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Sermon by Claire Tenny, OSH |
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| The Rev. Dr. Claire Tenny, OSH, in gold cope, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine |
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Claire Tenny, OSH on Sunday March 9, 2008 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, NY
A friend sent me a link to a video clip the other day. It was an abridged version of a lecture given at Carnegie Mellon University last September by a man named Randy Pausch.
Randy is a self proclaimed geek whose area of interest is virtual reality. The title of the talk was “The Last Lecture”. He went on to explain that the last lecture was an academic tradition, when a professor could take the opportunity to pass on the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime to his or her students, a parting gift. He chose the title because he had recently been diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer, and his teaching days were over.
The sub-title of the lecture was “How to achieve your childhood dreams.” He really wrote it for his children, who were six, four and two at the time. Some day, years from now they would listen to their father’s words.
Randy had a lot of childhood dreams. He always wanted to play in the NFL. In high school he was the smallest guy on his team, but that didn’t stop the coach from riding him hard. After one particularly grueling afternoon the assistant coach commented that he was lucky. When you do a bad job and nobody says anything, that means they don’t care about you.
He never got to play in the NFL, but he learned an awful lot about life on that high school team. He had a bunch of other dreams, but the big one was that he wanted to be an Imagineer at Walt Disney. I had heard of mouseketeers, but I had never heard that word before. But just the sound of it- I thought, what a great job. Imagineers are the people who cook up all the fun stuff at Disney, the people who make the magic.
So he applied when he graduated from college, and got a very nice rejection letter. He went to grad school, got his Ph.D., and he tried again. Another lovely rejection letter. He saved them-they’re a part of his PowerPoint presentation.
He got a faculty position, got tenured, and continued his work in virtual reality. It was time for a sabbatical, and he finagled a meeting with someone from Disney, and managed to get an invitation to work as a part of an Imagineering team for six months. It changed his life. They even offered him a job, but he wanted to keep teaching. So they said he could be a consultant once a week. After years of encountering obstacles, he finally had his cake and got to eat it too.
Somewhere along the way he figured out that the brick walls we encounter are not there to stop us, but to make us realize how much we want something. This is a profound piece of spiritual wisdom, and I think this image of encountering the brick wall can illuminate some of the befuddling twists and turns in today’s Gospel story.
The story starts simply enough: word comes to Jesus that Lazarus, the one whom he loves, is ill. Jesus decides not to go right away. Now he had just been stoned in Jerusalem, so the disciples think this is fine. But for Mary and Martha, this will be a big brick wall.
When Jesus does decide it’s time to go to Bethany, the disciples question him, more or less saying “Are you crazy?”. They too have hit a wall in their understanding of their Rabbi’s purpose. He starts talking about night and day and light, and about Lazarus being asleep. They grab hold of that and say, well if he’s just sleeping, we can stay here. So Jesus tells them plainly: Lazarus is dead. They still don’t get it, and Thomas says to the others: let us also go, so we can die with him.
Jesus was trying to tell them that it was not yet his time to die, but they couldn’t get past the wall. But like Randy, they recognized something in Jesus that they wanted very badly, and so they gamely carry on.
We often talk about faith as “believing in”, but it is much harder than that. Faith is about going on despite the walls, moving forward when you don’t really know where you’re going. Maybe even when you’re not sure why you are going.
When Jesus gets to Bethany, Lazarus has been dead for four days. Martha cries out, Lord, if you had only been here. Both Martha and Mary are certain that Jesus could have prevented Lazarus’ death, if he had been there. But that belief is their wall, and Jesus wants them to move beyond it.
They see Jesus as a healer, someone who has an in with God. They want the miracle, the big event. They want their brother back. But Jesus wants to give them so much more.
So he engages Martha, says those beautiful words: I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even if they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Jesus asks her if she believes this, and she says yes Lord-but we already knew that. But she still hasn’t quite grasped the fullness of what Jesus is offering her. The wall still stands between them.
