May 24, 2009 Seventh Sunday of Easter, Ascension Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 139; Acts 1:1-14; Luke 24:49-53
The Rev. Dick Devor told me recently that one of his favorite passages is:
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the
will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18) This was also one of
Dan Clouser’s favorite passages. Like Dick, Dan was a seminary graduate and scholar
and professor. He was not a minister, but a philosopher and one of the founders of the
field of medical ethics. I have quoted him often, telling us at Prayer of the Heart not
long before he died that the only thing that he felt the need to say was, “Praise God!”
He laughed as he told us that he sometimes had the urge to shout it out in the most
unlikely public places.
If two such wise elders as Dick Devor and Dan Clouser tell us to “Rejoice
always, pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances,” we would be wise to
shape up and do so.
But, of course, it is not an easy thing to do. Dan was still in the prime of life
when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His suffering was real. His loss was
huge. Dick Devor has suffered painfully himself in recent years, and shared in Nancy’s
suffering. I know that neither Dick nor Dan always felt like rejoicing and giving thanks.
Jesus himself wept and sweated blood in anguish. But the words of Paul stand as an
ideal through even the worst of suffering and loss: rejoice always, pray without ceasing,
give thanks in all circumstances.
The disciples who followed Jesus did not live up to that perfect ideal any more
than Jesus did. They responded to the arrest and crucifixion with fear and grief, they
responded to the empty tomb with horror and suspicion, they responded to Christ’s
resurrected body with terror and doubt. But something in them had changed by the end
of the forty days after Easter during which Jesus appeared to them in the flesh. The
book of Acts portrays no fear or grief, no horror or terror after Jesus’ ascension. It says
they all “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” The book of Luke says the
disciples returned from Bethany to Jerusalem after the ascension “with great joy, and
they were continually in the temple blessing God.” Jesus withdrew, his absence as real
and complete as when he died on the cross, his place among them as empty as his tomb,
and yet this time they understood the loss as something to respond to by rejoicing
always, praying without ceasing and giving thanks in all circumstances.
What happened? What had they learned? And can we learn a way of looking at
life that enables us to feel the way Dan Clouser did in his final days of life, where
despite impending absence, emptiness and loss, despite descending through darkness
and death, we are filled with the impulse to say “Praise God!” in the check out line or at
the gas pump, in our hospital bed or at the graveside of someone we love?
Of course, you may not want to rejoice always. You could argue that a God that
allows suffering and death does not deserve praise or thanks. You could argue that the
force of death must be fought at all times. You could quote the great poet, Dylan
Thomas, who wrote in his most famous lines,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You could argue that given the situation on earth in this age, we need the spirit of
the bumper sticker that says, “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention!”
This week’s New Yorker magazine (May 25, 2009) has another excellent and alarming
article by Elizabeth Kolbert, entitled, “The Sixth Extinction? The Earth’s Species in
Peril.” In it she describes the massive dying off of species like frogs and bats that is
taking place right now, and the rapid environmental changes that our way of life has set
in motion that are bringing this great dying about like a runaway train—a global
extinction that seems likely to join the ranks of the five worst cataclysms in the four and
a half billion year history of the planet.
Or maybe you do not need to look at global problems, maybe you have plenty
enough things you love that are endangered in your own life.
As you contemplate the forces of darkness and death, do you choose to “Rage,
rage against the dying of the light,” or “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give
thanks in all circumstances?” The great poet, Dylan Thomas, felt one was right; the
great pastor and apostle, Paul, thought the other right. Which do you feel is the right
thing to do ethically and morally and practically? What would be the wiser course to
take to save what we love, to keep love alive?
The disciples lived in a very different time, in some ways. Yet they, too, suffered
loss and hardship and death, and they, too, feared that the end of the world was near.
Jesus was their one hope of changing and saving the world. They despaired when the
empire nailed him to a cross. But only forty days later when Jesus left a second time,
they were rejoicing and praying and giving thanks.
I think what happened in those mysterious post-Easter encounters with Christ
was that they came to experience as true the affirmations we read together from Psalm
139:
O God…where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
The disciples learned that even in that most devastating absence they could find
God’s presence, and because of their emptiness, they could expect the Spirit’s fullness.
They seem to have gained the wisdom that absence, emptiness and darkness are part of
the realm of God, part of the goodness of God’s ordering of the universe, so they could
not only accept loss, but rejoice and give thanks in it.
