Saturday, May 25, 2013
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Tower Gazing: A Reflection for Ascension Day
I remember
several years ago the debates in the news about the alternatives for rebuilding
at Ground Zero in New York City. There was talk about creating an empty space
there as a memorial to the victims of 9/11; there were those who wanted to
rebuild exact copies of the Twin Towers; there were people who worried about
the cost of it all; there were others who objected to anything being done that
would disturb the sacred ground where so many had died; and there were many who
were afraid that whatever they built would become a huge target for further
terrorist attacks. Remembering those debates, I was interested to see on the
news this week that a new tower is almost completed at One, World Trade Center.
This tower is in addition to the two pools of remembrance, immense fountains
that pour somberly down into the black abyss of the Twin Towers’ foundations. It
is in addition to an underground museum dedicated to telling the story of the
victims’ lives. This new tower instead rises toward the heavens, and, topped by
a huge spire, will once again be the tallest building in North America. While
the pools and the museum are a tribute to the past, a memorial to the victims,
and a way of continuing to learn from the tragedy of September 11, the new
tower is a clear symbol of power and hope. With the completion of construction,
the people who move into the new space with their offices, will all take the
mantle of power from those who have died in that place. This new tower cries
out to the world that terror does not have the last word, that fear will not
rule our actions, that we are in control and moving forward.
Today we
celebrate Jesus’ ascension, and searching for a contemporary metaphor,
something less implausible than those ancient images of Jesus zooming up into
the clouds, I thought about this new tower in New York. All of a sudden, I
could see it:
At Ground Zero, the dark pools of water
pouring down into the abyss are like the crucifixion, like “God-made-flesh”
descending to earth, dying, descending even into hell. Alone, the dark pools
and the suffering, dying God bring peace to the depths and give succor to our
suffering, but there is no victory in them.
The memorial museum is like our
testimonies to resurrection. It gives us a new story by which to structure lost
lives, a narrative of love that brings glimmers of life out of death. Yet
alone, such a story is not enough to provide direction for the future. Mere
glimpses of the resurrected Jesus wafting in and out of our lives to feed us or
to lend a hand, if and when we recognize him, are just as tenuous and fleeting
as the pictures and voices of dead loved ones given new form as heroes on
museum walls.
The new tower, on the other hand, is like the
ascension, rising with power into the heavens, completing the cycle and
overcoming the defeat. When we say that Jesus “ascended into heaven,” what we
really mean—beyond the ancient cosmology of Jesus’ body floating up into the
sky—is that God Almighty who allowed himself to be poured out into the world to
live and suffer and die as one of us, has now not only shown us that sin and
death cannot hold him, but has returned to a place of power and glory. The Ascension
puts the Jesus that we know on earth back with the Father as ruler of Creation,
in charge and in control of the future. The Ascension builds a strong tower.
“The Almighty Lord, a strong tower to all who put their trust in Christ, to
whom all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bow and obey: Be now
and evermore your defense,” we pray in one of our collects for healing.
What difference, you might ask, does
the Ascension make in our daily lives? Is it just a theological concept,
another line in the Creed? Jesus tells the disciples that his ascension makes
them into his witnesses, into “martyrion,”
who are called to proclaim forgiveness of sins to all nations. I thought about
these disciples as I watched the gaggle of reporters on TV gawking up at the
hundred and some floors of this amazing skyscraper. I could imagine myself at
Ground Zero, as well, first peering into the depths of one of those huge black
pools. Lost in a sad reverie, I hear a voice saying to me, “Why do you seek the
living among the dead?”
“Of course,” I say to myself as I shake
my head to clear away the gloomy thoughts. “I’m like the women at the tomb,
expecting death, when God brings Life.” Had I forgotten so soon? I preached on
this at Easter!” Chastened, then, I look up instead at the tall tower, topped
by a silver spire that shines in the sunlight, reflecting more divine Glory
than the spires of the grandest cathedrals. My heart swells with hope for the
future and with patriotic pride as I associate myself and my nation with the strength
that this spire represents. Like Gollum who cannot tear his eyes away from his
precious ring, I stand and stare, as if entranced with the vision of Power. Then
I hear the voice again: “Anne, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This spire
and this tower will be here tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Until it
is no more. Your job is to testify right now and not to stare and gloat. Go
home and wait for the power of the Spirit.”
