PleaseGrace

I know people who will pick up a book and read the last page first because they can’t stand not to know how the story is going to end.  It’s not enough for them to be along for the ride.  They want to know how, when, and where the ride is going to end.  I have nothing against such people, I’m just not one of them.  I also know people who will pick up a book, read its first 10 pages, and put it back on the shelf saying the story just isn’t there.  It doesn’t grab them right off, and if it can’t do that, it’s not worth sticking with.  The book might still be a very good one, a prize winner even, but it’s not going to win a spot on their shelf, and I have nothing against them for saying so.  I’m just not one of them, either.

When I pick up a book I go cover to cover: Dedication, Table of Contents, Acknowledgments, right on through to any Epilogue or Author’s Biography.  In between it’s all page by page, paragraph by paragraph, one word at a time.  If my cup of coffee is especially large and hot and there’s no one to stop me, I might even check the publication date.  I’ll give any reader who skips right to the last page the benefit of the doubt that, finding the end to be excellent, they’ll flip back to the first page and give the whole book a fair trial. But having already discovered where the story is going to end, I simply wouldn’t find the rest of the book so marvelous.

This isn’t to say that every book is a good one.  As the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler once claimed, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”  I take this to mean that if the book doesn’t stir your conscience and cause you to love and hate, all at the same time; if it isn’t to you as it is to Madeline L’Engle, “a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe;” if it doesn’t, in the wisdom of Oscar Wilde, “make you to find beautiful meaning in beautiful things;” then I suppose the book may not be very good and that perhaps Charles Dickens was right to say, “There are books of which the backs and covers are the best parts.”  But such things should only be decided after you’ve read more than the first or last 10 pages.

For what it’s worth, my favorite books tell stories whose endings I didn’t see coming.  This is one such story.

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It was many years ago now on a Saturday morning.  The sky was bright blue.  I pulled up to Bernard’s house in my minivan and waited for him to come out.  At 9 a.m. he appeared looking like a Nike fashionista.  Sporting blue workout shorts with a bold neon green stripe down each leg, a solid navy blue tee-shirt with a matching cap, and a pair of white sneaks with the infamous Let’s Do It flash embroidered (also in blue) above the heels, he was poised to sweat it out in battle.  In a little less than an hour we would step to the starting line of Bernard’s first ever 5K road race.  But first he had to get in the passenger seat, which he did in the most human way possible.  “Looks good,” I assured him.  “You’re all lined up.”  With that, he bent forward and fell backwards, trusting that my words, and the seat, would not fail him.  I buckled him in.   

I’m sure that had I asked him in that moment if he had ever imagined himself pounding it over 3.2 miles—16,404 steps—of dismal pavement, surrounded only by dull scenery and 1,000 perfect strangers all mindlessly rushing past each other on their way to a finish line of free bananas, he would have told me straight up, “No.”  Maybe he would have taken to a slow stroll in the woods, freely stopping at will to lean on a rock and admire how crinkly the leaves sounded underfoot.  But a foot race?  Ludicrous!

Yet here we were, no less than 810 days from where it all began.  

On that day, 810 ago, Bernard was cruising his motorcycle along New England backroads at a mellow 40 m.p.h.  His iPod, safely perched on the dashboard, was blasting out Beethoven, because that’s how Bernard rolled on his Harley Davidson.  The sky, like another one soon to come, was bright and blue.  At 2:30 p.m., Bernard decided to turn the handlebars towards home.  What happened next—call it mystery, mayhem, only those who can look into the darkness and still see the light would call it mercy—is a memory only Bernard can recall, and he doesn’t.  With the force of someone who had just been sucker-punched to the head, Bernard tipped over.  Because there was no way to see it coming, there was also no way to protect himself from it, or from what was coming next.

The accident report, which no one saw much point in reading, suggested that when Bernard fell into the guardrail, the combination of his posture on the bike (which I’m sure was being maintained according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standards), along with his speed (which never went above the posted limit), angle, and the damn summer breeze blowing in from the east at that moment, all made for the perfect combination of mangled-up hash.

By the time we got to see him it was 9:00 p.m. the next day, 807days ago.  By then he’d already had both his arms sawed off.  His right leg looked like it had been twisted up by a tornado.  For all the blood his body had lost and for all the fluids he was being pumped with, he looked like a balloon ready to pop.  His neck, though broken, and his head, though dented in spots, had both been saved by his helmet.  In the morning, a short 8 hours from now, some of his intestines would be added to the spoils.  

“It has to be done,” the doctors told us. “It will save his life.”  

What we’re never told of course, because really, we already know this—how unavoidable this is, how unavoidably necessary this is, how unavoidably necessarily painful this is, so please don’t remind us again—is that our lives are never merely saved.  For every act of saving also requires an act of sacrifice.

806 days ago, 805 days ago, 804, 803…  For 65 days straight we went in and out of the hospital waiting room.  In the mornings we tuned into Regis and Kelly, who never failed to show up every day at 10 a.m. to keep us company for an hour.  In the afternoons we slumped over chairs in the corner.  Drifting in and out of our own listlessness, we were beckoned back to life only by the long-lost relative rifling through our pockets in search of another quarter to feed the vending machine with.  (It is one of the odd wonders of waiting rooms to be able to reduce everyone to immediate family.  A doctor walks in to give an update and they’re hard-pressed to figure out who the next of kin is.  Who is weeping?  Who appears the most stoic?  Who is everyone huddled around?  In the waiting room appearances can be deceiving, not to those who are waiting, because they all know who is who.  But what is the woman whose husband is presently getting a couple yards of digestive tract cut out of him doing letting his co-worker weep inconsolably on her shoulder?  Who is she, and who is he to be so grief-stricken?)  So it must be said that “we” doesn’t do much for describing exactly how many people flocked to the waiting room at first. 

After a while though, around day 780, maybe 779, could have been 769, most of us had to return to work and to cutting the grass and doing laundry.

