy to affirm the experience of God and the growth of our connection with the Divine when we live in some circumstance of wonder. The beauty of a child asleep, the sound of a mountain brook, the refrain of music that touches the heart, a silence too deep for words. Yet, over and over in my life, and in the stories I am told, it is the crucible of suffering that also produces profound connection with the Divine, even as the horror of suffering creates possibly the greatest challenge to faith in a God we are told is supposed to be kind and loving.
"Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles (of wonder and suffering), because inside human beings is where God learns." It is a poetic image of the cross, where God wondrously absorbs all human evil and suffering. From that great stretching, comes new life, resurrection.
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As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!" Then Jesus asked him, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down."
Former Arkansas priest Stuart Hoke was serving as the executive assistant to the Rector at Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street in New York City, just a few yards from the World Trade Center. When the first plane hit the north tower, he ran to the church, put on a cassock and surplice, ran to the pulpit and began reading prayers. People started coming inside the church in droves. So there they were, reading prayers, scripture, singing hymns. Until the first tower collapsed. People screamed and jumped under the pews. All the lights went off. The place was filled with smoke and debris. Stuart said they all thought they were certainly going to die.
When the noise was over, he said to the congregation, "Now it's time for you to stand and sing the second verse." They all laughed. And they sang, as they waited to die together. "Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles (of wonder and suffering), because inside human beings is where God learns."
As he watched the second tower collapse, Stuart felt as if his own interior had collapsed. Later, he realized it was his defenses that had collapsed. In the months following the tragedy, he felt so vulnerable. Vulnerable and cracked open. All sorts of things came up from inside him -- a lot of grief, a lot of urgency about relationships, a lot of affections for people and the need to go out and tell them that he loves them, but also to go up to them and say, "Do you love me?" He said that's something new for him to do. It is a lot of risk-taking. What one person called pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Stuart said, "We've had to hold each other's souls for hour upon hour and just let whatever emerge, emerge." (From the 2002 Trinity Institute, "How Then Must We Live?" -- http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/institute/content/conference/2002/?parks)
Many of you remember our friend Fred Burnham's visit to St. Paul's earlier this year as one of our McMichael Series Lecturers. Fred was in a different part of the Trinity Church complex that day, planning a television filming with about thirty spiritual leaders from around the world, including then Archbishop of Canterbury elect Rowan Williams. Twice he was certain that they would all die. Escape seemed all but impossible.
Fred said he discovered two things that morning. First, he discovered he was not afraid to die. That surprised him. He didn't know that about himself. Knowing he was not afraid to die, Fred experienced great freedom from anxieties, from concern about self, about the future, even about survival. The second discovery was that he loved all of the people around him. He experienced an inseparable bond between himself and the others who were with him that day. Then that love expanded universally. During the terrifying hours of the morning of September 11, he realized that he loved all humanity, he loved all of this living, pulsating alive planet.
The first of our readings today imagines Michael the great archangel coming to protect in a time of unparalleled anguish and unparalleled enlightenment. In our Gospel reading, Jesus has conversation with his disciples in the presence of what some regarded as the most awe-inspiring structure in the Roman world, the rebuilt Jerusalem Temple of Herod the Great. How strange and frightening his words must have sounded. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down." It would seem impossible to imagine.
When we were in school in New York, Kathy and I would always take out-of-town visitors for a drink at Windows on the World the bar at the top of the World Trade Center. Such an amazing and wonderful view of the world's greatest city. It's all so hard to imagine.
Yet Jesus says, "Do not be alarmed." The Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce. The World Trade Center fell just over five years ago. Out of each event came spiritual fire -- the dispersion of Jewish and Christian energy throughout the Roman Empire; the experience of unity with a great city in a worldwide outpouring of compassion and empathy.
Whenever we are stretched between the two great opposing poles of suffering and wonder, "Do not be alarmed." These are the birthpangs of resurrection.
Life in the church will be filled with wonder and suffering. Two weeks ago amidst the baptisms of beautiful children and the joyful All Saints hymns and liturgy,this place was a filled with joy and wonder and happiness. Last Sunday a beloved friend and patriarch was dying, and the sadness of loss and suffering and death was palpable. As a congregation we were stretched between the two great opposing poles of wonder and suffering
"Do not be alarmed."
The Whidbey Institute conducted a study over a ten-year period of over one-hundred remarkable people. They studied people who are able to sustain commitment to the common good in significant ways over time -- the people we often look to as models of compassion and sacrifice. The study discovered that every one of the one-hundred subjects had something in common. Every one of them, each of them, somewhere, someplace, sometime had experienced a constructive or a transforming encounter with otherness. Here's what they mean by that. Each of these one-hundred people who can sustain commitment to the common good had a significant encounter with some one or some group from another tribe. And, they explain, tribe exists wherever we would tolerate for them what we would not tolerate for our own. Let me say that again. Tribe exists wherever we would tolerate for them what we would not tolerate for our own. Each one of these remarkable people experienced the suffering of the other. But not just the suffering, also the longing or the joy or the wonder that create common ground among us all. They discovered an empathetic response to the wonder and suffering of someone from another tribe, and that experience transformed them into people living with a commitment to the common good, rather than just a commitment to me and mine.
I think that is an important perspective, because it is not inevitable that people will respond to suffering and wonder with their fears released and their compassion enlarged. Fred Burnham also told us of others who felt haunted and afraid, freezing the trauma behind a wall of fear. Sometimes behind such walls angers are born which can be the birthpangs of hatred and even violence. This planet risks being blown apart by the angry hostilities of people who turn their suffering into sectarian violence. "Beware that no one leads you astray," says Jesus. "Do not be alarmed."
We can be a fearless people, released from the anxiety of self-concern and even survival. We can be a people whose love expands universally. We can be so vulnerable and cracked open that we can risk love rather than wars and rumors of war. We can discover our empathetic response to the wonder and suffering of someone from another tribe, and be transformed into people living with a commitment to the common good, rather than just a commitment to me and mine.
That's what comes out of the wonder and suffering of the cross. It is resurrection. It is new life. It is what God does best.
"Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles (of wonder and suffering), because inside human beings is where God learns." |
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