October 8, 2006 Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Access Sunday, CROPWalk Sunday, Second
Anniversary of Dedication of Harte Wing
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 22: Luke 5: 17-26
A thirty year-old man was in the final stages of AIDS. He had been a big,
athletic man, but now he was emaciated, like a survivor of a Nazi death-camp. He
had been brilliant, but now his mind was losing its coherence. Many of his friends
stopped seeing him as soon as he was diagnosed. Most of the rest of them could
not handle seeing him changed as he was now.
So it was to one old college friend’s credit that he arranged to come for a
visit. The man with AIDS was in his bedroom with his wife and best friend. The
room was silent, the lighting dim. A nurse led the visitor in. He burst into the
room with all his old college bravado, hailing his friend loudly.
It was clear that his plan was to cheer his sick friend up, to give him a
boost, to walk right in and shake his hand and start talking about old times. But at
his first loud words a look of horror and revulsion came over the sick man’s face.
Seeing it and seeing his shocking, ghostly appearance, the visitor stopped in his
tracks. He continued to speak loudly and chattered incessantly for a few minutes
about some of the things he hoped would cheer his friend. Finally he made an
excuse and backed out of the room, fleeing from his discomfort.
The dying man’s best friend witnessed all this and felt compassion for the
visitor and went out to comfort him. He wanted to say that it was natural to be
nervous and upset, but the man was still talking boisterously about anything he
could think of other than the painful situation he had just deserted.
This visitor had the intention of helping his dying friend, but he had no
intention of exposing himself to his friend’s suffering. He did all he could to mask
himself from it, as if suffering were a deadly virus. He could not get past the
chatter and blindness that his fear was using to protect him. His strategy for
helping his friend was to try to get him to be distracted from his suffering, too, so
that neither of them would have to address it.
And so this visitor could never be one of those friends in the gospel story,
one who has so much compassion, one who enters into the suffering of another so
deeply that he is willing to do whatever needs to be done to help his friend find
comfort, healing and freedom. It is very difficult if not impossible to befriend
someone truly if we cannot feel compassion. But in order to feel compassion, we
need to be willing to feel suffering, to experience it in our body, mind, heart and
soul.
Sooner or later most of us come into the presence of someone who is dying,
and most of us have no idea what would be the good and right thing to do, and the
fact is that it really varies from situation to situation. Certainly it is good to say
hello and acknowledge the other person and your own presence there, but the most
important thing to do is open your heart and mind as widely as you can, listening
and feeling and trying to comprehend what the dying person and the people
around her are experiencing.
If you quiet your own nervous chatter and open to the moment and try to
see and address what seems real, you will probably say or do something that will
be appreciated. If you can become so open that you actually begin to glimpse
what the other person is going through and you respond by being fully with her in
her suffering, then you might do something useful.
You might notice that she needs fresh water, or you might pick up that she
wants to reminisce about college days, or you might hear her wistful comment
about the faith healer who has come to town, and you might volunteer to gather
some other friends and carry her through the crowded streets and even go so far as
to carry her up onto the roof and tear away the tiles and dig down through the mud
roof with your bare hands and run for ropes to lower her down into the crowd.
You might do all that if you have felt true compassion and really listened. You
might then have a whole different perspective on the rope burns across your
palms. You might think nothing of risking falling through that hole in the roof as
you strain to lower her gently in front of the healer. You might have the joy of
being transported out of your self-concern into compassionate serving.
Psalm 22 says, “Those who seek God shall praise God.” And “Posterity
will serve God.” There is a formula that can move us from seeking to praising and
serving. It begins with experiencing suffering, as Psalm 22 does: “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me…? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not
answer.” When you feel that kind of suffering and you cry out to God, even if you
are angry or accusing, even if you are convinced that God is absent, you are taking
the first steps in this formula. Your suffering leads you to cry out, and your cry is
a form of seeking, even if you have given up all hope of finding.
The formula begins, suffer, then seek—next comes an answer. We do not
know how long the person in the Psalm or the paralytic in the gospel story
suffered, but we do know it must have been a long time to become so desperate.
There is no telling when the answer to our seeking may come. Sometimes it does
not come this side of death. But most of the time, at some point, an answer does
come. We suffer, we cry out and seek, and some healing or peace or
reconciliation eventually comes. Our suffering reduces to a manageable level or
to a memory.
Then the formula goes to the next step, the stage of praise. Psalm 22 shouts
its praise to all the offspring of Israel. The healed paralytic walks home through
the crowded streets glorifying God and amazing everyone. The length of suffering
no longer matters, all that matters is that it is over.
The gospel stories rarely tell what happened to the people Jesus healed
beyond their praising God, but those the gospels do tell about went on to follow
and serve. In their serving they discovered that the formula ended in joy—the joy
of going with Jesus to help others who were suffering so those others could find
the same path from seeking to finding their answer, from finding the answer to
praising, from praising to serving and through serving to joy.
This church experienced the suffering of those among us who are not
heterosexual. Some of us experienced it directly, and others of us through our
compassion after hearing their stories. We sought a way out of that suffering, and
our seeking led us to the answer of becoming Open and Affirming. We went
through the same process with people who cannot walk well. It led us to
becoming Open to All. And both of these have led us to praise and serve God and
to feel joy as people have come into our midst who have responded to our
accessibility.
But who is still shut out in our society? Whose suffering are we called to
join today? Who is crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So
many. Too many for us to help them all. The Freedom to Marry Task Force cries
out for marriage equality, not just civil unions. The Livable Wage Campaign cries
out that some are working two or three minimum wage jobs and still cannot
support their families. The Uprooting Racism Task Force cries out against the
many forms of racism in Vermont. Our youth cry out that their future is being
stolen from them by global warming or global wars or Congress cutting college
financial aid. Even suicide bombers are crying out that their families and
homelands have been oppressed too long.
It is understandable why we do not open ourselves to feel all their suffering.
Who could stand it? But we are not called to carry every paralytic to Jesus, only
one person or one group or one problem at a time, only the one that is our
particular concern—our friend or neighbor.
The question for us is, who is our neighbor now? Whose suffering will we
join now? We do not have to carry everyone, but we do need to carry someone.
Who is it for you? Who is it for this church? I urge you to participate in the
strategic planning sessions that we will be holding over the coming year to help
answer this question.
In the meantime, today let us celebrate how we have followed the formula
all the way from suffering to joy in the past. May our joy remind us why it is
worthwhile to feel the suffering and compassion that lead to joy.
Let us pray in silence, seeking God, praising God and offering our lives to
serve God…
Sermon 10/08/2006