Last week I made a
brief trip to Philadelphia for a speaking engagement, and on the drive up and
back I had little else to listen to than NPR.
Now I love NPR, but for some reason every news story and interview I
heard on both legs of this trip was more depressing than the last. Over a
two-day period, all they seemed to talk about was either the Boston Marathon
bombings and the suspects, the collapse of the factory in Bangladesh, the
assassination of the Pakistani prosecutor, the hunger strike by and
force-feeding of the detainees in Guantanamo.
Every news story seemed to be about some aspect of human violence.
I had some free
time before the event, so I made my way over to a place I have always loved,
the Philadelphia Museum of Art. What better place than an art museum to escape
news stories about human ill-will? But as soon as I got there, I realized that
even here there was no escape.
Try as I might to
find relief from the events of the week, as I walked around the museum, I could
not stop thinking about the persistence of violence in human life. Believe me, an art museum is not a place where
you want to go on a treasure hunt for images of human aggression. They were everywhere: suits of armor,
crucifixion scenes, depictions of land and sea battles, executions. You name it, somebody has painted or sculpted
it. To be sure, there’s a lot of love
and beauty in a museum, too. But looking
at the visual record of human history, the persistence of violence in our
personal and social relations is pretty hard to ignore. Where can we find
healing from this persistent curse? And if
we could find healing, would we actually take it?
Today’s Gospel
tells the story of Jesus healing a man who had been ill for 38 years. As John tells it, Jesus encounters him at the
pool of Bethzatha:
When Jesus saw him lying there and
knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to
be made well?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put
me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone
else steps down ahead of me." Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your
mat and walk." [John 5: 5-9]
It is hard to imagine lying by a
pool for 38 years without finding a way to get yourself into its healing
waters. The arch tone of Jesus’s
question (“Do you want to be made well?”) suggests that even he might be a little bit impatient with
this guy. Like our seemingly endless
tolerance for the violence in our natures and our society, this man’s ability
to live with a bad situation appears almost baffling. Why do we continue to tolerate aggression and
enmity? Why do we live with ailments
when the cure is only a few steps away?
I was once in an extremely
tense conversation where I was trying to help resolve an interpersonal dispute
between two colleagues. One of them believed that she had been offended and
disrespected by the other, and though the other repeatedly apologized she
refused to accept his regret as sincere. In the middle of this back and forth
rehearsal of grudges, the second turned to the first and said, “You know, I
believe you have made a shrine of your wound.” It was such a startling remark
that, though it initially offended the first person, eventually it opened the
logjam of our conversation and allowed us to move forward to a new way of being
with each other. I have never forgotten it.
“You have made a shrine of
your wound.” I can’t speak for you, but I know that there are many times in my
life where I have made not only a shrine of my wound. I’ve built a temple for it
and regularly worshipped at it and checked regularly to be sure that my
grievances are maintained in top working order. In today’s Gospel, the man by
the pool has made a shrine of his wound. The news stories of violence and
aggression, the artworks depicting human violence, all of these are only more
extreme versions of the poison that we spread when we worship at the shrine of
our wounds as we work night and day to keep our grudges alive.
As people and as a society,
I believe we have all made a shrine of the wound of violence in our human nature and in our world. In saying that I do not in any way intend to
disparage the victims of violence or to suggest that they somehow bring it on
themselves. I would never say that. But
I do mean to say that we seem to have accepted violence as a natural fact of
life and so we tolerate violence and
aggression much more than we should.
And one of the reasons we
tolerate violence is that we are in denial about the depth of its roots in our
being. After September 11, 2001, do you
remember all the talk about how those bombings signaled the end of American
innocence? Really? I’m as patriotic as the next person, but as a
student of American history, I’d say that “innocence” is about the last trait
we have exhibited as a people. Just think
of slavery, Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, the Mexican War, and the World War II
internments for starters. How could we presume to be “innocent” in any
meaningful definition of that word? We
have many wonderful enduring achievements and characteristics as a nation, but
we are not “innocent”. And, more importantly, why do we want to think of
ourselves as “innocent”? In this, we Americans are not alone. Every culture justifies itself and blames
others. We are peace-loving; only the
“others” are violent. We have made a shrine of our wound.
The artists whose
works hang in our museums know something deeply true about us. Each of us carries the possibility of
violence within our own heart. Only when
we acknowledge that possibility, only when we accept that part of us Jungians
call “the shadow”, only when we stop pretending that we are somehow better and
purer than everybody else, only then will we be open to the healing that can
happen when we acknowledge that we actually need it.
"Do you want
to be made well?" That is Jesus’s question to the man by the pool of
Bethzatha, and that is Jesus’s question to you and me today. "Do you want
to be made well?" Do you want socially to be made well? Do you want personally to be made well? Do you want your world, your society, your
relationships, even your body to be healed?
If so, then start by seeing things as they are. When I build a shrine to my own wound, I
perpetrate the fiction that you are guilty and I am innocent. All of us are somewhat guilty. None of us is perfectly innocent. Only as we accept the parts of ourselves we
would turn from and deny, only then will we be open to the healing that Jesus
offers the man by the pool in the story, to our nation and our world, to you
and me today.
Preachers are
often asked to summarize the Good News, to give a Reader’s Digest version of
what Christianity is all about. Some people can do that, but I’ve never been
very good at this exercise. Today’s
collect—the prayer appointed for this Sunday, the Sixth Sunday of Easter— does
it as well as it can be done. This
prayer is, for me, a perfect summary of what the Gospel is all about. I use it regularly in my own devotional
life. I offer it as a concise expression
of the Christian hope:
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good
things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards
you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your
promises, which exceed all that we can desire . . .
The man by the pool didn’t quite
know what he wanted. He had made a
shrine of his wound. Jesus came to
remind him that God’s promises exceed even what we can want; God’s future for
and with us is greater than anything we can ask for or even imagine. If we orient ourselves away from our wounds
and toward those promises, we will be able to step into the healing waters
where our hopes will be realized and our wounds will be healed. Our task, with Jesus, is to love God in all
things and above all things so that we may receive those good things that
surpass our understanding. "Do you want to be made well?" If you do,
walk away from the shrine of your wound, accept yourself in the fullness and
complexity of who you really are, and come to this table. As we feed each other
and are fed by Jesus, our rage and our pain, our sorrow and our violence will
be transmuted into love and hope and peace and joy. Amen.
1 comment:
Thanks for posting this to your blog
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