He Qi, Calling of St. Paul
“Weeping into Dancing, Sack-cloth into Joy”
Third Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 5 (Year C)
5 June 2016
Homily at 8 a.m. said and 10:00 a.m. sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
Third Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 5 (Year C)
5 June 2016
Homily at 8 a.m. said and 10:00 a.m. sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
Weeping may spend the night,
but joy comes in the morning. …You have turned my wailing into dancing;
you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.
The idea here is this: God is a savior who delivers us from
distress. It might be suddenly,
literally overnight as here, or it might be over a long time.
The old adage, “Time heals all
wounds” is not accurate. Many wounds
heal with time; some do not. I think
most of us who have mourned know well that time does not make us forget the dead or
miss them less. It simply gives a chance
to get used to missing them, a chance to get on with our lives in their
absence. Even after years, moments of intense yearning may come, where we miss them and feel the loss. And there are plenty of
situations where we pray that God relieve suffering, or fix a problem, but no
response is apparent.
But even so, God is a savior who
delivers us from distress.
That’s what the scripture lessons
today are all about, in one way or another.
The story of Elijah and the son of the widow of Zarephath and Luke’s
story of Jesus and the son of the widow of Nain both recount where God’s love
brings back to normal life those who have died. Critics have questioned both, saying the dead
don’t ever come back to life, and if indeed something like this actually
happened, those young men weren’t actually dead. But this misses the point: God is a savior who delivers us from death,
whether we’re dead or near dead. As the
psalm says:
… I cried out to you,
and you restored me to health.You brought me up … from the dead;
you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.
The Galatians reading also
is about God’s love turning things completely around: Paul’s conversion. Paul
tells the story trying to convince people to return to his radical Gospel of
faith in Jesus after they have lapsed into a more traditional faith focused on
Jewish Law ornamented with stories of Jesus.
Paul says that he got his version of the gospel directly from Jesus,
without any intermediaries like the pillars in the church—Peter and James—whom
Paul’s opponents had been quoting. Paul is overstating things to make his
point: in Luke’s version of Paul’s
conversion, after the vision, Paul seeks instruction in the basics of
Christianity from those already in the faith.
In Paul’s own letter to the Corinthians, he admits that had received
from others before him the basic Christian proclamation before passing it on (1
Cor. 15:1-8). Again, this is beside the
point: for Paul, God saved him from
futility and murderous religiosity by showing him the resurrected Jesus. God is a savior who saves us from our deepest
distress.
In my life, I have
experienced moments of such salvation, where God turned wailing into dancing,
and sack-cloth into joy. All are very
personal. All involve death of one sort
or another, whether of a relationship, of hope, a sense of control and meaning,
or the real death of a loved one or of victims of horror to which I was a
bystander. All shook me to me core,
and made me question everything. In all
of them, I was healed and gained from the experience. The pain was redeemed by grace, and joy
replaced grief.
It is important in
preaching to share scars we bear, not any still open wounds. We do this to give hope that wounds do heal
because God is a savior who delivers us from our distress.
One of the scars I bear
comes from something that happened 27 years ago yesterday, June 4, 1989, when I
saw people shot and others run over by tanks in the streets of Beijing. I had severe PTSD as a result. Messed up, but putting on a good front. I could not and would not talk about it. For months, I had flashbacks and was
emotionally distant and withdrawn. I did
not admit, even to myself, exactly what I had seen. But for years, I couldn’t see any track-treaded
vehicle—even in a film—without getting violently ill. I started and shied away from loud
noises. Each year when the first week
of June approached, I suffered horrible nightmares that made me afraid to
sleep. Counseling and spiritual
direction over several years helped this heal.
I was able to learn to forgive, and let my deep anger and resentment go,
and in the process learned how different this was from simply saying bygones
were bygones, and that maybe things hadn’t been so bad. I learned that remembrance and deep concern for
a past wrong were fully possible in a heart that had forgiven and let go of the
past.
There are several other
such experiences I have had, where weeping spent the night, but joy came in the
morning. But one is enough for today.
How do we embrace this
saving God? How do we let the
All-Nurturing One nurture us and heal our pain?
First, we must be completely
honest in our pain. The widow of
Zarephath complains to Elijah about her son’s death, and expresses her anger
with Elijah. The widow of Nain is in an
open funeral procession, with the public wailing and sack-cloth, before Jesus
can take notice and be moved to compassion.
Trauma and deep grief
make it hard for us to recognize what has happened, to even know what we are
feeling. Grieving, really grieving, is
hard, because our flight or fight response is so deeply imbedded in us. Flight tells us to run from danger: deny there is a problem, diminish its
importance, say everything is alright or to be expected. Fight tells us to blame someone else for our
pain, to scapegoat them and think that somehow if we punish the wrongdoer, it
will relieve us of our pain. Again,
honesty requires that we be open about who has caused us pain. But scapegoating means we blame them and
think that by causing them pain in return we somehow make things better. Let me be absolutely clear here: it will not. Even killing a killer won’t bring the dead
back to life. Only God can bring the
dead back to life.
Second, you must be open
to compassion of others. Most often in this life, the grace of God works
through the love of those about us. Be open to compassion, even if it seems
misdirected or foolish. Sometimes, seeking professional help is
necessary to help us sort out complex and hidden feelings. But simply
being open to the compassion of others is often all it takes.
Of course—this puts a
great responsibility on all of us. We
must have compassion for others, and actively pursue it and the justice it
demands if we are to help others, and raise them to life.
Third, pray. Really pray.
Express your anger and hurt to God.
Your doubts. Your fears. Asking for what you hope for is a good way of
finding out what you really are feeling.
It’s not that you’re telling God something he doesn’t know. It’s not that you are trying to convince God
to grant your wish. Self-disclosure is a
major part of intimacy. And you must show
intimacy with God before you can hope to recognize the intimacy God has been
showing you all along.
Together with Episcopal
Church clergy throughout the nation, we are wearing orange stoles today to
commemorate National Gun Violence Awareness Day, which was this week. Compassion for all who suffer from gun
violence demands that we seek effective measures to reduce and eliminate the
scourge of violence through firearms in our society. I urge all here to write members of congress
and local and state officials calling for licensing of all owners of handguns,
background checks and waiting periods for all purchases, and requirements for
safety cabinets and trigger I.D. locking systems. Such measures are part of the well-ordered
context of the bearing of arms in a free state that the Second Amendment talks
about. We must not lose hope because
this problem appears so intractable.
Do
you believe God is a savior who can save us?
We
read in Isaiah:
[God says,] Why was no one there when I came?Why did no one answer when I called?Is my arm too short to reach out and redeem you?Am I too weak to deliver you?By my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert… (50:2)See, [my] hand is not too short to save,
nor [my] ear too dull to hear.
Rather, your own failings set up barriers
between you and your God,
and your shortcomings have hidden [my] face from you
so that [I do] not [seem to] hear. (59:1-2)
God is standing there
with arms outreached to help us. God is
listening for us to speak to him. We are
the ones not reaching out, not communicating.
We must open our hearts, reach out, and really listen.
God is a savior who
raises the dead to life again, who delivers us from our deepest distress.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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