Faith for the Future: Care and Compassion
| John Wilkinson |
Third Presbyterian Church |
| May 25, 2008 |
Matthew 6:24-34 |
Last fall, Bonny and I led a section of the Qabats Wednesday
evening program. The task was to help our first through sixth
graders learn a bit more about Third Church. Our curriculum
was the stained glass windows in the sanctuary. It was a lot
of fun, one of those occasions where the adults learned much
more than the children.
Of special interest to them were the six stained glass windows
on what we call the Arnold Park side of the sanctuary. The World
War I Memorial windows. They were dedicated January 1, 1922,
in memory of the five young men, Third Church members, who were
killed in service in World War I: Lieutenants Harvey Cory, William
Magill, Henry Sommer, Frank Stewart, Chauncey Young.
Each of the windows has religious symbolism and military symbolism,
and, uniquely, symbolism from each of the countries with which
the U.S. was an ally in that great war. Belgium, Ireland, Italy,
Scotland, France, Japan, Greece, Canada. The window to the far
left is the window that commemorates England, and includes a
depiction of St. George slaying the dragon – by far the
children’s favorite.
These windows for me – like this building itself –
are more than inanimate objects. They form a kind of living,
breathing skin that both welcomes in and sends out a living
breathing organism, us, the church.
The windows, more specifically, do several things:
They are objects of beauty, unique creations by the renowned
Pike Studios.
* They are poignant memorials to five men, among hundreds
of thousands of men and women, whose lives ended all-too-soon
in the face of war; and as well, to the families and friends
and communities of faith they left behind.
* They are testimonials to the horror and tragedy of war, and
how its impact continues for generations to come.
* And they are prayers – prayers in glass and lead, but
prayers nonetheless.
“Are you not of more value than they?” Jesus asks
his disciples as he refers to the birds of the air.
Those windows remind us of that – not a bird, not a blade
of grass, not a hungry child, not a fallen soldier – is
ever absent from God’s care or God’s compassion,
and, by extension, should never be absent from ours.
That does not mean that we passively accept the state of things
as they are – whether warfare of hunger, or personal hardship
– as they are and as they forever are to be. But it does
mean that we as a community of faith, as this community
of faith, are called to believe differently and behave differently
in the face of human hardship and human suffering and human
heartache. And so we do.
One can read Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel in
many ways. Charles Cousar writes that “the passage confronts
its readers with a series of choices: serving God or pursuing
wealth; trusting God or fretting over life’s necessities;
seeking God’s rule or worrying about tomorrow. (We) are
prone to laugh and dismiss Jesus’ words as something (irrelevant),
far too utopian to serve as practical wisdom…” (Texts
for Preaching, Year A, pages 161-163)
Don’t worry, Jesus says, which suggests to some that
people should just accept that hand they’ve been dealt,
crummy or otherwise. We know people who live like that, and
we know religion that teaches that.
But I don’t think that is what is happening here. Jesus
here is acknowledging that bad things will happen to people,
good or otherwise. We know the litany well. Health. Relationships.
Work. Financial crisis. It would do little good to tell someone
not to worry when they are facing an awful marriage or an aggressive
form of cancer or no job or…you fill in the blank. “Don’t
worry” rings pretty empty at that point.
What Jesus is saying, I believe, is something like this: as
God clothes the grass of the field, so God clothes you with
care and compassion, so that when bad things happen, you are
able to put every challenge, every hardship, in another context,
a different, counter-cultural context.
I have visited enough hospital rooms and presided over enough
funerals and memorial services, sought to offer some comfort
and usefulness to hurting persons and grieving families, to
formulate a pretty fundamental question in my mind. What would
they do, what would we do, without the church?
The church as the balm in Gilead that provides comfort. The
church as the body of Christ that attends to its hurting members.
The church as the good shepherd that walks through the valley
of the shadow of death with lost and lonely sheep.
I have told this story before, so I apologize for the repetition.
Some years ago, when I was in middle school, my father was in
a serious car accident, driving with several ministerial colleagues
to the funeral of another colleague’s father. The driver
of the car was killed instantly; my father was hospitalized
with a serious head injury and faced a very long convalescence.
Those of you who have met him wouldn’t know, which is
very good news indeed.
Even now, more than 30 years after, I will be at this church
meeting or that one, and someone will recognize my name on a
name tag and make the connection. “How’s your dad
doing? Tell him hello for me. We prayed for him.”
