Sermon for The Seventh Sunday of Easter, 2022 Acts 16: 16-34
Revelation 22:12-13,16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26
Psalm 97
In his early years, writer and poet Archibald MacLeish wrote a poem he entitled “The End of the World.” It’s set in what he imagined; the world as a huge circus tent with a dynamic and colorful performance going on. The tent is packed with spectators.
Quite unexpectedly as Vasserot
The armless ambidexterian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb –
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing – nothing at all.
The poem speaks of MacLeish’s lifelong search for meaning in life and his struggle to find some logic, some meaningful reason behind it all. His search led him to the study of the biblical character of Job, the personification of the question of meaning in the suffering of the righteous.
This is not the sermon I planned to preach this morning.
This is not the white stole I wanted to wear signifying the joy and assurance of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ with its promise of life eternal……..!
I did not want to put on an orange stole signifying the violent death of innocents. This time, children again……..8, 9,10 year-olds!
Again! ……..less than two weeks ago we were here, the clergy wearing orange stoles to signify the slaughter of other innocents, ordinary people doing a bit of shopping at their local grocery store! Most were black, apparently seen as some sort of threat to the 18 years-old shooter besotted by some insane theory of white racial superiority.
This time, we have witnessed the slaughter of 19 children and their 2 teachers. The shooter was again 18 years old. We know little about him or his motives.
Also, the streets of villages and cities in Ukraine are littered with the bodies of civilians brutally murdered by the same class of weapon as used in Uvalde, Buffalo, Charleston, Las Vegas, Columbine, Parkland, Sandy Hook and on and on!
I did not want to preach today as I struggled with my own emotions and wondered how I might communicate something, anything, that might offer some solace. “Maybe,” I thought, “in that search for something to say I will find some peace for myself.”
We need not dwell of the grisly details beyond the observation that the usual means of visual identification of victims in Uvalde was not possible. Fragments of clothing and DNA samples had to do.
“Why?”, we cry out!
“Why can we not find some way to end this seeming madness! Is this to become the unique American way of death?”
Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas has commented, “Don’t tell me that guns aren’t the problem, people are. I’m sick of hearing it. The darkness first takes our children who then kill our children, using guns that are easier to obtain than aspirin. We sacralize death’s instruments and then are surprised that death uses them.”[1]
“Why?”.
“Why?” indeed!
More generically, why do bad things keep happening to good people?
The question has haunted us from the beginning …..and we will not answer it this morning! It’s the central question posed by the biblical account of Job. Job’s friends attempted to provide reasonable answers to Job’s questions, but all got swept away.
And there are more stories!
Look at Luke’s account of Paul and Silas’s miraculous release from prison! What happened to the slave girl whose powers of divination irked Paul and caused him to drive out the spirit? What then became of her? She was still a slave but now no longer able to provide wealth for her owners. She was likely beaten and even sold off. She was, after all, only a worthless piece of property.
And what of all the other prisoners in the jail after the earthquake that freed Paul and Silas? All doors were opened but It appears they were not set free also but remained in that wretched Roman jail!
So ……..we’re left with no real answers to the ancient question.
We’re left, like Job, with no answers… but perhaps only begrudging acceptance of things beyond our ability to understand.
Many years after Archibald MacLeish wrote “How the World Ends”, he wrote a play in verse called simply. “J.B.” It was his response to a lifetime of struggling with the question of evil in the world and the old dilemma of why bad things happen to good people. There are the expected characters of J.B., his “friends”, Mr. Zuss, and Sarah, his wife.
As the play ends, J.B. has concluded that he is basically alone in the world. There are no answers and there is no one to help him. He senses that light has gone out in the world, the roof of the circus tent has, indeed, blown off!
Sarah says, to him, “You wanted justice and there was none – only love.”
J.B replies, “It’s too dark to see.”
Sarah responds, “Then blow on the coal of the heart, my darling.”
“The coal of the heart…..” he responds
She continues. “It’s all the light now.”……..
“Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in the churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see by and by….. “
We’ll see where we are.
The wit won’t burn and the wet soul smoulders,
Blow on the coal of the heart and we’ll know……
We’ll know…..”[2]
“Blow on the coal of the heart”.
Blow on the coal of the heart?
“There is “only love!”
In the face of tragedy so sharp we can hardly bear it, there is only love!
On this last Sunday of Eastertide, the new fire we brought so joyfully into this room at the Great Vigil of Easter, the pascal candle, still burns!
It is the light of love; the love of God in Christ for us, and us for each other!
It will burn again as we lay those we love to rest in God’s eternal arms.
It will burn at the Easter Vigil next year, no matter what wars, disasters, or loss of life we may endure in the coming year.
It will burn in our hearts all the time, ….if we continue to blow!
The light may seem dim.
But the coal still smolders there.
Let us blow on the coal of our hearts so that it bursts into the flame of love!
That love will sustain us through loss and calamity, through good times and bad, through celebration and mourning.
“We love because God first loved us!”
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
[1] Bishop Daniel Flores, quoted in The Bulwark blog 5/25/22
[2] MacLeish, A. “J.B.” Hougton Mifflin, Boston,1986, pg153