Life under the shadow of the spire,
like life under an ascended Lord, is less a life of pride and reflected Glory
than it is a life wrapped up in God. We pray in today’s collect that Christ
ascended far above the heavens “that he might fill all things.” As Joseph
Britton points out, if all things “are now filled by Christ’s presence, then
the consequence for Christian living is that nothing and no one can be taken as
insignificant or of no importance. Our commitment to God means that we are also
committed to what God is committed to: the whole of creation, as it has been
filled by Christ’s presence.”[1]
A spiritual director encouraged me just last week to put a sign over my desk
that reads: “How is the transforming power/love of God being made real in the relationship/activity/task
that you are now engaged in?” She encouraged me to examine in the light of God’s
transforming power, all of the seemingly unimportant daily tasks, chats, and
empty gestures that I shrug off every day as I long instead for a glimpse of
Glory. I haven’t started this spiritual discipline yet, but this Ascension
Sunday has given me renewed incentive. I’m going to look out—not up, not down—but
out into the world, into a world filled with Christ. What, in my actions and
interactions, opens, rather than closes, doors for God’s healing, reconciling,
forgiving, and creating work to go on? Like the 26,000 iron and steel workers
who forged the grand new tower, I have a role to play in the structure of the
Kingdom, one small widget at a time.
Friday, May 3, 2013
The Peace of Christ
A two-year-old shot by her five-year-old brother this week
here in Kentucky. The recent bombings in Boston. The threat of war with North
Korea and now with Syria. The worst bloodshed in Iraq in years. Stories about
domestic violence…As I listened to the news and read the papers this week, I
joined with you in your yearning for peace, as you asked God: Why can’t we have
peace on earth? Will there be peace? How can we work toward peace? Will all in
the world live in peace? Perhaps it was the contrast with the fun and
lighthearted festivities of Derby, but the world seemed to be especially
fraught this week with threats of violence all around.
We joke, of course, about the empty-headed beauty pageant
contestant who is coached to simper, “World peace,” when asked what issue she
cares most about. The seeming impossibility of “world peace” makes wishing for
it almost a farce; the vagueness of it is overwhelming. What is “peace,” after
all? Is it merely an absence of violence, an end to war? Or does it have
concrete, positive qualities of its own? Or does it flow from an inner kind of
calm within individual hearts? I was talking with the Preschoolers about Jesus’
peace several weeks ago, and after talking for awhile, I asked them what peace
is. One little girl raised her hand confidently: “It’s a piece, like a piece of
pie,” she proclaimed, as if nothing could be more obvious. Before we can pray
for it—or work for it—we need to know what it is!
For the Old Testament prophets, who often speak of peace, it
is “shalom,” a wholeness, a kind of right relationship that comes to us when
God dwells among and with us here on earth. It includes peace among the nations,
the absence of war, stemming from God’s justice and righteousness being carried
out on earth. Listen to those famous and beautiful words from the prophet
Micah: “God shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat
their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but
they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no
one shall make them afraid.” Here, God’s peace comes from right and fair
division of resources in a world where fear is no more. I certainly long for
that kind of peace, and Micah’s words prod and encourage me to want to work for
a more just world in which everyone can live without fear. It is no accident
that we have “Peace and Justice” commissions in our churches: the two
are inseparable. This kind of peace sounds satisfyingly concrete, if
challenging to achieve—something that we can try to attain through social work,
politics, and economics, as well as prayer.
Jesus, however, seems to tell us in today’s Gospel lesson
that he has already given us peace: “Peace is my farewell to you,” he plainly
says. “My peace is my gift to you, and I do not give it to you as the world gives
it. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be fearful.” Once again, we
hear peace being associated with an absence of fear … but what kind of peace is
Jesus talking about here? It doesn’t seem to be real-life farms and fig trees
or even real-life lack of violence. Christians have known violence since the
crucifixion itself, and the lives of the disciples are anything but peaceful! Yet
over two thousand years later, after crusades and wars, conflicts and power
struggles, we joyously continue to offer this peace to one another every
Sunday: “The peace of Christ be always with you!” we cry.
In today’s reading from John, the disciples are far from peace-filled.
