The Terrible Toll of Child Abuse

Not all sights here on the Cape are beautiful ones, and not all speak equally eloquently of the presence of God, but some are so compelling that they cry out for attention.  This was one of those.

200 gaily spinning silver pinwheels whose beauty stands in jarring contrast to the background message that each stands in for one of the 200 children who reported sex abuse on the Cape and Islands in the past year.

It happens in our homes. It happens in the camps to which we entrust our children (currently there are claims from some 13 former campers that they were allegedly abused at Camp Good News by multiple perpetrators over the course of several decades). It happens in our churches, as those familiar with the global reach of the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandals, and with cases that know no denominational bounds, know.

I happens, and it keeps happening, often because of misguided and dangerous concepts of what it means to forgive those who abuse.  Forgiveness does not mean that there are no consequences for the perpetrator of abuse; forgiveness does not mean keeping the abuse secret to protect the forgiven perpetrator; forgiveness does not mean failing to take every possible precaution to ensure that the perpetrator will not have the opportunity to abuse again.

Abuse of our children is horrific.

And perhaps only outweighed by those who know about it and, through their actions and omissions, allow it to keep happening.

May we all work for the day when no gaily spinning silver pinwheels mar our beautiful landscapes....

Easter and A Ministry of Hugging

     We were hot – working indoors and without air-conditioning on a warm spring day in New Orleans will do that to you. We were covered with dust – sanding dried plaster overhead for hours on end will do that to you. We had plaster caked on hands and shirts and shorts – being novices at spreading mud, a form of plaster, on wallboard will do that to you. So when a nicely dressed African-American woman pulled up in her car and with a “yoo-hoo y’all” summoned us out of doors, we were happy to take the break.

            She was there, she explained to us with a big smile and a twinkle in her eye, to thank us – some 15 members of this church and two other congregations here on the Cape – for coming down to New Orleans and spending a week helping renovate homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina over five years ago. She told us her name was Elizabeth, and that she worked for the St. Bernard’s Project – the organization for which we were volunteering – as their official hugger. And her job, she told us, was to go to all the volunteer work sites every week, thank all the volunteers, and give them each a big hug.

            Of course we asked Elizabeth how the hurricane had affected her – had she evacuated, or had she been there when the levees broke and water often fourteen feet deep had flooded the area? She was fortunate, she told us – had not been in New Orleans at the time, and unlike many people, she had flood insurance, and so was back in a rebuilt home in about 14 months.  But then, two years ago, someone broke into her home, and right in front of her eyes killed her 18 year-old daughter, and then shot her in the face.

            After she recovered physically, Elizabeth went to St. Bernard’s Project and asked if she could have access to the mental health services they provided for those traumatized by the flood experience.  And although her trauma was not directly related to the flooding, they took her in, and eventually she recovered from the almost unimaginable psychic injuries that she had sustained.

            And when she had healed, Elizabeth realized that she had a choice. She had every right in the world to be bitter, angry, despairing, full of hatred at a world and a God which could let such terrible things happen; she could have turned away from this cruel world and in on herself.  Like those fearful, angry, shame-filled, despairing disciples long ago, she could continue to live, if you can call such an existence living, in a Good Friday world.

            That is, after all, where those followers of Jesus were living on the evening of that first Easter – in a Good Friday world. Cowering in fear behind closed doors. Fearful of the authorities, the same ones that had arrested their leader, Jesus, had tortured him cruelly, had nailed him to a cross in the worst form of capital punishment the world knew.

But also fearful that Jesus himself had come back, that as Mary Magdalene had told them that morning, he had been raised from the dead. Given that they had abandoned him in his hour of need, had cut and run when the authorities had moved in, had not even shown up at the foot of the cross to be with him in his time of direst need, they had no reason to expect that a reunion, unlikely as though it might be, would be a happy one.

            And then suddenly, mysteriously, Jesus is among them. Here is the amazing thing: Jesus comes back, not to the perfect, not to those with straight As or 100% Sunday School attendance, but to this band of pitiful, despairing, fearful failures. And what does he say to them? “Peace be with you.” In other words, “Do not be afraid. I forgive you.”  And perhaps because they can’t believe their ears, he says it to them once again: “Peace be with you.”

            But Jesus does not leave it there, with allowing his followers to feel relieved that they have been forgiven. Jesus breathes on them, and gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of power, and a mission – to carry on the mission which had been entrusted to him by his father: to love, to heal, to reconcile, to seek justice, to promote peace. To live in the light of Easter.

            With all that had happened to Elizabeth, who could blame her for choosing to pitch her tent in a Good Friday world. But she chose Easter. She chose to live with the unfathomable mystery of why bad things happen to us, why hurricanes rage and violence invades homes, and she chose to embrace the call she had – the call each of us have – to partner with our Creator is bringing new life to this world.

Like Mary Magdalene, who because of her tears cannot see clearly until Jesus calls her name, Elizabeth heard the call to rise to new life, and everything changed.

Just as those wounded and fearful disciples had God’s restoring Spirit pouring into them, so too Elizabeth was filled with the empowering Spirit.

Just as the newly en-Spirited church was given Jesus’ mission, so too Elizabeth received her mission. And so this is her calling, to take that gratitude that just overflows out of her, and to share it with others, and to go around giving the world hugs every day.

            Easter is about God giving us what we need: Jesus risen from the dead, offering us forgiveness, healing, the breath of a new start, and a new calling.  It is a gift of new life, a gift graciously taken up by those early disciples, a gift gratefully taken up by Elizabeth in our time, a gift there for the taking by you.

            So maybe you, like Mary Magdalene in the garden, like Elizabeth knocking on the door at St. Bernard’s Project, come this morning with tears in your eyes, grief having its way with you.

