By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
What a disappointment! What a disappointment to be so sure that things were moving in the right direction, that the promises of rescue and renewal were just about to be fulfilled, and that everyone would soon be living with less fear and more freedom, and then to have the dream fall apart. To believe all that, and then to have those hopes dashed, is almost worse than to have never had any reason to hope at all.
The hope I am talking about is not the hope of a vaccine and an end to the pandemic we’ve all been living through, but the hope of a triumphant Messiah who would set the people of Israel free from the oppressive forces of imperial Rome. Although the people we hear about in the Gospel of Mark lived way back at the beginning of the Common Era, although we are separated by a great gulf of time, geography, and culture, we can in many ways feel so much of what they must have felt.
Regardless of whether you live in California or Palestine, in the present moment or 2000 years ago, human emotions are universal. Hope is hope. Fear is Fear. Disappointment is disappointment.
Today’s Gospel eloquently tells the tale of what it is like when we think we are promised one kind of future and the reality turns out to be something entirely different. Peter, as usual, stands in for the rest of us fallible, hapless human beings. One the one hand, he seems to know something critical that nobody else in this Gospel has yet realized: that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one sent by God to bring about a new world order. On the other hand, he grossly misunderstands what that means.
When Jesus explains frankly that being the Messiah means that he needs to suffer and die, Peter is horrified and rebukes Jesus. It’s as if he is saying, “No, Rabbi, you’ve got this all wrong. Now that we know you’re the Messiah things are going to get better. You’re going to lead us to freedom and safety. We’re never going to have to deal with injustice or oppression again. You have to stop all this talk about suffering and death—nobody will want to follow you now!” And Jesus responds with a stunning, stinging rebuke of his own, famously comparing his first disciple to Satan.
That kind of emotional ricochet, back and forth from one extreme to another, is exhausting, as we all know too well. And yet Jesus does not let up after rebuking Peter, but doubles down, explaining that discipleship is going to be hard, and may even mean giving up our lives. Again, this is not welcome news by any measure.
Several months ago, when I got out my calendar and marked September 12th as “Kickoff Sunday” for the church program year, I felt a lot of hope and excitement. And if I’m honest, what I was envisioning was not exactly what is happening today. I was not envisioning that we would be in a time of rising COVID rates across the country, with ICU beds filling up again and a national dispute about masks and vaccine mandates raging while people continue to die at alarming rates. I wasn’t envisioning how much of our state would be on fire, nor how painfully fresh the memories of 9/11 would be, even 20 years later. What I was envisioning was a church full of people, all of us singing, maybe with a picnic out on the lawn and a ministry fair in the parish hall after the service ended.
And while I still believe we’ll get there, some day, it’s really hard that we’re not quite there yet. Still, acknowledging that things aren’t where we want them to be should not be a barrier to celebrating the good things. This is a more somber and subdued Kickoff Sunday than what I anticipated, what I envisioned, but it is not without some real joy and progress as well. For example, this is the first time the St. Martin’s choir has sung in this building together on a Sunday morning since March of 2020.
Some of us are here in person to appreciate it, some of us are watching and listening from home, but I know that all of us are grateful for the many ways that our musicians and choir members have held together over these long 18 months. They have had to try new and difficult things and have done so with grace and generosity.
Maybe it doesn’t sound like an act of heroic courage to sit in a room alone and record yourself singing so that your voice can be electronically joined with other voices, carefully crafted to create an anthem for Sunday worship, but trust me, that is not an easy thing to do. It takes guts and creativity and faithfulness, and I’m extremely grateful to them all.
And, of course, it isn’t just the choir and our music leaders who have had to pivot and respond with grace to constantly changing circumstances. It is the altar guild, members of Caring Ministries, the Vestry, the Ministry Council leaders, and so many more of you. As I said in my email on Wednesday, it is every one of you who just keeps showing up as best you can, in whatever way you can, and as often as you can. And, again, I want to acknowledge you and thank you.
The importance of just showing up, of just doing what you can do, was the message shared by Mychal Judge, a Franciscan friar and chaplain to the Fire Department of New York, who died on September 11, 2001, as he was offering prayers and assistance to people in the midst of the disaster. In a speech he gave to firefighters the day before, he said, “You do what God has called you to do. You show up, you put one foot in front of the other, and you do your job, which is a mystery and a surprise. You have no idea, when you get in that rig, what God is calling you to. But he needs you . . . so keep going. Keep supporting each other. Be kind to each other. Love each other. Work together. What a blessing that is.”
Mychal Judge has become known as the saint of 9/11, but it turns out that on that day twenty years ago he was pretty much doing what he always did. He had been caring for others with great compassion and courage for many years. He was a Catholic priest who participated in the New York City Pride parade and helped found a ministry for people with AIDS in the early days of that epidemic. This was not an easy or popular thing for him to do, but those who knew him said it was just part of who he was.
Caring for the marginalized and vulnerable day after day, year after year, was how Mychal Judge lived his life. I don’t know if he saw that as taking up his Cross or just following Jesus, but the truth is they are one and the same. And, more than likely, it was living that cross-shaped life day in and day out that made it possible for him to make the ultimate sacrifice on 9/11. He was just showing up where he was needed, like he always did.
Mychal Judge was administering last rites when he died.
Jesus was never one to turn away from the hard things in life, and he did not want us to turn away from them either. But he never said we would have to face them alone, either. Because we don’t. We have each other. We have the church and the sacraments, Scripture and song and stories. We are part of a community that knows how to pull together and learn and grow and do hard things.
So let’s embrace this moment, not disregarding our disappointments and hurts, but acknowledging them together, leaning on one another, and moving forward. In the words of Mychal Judge, let’s “keep going. Keep supporting each other. Be kind to each other. Love each other. Work together.” Because, indeed, for all of us, what a blessing that is. Amen.