We prayed for him.
It is what we do. One time I tried to calculate how many sermons
had been preached since the founding of Third Church. It is
a mind-numbing, and perhaps depressing, number! But think of
how many prayers have been uttered. On Sunday morning, dozens,
literally. Or before meals. During Sunday school. At the beginning
and end of every Session meeting, as the minutes will dutifully
attest. At weddings and funerals. And beyond these four walls
– at hospital bedsides, in care facilities, in hospices.
Add to that number how many prayers you utter, each moment,
each day, each lifetime.
It is what we do, deeply engrained in our personality and ethos,
a reflection of the care and compassion that God through Jesus
Christ offers to us. Prayer is what we do, prayer that reminds
us that more than any blade of grass or bird, God’s care
and compassion reaches to us. Prayer that is silent or verbal,
active or questioning, plaintive or confident. An act of faith
and hope that connects us with God and an act of solidarity
and community that connects us with one another.
Prayer is a mystery to us, in so many ways, and my trajectory
this morning is really not to consider the content of prayer,
nor its properties.
When all else fails, the Lord’s Prayer always works.
Or a prayer known as the “serenity prayer,” attributed
to Reinhold Niebuhr, that seems fitting in light of the gospel
message: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things
I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom
to know the difference.” Or Anne Lamott’s reminder
that there are really only two prayers – “please,
please, please” and “thank you, thank you, thank
you.”
This is not about prayer content. Prayer is not magic, nor
a sedative nor a tranquilizer. As much as we do not understand
the mysteries of a sovereign God, we do not understand the ways
we communicate to God and with God on our behalf and on behalf
of others. Nor do we know how it makes a difference.
I do not know how or whether the prayers offered on my dad’s
behalf made a difference, but I trust they did and I believe
they did and they certainly did in my life and in my family’s
life. And they would have, as well, made a difference, somehow,
inexplicably, had the result been a different one, because they
would have been a manifestation of the care and compassion Jesus
shows us and that we embrace as a community of faith.
Our friends in the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester will consecrate
a new bishop this coming Saturday in a ceremony filled with
pomp and circumstance. Given the controversial choice of Gene
Robinson as bishop, I’ve asked my Episcopal priest friends
why the matter of priests and human sexuality seems not to be
such a big deal, but the choice of bishops does. A bishop is
different, they say. Unlike a priest, a bishop carries the tradition
of the church wherever he or she goes, in a way that our priests
do not.
Interesting, I thought. I would want to expand that thinking
a little, perhaps a lot. I would invite us to understand that
wherever you or I go, all of us, any of us, we carry the church
with us.
Wherever we are, the church is.
At work or play, at home or at school. On the soccer field,
in the courthouse, in the statehouse. At Wegman’s, on
vacation, at Oak Hill. And more to the point, in the counselor’s
office, in the hospital room, at the funeral home.
Wherever we are, the church is, reflecting God’s care
and compassion for every blade of grass, every bird. In every
prayer offered, every ride given, every hospital visited, every
casserole prepared, every flower delivered, every act of kindness
– large and small. Which become, therefore, not random
acts of kindness but intentional acts of kindness generated
by the care and compassion of God.
This has been an important lesson of the hundreds of visits
we have undertaken in our “Faith for the Future”
capital campaign. We have learned many things, and some not
so good. We have learned about hurting relationships and rough
job prospects. We have learned that the church has not always
done a good job of being connected with all of us.
The good news is that we have discovered an opportunity to
connect and re-connect, connect more deeply, more broadly, into
this vision, this gospel, this community, into the streams of
care and compassion that make differences in our lives.
It is a task our deacons work on all the time, our staff, our
congregational visitors. It will be a big task for the new associate
pastor we are preparing to call. But really, it is the task,
the joyful, vital task, of all of us. To reach out. To connect.
To pray, especially, to pray. To exhibit the care and compassion
that has been exhibited to you by a caring and compassionate
God. If we do not know what to say, and I often don’t,
don’t say anything. Just show up, with a cookie or a hug
or a silent prayer.
By so doing, we become as living prayers, as living, breathing,
flesh-and-blood stained glass windows. We memorialize the fallen
dead of a century ago and give strong, continual witness to
every situation where hurt and hardship exists, even to this
present moment.
It is what we do for each other because it is what God has
done, and does, for every blade of grass, every bird, every
one of us. Amen.