It’s a bittersweet fact of life that most of us can endure a hospital waiting room for only so long.  Giving comfort and finding solace are among the noblest human ventures.  We stumble into the waiting room as strangers, stricken and lost in our own sea of questions, faith, and grief.  We’ve joined the huddle on the field but we don’t have the equipment or size necessary to keep us safe from the hits that are about to knock us flat.  We leave the huddle, however, and eventually the game entirely, as family.  We pat each other on the back and head for home believing that we used every play available to us in the book.  Come hell or high water, we must let ourselves sleep well tonight. 

The irony of course is that no one was working the plays harder than Bernard was, and yet he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, least of all to home.

A few people continued to hold-up at the hospital, and one in particular would go in and out—100 miles door-to-door—everyday.  755 days ago, 754, 753, 752…  

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The love of Bernard’s life is a woman named Gail. At the time of the accident they were not married.  That she was the one who had told Bernard years earlier that he deserved to buy himself that motorcycle, that I call her my mother-in-law, that she was the first one to the hospital every morning and the last to leave every night, should say it all.

A couple of us continued to drop by the waiting room whenever we could.  These were mostly women, friends of Gail’s from bygone days.  I never thought much about what they were doing there alongside Gail, what they might have whispered to her in the quiet of the dawn.  They knew Gail long before Gail knew Bernard.  Back when she was just a child and didn’t care about boys and tomorrow; back when she was working in retail, pinching her nickels and dimes and hitting the books at night with no time for a guy; back when she told them in sacred tone that she, she had met a man who turned her heart on.

“If Bernard doesn’t come out of this, you will,” they intoned.  It’s the kind of thing priests say just before they pour sacred water over the head of an infant to proclaim that, though barely alive, they are fully grown with love and all its possibilities.

What I knew of these women is that they always called ahead to the waiting room to see what they could bring for whoever was there.  A pizza, 6 coffees from Dunkin Donuts.  Like Mary and Martha carrying spices to Jesus’s tomb to embalm his body, to stave off the smell of death and make the pain of their loss feel just a bit less cruel, a couple BFFs continued to drop by the waiting room every day.

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732 days ago, 731, 730…   All the way through to day 701 we prayed without always knowing how or even why.   Do we pray for life, death, a greater good, a lesser evil, or just the right person to come along and decide for us?  Frederick Douglass once said, “I prayed for 20 years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”  He, of course, was talking about the wicked oppression of slavery and what can happen when we decide to free ourselves. 

After 200 days in rehab and doing all he could to make the old self work again, the insurance company told Bernard he was “good to go.”  Of course, that’s only how the rep who stopped by his room one morning put it.  Bernard was sipping coffee through a hard plastic straw when when a young man strode in looking like someone who’d been sent to announce the winning lottery numbers, only to realize the winner couldn’t reach for his wallet anymore.   “Good news, you get to go home.”  Translation: We trust you know where to find more straws.  

The truth was/is: Bernard had come a long way.  He’d figured out how to maneuver one mechanical arm, and was already working on a second.  He’d never be able to keep a spoon level enough to feed himself ice cream again, or be able to pull a shirt over his head, or reach up high enough to prune his beloved Japanese Maple, or feel the pulse of another person’s hand in his. “We can give you hands that look like hands but won’t ever do much for you, or we can give you hooks for hands that will allow you to grab a tissue and scratch your nose,” the arm mechanic said.  Bernard took the hooks. 

At 61, he was suddenly bruised, dented, disabled, and starting out again.  But 500 days ago, he drew his heels back as far as he could and heaved himself into a standing position at his kitchen counter. 

It had been almost a year since he looked around his house.  Before the accident, he was always looking around the house.  Checking every battery in the smoke detectors, changing them out before they even needed changing.  Patching up the tiniest knick of wood trim before it got any bigger.  Unraveling the hoses, then winding them back up into a perfect display of geometric symmetry.  In Bernard’s house, nothing was ever given a chance to become bruised, dented, or disabled.  Now, with one great exception, everything still looked the same.    

“I have to do this for myself,” he insisted.  Shuffling over to the bottom of the staircase, he looked up.   Stairs was one thing therapy hadn’t given him a ton of practice at, and the few stairs he had tried out were wide and short.  To get to bed every night, and to his straw of coffee every morning, he would have to balance himself up and down 14 narrow, tall steps.  “We don’t have to do everything right now,” I told him.  “Remember, we’re just here to check things out today.  We’re not staying the night.  You’ll be coming back.”

“We’ll see,” he said, as if looking to the steps to confirm his hope.

Lifting his right foot onto the first step, you could see the 8 inch surgical scar from where his shattered knee cap had been puzzled back together stretched out, spots of iodine still visible.  Raising his left foot up, he didn’t stop to rest it next to his right one.  Instinctively, he went straight for the second step, only to realize too late that he couldn’t stand on one foot for even a split-second.  Falling into the wall, he dropped to the steps like cheaply hung wallpaper.

How he managed to get himself back on his feet, I honestly don’t recall.  As other stumbles have since come to prove, it involves the loss and discovery of both dignity and gravity.  “I have to do this for myself.”  Whatever else this might come to mean, for the moment it meant that Gail and all the rest of us would have to let Bernard fall, and he would have to let us pick him back up.

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“Ready to go?”  The early morning sun caught the flash emblem on his cap, casting a glare onto the dashboard.  “Grampy, you’re shiny,” my daughter, Lillian, called out from the backseat.  All of 4 at the time, she and her younger brother, Rowan, were going to walk with us—no small feat for such small feet.     

It was now 9:08 a.m.  At the registration table, I picked up number 611 for Bernard.  “That’s a good sign,” he said as I pinned it on him. “Is 611 a significant number for you?” “Any number that isn’t 9-1-1 is a significant number.”  We both laughed.

9:50 a.m.  We stood at the back of a pack so large we couldn’t see the starting line up ahead.  “I want to start last.  That way I won’t get bumped or knocked over.  It doesn’t matter how long it takes to cross the finish line.”  Or the starting line, I thought. 

