The Beauty We Love

The beauty of Kent in spring is now on full display, especially on Friday.  How does this happen every year?  Spring seems like miracle.  Should we be burning incense to Persephone?  Should there be a sacrifice to perform to receive the grace and beauty of spring?  I remember winter.  Nature all around us is both obvious and mysterious, as we ponder the source of life in the midst of blessing.   

            The obvious and the mysterious are also here in Henry’s baptism.  Henry Copland Sullivan.  The love of the parents for the child is obvious; it is overflowing; it moves powerfully like the tide.  Parental love is one of the most powerful forces of love we ever encounter.  When my children were born, I felt enormous love being pulled out of me, naturally, spiritually, emotionally, and it hasn’t stopped.  Not ever.  But in the life of Henry…there is mystery, in the twists and turns to come, in the decisions and choices of his life, in the ups and downs.  His life will include religious faith by the events we perform together on this day.

The gospel this morning from Luke is the road to Emmaus.  The road to Emmaus is a beloved story among the resurrection appearances, and it too is both obvious and mysterious.  These are not the main disciples of Jesus in the story, and only one of them is even named as Cleopas.  But the story strikes an important chord in the Easter imagination.  The stranger who joins them is the risen Jesus, but they fail to recognize him in their grief.  Jesus walks with them; he teaches them about the Scriptures.  They talk to him about the crucifixion and about the wild news of the empty tomb.  Jesus opens their eyes to the resurrection of their leader, but they still fail to see that is Jesus himself walking with them on the road to Emmaus. 

            The search for new life is not an easy one, as seen in this gospel story of non-recognition.  It can be hard it is to see what’s right in front of you.  The theme of non-recognition is the major one for Luke on the road to Emmaus.  What does it mean to be with Jesus and not recognize him?  Does this still happen with religious experiences of God and Jesus?  I think it happens all the time.  Non-recognition is the story of my life, maybe yours too.  I often don’t recognize people.  Sure, I may know their names, but that doesn’t mean I really see them.  And that doesn’t mean they really see me.  Sometimes weeks can go by without feeling really seen for who you are.  We walk around each other, we talk to each other, but that doesn’t mean we know each other.  This should be true in September, but not in May with five weeks left of school.  You could be Jesus—I could be Jesus, but something holds us back from really seeing each other.  The quick labels that we have don’t actually help us in the area of recognition; we put people into our categories and imprison them there. 

The mysteriously hidden Jesus teaches about the Bible and makes the purpose of his life and death obvious to his listeners.  I can read pages of a text without actually understanding or remembering a thing.  I’m sure this has happened to you.  Maybe it happens to you every night when you study.  We don’t read the world very well, and this keeps us in the dark when it comes to Jesus and the love of God.  Resurrection is about waking up, seeing the big picture, but something is always holding us back.  Something is causing the non-recognition.  Cleopas and the unnamed disciple have absorbed the events that led to the crucifixion of Jesus, but they are unready for the good news of his resurrection.  They cannot recognize Easter joy.  They don’t even see Jesus with them until they break bread at the end of the day.  Then their eyes are opened.  Then the risen Jesus is known.  The broken has become whole, the grief has become ecstatic.    

What does it mean to celebrate new life—to even talk about resurrection—when so many people in our world are suffering?  Suffering and pain can cause the non-recognition of God.  We prefer to stay in our pain or fondle our grievances then to wander into the new.  But Easter hope brings suffering and joy into a new mixture—a Loving God holds it all together for us, the tradition says.  Even when the disciples experience the Risen Jesus, it is clear that that the wounds of Jesus are real.  He really did suffer; it was no illusion, which was a source of debate in the early church.  So today, we celebrate new life on this third Sunday of Easter, not by isolating ourselves in joy from a suffering world, but by opening our hearts wider than they have ever been opened before. 

As I reflected on the paradox of new life and resurrection combined with the broken images of the world, I thought of the mystical poet Rumi, who is beloved by those of different faiths.  Rumi was a Muslim who lived in the thirteenth century, in what is now Afghanistan.  His poetry deeply investigates the paradox and mystery of God, especially the love of God that is found, surprisingly, in human suffering. 

Here are some samples of the spiritual wisdom of Rumi.  

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.

                        There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”



                        “Chase a deer and end up everywhere!” 

That sounds like my Native American Literature class.

                        “Mystics are experts in laziness.”

                       

                        “What have I ever lost by dying?”

“Because I love this, I am never bored.

Beauty constantly wells up, a noise of spring water

In my ear an inner being.”

