|
GOD’S SPIES March 23, 2008 EASTER Matt. 28:1-10 At the end of Shakespeare’s King Lear the crazy old king is reconciled with his loving daughter Cordelia. The king, now blind, is able for the first time to see people for who they really are. Humbled by heartaches, he finally has the insight of wisdom. As they are led away to prison, and as it turns out to death, Shakespeare gives us these words from the old king, “…Come, let’s away to prison; We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage;… And take upon ‘s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies.” Act v, Scene 3 I suspect the calling of all Christians is to be God’s spies. After we’ve learned the catechism basics of faith and worshipped regularly and pitched in to cook some church meal or hammer some Habitat house, then we pause and perceive and report back on what is happening. St. Paul calls it being “stewards of the mysteries of God” (I Cor 4:1). We become those who, in the service of heavenly espionage, train ourselves to look beneath the surface and see God at work where once, from the hectic pace of life, we would have seen nothing. Several weeks ago I was struck during worship as we repeated the Nicene Creed. Each week we say together “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” I always assumed that meant at the far end of time, at the end of life’s treasure hunt, graves are opened and we gain new life. I wonder, though. Could it be that those timeworn words also mean “wake up and look for signs of the resurrection now”, for in spying those God signs we begin to enter “the life of the world to come.” That first Easter it was not only Jesus who experienced resurrection. His befuddled followers entered it, too. They weren’t at all sure what they were spying. After all, spies aren’t expected to understand what they see, only report it. The followers looked at an empty tomb and didn’t know what to make of it. The four Gospels have four different accounts of who was at the empty tomb and what happened when. Espionage is not easy, especially when you’re peaking at a miracle. And notice, four times in these 10 verses of Matthew is the word “fear” or “afraid”. Were they afraid that this was Jesus alive again. That would mean all of their orderly understanding of life and death and stone-cold bodies was out of date? Or were they afraid that when they look for God they will not find him alive, that deep dread that the promises are empty and there is no hope beyond the tomb? No wonder Jesus and the angels keep quietly saying, “Don’t be afraid. Ask the hard questions and explore the unknown. It’s more amazing than you could imagine but at least try to imagine. Dare to dream.” They do dare and stumble over themselves in excitement. In Matthew’s Gospel the women fall down and kiss Jesus’ feet. In John’s the men run to and from the tomb. Mark speaks of “trembling and amazement.” Paul says it philosophically: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.” The psalmist puts it more poetically: “Thou hast caused us to drink the wine of astonishment.” Where do you spy God at work? Years ago as an awkward, unsure seminarian, I served as a chaplain at Boston State Hospital, a mental hospital in a sterile old building on the city’s tough Southside. One inmate was a frail woman with salt-and-pepper hair. We called her Mary. She never spoke, had no identification, was first found by police sitting downtown in the gutter. My job was to try to reach Mary, make a connection, and then find her home. But whenever any of us spoke she just turned away, face in hand, a vacant look in her eyes. The only time she seemed to connect was once in chapel when the 8track played sacred music and she heard Ave Maria. On Mary’s face came a smile. For weeks Mary lived in her own disconnected world. Then someone got an idea. We brought to her several translators. As they spoke French, German, Spanish she merely looked puzzled. But when someone asked, “Parlate Italiano?” Mary exploded in Italian, “Where have you been?” It wasn’t long before we had Mary on a plane to Rome, congratulating ourselves that we had found her home. It was a few weeks later. I was walking downtown in Boston after dark. As I turned the corner I came upon Mary sitting in the gutter. Italy had not wanted her and they flew her back to us. I was dismayed. By the end of the summer the courts had placed Mary back in our hospital. Locked up she was still in her own world. But now she would approach me. Now she would come to me and whisper, “Padre, Ave Maria?” and together we would listen to Italian sacred music, and she would smile. What had she spied in her own little world? Had she really found a home in that hospital? Had I? “Looking for God in all the wrong places,” to paraphrase the song –it doesn’t come naturally to us. We don’t assume God will be at home and vibrant in the salesman you want to ignore or the woman crippled with arthritis and bitterness, or the runny-nose neighbor child who stares at you when you’re gardening. It takes what W.H. Auden called “an intensity of attention”. Poet Robert Frost called for careful observations of the everyday, and by “careful” Frost meant both heedful and loving, full of care and open-minded. I was amazed to flip the channels the other day and see an interview with Jane Fonda. If you’re my age you remember the many manifestations of Jane Fonda – Hanoi Jane who supported the Viet Cong enemy, her movie work with Klute and On Golden Pond, her glamorous life as wife of Bizillionaire Ted Turner, even her exercise video. The interviewer kept wanting her talk about all that but all she wanted to report on was her new relationship with Jesus. Jane Fonda has become a vibrant, exuberant Christian. Now the woman I had long ago discounted was reporting how she had spied Jesus, just as I am here reporting spying Jesus in Jane. And once we do make these spyings, what do we do with them? “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” What do we do with our spying? We lose the fear! We go and tell our brothers where we have spotted the Lord. We tell our stories, our witness, the places where we have found the tomb empty or met Christ in a crazy Italian lady. For in our telling of our spying is his promise, “there you will see me.” Seeing leads to telling. Telling leads to seeing.
|
||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