9:57, 9:58, 9:59…Bang!  In a matter of minutes, we were our own pack of 5. 

Anyone who has ever run a road race knows that each mile is marked by volunteers handing out Dixie Cups of water that you can grab on your way by.  It took us 24 minutes to reach the first table, where they were already closing up shop.  “You got this!” a woman shouted.  Suddenly seeing us, she pulled out a few cups and quickly filled them.  I took one and tipped it into Bernard’s mouth, pouring another one over his head.  Thinking that looked like great fun, Rowan took one and threw it at Bernard’s face.

At Mile Marker 2 there was no table, just some wet spots on the ground, already half-dried.  “I’m tired,” Lillian groaned.  “Can I have a turn in the stroller?”  We’d been walking for about 45 minutes and still had a mile to go.  I figured I could probably run all the way back to the car to get another stroller and still catch up with them before they reached the finish line.  “I’ll keep walking with Dad,” my wife said. 

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It was her idea to walk a 5K with Bernard in the first place.  Back in the ICU, over 800 days ago now, she had stood on the other side of the curtain from him reading a letter she wrote.  She absolutely hates hospitals—the alarms, the plastic bags hanging up and down, the smell of sanitization, the feeling of uncertainty in a place of protocols.  “Whatever you need to do, Dad, you go ahead and do it.  Fight, or don’t fight, it’s okay.  You will be okay.  We will be okay.”  They say a person’s sense of hearing is the last thing to go.  She aimed to test that theory.

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By the time we reached the last bend in the course, cars were back on the road, relegating us to the sidewalks and shoulders.  Up ahead, we could see the finish line.  The stop clock was frozen at 61:32.  They must have stopped counting when they figured the last person had crossed over.  Little did they know #611 was still out there.  When one of the race workers saw us coming, she put down the stack of tee-shirts she had been lifting into a box and began to clap.  A man who was built to look like he must have finished the race an hour ago came trotting out.  We were still about 100 yards away from whatever free bananas might still be left.  He had a cup of water in hand.  He went to give it to Bernard went he realized, Bernard had plastic arms!  “No thank you,” was all Bernard said.   

Soon, everyone who thought the race was over began to clap, as the trotting man kept trotting, now more jumping up and down.  “Look at this!  Look…at…this!” 

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I never crossed the finish line that day.  With about 50 feet to go, I stopped to let Bernard go on ahead alone.  ________________________________________

I don’t know how many days it’s been now since Bernard wore #611; so many that I’ve lost count.  Then, a couple days ago, Gail called me in the late evening to say that Bernard had taken another fall on the steps, and could I come over to help him up.  When I arrived at his house, he was sitting on the fourth step, looking his usual embarrassed self.  He had a raspberry patch on his forehead from where he hit the wall.  “You okay?” 

“Yep.”  

Back on his feet, Bernard wanted to head right back up the stairs.  “Hold on.  Let’s at least take a walk around the living room first to make sure you’ve got your balance.”  He didn’t want to, but I insisted we do it my way.

Watching him from behind as he headed up the stairs once more, I remembered what it was like seeing him cross the finish line that day in last place, from the back of the pack, and I realized that if he fell, I wouldn’t be able to stop him, or catch him.  In this way, life can be fragile.  Lucky us, it can also be brave.     

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We have 40 days. 
We should be able to do something with that. 
  
Old Noah bobbed
up and down in hell for that long. 
Carcass like driftwood sounding Morse code outside—
     —All has been killed here. 
  
When the sun shone again, even the giraffe had to
     step high not to knock over the
     piles of family trees now cut down
     to debris. 
  
Who gets off in a world like that? 
58,000 names on a sloping wall. 
20 children to 1 gunman. 
  
Still,
the old man walks down the plank. 
When we’ve had
     enough,
     start something new. 
We have 40 days. 
  
Let us go into the wilderness where
God wants to take us. 
Learn to trust in what we cannot
earn.  God will be our shepherd who
feeds us, and
  
our daily bread, God’s daily word. 
  
Throw down the weapons that defend
and define.  Be known as those
who have come through the waters carrying in our
hands a towel and basin, and
  
upon our backs, a cross. 
  
In the wilderness, there is only one
  Beloved Community to which
  all belong. 
Let us be a people who
walk together. 

We will
 starve ourselves of hatred.  And
 feast on love.  Sacrifice
 power for humility. 
 Look out over the world and call it
 our temple of service. 
  
Let us go into the wilderness. 
 

Ash Wednesday.  What does the name mean to you?  If you didn’t know that on this day, millions of Christians around the world—from Catholics to Protestants, Baptists to Episcopalians, Rhode Island to Russia—put ashes on their foreheads in the sign of the cross to remind ourselves that we belong to the God who through death gives life, what would you think this day is all about? 

Two words: ash and Wednesday.  Ash is the image of gray, of black.  It is color without being colorful.  It is what’s left over after the fire.  After the house and everything we have loved and worked our whole life for is burned up. 

After the cigarette we’ve been dragging on all day long—to distract ourselves, to calm ourselves, to keep ourselves from having to deal with what’s hard—after we’ve run out of easier and better options, ash is what’s left. 

After this life is over, at 5 or 95, and our last breath has escaped us, and the friends and family gather around to sum us up in eulogy and song, and the preacher says, “Into your hands, Almighty God, we commend your servant,” ash is the part of us that gets lowered into the ground, or spread to the wind. 

Ash is what remains of us when nothing else does.  When all the identifying markers have rotted to bone, and bone has deteriorated beyond recognition, ash is that part of us that goes out into the ether, and becomes one again with the earth. 

Wednesday is that day of the week we work so hard to get to, and then to get over. Hump Day.  It’s not the beginning, or the end. It’s just, the middle.  It’s not Sunday or Monday—full of newness and possibility. Nor is it Friday—full of relief and completion.  It’s just Wednesday.  To make it even less significant, less wanting, today we call it Ash Wednesday.