Martha goes to get Mary, and the crowd of mourners follow her. They think she is going to the tomb, but she is going to Jesus. Jesus begins to lead her through the wall, and he does it by entering into her grief. The way back is a dead end. He must move forward, through death, to bring God’s life, God’s love, to a place where it has not been before.
They can’t see yet that Jesus is more than a miracle worker, that he doesn’t have to be physically present for them to receive what he is offering them. That he is offering a way of living, of being, that transcends the limitations we so often impose on ourselves and our world.
It is the path of self-offering that leads to eternal life. The kingdom is here, if we could only see it. So Jesus offers himself, he enters into the suffering and grief of his dear friends. And through the anguish, divine life will pour out of him. The way of offering, of emptying, of oblation, is the way to eternal life.
Randy Pausch understood that. He kept offering himself. When he hit the wall, he did not get bitter or angry. He followed his passion, shared his knowledge and enthusiasm, created his way even as it seemed to be blocked. In the offering of himself, he found the way through the wall. He cultivated a spirit of gratitude, an awareness of the self-offering of others: mentors and guides, colleagues and students, family and friends.
The stone covering the tomb is a powerful symbol of the wall between death and life. When Jesus tells them to roll away the stone, Martha protests-it has been too long. There will be a stench. She speaks now for all of us who can not yet believe that love is stronger than death. We need a sign.
The stone is rolled away, the walls come tumbling down, Jesus cries out to Lazarus and he emerges from the tomb. “Unbind him, and set him free.” Lazarus is resurrected.
I have always imagined that Lazarus was a changed man after his resurrection. That the walls in his life came down, and he lived with a new sense of freedom that he had never really experienced before. I like to think that he lived like Randy, full of life and love, with a child-like spirit, playful and unashamed of his heart’s deepest desires.
I have been blessed in my life to have met several Randy’s, and each of them has been an inspiration to me. In fact, I would say they were the ones who led me into the priesthood. They had discovered the secret, the key to a meaningful life, and the walls came tumbling down.
Jesus invites us to a new way of looking at life, at the obstacles we encounter, of what it means to be faithful. The brick walls in our lives do not mean we have failed. They can be disappointing, perplexing, maddening, frustrating, all of those things. But they also may represent an invitation, a challenge, a gift. Often it is all of those things at the same time. It takes a while to sort it all out.
This is not to say that we are to push on in the face of every obstacle, steam rolling our way through life. Parker Palmer, in his book Let Your Life Speak, tells a wonderful story from when he was at Pendle Hill, a Quaker community. He was in a bit of a vocational crisis, and as he sought guidance from others, he was told more than once, have faith, and way will open. It is a traditional Quaker saying. One day in frustration he went to see Ruth, a wise elder in the community known for her straight talk. He told her his story, that he was praying and praying, and the way had not opened. Ruth replied that in her sixty odd years as a Quaker, “the way has not opened in front of me, but a lot of way has closed behind me, and it has had the same effect.” Some walls are there for a reason.
I was in Jerusalem at this time last year. It is a sad irony that the metaphor of a brick wall we have used today is a reality now in Jerusalem. Three stories high, it surrounds the city. Jesus would have been able to walk to Bethany to stay with his friends in less than an hour. It is about two miles from the center of the old city, and it is easy to imagine him walking down at the end of a day to spend some time relaxing with his friends. Now, because of the wall, to get to Bethany from Jerusalem one must drive miles down the mountain, pass through several military checkpoints, and then go back up, in order to get around the wall.
With the latest shootings of rabbinical students at a seminary in Jerusalem, we are not likely to see that wall come down any time soon. But if the wall shows us what we really want, it will push us all to work for peace in Jerusalem. In Ephesians Paul writes that Christ is our peace; he has broken down the dividing wall that is the hostility between us.
This is what is waiting for us on the other side of the wall.