April 22, 2007
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Acts 9:1-6 + Revelaton 5:11-14 + John 21:1-19
This has been a week of death, pain, tragedy, terror, fear and heroism. At Virginia Tech, in colleges and universities, in towns and villages and cities, and in homes throughout this land and throughout the world where vulnerability, the fragility of life, and human powerlessness in the face of death have all been re-woven in horrific bold relief.
“Life is a crap-shoot,” I have heard it said this week. You never know when your number is up. Others said, “Life is like being a fish in a barrel, there’s no escape.” Even if you know, you can’t do anything about it.
As if they were saying, We are at the mercy of random chance. We are at the mercy of fickle fate. We are at the mercy of the powers of darkness. We are at the mercy of the forces of evil. We are at the mercy of the capricious ways, whims and wiles of the world.
We are at the mercy…
Lord have mercy…
The victims at Virginia Tech ranged in age from 18 to 76; they came from nine states, along with Puerto Rico, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Romania. They were male and female, African-American, Asian, Middle Eastern and Caucasian. They were all people who began a day little knowing it would suddenly end their lives. True also for the victims of the Baghdad bombings this week – and every week.
Dear friend Barbara Crafton wrote through her own pain, Oh, beloved! Oh, dear and funny ones, serious young ones, confused and uncertain young ones and confident young ones -- may the holy angels lead you into paradise and may you be there, in some mysterious way, everything God intended you to be here! Oh, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, grandmas and granddads! Oh, aunts and uncles and cousins and friends -- you all deserved so much better than this. *
In the memorial convocation Tuesday evening at Virginia Tech, Professor and poet Nikki Giovanni said: “We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. … We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, … No one deserves a tragedy.”
Each of them, each victim of terror was taken where they had no thought of going, where they had no desire to go.
And in the gospel lesson, following breakfast on the beach Jesus tells Peter a hard truth, “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Eventually and finally that is true for each and every one of us.
The question of death and how to live with it comes to us as we see family and friends – and ourselves – age, face life threatening diseases, accidents, happenstance – being in the wrong place at the wrong time – and terminal illness. The fragility of life and our utter powerlessness in the face of death.
At such a time we need to remember lessons that we have learned from the experience and testimony of others – lessons that remind us of important realities:
1) life is a gift from God,
2) the importance of family, friends, and community, and
3) the place of God and faith in our lives.
The undeniable truth that life is a gift – a gift from God – is paramount in our faith. The fragility of life becomes clear as we deal with our own limitations. In the face of death we are powerless. We face the mystery of life as we taste the possibility of death. The “why” and the “how” and the “when”remain a mystery to the very end. Death brings us to the farthest reaches of human experience and understanding. It brings us to the very edge, closer to the mystery than ever before.
And so we must finally turn to God, and we must turn to each other.
In such a time, in this event we can rediscover the strength and wisdom held by family and friends. They can grace us with the insight of our deep need to belong to family and to community. It can remind us of the truth of belonging to God’s family and of the comfort and power of that relationship. That is precisely why as he was dying on the Cross Jesus commended his mother Mary and his beloved disciple to one another.
We are reminded of what is really important in life and what is trivial. It gives us a chance to rediscover and treasure the beauty, flawed as it might be, of family and friends, and to be patient with our own beauty. We rediscover anew our interdependence with others and the bonds of life we share.
Ultimately, the mystery of death offers the great lesson of the importance of God in our lives. When we cannot bear the unbearable, our refuge is in God. Where else can we turn except to the one who says, “Come to me all who bear heavy burdens and I will give you rest”?
It is like being welcomed into the hospitality of Jesus the Risen Christ as he welcomed those to breakfast on the shores of Galilee.
When the tomb was empty it radiated with the risen Christ. Whether our hearts are empty or full they, too, can radiate with the Risen Christ and the knowledge that both the ones we have loved and lost, and we ourselves are in the embrace of the loving God yesterday, today, tomorrow and for all time, no matter what.
*Worst Case Scenario, April 17, 2007
The Almost-Daily eMo from the Geranium Farm
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