It shouldn’t surprise us, perhaps, to discover that the setting for Ash Wednesday is the wilderness.  For like Wednesdays, the wilderness is just out there, in the middle somewhere.  People who find themselves in a wilderness will struggle to know which way they came from, or which way they are going.  The land can look vast, empty, and desolate, with few signs of life, and no road signs to follow.  Whatever regrets we have about the past are just that. We can’t go back now.  We’ll have to deal.  Should I turn to the left or to the right? Which way is north, and which way south?  Stuck in nowhere land, we sit down in the only seat available—the ground itself—to think about who we are, and what we’re becoming. 

The ground, of course, is the place of our ending.  It’s the ash heap. And yet, the fact that we are here, that we are still pulsing, tells us that we are not ended, and the ash heap may be good for more than just endings.  It may also be good for beginning again.

So sit down today. Right where you are. On the ground. The same and only ground everyone else has to sit on. Sit deep. Feel the cold, hard ash of the earth. Know the embrace of God our Maker. And give thanks that this is the place, and this is the time, and this is the stuff of our redemption. 

My brother’s initials are J.W.P.  He is a junior, which means my father’s initials are also J.W.P.  The “W” stands for Woodfin.  It’s a family name—originally a last name—from my paternal grandmother’s side.  Back in the late 1800s the Woodfin’s settled in Marblehead, Massachusetts, an old whaling town on the beautiful Northshore that ends where the ocean begins.

Admittedly, Woodfin is a peculiar name, and when my brother was in college down south, his roommates spared no mercy in poking some fun at it, calling him everything from Woody to Woodster.  But my brother, proud of his heritage and his namesake, wore Woodfin like a badge of honor, promising his roommates that one day he would take them north to Marblehead, and show them the street named after his family, the street called Woodfin.

Well, a couple summers after they all were out of college, he got his chance when his roommates came to visit.  Woody wasted no time.  On their first day in town, he took them to Nick’s Roast Beef in Beverly, to Singing Sands Beach in Manchester-By-The-Sea, and ultimately to Marblehead.  Now it’s important for you to know that my brother had never actually seen the street in Marblehead named Woodfin. As a family, we’d been to Marblehead a bunch, and he’d heard it was there, but he’d never actually seen it himself. So, rolling into Marblehead on Route 114 that day, his audience still not convinced by his claim, he was relieved to find on the map “Woodfin Terrace.”

“See, I told you it’s a real place.  And it’s a terrace. Not a street, not even a lane, but a terrace.  Only beautiful things are named terrace.  And it’s a dead-end,” he added.  “Probably a nice little neighborhood.”

A couple more turns, a bend in the road, and the moment of truth had arrived.  There it was, a sign that said, “Woodfin Terrace: Welcome to the Town Dump.”

We are confronted in this season by a most unexpected sign.  We set out several weeks ago—some of us—from our homes.  We took to the stores and malls in search of Christmas.  From there, we R.S.V.P.’d to a couple holiday parties—one work party and one with the cousins from the side of the family we never see anymore.  A couple nights we stayed in and tried to do nothing.  We watched Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We sent-off a few cards, made a few phone calls, got back in touch with some friends we wish we’d never lost touch with.  Some of us even found the courage to reach out yet one-more-year-in-a-row to those people who never seem to reach back.  We stopped off and bought a tree.  We got one for Grandma too, because she told us she wasn’t going to decorate this year and we decided that’s just not right.  When we delivered the tree, we bought her some homemade cookies.  We gave some to the neighbors and our kids’ teachers at school as well.

It’s been a long few weeks.  We’ve packed a lot in and gotten a lot done, and for some of us it’s made us feel a lot closer to Christmas.  For others of us, we don’t feel like we’ve gotten anywhere.  Despite our best efforts, the Christmas spirit just never seemed to come this year.  It’s felt like a dead-end terrace.  Then, a couple nights ago we came across a most unexpected sign (where were we again when we saw the sign?): “To you is born this day a savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  Well that’s not so bad, we told ourselves.  Actually, it looks pretty good.  “And this shall be a sign to you: a child wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.”  On second thought, maybe not so good.

In a world that has become as hard and cruel as ours, it’s not exactly a sign of relief. It doesn’t quite read: “And Here You Shall Find Peace on Earth.”  A child wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger—but where’s the knight in shining armor?  Where’s the seasoned politician who can unlock the gridlock between parties?  Where’s the miracle-worker who can cure our cancer, mend our broken relationships, and build that better world we’ve been wanting for our children?

Why does Christmas insist on giving us the same one sign year-after-year: a child wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.

One of my favorite Christmas carols has to be “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear:” O ye beneath life’s crushing load / Whose forms are bending low / Who toil along the   climbing way / With painful steps and slow / Look, now, for glad and golden hours / Come swiftly on the wing / Oh rest beside the weary road / And hear the angels sing.

Some of us have come a long way to get to get to where we are.  Like those prophets and dreamers of old, we’ve traveled many miles, if not along the road than in our hearts.  We’ve heard God say, “You are favored, you are holy, and I’m coming to lift you up,” and we want to believe it’s true.  But the signs all point to a dead-end.  Others of us feel like we’ve been parked at a dead-end forever.  But here we are, stuck all together in this season, unable to speed up or slow down.   With Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds and the angels, and that pesky innkeeper who was maybe just too tired to open the door and squeeze yet one more person in, may we be discovered in that place where all signs point to a child wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.  For what a good sign it is: a baby, a new-born, opening his sleepy eyes to the world.  In his lifetime, he’ll grow  exhausted in body and spirit.  He’ll touch pain and be touched back, and all to heal and redeem.  But for now he comes simply as a sign that something is different in the world today.  At the end of the dead-end street, where things go to die, life is beginning again.  In the cold darkness of night, something is creeping in: light.  Beside the weary road, you can hear the angels sing.