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”

           

Even in the midst of suffering, there is treasure to be found.  As a Christian reading the mystical poet from Afghanistan, I can’t but help but be moved by his poetry about, and for, Jesus Christ; the way he comes to Jesus so personally, with fresh expression, and even with love.  Rumi was fascinated by Jesus, as many mystics from other religious traditions have been.  I have a brother who is a scientist, but he is keenly interested in theology and likes to ask me questions.  The hardest question that he once asked me: how come non-Christians often see Jesus more clearly than the Christians do?  I still don’t have an answer, but there is enormous reverence for Jesus in Islam.  The mystical experiences of God often obliterate, wonderfully, the boundaries that human beings hold most sacred, the ones that divide us; strangers and even former enemies can become friends and brothers.  When the Kingdom of God comes near, a full recognition can occur, a wonderful chaos can break out in human society.  The last become first, the first last, the poor hold spiritual riches, and the rich walk away empty-handed.  Rumi sensed the transformation and full recognition at the heart of Jesus’ life before God. 

This Jesus poem by Rumi is called “There’s Nothing Ahead.”

“Lovers think they’re looking for each other,

                        but there’s only one search: wandering

                        this world is wandering that, both inside one

                        transparent sky.  In here

                        there is no dogma and no heresy.



                        The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did

                        About the future.  Forget the future.

                        I’d worship someone who could do that.



                        On the way you may want to look back, or not,

                        but if you can say There’s nothing ahead

                        there will be nothing there.



                        Stretch your arms and take hold of the cloth of your clothes

                        with both hands.  The cure for the pain is in the pain.

                        Good and bad are mixed.  If you don’t have both,

                        you don’t belong with us.



                        When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us.

                        There’s no place like that anywhere in the world.”

Jesus lived fully, completely, into both the beauty and the peril of creation, seeking out his neighbor in the least among us.  In him was the delighted mystic who lived each moment in the divine dance of creation.  God was so near to him that he called the ultimate reality Father or even Papa—his Beloved.  The Kingdom of God could be seen by Jesus in every human face.  That’s what it means to really see.  There is you full recognition.  Jesus chose as his discipline the Way of Transformation, the way of the heart in deep thanksgiving for every breath we take.  Sometimes a broken heart is the strongest thing there is. What is the new life, the great beauty, in front of you right now?  Go out and find it today; claim it for yourself.  Let the beauty we love be what we do.  There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Going Safely Through the World

The entry into Jerusalem by Jesus on Palm Sunday was a peak religious experience.  In the reading from Matthew, there is the sense of living religion, of faith coming to life in a radical new scene, one of power and majesty on this day.  Jesus literally comes down from a mountain—the Mount of Olives—to enter the great city of Jerusalem.  He is hailed as a king, and Matthew takes pains to present Jesus as a messianic king of old, entering the city with a donkey and a colt, as prophesied in Zechariah.  The gathered crowds also speak the language of royal power and divine blessing from the psalms as they hail Jesus, waving palm branches to the chosen one. 

            “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! 

             Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

The city of Jerusalem is alive with Passover preparation, the holiday of liberation for the Jewish people, and Jesus’s arrival adds to the drama and excitement, a city in turmoil.  But let’s go back to Jesus just before the powerful palm procession; as Jesus stood with his followers on the Mount of Olives.  He has a view of the entire city from an elevation of 3600 feet.  What a view.  What a moment to stand with him, with Jewish pilgrims gathering for the Passover celebration.  What must have been going through his mind as he saw the great city of his people?  In all of the gospels, Jesus predicted his death as part of God’s plan of salvation.  Yet he must have been torn, there on the Mount of Olives, before going down into the teeming city for the great holiday of the Jewish people.  There is a great tension here.  There is the holiness of the mountain peak experience, but what’s coming is the descent into humanity, and human problems and suffering.  There is hope in the panoramic vision—seeing the world as God might for a moment, but there is the darkness of human nature ahead in the events to come.  We have all felt holiness in the beauty of creation, but it’s always much harder when you go down from the mountain into human community. 

Our palm branches, like the ones waved to honor Jesus, signify a joyful fulfillment, yet they are also a transitory moment of glory where we rest in the eye of the hurricane.  Surely the greatest chapter of this teaching and healing messiah will unfold in the events in Jerusalem.  How we long to stay in the moments of triumph.  If you’ve ever had a great moment of success, the human desire is to stay there, not to move on. 

So, when Jesus goes down the mountain, he decides to enter into human suffering; he makes a decision to be a suffering messiah.  Or rather, he has made it all along.  On Palm Sunday, we want to linger in triumph, but how can we stay on the mountain when the panorama of this world is so filled with suffering?  Perhaps the great human success, the moment when we are at our best, is when we don’t celebrate, but rather embrace our neighbors in need.

