During Marine field training at Parris
Island, South Carolina, a drill instructor threw a pinecone among the recruits
and yelled, "Grenade!" The trainees immediately turned away and hit
the ground. "Just as I suspected," chided the drill instructor.
"Not a hero among you. Didn't anyone want to jump on that grenade to save
the others?"
A little later, the DI again threw a pinecone.
This time, all of the recruits but one jumped on the "grenade."
"Why," demanded the instructor, "are you still standing there?"
"Sir," the recruit replied,
"someone had to live to tell about it."[1]
Holy Nativity has experienced some very
difficult times. You may feel heroic, having survived something equivalent to,
or even worse than, a grenade attack. Importantly, you have survived,
individually and as a parish and school. So, what is the story you have lived
to tell? This morning's gospel reading,[2]
Jesus' prayer for his disciples, suggests that our story as Christians has at
least three parts.
First, Jesus prays that God's love for him
may also be in his disciples. That is, he seeks the gift of God's love for us,
a lesson analogous to the Maine Corps' ethos of always taking care of your
Marines.
Suicide rates in the United States, and in
other affluent countries, are rising. Part of the explanation is opioid abuse,
which frequently begins with prescription painkillers that may or may not
relieve a person's real discomfort or disease. Research repeatedly shows that
money, beyond an annual income of about $72,000 in this country, and
possessions do not make people happy. What's more important in determining
happiness than income is a person's perception of her/his wealth compared to that
of peers. Economic inequality is expanding the gap between the top 1% and the
rest of us. Lastly, the real, enduring source of happiness is spiritual health.
However, participation in religious communities is declining while the number
of persons who self-identify as spiritual but not religious is growing. Generally,
this group lacks both spiritual depth and a clear path for developing spiritual
depth and health.
Episcopal priest Bob Libby learned that a
parishioner named Sally whom he had never seen at the Church was hospitalized.
Nevertheless, he followed his usual practice of visiting the sick. The duty nurse
paused awkwardly before directing him to Sally's room. It was a semi-private
room with the curtain drawn between the beds. When he asked the woman in the
first bed, which was surrounded by flowers, if she was Sally, the woman pointed
to the other bed. There he saw a woman who appeared to be in her mid-50s, with
an IV in her arm, staring at the curtain. Fr Bob started to introduce himself,
but she rudely interrupted demanding to see the nurse while complaining that
she had been paging the nurse for fifteen minutes and that nobody ever came. So
Bob, telling Sally where he was going, went to the nurse's station and relayed
her message. While Bob waited at the nurse's station for a nurse to return from
checking on Sally, the another nurse, who had rolled her eyes at his relaying
Sally's request, explained that Sally constantly paged the nurses and complained
incessantly about the hospital, her treatment, her family, and her life.
When the nurse returned from Sally's room
and assured him that everything was ok, Fr Bob went to see Sally. True to form,
she complained about the hospital, her treatment, her family, and her life. During
subsequent visits, he heard an unending tale of woe and misery. When he
inquired about bringing her Holy Communion, she declined. His visits seemed to
produce no beneficial effects nor did they appear to contribute to his
establishing a helpful pastoral relationship with Sally. So, Fr Bob found
himself looking for excuses not to visit Sally and feeling like the visits were
an unwelcome chore.
One day, he surprisingly discovered Sally in
a better mood. She asked if he could bring communion; startled, he agreed. On
his next visit, when he returned to celebrate Holy Communion, at the Lord's
Prayer, she and her roommate held hands. Following the service, the rest of the
story came out. One evening, whether out of compassion or self-defense, Sally's
new roommate had reached out to Sally and said, "It's time to be quiet
now. Let's hold hands and say the Lord's Prayer before going to sleep." Through
that simple gesture, which incarnated God's compassion in a stranger, healing
came to Sally. Her attitude about herself, her family, and her life changed.[3]
This is Jesus' prayer for us.
Second, Jesus prays for our unity, that we may be one, even as he and
God are one. Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, speaking to the bishops
assembled for the last Lambeth Conference, in the midst of intense conflict
over decisions by the US Episcopal Church to ordain openly gay persons and to
bless same sex marriages, conflict more acrimonious and bitter than anything
Holy Nativity has experienced, said:
Our unity is not mutual forbearance but being summoned and drawn into
the same place before the Father's throne… that's the unity which is
inseparable from truth. It's broken not when we simply disagree but when we
stop being able to see in each other the same kind of conviction of being
called by an authoritative voice into a place where none of us has an automatic
right to stand.[4]
Christian unity does not require that we
agree with one another. Christian unity does require that we respect one
another, for each of us is God's child made in God's image.
Third, the passage presumes that each
generation of disciples will continue to attract new disciples, i.e., Jesus
prays not only for his disciples but also for those who will become disciples
because of the witness of his current disciples. This morning's first reading,[5]
like much of the Book of Acts, records the faithful witness of the early
Church.
Remember the story about the Marine recruit with which I began this
sermon: someone has to live to tell the story. We are that someone. As St.
Francis famously said, Preach the gospel always, and, if necessary, use words.
A pastor tells of making a hospital visit. The hospital seemed unusually
quiet as he made his way down the hall to visit a church member who had
suffered a stroke. After knocking on the door, he entered the room and before
he spoke, the daughter said, "Daddy, guess who has come to see you?"
He immediately replied, "It's my preacher." The daughter, surprised
at his accuracy, asked, "How did you know that?" The father simply
replied, "I know that walk."[6]
Christianity is not so much a set of beliefs as the trajectory of a
person’s life. Is your life aiming toward loving God and others?
The Spirit and the bride say,
"Come."
And let everyone who hears say,
"Come."
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life
as a gift.[7] Amen.
George M.
Clifford, III
Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 8, 2016
Church of the Holy Nativity
Honolulu, HI
[1] Nellie A.
Pennella, "Humor in Uniform," Reader's
Digest, November 1994, p. 126.
[2] John
17:20-26.
[3] Bob
Libby, Grace Happens (Cambridge, MA:
Cowley, 1994), pp. 55-59.
[4] Rowan
Williams, http://www.lambethconference.org/daily/news.cfm/2008/8/3/ACNS4511
quoted in Charles F. Raven, Shadow
Gospel: Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion Crisis (Oxford, UK:
Latimer Trust, 2010), p. 137.
[5] Acts
16:16-34.
[6] David M. Hughes,
"Drop Everything!" in Following
Jesus, ed. W. H. Gloer (Macon, GA: Smythe & Helwys Publishing, 1994).
[7]
Revelation 22:17.
No comments:
Post a Comment