On Easter I quoted our former neighbor and worshipper here, Dr. George
Vaillant, the psychoanalyst and researcher at Harvard University. In his book Spiritual
Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith he observes that “without the pain of farewell
there can be no joy in reunion. Without the pain of disapproval, there can be no joy in
forgiveness. Without the pain of captivity, there is no joy in exodus. Thus, just as hope,
love, forgiveness and compassion are all connected with suffering, so too is joy.” (p
131)
The most enlightened sages of all religions have come to this unified vision of
reality that embraces opposites as both being essential parts of life. Without the fear
that would stop us from doing the right thing, there can be no courage. Without the
temptations of greed, lust and pride, there can be no virtues of self-restraint and
humility. We live in a universe where darkness and death are essential to the existence
of light and life.
Does that mean that we should rejoice and give thanks for the massive, global
extinction now underway? Does it mean we should continue our materialistic,
militaristic way of living that is causing so much suffering and death? Does it mean that
we should do nothing to prevent the loss of what we love in our own lives? No, because
while suffering, darkness and death are all necessary parts of God’s creation, every
religion’s understanding of the great spirit or higher power that flows through the
universe says that it is on the side of love and life and light.
To use the Star Wars language, there is a dark side to the force, and though the
goal is not to eliminate it, we are called to bring it into balance with the light. But the
balance point of the spirit and of God is not equal between darkness and light. It is
always tipping the universe toward the side of love and life. Where there is suffering
and death, the Holy Spirit brings comfort, guidance and the power to begin anew.
Where there is absence of love, God’s love rushes in to fill us up. Any gardener with a
compost pile understands that we need death to have life, but every gardener is in the
business of serving and nurturing life, not death, and needs the balance to tip more
toward life.
The Kentucky writer Wendell Berry tells a story about a young farmer sitting
with his father looking out at the brown grass and thin cattle during a terrible drought.
The son is in the Dylan Thomas mode of fearful raging against the dying. The father,
though, has seen droughts before, and survived. He has seen the dead grass green up
again, and the cattle fatten. His serenity born of experience teaches his son to wait
patiently and trust. In the absence of what he longs for, in the darkness of loss, the son
finds the unexpected presence of an enduring love and a guiding light.
Raging may have its place, but there are three compelling reasons to choose to
rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances. One is to
affirm the faith that God’s love is the greatest force in the universe, and will turn even
the worst calamity to the good. Another reason is that by choosing the positive path of
rejoicing, praying and giving thanks, we take a powerful, nonviolent stand of resistance
against the negative alternatives of craving, raging and fearing.
But the most important reason is that when we rejoice, pray and give thanks, we
throw wide the gates of our heart, we empty ourselves of all defensive obstacles and all
self-will and focus entirely on God, and though that exposes our open hearts to the pain
of suffering and death, it also immerses us in the flow of God’s power. It makes us
instruments of God’s power. We entrust our life and our will to God’s care, and let its
current carry us through whatever trouble comes, and let its power flow through us.
The more we do that, the more we learn that God will not leave us to be destroyed
by loss and death. Nor will God abandon the earth. If we open ourselves to God, the
Holy Spirit will come and use us to do Christ-like work on earth, promoting justice and
mercy, healing and peace.
Hermon Hesse was echoing the highest wisdom of all ages and faiths when he
said, “Soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than violence.”
It may be no accident that Dylan Thomas, who urged his father not to go gentle into the
night and to rage against the dying of the light, himself lived a short, self-destructive
life. As paradoxical as it may seem, gentleness and acceptance open our hearts to
receive the power that can overcome the very hardships we are accepting, a power that
cannot flow through the heart clenched with a fighting rage.
So as we face our suffering, our loss, our hardship, and as we look at a world
situation that fills us with fear and the temptation to despair, the response we choose
will make all the difference in our lives, and to some extent, in the future of the world.
One man facing his untimely, unfair death with “Praise God” on his lips can make a
difference with that small act that ripples far out beyond his time and place. One
woman who struggles to keep praying through the fog of pain and morphine in the
intensive care unit releases into the world a power that changes many more lives than
just her own. People who have lost their spouses yet live on to let new life and love and
light fill their emptiness and darkness, people who are heartbroken by war or
environmental destruction and yet dedicate their lives to letting the Holy Spirit flow
into and through their pain to make them instruments of peace—all the examples we can
think of in this congregation and in the world of people striving to serve God and love
even as they suffer—all these call to us to rejoice always, pray without ceasing and give
thanks in all circumstances.
Jesus withdrew, leaving the world bereft. One after another, what we love most
on this earth withdraws as well, and leaves us bereft. But if we faithfully endure
absence, if we stay open to love, we will find God’s presence filling our emptiness and
we will become part of the force that represents the greatest hope any individual life or
any planet can have.
Let us do so now by entering the emptiness and darkness of silent prayer in the
faith that God will fill it with love and light. Let us pray…
Sermon 05/24/2009