Entangled
Good Morning,
It is a beautiful day, it is an Easter day,
And we have some wonderful music, to enliven the spirit,
And its good to be here.
It’s Earth day. Last night,
I went to a convocation of religious leaders up in Garrison,
yes, on a Saturday night
which is why you pay me the big bucks.
We were reminded, of our precarious situation,
How we have some serious choices to make, personally, and as a country.
I promised myself I’d go on a low-car diet,
That I would try to eat real food.
Real food, meaning less processed food.
And perhaps watch less TV, although I don’t watch that much now.
I also promised myself
I would re-entangle myself in the lives of people around me,
Because one reason we are in our current state of affairs,
Is that we are disentangled from each other.
Our easy individualism hides how our daily charms
and luxurious conveniences
depend upon the work of others;
Our system of economic arrangements
That makes our lives so easy, also comes at a cost,
A cost we are only beginning to count.
Entanglement.
Over the last week we’ve been hearing
about how teachers, students and acquaintances of Seung hui cho,
the young man who murdered thirty two students
who had not yet seen the prime of their lives,
how teachers warned the institution of this dangerous person.
He had been disentangled from his surroundings, his environment, from other students.
He was a loner;
He was mentally ill;
But he had no help.
Perhaps he didn’t want help.
He would have resisted what help was offered;
He had found some contentment in
his own suffering and the judgment of others.
He had been born different, yes;
But his environment exacerbated his feeling
Of awkwardness.
Disentangled.
Now let me say that sometimes disentanglement is not always a bad thing.
Sometimes our families are such deep sources of violence,
that by disentangling we get ourselves out from under our fears, and find new places of safety.
We don’t expect and abused woman or child
to stay entangled in a relationship with a bully and abuser.
We encourage people to flee for their own lives instead of live in terror.
Not all entanglement is the same.
But sometimes the cost of disentanglement is itself
Problematic.
I often feel disentangled.
I am on the treadmill when I first learn the story.
Sometimes when I’m at the gym,
I’m struck by how my attention is deeply challenged. Sometimes I watch six TV shows.
On one channel is a story about Iraq;
another a reality TV show called “I Love New York.” I hope you don’t watch that.
A Discovery channel show on the planet;
then a baseball game.
The Simpsons.
And suddenly, this one event captures my attention.
But it is horrifying; but it is distant.
I wonder if I know anyone there. I don’t.
In this age our mental life easily separates into categories. I suppose we always had this skill, but we’ve been blessed with many ways of doing this.
I sit comfortably near a computer;
friends of mine have had to deal with a terrible storm in Mamaroneck and Larchmont.
I have to invite people to have fun at another event,
but it feels strange to do so,
even though I have been asked to organize it for a convention.
Then I consider Iraq where 600,000 people have died. Alas, that number I cannot understand. That number makes me cold.
But thirty-two Americans and I grieve a little more.
That is my sin; our sin.
My Ipod shuffles to “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Soometimes Ipods are like that: they shuffle to songs and I haven’t taken out my Christmas music. The next song will most likely be salsa.
The TV has a text feed that is reporting one young woman who has just gone to mass. She says, “it felt very real.”
Contrast to the previous day: she hears the shots; she hides; she doesn’t know where to go. The experience: surreal. Time shortens and becomes incomprehensible; people are trapped; they sense directly being on the boundary of life and death. Real? Or Unreal?
For her, it was gathering, as prayer, as real.
It is an interesting exercise of the human imagination: shooting – the hell of a violent death – reconstructed as surreal.
We do not say, precisely, that it was not real: yes, it was.
For each family who will live with the consequences: it will be painfully real.
But this young woman separated where she found meaning.
She could not find meaning in the death. Life is real.
This is provocative: she determined that suffering – needless, pointless suffering –
is not where we locate meaning.
She reentangled herself into a world of love, prayer, and hope.
I recognize that for lots of Christians, suffering is how we create meaning. Perhaps suffering does allow us to see details. It may make us pay attention.
It is not, however, the last word.
We don’t celebrate Holy Saturday at St. Barts, but one reason we have a day that separates Good Friday from the Resurrection is to cut the causal link between suffering and resurrection. Yes – one happens after the other, but the resurrection does not happen because of suffering. It happens to transform it.
The resurrection is what transforms our understanding of suffering. It is the light that exposes suffering and our lives, making them comprehensible. It diminishes their power, it permits us to live into the future more confidently.
Holy Saturday destroys the connection that necessitates and elevates suffering as a precondition to the resurrection.
No – there is no meaning in the suffering.
Suffering helps us pay attention.
Each life lost is another nail in the cross of our savior.
Upon the cross, suffering dis-illusions our own limited power.
The cross, itself, is not magnificent, divine, as holy, but only as a reflection, an invitation, of and into whatever hope we can muster.
What we do now, as we always do in such tragedies,
look at the horror,
cringe in embarrassment toward a God
who could let such suffering happen and gather the faithful.
But This God reentangles himself in a new way.
Yes there is suffering.
The suffering turns us to where the bodies are laid.
We are moved to gesture: to hug, to kneel,
to share our french-fries with neighbors.
We draw symbols, we say words to the dead.
These are natural, human, real responses.
As we gather, the divine fire is lit.
As we reentangle, the divine fire is lit.
In the gospel, Jesus reentangles through an act of divine forgiveness with the bully, Paul. That’s what Paul was – a bully,
Bullying people who didn’t think the way he did.
But instead of resentment, Jesus forgives.
That’s the gospel moment.
The resentment Jesus could have felt but by being persecuted;
is replaced by love.
He reentangles with others,
Not through rivalry, not through envy, not through competition;
And Pauls heart is changed –
Suddenly he sees.
I wonder if this means that we should get rid of our own easy moralism.
That’s how The murderer, the man, the child, Cho constructed his world:
These people are wrong – hedonists, corrupt, evil.
I am good.
Cho had constructed a world of right and wrong, without grace and forgiveness.
There is a movie called "Jesus camp" –
a movie about young Christians who are being taught this about the world: it is evil,
It is corrupt and worthy of being destroyed. There is no forgiveness, there is only judgment.
Instead of entangling with the world,
They claim to destroy it.
The gospel story reveals, however,
When we entangle the world.
The disciples, throw over the net,
And they entangle the fish.
Are we ready to throw the net over?
I’m ready.
I’m ready to throw the net over.
I’m ready to entangle people
in this mess of love and hope
And forgiveness and joy.
I’m ready to share in this sense of abundance I feel.
Jesus says throw over the net.
Throw over the net.
And then,
“Come and have breakfast.”