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Rebirth in Autumn

Forrest Church • October 7 , 2001

I have a gift for you. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, "I bring what you need yet always have. It is not in this sermon. It is not in any sermon. Hinted at by nearest and commonest and readiest, it is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you. It is not them, though it is endlessly provoked by them. What is there ready and near you now?"

You have glimpsed it many times, sparking in the rough, catching the one Light, dancing with color. You have seen it refracted in your loved ones’ eyes. Or at dawn’s first blush on rosy fingertips. Or fixed high in the heavens like the morning star. You have sensed its presence within the depths of your soul, beckoning you to awaken to its wonder. "It is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you." You have heard it calling through your soul’s dark night and singing above the din of your proudest day.

"It is not in this sermon. It is not in any sermon." Sermons are built of words, and no word can capture it. Sermons are but signposts and pathmarkers. They can tell us how to look but can’t make us see. They can point our eyes outward and inward toward meaning’s dual horizon. They can fire our minds with passion and inspire our hearts with hope. But they cannot unwrap the gift of which I speak. No creed can make it yours, for it is yours already. No set of instructions, no mortal proof can break its code. One cannot explain the inexplicable without explaining it away. Its mystery springs from a voice deeper than words, more riddled with nuance than any human tongue. To stare directly at its Light is to go blind. To hear its voice clearly is to be struck dumb. Yet, "It is no farther from you than your hearing and sight are from you. . . . It is hinted by nearest and commonest and readiest. It is not them but it is provoked by them. What is it that is ready and near you now?"

I remember sitting with my wife, Carolyn, late one evening, the two of us in a hospital reception area, awaiting word from the doctor concerning whether the surgery to remove a rare tumor from our son Jacob’s leg had been successful. Jacob had spent the better part of sixth through eighth grade either in a wheel chair or a body cast. This was his fourth operation in half as many years. Three times the tumor had returned.

The operation went on longer than we anticipated. The last attendant had left the waiting room. Carolyn and I were alone. There was nothing more to say to one another that we hadn’t said a hundred times already, and so we sat in silence as the minutes passed. Then Carolyn reached out her hand to me. "We’re so lucky," she said. "Life is such a gift."

Whenever someone asks me, or I ask myself, "What have I done to deserve this, the larger answer is always, "Nothing." We did nothing to deserve being born. We did nothing to earn life’s privileges of joy and pain. And on the day we die, we will still know almost nothing about what life was all about. Among the many things we mortals have in common is that we are far more alike in our ignorance than we differ in our knowledge. Simply to acknowledge this brings us together. Arguments over who has the best insider information on the creation can tear the world apart.

In fact, if our religion doesn’t inspire in us a humble affection for one another and a profound sense of awe at the wonder of being, one of two things has happened. It has failed us, or we it. Should either be the case, we must go back to the beginning and start all over again. We must re-boot our lives until the wonder we experience proves itself authentic by the quality of our response to it.

A Presbyterian minister from Chicago, John Buchanan (who also serves as editor of The Christian Century Magazine) told the following story in a sermon he preached on Sunday, September 16^th. That Friday afternoon he had been invited to speak at a memorial service at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral for the United Airlines flight crews that were lost on September 11 on Flight 175 and Flight 93.

"The service was sponsored by the Flight Attendants Organization and the Association of Airline Pilots. Holy Name Cathedral was full of United Airlines blue uniforms, men and woman, one week and three days after an act that had violently killed eighteen of their friends. It was a vulnerable congregation: proud professionals who were feeling understandably helpless, in the loss of friends–a terrible reminder of the danger of their work–and now, to add more cruelty, facing economic forces that threatened their jobs and the entire industry.

Dr. Buchanan "reached for words. [He] told them that they were [his] neighbors, [their] airline in Chicago one that had taken [him] where [he] needed to go and brought [him] safely home. [He] told them [he] was grateful for them and proud of them, that God loved their friends who died and that God loved them too.

"There were eighteen candles on the high altar at Holy Name. As a Pentecostal choir sang a stirring version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," eighteen flight attendants and pilots lined up at the altar and each lighted a candle to honor a dear dead colleague. They sang ‘America the Beautiful’ and ‘Amazing Grace. A Catholic priest led [them] in a prayer and sent [them] out into the world in peace. [Buchanan] was drained, tired, weary, and a little discouraged at his own inadequacy to find the words to help.

"And then walking up State Street, with [his] pulpit robe over [his] arm and a clerical collar on, [he] was spotted by a street person singing "Take Me out to the Ball Game" at the top of his lungs. They look for clerical collars–marked ministers are easy. [Buchanan] saw him coming and reached for [his] wallet. "Father," he said, "Father, there’s one God, right?" "Well, yes, there is one God," he responded, thinking, "This is really going to be an expensive one." "So if there’s only one God, then we’re all sort of the same, right?" And he had to agree with that too. The street person said, "Cheer up, Father, we’re all going to be okay." And then he did the most extraordinary thing, like an Olympic athlete–or like the Cubs relief pitcher Flash Gordon, when he gets the final out and nails down the win–he raised his arm and pointed an index finger straight up to the heavens. It was an act of defiant hope, after a moment of extreme vulnerability. And so Buchanan joined him, pointing up to the heavens. The man said it once again: ‘Father, we’re going to be okay.’"

What were these two mortals, so different yet so alike, pointing to up there in the heavens? The Grand Master of Ceremonies, all-knowing, all-powerful, pulling our puppet strings, directing the human drama from on high? By such a definition, as Archibald McLeish wrote years ago in JB, his play on Job, "If God is God, God is not good. If God is good, God is not God."

This little God is not God. God is not even God’s name. God is our name for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. The life force. The ground of Being. Being itself. The word God is but another signpost pointing to the heart of creation’s mystery. By whatever name, God doesn’t steer hearts to drive planes into buildings. God is our symbol for the awe-inspiring, mind-humbling power that animates the cosmos, that encompasses our existence, that riddles the creation with an energy and vitality beyond all human imagining. God is our name for the gift that can’t be named, the proof that can’t be checked, the power and the purpose that we will never parse. The terrorist attack disproves the existence of God no more than it disproves the existence of love or the existence of goodness. Instead it reminds us once again, first, of how precious life is and how fragile, and, then, of the inestimable worth that love and goodness both possess. Like a still, small voice, this message speaks softly yet clearly through the clamor of these vivid, chastening days. It proclaims the divine Word. It reminds us of the key hidden deep within our pockets, the key to our hearts. It invites us to open up our gift.

The Rev. Brian Jordan, a Franciscan priest, gave the Eucharist to a construction worker laboring at Ground Zero, who wanted to receive it in God’s House." The priest followed him to the shell of Six World Trade Center, where two iron beams welded in the shape of across stood out amidst the wreckage. "There are no atheists at Ground Zero," Jordan said. ‘Everyone has a spiritual life now.’"

Shouldn’t there only be atheists at ground zero? No. Because that which inspires us to do healing work is Holy. That which connects us in the sacrament of suffering is sacred. That which brings us together blesses our lives with new possibility. It is redemptive. It fosters hope. It saves our souls.

This is the gift of which I speak, the gift that life offers us this morning and every morning we awaken to the sun of a new day. To open it, all you have to do is this. Unwrap the present.