For the blessing of mothers everywhere, we bless you.

For you who like a mother feeds the earth with rain and sunshine, who gives the sparrow a home, we praise you.

For you who like a mother endures the joyful pain of bringing forth new life, who gives life to redeem life, we love you.

For your mothering spirit that weeps when we weep, rejoices when we rejoice, disciplines us when we go a wrong way, and runs from the front porch to welcome us back always with open arms, we come to you.

For all who have known the loss of a mother, for mothers who have known the loss of children, for women who have had motherhood thrust upon them, for women who have wanted but for some reason could not have, for women who have loved in ways no mother perhaps ever has, we pray to you.

For all who have lived with a disappointment and hurt of motherhood so deep that it has led to rage and fear, heal us and help us to forgive.

For your children who woke up today in a world that feels absent of a mother’s touch, because there is no food to eat, no shelter big enough to hide the sound of bombs, no money with which to see a doctor, no one to teach them what other children are getting to learn,  we work for your justice.

For all who have no day to call their own, no day that speaks their worth and tells their story, may we know who we are in you—holy, blessed, and loved, Amen.

My wife and 7-year old daughter are sitting at the kitchen table right now reviewing worksheets that my daughter brought home from 2^nd grade today.  My daughter loves school.  Part of the reason for it may be that it seems to come pretty easy to her.  I don’t say that to brag, like she’s Will Hunting kind of smart.  I also don’t mean to say that she doesn’t work really hard.  She does.  But she really loves learning and exploring and discovering.  She’ll sit in her bed at night and just write about whatever.  In the middle of July she happily does math sheets.  All this to say, school is not hard for her, which means it’s not hard for us either.  Except on Monday nights when she brings home her work from the previous week and my wife, a 4^th grade school teacher, gets to asking her a few questions about why she didn’t capitalize the P in Pennsylvania, or why when the question says to give two facts about deserts, she gives only one followed by an op-ed piece about deserts.  Lately, this exercise in detail always results in my daughter bursting out into some kind of hysterical crying that is followed by ridiculous comments. A couple minutes ago I heard her say (while panting!) to my wife, “Why are you mad at me?  I had a sub last Tuesday!  She didn’t give us very good instructions!”  To which my wife of course said, “Honey, no one is mad at you.  I just asked you to correct this sentence so you’ll know how to get it right the next time.”  But I can tell my wife’s cool calmness isn’t working as hoped for.  My daughter is ramped up a particular level of adolescent ecstasy tonight.  Right now she is asking to have a minute to herself in her bedroom, to “gather my emotions,” she just told my wife.  “No, sit down and stop crying about this.  You don’t need to go to your room.”  This will go on for another 5 minutes at least.  My wife telling her to simply fix her p; my daughter telling her mother she doesn’t know why she’s mad at her and she needs to be alone; my wife telling her she’s overreacting, she’s not leaving the kitchen, it’s just a p.   I could walk out there from my spot here in the bedroom and tell them both that I think they need a break from one another, but that seems neither wise nor helpful.

I don’t know but I think what’s going down in my kitchen right now is the stuff covenants are made of.  As young as my daughter is and as old as my wife is, they both know that neither of them gets to decide on their own how this is going to end.  This isn’t a contract.  They didn’t agree on anything before it all started.  They got into it by virtue of one being the mother and the other, well, being her mother’s daughter.  On the one hand, my wife has experience enough to know that second grade worksheets aren’t going to do any permanent damage to their relationship.  My wife has already decided that no matter how much my daughter cries and says she wants to walk away, my wife is never going to walk away from her.  What my daughter doesn’t know of course is that this unrelenting love is her saving grace.  My wife isn’t feeling personally injured by any of this.  And yet my wife is feeling deeply pained for my daughter and what she doesn’t know how to let go of.  There is an absolute autonomy that can only be reconciled by an absolute mutuality—an agreement that even though they don’t know how to work this out, and even though they don’t actually know what it is that they are trying to work out, they will work it out, because their relationship not only depends upon them doing so, their relationship is defined by them doing so.

It’s too early still to tell how it will end but like all covenants its ending will simply be its beginning again.  Like going to church in search of answers and someone offers to show you to the nursery where the children are sitting on the floor happily passing Cheerios and making sure everyone has just 5.  Who convinced them that 5 is enough?  Such is the wonder of sacrament.  Tonight it may be a warm bath or a shared plate of cookies.  Hugs, that holiest of incarnations where parent and child get close enough to touch each other’s skin and wounds, will also be passed around.  And surely they will ordain one another all over again.  They will issue statements about how special and blessed the other person is.  They will say, you have a gift, you are a gift, you are my gift.  And finally, my daughter will no doubt fall asleep in bed next to her mother tonight.  She’ll stay there until I pick her up and move her into her own bed, from which she’ll get up tomorrow morning, happy to eat breakfast at the same table where her mother loved her the night before.

Do you remember what it was like to be on that hillside?  It was a perfect spot—that hillside—not unlike the spot you may be sitting in now.  Rather quiet and a little removed from everything.

The plot goes that Jesus and his disciples had just come off a long week of ministry.  They were due for some R&R and had to take a boat across a lake to get to that hillside.  Poor Jesus, he had recently received news that his cousin John the Baptist had been executed by King Herod for the crime of publically calling out the king.  It had been discovered that Herod was having an affair.  John said it was shameful and abusive, even for a king.  So, sad, grieving, and emotionally spent, a little time under the sun on a lonely hillside would be just the ticket for Jesus and his disciples.

Except when Jesus and his disciples get to that hillside, there are 5,000 or more people gathered about waiting for them.  And the people are hungry.  Not hungry for a mid-morning snack. I mean, forced to pick scraps-from-the-trash-for-days hungry.  And Jesus, turning to the disciples—tired, worn down and looking for the closest exit—tells them, “You give these people something to eat.”   But how could they?  All they had on hand were a few loaves of bread and a couple fish, and they were pretty hungry themselves.  Feed the crowd and they’ll never go away.  Don’t feed them and…they’ll never go away.