They have just heard that Jesus, their Lord, their teacher, the one whom they
have left home and livelihood to follow, is about to go away. They will be left
alone. His own heart breaking, too, Jesus gives his friends a parting gift, a
heartfelt and valuable bequest, like grandma’s ring, or dad’s letters from war,
or even a rich uncle’s pile of money in the bank—something meant to continue on
in the world with us after a loved-one’s departure. Except Jesus’ bequest
cannot be held in the palm of the hand; it is not given “as the world gives.”
It comes by way of the Holy Spirit—an intangible bequest of peace, peace that
will ease fearful and troubled hearts.
I wonder if the disciples understand what Jesus is offering
them any better than we do. The little boy with whom I read every week at
Zachary Taylor was doing a reading comprehension exercise this week with me
about a little girl whose grandmother down in Louisiana gives her an injured
bird to keep, telling her that it will be her bird. When the bird’s leg is
healed, the grandmother then tells her to let it go. The little girl balks. “I
thought that you gave me this bird to keep!” she cries. The grandmother
explains that she will always have the memory of the bird, but that the real
bird needs to get back to its life in the bayou. At the end of the story, the
little girl rather suddenly appears happy to have a mere feather from that bird
to take home with her from her travels. My young reading student just didn’t
understand why that little girl was supposed to be happy with a dumb old
feather, when she really wanted the bird. He just couldn’t wrap his head around
this story. If I were one of the disciples, I think that I might have felt the
same way about this gift of peace that Jesus is promising. This promise of
peace would seem like a mere feather of the fullness of life that I had enjoyed
in Jesus’ presence.
When I think about it, though, I can
see that while the gift of peace that Jesus offers us is not a singing bird that
we can hold in our hands, it still has profound value as the silent place marked
by a delicate feather. I once wrote a poem about the Trinity, in which I expressed
a longing to hold onto God:
I hold out stiff
and awkward arms
but all I catch
are sweaty handfuls
of images that drift
like lonely feathers
from my fingers,
spinning slowly,
slipping softly
to that secret space
between thought and word
where Three can be One
That secret space, too, is the home
of Peace. Rowan Williams points out that Christ’s peace enters most easily into
places that we leave empty and silent. Think of Jesus meeting the woman who has
been caught in adultery. She is about to be stoned to death for her sin—a
violent punishment if ever there was one. Jesus stops the violence not by
hollering at her accusers or by pushing them away or by reasoning with them or
by using more clever language than they do. He merely kneels down and starts
writing in the dust. He takes a “breathing space” for God’s peace to enter in.
Williams says that he is hesitating in order to root himself in God’s peace. He
does not draw a line in the sand or fix an interpretation. He does not tell the
woman who she is and what her fate should be. He waits long enough for her to
see herself differently, and “when he lifts his head, there is both judgment
and release.”[1]
God’s
peace, brought to us by the Holy Spirit and bequeathed to us by Jesus, is
indeed an active peace, a peace as active as Jesus’ own presence in the world. It
is a peace that is stealthily pulling compassion and forgiveness and joy out
from underneath pain and injustice and condemnation, just like Jesus did. Rick
Morley describes this gift of peace beautifully: “Jesus brings … the kind of
peace that walks on water, that stills the storm, and fills our jars to the
brim with the finest of wines. The kind of peace that brings sight to the
blind, restores hearing to the deaf, and tells the lame to get up and go home.
The kind of peace that comes to a tomb and renders it empty. That
kind of peace.”[2] By
sharing his peace with us, Jesus shares his power to transform from the inside out.
Williams
points out that violence is a communication of hatred, fear, or contempt. If we
are to be bearers of the peace of Christ, a space that offers forgiveness and
compassion, then our communication needs “breathing spaces.” Can we learn to
stop drawing lines in the sand? To breathe before we retaliate? To pause before
we condemn? There is a confession of faith from the Reformed Church of France that
reads:
“Christ is
risen. He is present among all people, and to serve them, he recruits his Church,
without taking into account our differences. He acts through humankind in history,
in order to lead it to its End, to a universe reconciled in love. Thus, I believe
neither in fatalism nor in war, nor in hatred, nor in catastrophe, nor in death,
because I believe that Jesus frees us to make free decisions. Thanks to him, my
life has meaning, as does the universe.”[3]
The gift of Peace, like God, creates Something out of Nothing; it transforms
with a whisper. It is the most powerful of Gifts.
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