For some of you, Palm Sunday and Holy Week are new experiences.  You’ve never been here before.  Never have you sat in church with a palm branch in your hand, as you wondered what was happening all around you.  Chapel is different today.  For me the liturgy of Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week go far back in my life, to my earliest memories as a child.  I have been around this block a few times.  Yet there is something about the last week of Jesus’s life that is always daunting, and I want to linger with my palm branch and the triumphant journey of Jesus into Jerusalem. 

Despite all of the problems of the Church, there is something that I deeply appreciate about the millions of Christians who are doing exactly the same thing as we are on this Palm Sunday.  The Church for me has always been a place where death and suffering could be talked about.   And if you can talk about something painful, God can redeem it.  Extraordinary words have been said in chapel this year, and I don’t think they could have been said anywhere else.  We have needed chapel; we have made meaning, even when our hearts were broken.  And we gather together for Holy Week, seeking meaning, and experiencing forms of healing.

I mentioned that there is tension in the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  Where does it come from?  The tension comes from the messianic expectation.  This was the common belief that a messiah would liberate the Jewish people from the occupation of the Roman Empire.  What kind of person could do this?  A political revolutionary, a warrior messiah.  The messianic expectation could not be clearer with the joyous greeting on the lips of the people.

            “Hosanna to the Son of David!

            Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

            Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

And yet Jesus rejected this messianic expectation for his entire ministry.  He is no warrior king who will overthrow the Roman occupation.  He’s not even close.  The values of humanity and the vision of God are in conflict, as they will be for most of this week.  We are called to go deeper into the mystery of suffering and how it gives birth to the Kingdom of God.  Holy Week is not about believing a series of creedal statements that leads one to the reality of God.  It is rather about the transformation of the heart, and an understanding of how to live in the moment with our humanity intact. 

I have recently been reading the work of Karen Armstrong, a religious thinker and former nun.  Armstrong made the decision to become a nun when she about your age.  She lived in a convent for seven years, and she was subjected to an extraordinary discipline designed to bring her closer to the Christian God.  She tried to believe all the doctrines of the Church; if she could do that, surely God would touch her life with his presence.  It didn’t work out that way.  She ended up leaving her religious order to study English Literature at Oxford.  She drifted away from God after the desert of her religious experience in the convent.  It wasn’t until she started to write about Islam and Judaism that she found herself drawn back to the life of faith.  Judaism and Islam are not creedal religions, and there is an openness about what one is to believe.  In Islam, there is only the Shahada which states: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his mouthpiece.”  That’s it.  And Judaism has no central creed.  These religions liberated Armstrong, and they showed her how to live faithfully, not by creeds, but by life practices and transformation.

In her words in her book titled The Spiral Staircase, subtitled My Climb Out of Darkness:

            “In the course of my studies, I have discovered the religious quest is not about discovering ‘the truth’ or ‘meaning of life’ but about living as intensely as possible here and now.  The idea is not to latch on to some superhuman personality or to ‘get to heaven’ but to discover how to be fully human—hence the images of the perfect or enlightened man, or the deified human being.  Archetypal figures such as Muhammad, the Buddha, and Jesus become icons of fulfilled humanity.  God or Nirvana is not an optional extra, tacked on to our human nature.  Men and women have a potential for the divine, and are not complete unless they realize it within themselves.  A passing Brahmin priest once asked the Buddha whether he was god, a spirit, or an angel.  None of these, the Buddha replied; ’I am awake!’  By activating a capacity that lay dormant in undeveloped men and women, he seemed to belong to a new species.  In the past, my own practice of religion had diminished me, whereas true faith, I now believe, should make you more human than before.”

 Holy Week is about escaping your mental prisons, not building them taller and wider.  As Bob Marley used to sing, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.”  Most tangibly for me I remember experiences of success and failure and how to look at them from the eyes of God.  My life has not been one success after another.  My life has always included grief and failure, and I had to learn how to find the best of myself in adversity and sorrow.  I have made mistakes.  It is human nature to want to stay in the moments of triumph, like Jesus’s epic arrival in Jerusalem.  But life doesn’t work that way, and neither does God.  Rudyard Kipling put it this way in his poem called “If.”

“If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;”

William Blake echoed this sentiment in his poem “Joy and woe are woven fine.”

“Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine,
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so,
We were made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.”

 Jesus didn’t fulfill the messianic expectation.  Jesus did something much more significant in his actions this week.  He went deeper, into the mystery of suffering; and into the mystery of God.  So, we follow in his footsteps, knowing that triumph and defeat are both imposters.  Palm Sunday is a moment of awakening, weaving our lives, our joy and our woe, with the love that God offers us now; that through the world we may safely go.