In such situations, is there really a good next move?

And Jesus says, “Give me what you got.”  And taking their bits of bread and fish he blesses it and breaks it and gives it to the disciples, as if to say, this much you can always do.

The crowds had more than their fill that day on the hillside.  So much bread and fish that there were basketfuls of leftovers.  And with that Jesus wastes no time in telling the disciples to get back in the boat.  Maybe Jesus knew that if they stuck around for too long, the crowds would start asking for dessert.  Maybe he just wanted to finish what he’d started that day.  He had set out to find a quiet spot to recharge and dang if he wasn’t going to find one still.  Whatever the case, immediately he makes the disciples set sail for the other side of the lake while he hangs back to break up the crowd.  This is, perhaps, the most curious feature of the story, that having arrived on the hillside with the disciples, Jesus does not leave with them.

For just before getting to the hillside, we’re told that Jesus and the disciples have gotten into a boat and sailed across the lake in an effort to get away from the crowd.  So why does Jesus now stay with the crowd?

You know, crowds can be exciting, if they’re not wanting something, and did you ever meet a crowd that didn’t want something?  With Jesus there was always a crowd, and so he must also have known that crowds can be dangerous.  You can get accustomed to the popularity, to people always looking to you to lead them, to heal them…to feed them.  It can feel good to be needed, until one night you’re lying in bed and you can’t fall asleep on your own.

There’s a story that almost every candidate for president tells about being out on the campaign trail.  Crisscrossing the country, the days are long and the nights are short.  If you make 3 stops a day, you make 4.  If you make 4, you make 5.  On and off planes and podiums all day long.  Glad-handing everyone, trying not to make too much of this person or too little of that one.  It can be exhausting, and invariably, at some point, when the candidate has lost track of where they are and which number stop it is, they will turn to some aide or to their spouse and ask the question: who am I, and why is what we are doing here important again?

And maybe this is why Jesus put the disciples back in the boat and shoved them off back across the lake without him.  He’d brought them across the lake and up the hill to get away from the crowds, but the crowds found them anyway.  And though at first the disciples didn’t want the bother of the crowds, when they discovered they could give the crowd what the crowd wanted, and that the crowd kind of liked them for it, they suddenly didn’t mind the crowd so much.  I can imagine one disciple saying to another disciple, “Look at them all.  They’re huge.  And they love us.”  And that was Jesus’s cue to get them the hell out of there.

Meanwhile, Jesus, who is seen as having no attachment to crowds, hikes himself further up the hillside to be alone and to pray, which is exactly what you would do if you needed to remember who you are and what’s important—you’d talk to your father.  So, with no crowds to drown out the silence Jesus just sits and listens.  The disciples on the other hand are now out in the middle of the lake rowing against the wind and getting nowhere.  Despite the fact that they are fishermen and that they were feeling pretty good about themselves when they got into the boat, that was 9 or 10 hours ago.  Now they’re overtired, underfed, and they’re not sure their sleepy eyes aren’t playing tricks on them when they see a figure walking (walking!) across the top of the water and coming towards them.  In fear they cry out, it’s a ghost!  But Jesus assures them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.

What we are talking about, really, is power and who holds it.  We have seen—once again—a great deal made of power recently.  Our newsfeeds and Facebook pages have been overwhelmed with images of power, of power against power, of some people carrying torches, wearing the white hoods of the KKK, and chanting White Lives Matter and “We will not be replaced by the Jews,” and others carrying signs that read No to White Supremacy and Black Lives Matter, while clergy link arms in the street.  There has been death in Charlottesville by those who would drive a car into a crowd and come bearing torches.  I have no answer to racism except to say that this is not power, at least not by any definition offered us by Jesus.

I think it’s worth noting that when the disciples first see someone going by their boat, walking on water, they are afraid without knowing what they are afraid of.  Is it Jesus?  Is it a ghost?

“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Take heart.

If we would overcome our fear and be truly powerful, we must dig deep within ourselves and consider the way of our hearts.  We must be honest about the prejudices and sins that live there, that we put there, that we allowed others to put there.  Because I am a person accustomed to privilege, which means that even if I tell myself I am accustomed to equality, I still have a long-ways to go.

How long?

“Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water,” says just one (just one?) disciple.

If the first step towards being powerful is to take heart, the second step must be to get out of the boat.  To move towards the thing that you fear.  To believe that the thing isn’t a thing at all, but a person.  Not an enemy.  Not a ghost.  Not an object to be handled.  But a person, with a heart just like me and you.

Of course, we can’t see one another if we are wearing hoods.  This is the thing that I am beginning to understand about people who carry torches and wear hoods over their heads.  They’re not afraid of seeing you.  They’re afraid of you seeing them.  Sure, they don’t mind being seeing as part of the crowd, because as the old saying goes, there’s strength in numbers.  But not always.  Sometimes the crowd is only a cover-up, a protection for our fear and cowardice.

My reader, I would give you a little power to carry with you  today, to carry into this world where terrible and beautiful things can happen.  It’s not my power.  It belongs to the one who walks openly upon the waves, who dares to be seen.  The one who hangs naked upon a cross, dying to save the very ones who put him there.  The One who says, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

 

 

It starts out as a story so old and familiar that we almost don’t need to have it read for us.  Someone is sick.  We’re not told how sick they are.  Maybe no one knows.  Maybe no one wants to say.  We know this person who is sick, though not very well.  It’s more that we know their family.  His sister is your best childhood friend.  You go way back with her—Friday night sleep overs, birthday parties, graduation, and everywhere you turned her brother was always there.  Pesky, but also incredibly sweet at times.

Then one day your best friend calls to say that her brother—you remember him, she says, pesky but incredibly sweet at times—he is sick.  Can you come, she asks you?

