One more week has passed in the course of human history since we last came together. Like most other weeks in human history, this one has been peppered by joys and sorrows. One of the more public tragedies this week has been the slaying of four police officers in Oakland. I don’t know whether you could bear to read the stories of these young men, but they all seemed to be very special. The thought that society has lost them at such young ages brings heartache. If this is so for those of us who did not know them, consider how their friends and families must be grieving. And there is another face to this tragedy. The man in his 20’s who was responsible for the shootings was himself slain. He must have been an adorable baby. Most all babies are, even the awkward ones. Someone, if only Heaven, must have had hopes for him on the day of his birth. But some combination of things broken in his world and in himself led to this ending.
If tragedy was only in the news we could avoid it by turning off the tube and covering our ears. But tragedy comes up close despite all best efforts. This week I was in an Emergency Room and encountered a husband with two daughters, ages 11 years and 7 months. They had just learned that the mother of these children arrived at the Emergency Room dead after a freak accident, having lost her footing. In a flash, this 7-month old became a motherless child. Something similar has touched many of your lives.
Where are the angels when such things happen? Where are the angels the crowd heard in today’s Gospel when such things happen? Where is God’s voice clapping like thunder when such things happen? God called all being into existence with the power of divine voice. Why isn’t that voice intervening in these stories?
A member of this parish once made a profound comment that I keep coming back to in my own reflections about life. She said, “Pain and suffering are two different things.” The distinction implies that pain need not become suffering. Suffering connotes misery, anguish and torment. Is it possible that we might be able to construct walls of defense, so that when tragic pain strikes, we can avoid slipping into the despair of suffering?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus does his best to give us material for building such a wall of defense. Our tragedies often slip into anguish when we torment ourselves with “If only.” When it seems like a bad choice of our own, or someone we love, or a stranger began the chain reaction ending in tragedy, our mind keeps saying, “If only this. If only that. If only a different choice had been made.” You may or may not believe in a Persona who can be given the name of Satan. If you don’t, then just think of the name Satan as embodying all humankind’s wrong choices, all the wrong choices of which humankind is capable. In this Gospel, Jesus makes a remarkable promise. He promises that this Satan, this ruler of the world, this embodiment of all humankind’s wrong choices is “driven out” by Christ’s choice of the cross. “Driven out” means this Satan cannot define ultimate reality, cannot define truth that counts, is no longer a player in fashioning the nature of eternity. This Satan does not get to write the end of our stories.
The Episcopal Church tends to attract thinking people, so some of you are thinking, “How does that work? How does Jesus’ single choice of the cross almost 2000 years ago have all these consequences?” Week after next is Holy Week, a time set aside to focus on fully absorbing the meaning of Jesus’ walk to the cross. Don’t worry if you fail to master it in Holy Week of 2009. There will be a Holy Week in 2010! (And it’s OK to ponder this question the other fifty-one weeks as well.) For now, consider this encapsulation: Perhaps by voluntarily choosing to innocently experience the worst consequences of bad human choosing, God by Jesus infused this earthly space with a love that trumps absolutely every evil and every ill. This love does not impose its will by freezing the frame of human drama and compelling outcomes. It cooperates with our human will to draw us into the life it offers. What wondrous love is this?
We preach and hope that after death, we will live fully in the truth of what I have just proclaimed. In the meantime, we seek to grow in our faith that this is so, and let it guide our lives. Jesus gives us some great advice about how to spur such growth. He encourages us to take any sadness about ways in which life has not followed the script we wrote and release that sadness into God’s care, just as a farmer releases seed by planting it in the ground. But for much experience, burying a seed in the ground would seem pretty crazy. What good can come of that? But farmers trust their experience that earth and rain will give nurture and bountiful harvest will ensue. Jesus wants us to release our disappointments, our tragedies, into God’s care, trusting that God will offer us nurture and carry us into bountiful life better than anything we know to envision. He longs for us to gain experience of God’s trustworthiness.
It’s not easy to accept this invitation. Some of you know that I have a grandniece who was born with a condition that makes her bones very brittle. They break often. I don’t like this. It’s not how I would have written the script. But God encourages me and each of you to release such disappointment into God’s care. The difficulty of this is made easier when we support and encourage each other. In just a few moments, we will invite forward candidates preparing for confirmation, reception, and reaffirmation of faith at the Easter Vigil. You will be invited to participate in blessing them with your silent prayers of encouragement. There is something about prayerful encouragement that reverberates. When you offer spiritual encouragement, you receive spiritual encouragement. The Spirit just can’t stay still! Once invited into a space, it’s everywhere. So know as you pray, that you are performing a vital act for others and for yourself. You are offering the encouragement we all need to “let go and let God,” to release our cares into God’s promise of bountiful life.