St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

Imagine for me that you have before you, not
A road, but a series of forking paths.
Most of the time we aren’t aware of the way
We take these paths,
And a good portion of our spiritual geography has already been mapped for us.

What if we had lived in another part of the country,
In a different neighborhood?
What if we had gone to boarding school,
Or taken a pilgrimage to a poor country.

What if we had chosen to become a locksmith or a welder
Rather than the law. (We might make more money).
Or if we had chosen a different partner?
What if we had eaten less meat, or not started smoking?

We often look at our choices with a deep sense of loss;
I suppose it is just a matter of getting older,
Our bodies a bit less cooperative than they used to be.
We regret that we didn't exercize as much as we should have.
A few of us hold our losses close;
We stand at the foot of the cross,
some of us perplexed and angry,

Angry at Jesus for being a fool to let himself be murdered;
angry at the government;
angry at the church.
A few will hide their hope inside until the next prophet arises.
The loss for others will become a badge of honor:
I was there; I suffered; I carried the body, or I would have;

These loses are small trinkets that we carry,
Photographs that warn and tell others
where we’ve been and how we’ve suffered

When I was 27 I met,
The woman of my dreams.
I had a list. I wrote it down:
It was a like a prayer.
You might know such a list.
Attractive, exuberant, cheerful, warm.
Her father was a nationally respected pastor;
her uncle CEO of a fortune 50 corporation;
she was a young a professor of media studies
at a technical school.
My friends remember that she was 6’ tall,
and she wore heels.
So I had to wear stilts.
We climbed mountains together, and yes,
We were expecting to get married. She was.

She asked "when" and I said "I don't know"
And she said "This is a good thing for you."
And I just said, maybe.
But I was timid, unsure, unprepared, and it ended.
Now, being ten years older,
I can’t fathom what I was thinking in those days.

And I consider how the vicissitudes of my life
Would be different,
Being married, probably a child or two,
My parish less apprehensive knowing I was settled,
not worried about where I am on a Friday night.
Maybe some of my other choices might have been wiser,
For men make better choices
when women are around.

I say I have no regrets, because I am here before you,
Just saying that I stumbled.
My life has still held together, and I have people I love around me,
but sometimes when I’m having a glass of wine
And watching reality TV, alone,
The sense of loss returns
I wonder if I should
Have taken that other path.
We stumble, and that’s the truth.
This is not a day to be proud,
to think of our perfections,

To take pleasure in our accomplishments.
It’s not a time to consider
the secret of attraction
With its promises of wealth and power.

If you want such a religion, then God bless you.
Today is the story of the world in its misery,
the crucifixion is the stumbling block,
That represents the brokenness and the chaos that we’ll see,
If we look a bit more closely. The prophets shout at us,
declaring that we too are,
broken like a vessel, shattered.
You are a broken shell, they say,

And we respond;

What if we had gone to the right school?
What if we had married our sweetheart;
What if we’d spent more time with our children;
What if we’d decided to live in Georgia;
What if we hadn’t had an affair?
What if what if what if we say.

And God has no answer to that question.
You can only fantasize about it, waste a little time,
Procrastinate while you get all nostalgic.
These are the answers we cannot see, the what ifs.
The alternative worlds,
or, as the philosopher Leibniz would say - the imperfect ones,
Around us,
whispering into our ears that things could be different,
if only, if only.

The shift comes right after we hear no response,
Not a satisfactory one,
Not one that would answer our questions about
Other worlds,
God asks another question.
What next?
You’ve stumbled, what next.

There’s always room for regret, just a little;
There’s always some room for reflection;
It’s good to see the places you’ve been;
It’s good to tell your story, just because
The telling is good;

But why would you search for the living among the dead?
Why search for God in the past;
Stumble forward, we say;
The question awaits us; what next?

Kierkegaard once said that all faith is autopsy;
And autopsy is seeing with your own eyes.

Do you see, asks the Holy spirit?
Our Lord only uses those what ifs, in contrast to what is.
Yes you’ve stumbled;
You’ve almost killed your son;
You’ve made, yes the wrong choice;
Or yes, you had two right choices, and here you are.
The true faith is one that teaches us to see;
It allows us to manage our disillusionment;
It doesn’t hide from us,
the sharpness of life around the margins,
It doesn’t disguise the rocky soil
Upon which we seed ourselves.

I was reading a man who told this story.

I went into detox.

I went through withdrawal in a dingy.
Rooming house that had been converted
Into a long-term recovery center.
By the third night I was sweating, shaking, vomiting, and cramping.
My roommate was a recent graduate of the center who had relapsed.
He coughed and hacked and cried over and over,
“I just wanted to try it one more time.”

Why does he have to be in here with me? I thought. Why?
And then a quiet voice in my head asked,
So, what about it, Jimmy? You want to try it one more time?
And I knew: I did not want to try it one more time.
I saw that I’d needed all the pain
I had visited upon myself to lead me to this point.
And I saw there was a loving order
to the universe that had delivered me to this broken state.
With nothing to lose but my pain, I surrendered and let go.

I haven’t used since.

You’ve lost. You’ve stumbled.
God bless us that we might not take the knife to our son;
that we might see whatever love exists in our world.
That he might send our roots rain.

When he asks us, what is next,
We will have an easter answer.