Now for some of us the decision is easy.  We don’t even need to ask just how sick he is or how long he is expected to live.  We won’t even bother to check our available time-off.  We hop the next train or plane and we’re there.  But for others of us, including Jesus apparently, the decision is more complicated.  For the familiar story goes that after hearing that his friend Lazarus is sick, Jesus stays two days longer where he is.

(And this is where the story starts to sound less familiar to us.)

Can anyone say for sure why Jesus doesn’t hop on the first camel he can find to get to Lazarus?  As readers, we are often given more information about what’s going on in a story than are those who had to live out the story, and this can cause us to forget certain things, like how it must have come across to Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha, when they heard, “Yeah, about Jesus, he’s not coming.”

Jesus says, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  But Mary and Martha don’t hear him say this, and even the disciples who do hear him say this, they don’t get it.  They figure it’s just the kind of thing someone says when they want to make you feel like things aren’t as bad as they seem.

I’ve often wondered, though, if Jesus didn’t know exactly how bad things were for Lazarus, but he just didn’t like hospital waiting rooms.  Nothing ever seems to happen in waiting rooms. “I’d prefer to stay busy.  Call me or come get me when you’ve got more news.”  Maybe that was Jesus.  We can be so hard on the ones who don’t drop everything to come, except maybe Jesus knew there’s something even worse than death: Despair.  Empty living.  Despair is worse than death. 

So, Jesus doesn’t rush to get to Lazarus.  Even though Mary and Martha have asked him to come, telling him in no uncertain terms, it would mean a lot to us if you would come, Jesus holds out for two days until, on the third day, he announces to his disciples in a manner so unnerved,  “Lazarus is dead.”  Then, this, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.  But let us go to him.”

And we can hear the grumblings, the disappointment.  “Now?  Jesus, you’ve known for two days that Lazarus was sick and on the brink.  But when you could have done something to comfort him and the sisters, you did nothing!  And now that he’s dead you expect us to believe you and to go with you?”

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Stop reading and take a look around.  What appears to be on the brink to you these days?  What are you afraid of losing, of having to let go of and never getting back?  Or maybe it’s something or someone that is already lost.  Something you’d bring back if you could but right now it just feels dead to you.  A job?  The feeling of security that comes from having a job?  An important friendship or a connection to a piece of your past?  Maybe you’re expecting a baby and as thrilling as that is, you’re afraid of losing your independence and quiet time, and it’s got you feeling like you’re teetering on the edge.  Maybe your children are grown and getting ready to head out the door and you’re feeling like less of a mom or dad these days.  You know who your children are becoming.  You just don’t know who you’re becoming.

What feels like it’s on the brink for you?  Who or what are you barely hanging on to?

Collectively I believe we must do more than to acknowledge only the personal right now.  We must also speak of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are flooding the streets out of Nigeria and South Sudan and Syria today, fleeing because their countries and governments are no longer safe.  And we must speak of the children in South African and also in south Chicago who are living on the edge, children who will go to bed tonight without any food to eat.  And we must speak of young boys being lost to gangs and young girls being lost to trafficking, and the prisoner sitting on death row who does not know the love or mercy of God.

When Mary and Martha send word to Jesus about Lazarus they feel the need to remind him, “Lord, it’s he whom you love.”  What a curious thing to say.  Doesn’t Jesus know he loves Lazarus?  Don’t the sisters know it?   I’m sure they do.  Maybe it’s them though, maybe it’s Mary and Martha who haven’t felt the love of God in so long.  Caring for their brother night and day, everyone else just assumes he’s being taken care of.  But who’s taking care of Mary and Martha?  Jesus, we’re on the brink, they say.  Can you come?

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It’s worth noting that among the disciples there was one who didn’t grumble and act all disappointed with Jesus when Lazarus died.  It was Thomas.  That’s right.  The one who would later come to be branded a doubter for not believing that Jesus has been raised from the dead—he said he needed to see to believe—he’s the only who, for the moment, gets that there are worse things than death: Despair.  Despair is worse than death.  And so, upon hearing that Lazarus has died, Thomas, believing that Jesus must still be up to something good, tells his fellow disciples, “Let us go die with him.”

I probably don’t need to tell you how the story ends.  It is a well-known ending.  On his way to see Lazarus Jesus finds out that Lazarus has been dead and in the grave for four days already.  Martha comes out to meet him first, followed by Mary.  Both women tell him the same thing.  “Lord, had you been here my brother would not have died.”

“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus tells Martha.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Martha responds.  “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

And Jesus hits her with those most famous words of his, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”

Then, turning to the crowds who have come out with Mary and Martha, he asks, “Where have you laid him?”

“Come and see,” they direct him.

The story writer notes that up until now Jesus has not cried.  Not upon hearing that Lazarus is sick or dead, nor upon seeing his sisters’ sorrow.  But upon realizing the crowds are never going to believe in what they cannot see, Jesus weeps.  That unless they can see Lazarus alive again, they are never going to believe in God’s power to heal or to give life.  And because Jesus desperately wants us to believe in life at all costs, he goes and stands before Lazarus’s tomb and cries, “Lazarus, come out!”  And Lazarus does.

Now my question has always been, did Lazarus want to?  Knowing especially that he would have to die again someday, did Lazarus want to come back to life?  Upon hearing Jesus say, come on out of there, did he sit inside his tomb for a while mulling it over?  The Bible’s final chapter tells us that in the celestial city there will be neither pain nor sadness nor crying anymore.  Doesn’t sound like any place I’d ever want to leave.  Then again, Lazarus didn’t have much time to get used to being there.  Just four days.  When he comes out of his tomb, he’s still wrapped in his grave clothes.  Is that how it works?  We come out on the other side much the same way we went in?  I do believe the addict gets to come out clean on the other side, and the abused child no longer has to lie down in fear.  But does the paraplegic get his limbs back in heaven?  Will the person who had Alzheimer’s remember again?  Will each of us get to be our own best version of ourselves again someday?  We’re told that when Jesus himself came back from the other side, you could still see the marks from the nails that had killed him.  I wonder if he liked himself that way.

Not too long ago a friend put me on to the writings of Amy Julia Becker, who writes mostly about her daughter Penny and what it’s been like to raise a child who has Down Syndrome.  Most recently she wrote an article in which she bravely and honestly takes on the question, “Would I cure her if I could?”  She says,

Learning how to accommodate people with disabilities…is a crucial act in expanding our definition of humanity and of recognizing the common good that comes from policies and practices of love and inclusion rather than conformity and exclusion.  I used to worry that I would compare Penny to myself and find her lacking.  Now I either find our points of commonality—her love of reading, her hesitance in large groups, her difficulty expressing negative emotions—or I see the ways I want to learn from her.  I see her contented hard work—trying for two years to muster the courage and strength to do the monkey bars, practicing one song on the piano 10 times over without banging the keys from frustration (as I used to do), practicing math problems day in and day out without protest. I see her willingness to forgive.  I see the pleasure she receives from a cheeseburger, or a moment side by side on the couch, or an invitation to dance with her dad.  I no longer want Penny to be like me.  In so many ways, I want to be like her.[1]

I don’t know how it’s all going to look in the end.  I do think that if the story of Lazarus and Jesus and Penny is true, and I do believe it is, then it means we don’t have to wait to get someplace else before something good can happen.  For today, after four days in the ground, Jesus is calling Lazarus back into this world.  “Lazarus, come out!”  Could it be?  Yes, there it is!  New life even on this side of eternity.

 

Sunday’s Sermon, April 2, 2017

[1] By Amy Julia Becker, “My daughter has Down Syndrome.  Would I ‘cure’ her if I could?”  Published on Vox.com, 8/3/16.

If I’ve heard it said once I’ve heard it said a thousand times: “No, it isn’t right.”  I heard it just this morning when standing at my kitchen sink.  My hands deep in a pot of soapy water, trying to scrape off the pasta from last night’s dinner, which should have been dumped into the trash 14 hours ago, because now it was stuck dry and crusty to our good pot.  But I wasn’t going to do it.  No, no, I told myself.  She—she being my wife—she said she’d take care of it.  It isn’t right that she didn’t.  I get that it’s just a pot of pasta.  I get that a little boy in her class at school found out three days ago that his dad—his dad that has never really come around since the day his son was born, but his dad that the little boy still wished upon the stars for every night—his dad was murdered.  And that’s not right.  Standing at the sink I tried to remember that it’s only Wednesday and already the week must feel like an eternity for that little boy, and for his teacher, my wife.  Standing at the sink I tried to remember just what isn’t right, and why it was better that my wife fell asleep early last night while reading bedtime stories to our son and before she could get back to that pot in the sink.  But I swear this happens every time we eat pasta.

Down the hall from where I stood in the kitchen, I heard my daughter let out a loud grunt—ugh—followed by an instant sob.  It was crazy hair day in the 1^st grade today.  Poor Lillian though, her hair is so fine and straight that crazy is hard to do.  And besides, her mom had already left for work and she was stuck with me.

“Can you just put my hair into a bunch of ponytails,” she asked me?

“Absolutely,” I assured her.

So I started to brush this way and that until I had about 8 ponytails coming off her head in every direction.

She looked in the mirror and began to cry again.  “It isn’t right,” she exclaimed.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her.  “It’s crazy hair day.  What’s not right on a day like today?”

“You.  You’re not right.  You don’t know what you’re doing!”

I felt sad for her and mad at her at the same time.  “No, I don’t know what I’m doing.  But I’m trying.”

I was practically crying now too.  “Of course it’s not right.  But what’s right?”

Her younger brother, all of 5, in preschool and a bit of a swindler, had his own answer to my question.  “Maybe we should just all stay home from school today.”  Like what could be more right.

No, it isn’t right.  But what’s right?  I think this is the question we are stuck with on this day of days.  Because we all want to be right.  Presidents want to be right and news reporters want to be right, and protesters want to be right and protesters of the protesters want to be right, and preachers want to be right, and little girls want their hair to be right, and parents want to do right by their children.  And for all of this we have come to know the one thing that can be known, which is that we can’t all be right.  Not if we continue to insist upon playing, each of us, by our own rules.  Not if the best we can come up with is a choice between a pot of day old pasta and showing mercy to those we love.  In a world of petty competition and flimsy ideals, not everyone, and maybe no one, can be right, which is just another way of saying, we need to find another way.  So please, would someone please tell me there is another way.

There is.  It is the way of dust and ashes.  On this day of days we often hear read the story of God at creation, of how God chose to make the first human being from the dust of the earth.  “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” 

Not out of gold or silver.  Nor out of some ivory tower with lots of knowledge in our heads.  Not out of a great mansion that we might be wealthy masters.  Nor out of some cotton field that we might have to know ourselves to be poor slaves.  But out of the dusty ground God raised us up to life and human dignity.

It’s a story that would come to be repeated by Jesus himself many thousand years later, when he wanders out to find John the Baptist in the desert by the Jordan River, to have John pour the water of God’s anointing over his head.  But the story goes that when John sees Jesus standing in line with everyone else, John tells him, This isn’t right.  What wrongs have you done?  What do you need to come clean of?  And John tries to tell Jesus to switch places with him, to have Jesus do the baptizing.  But Jesus tells John, No, this is right.  It is right that I should stand with the sinners.  It is right that I should be counted among the least, and be alongside the sick and those who can’t afford to pay for a doctor.  It is right that I should know what it’s like to be with the hungry, to wait in the breadline.  For I am dust, and you are dust, and it is right that I should bear the mark of God’s blessing with everyone else.

So, on this day of days it is not necessary that any of us be right.  It is only necessary that we believe we can be made right.  And for that all we need do is to get in line beside each other and confess that we are, each of us—no more and no less than anybody else—the beautiful, precious, God breathing dust of new creation.