            Or maybe you, like the disciples huddled in that upper room, come this morning with regret, with shame, cynical, scarred.

            Or maybe you, like those in Jerusalem who had somehow missed it all, come distracted, worrying about the kids and whether they are making too much noise, or thinking about how you might best navigate that difficult family gathering after.

            Or maybe you, like one of those followers of Jesus, the one we call Doubting Thomas, come with questions, doubts, uncertainty about how these matters of the spirit fit into your rational and scientific world-view.

            It doesn’t matter. The gift of Easter is there for you, a new world of forgiveness and healing and comfort and new purpose, all wrapped up and ready for you today, or whenever you are ready to accept it. 

And so I say to you, with all my heart and soul, Happy Easter! Amen.

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"Love" is an Action Word

Today is called Maundy Thursday, so called because it is the day that Jesus gave to his followers a new mandate – that they love one another.

“ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Sweet – so what we are supposed to do is send each other Valentine’s Day cards, have tender feelings for one another, think kindly on one another?

That is not “loving one another” by half, not as Jesus sees it.

The love he is talking about is an action word, not a cover for sentimental gushings. He is not talking about just the heart or the head – he is talking about our hands and our feet and our wallets and our pocketbooks. Love others as he loved us?  Those feet dragged a cross up a hill on the trash heap outside of town, for us. He stretched out his hands to embrace the world, and in so doing got them pierced with cruel nails. He gave everything and was left with nothing, not even a cloak.

Love one another as he loved us? Then see that we are not isolated, independent individuals responsible only for ourselves and our own wealth and well-being, but instead are all bound together into one community, responsible to one another, entrusted with the care of each other.  Then understand that the plight of the family still living in FEMA trailers almost six years after hurricane Katrina is something we are called to do something about. Then get that placing the cost of fixing the national debt problem on those least able to afford it while the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth goes to the top 1% is not exactly what Jesus would have had in mind. Then work for justice for everyone, so that no one will be bullied, stereotyped, or abused.

Loving one another will be costly.

Jesus got that.

Do we?

What Happened?

There is a terrible paradox at the heart of Palm Sunday. On the one hand, a hand raised high in exultation and triumph, it is a day of celebration and rejoicing, as we recall how Jesus is welcomed as a king into his capital city, Jerusalem, with the crowd waving palm branches and strewing their coats before him.

On the other hand, a hand clenching at our heart in fear and  shame, even as we sing, “All Glory, Laud and Honor”, we know that this king is on his way to betrayal, desertion, torture, and a cruel and grisly death without honor.

            Doug Davidson, writing in the periodical “The Other Side” (March 2002, p.9), was recently re-awakened to the paradox of Palm Sunday by his young son. He writes,

“Last summer, my three-year-old son and I stopped off at the seminary library to return a book for a friend. Our family has lived on the campus of this Lutheran seminary since Jennifer began classes here a year and a half ago. But this was our son’s first time inside the old stone building that houses the library.

As we stepped through the bright red doors into the darkened vestibule, Elliot stopped in his tracks. There, on the wall to his right, hung a sculpted crucifix, about five feet tall. I watched his young eyes study Jesus’ agonized face, the dying body nailed to a tree, the nails piercing his hands and feet.

I knew the image was a new one to him. Although he’s been raised in the church, the crosses in our Baptist congregation are all clean and sanitized; their Jesuses all resurrected and ascended.

For a moment, I considered hustling him back out the door, trying to shield him from this holy horror in the same way that I “rewrite” the violent plots of his beloved Batman comic books when I read them aloud. But it was too late; he had already taken it all in.

I thought he might cry. Instead, without ever taking his eyes off the dying Jesus, he slowly spoke words filled with great sadness, mystery, and wonder: What happened?”

            “What happened?” It really is a question that cannot be avoided today. If we can’t make some sense of what happened that led to Jesus’ betrayal and torture and death, then how can we even begin to make sense of what happened that first Easter day? If we cannot place ourselves in the triumphal march into Jerusalem, around the table with Jesus at the Passover celebration, in the garden with Jesus as he prays that he might be spared, or with the disciples as they flee after Jesus’ arrest, how can we possibly place ourselves at the empty tomb or on the road to Emmaus with the risen Christ?

            Again, what happened?

n      What happened that this spirit-filled and compassionate soul might be sold out by one his inner-circle for 30 pieces of silver?

n      What happened that this gifted healer became an object of cruel punishment and was subjected to the most exquisitely painful method of execution yet devised? 

n      What happened that this unarmed peasant who preached non-violence so threatened the religious and governmental authorities and their power that they conspired to silence him once and for all?

n      What happened that the joyous “Hosannas!” of the multitudes as Jesus entered the Holy City on Sunday only five days later were changed to blood-thirsty cries of “Crucify him!”?

n      What happened that on Sunday palm branches were strewn before Jesus, but on Friday Jesus was hammered to a tree?

n      What happened that of all those who followed Jesus on that ride up the mountain on Sunday, none stayed by his side on the night of his betrayal, or on the day of his death?

n      What happened that we could kill the incarnate God?

n      What happened that we have become so used to this shocking and tragic and humanity-indicting event that it is only through the witness of a shocked three-year-old that we might be re-awakened to its incomprehensibility?

            The Biblical scholars try to tell us what happened: that Jesus threatened the powers that be, that his over-turning the tables of the money-lenders in the Temple united the religious and business leaders against him; or that his defeat of the powers of death, illustrated by the raising of Lazarus, was too much for those who make out quite well, thank you very much, from the profitable ways of death. 

Yet even as they struggle to explain the depths of perversity in the human soul, or the willingness of humans in all generations to betray Jesus by turning our backs on the hungry and the homeless, the oppressed and the poor, or the ways in which unmet expectations can lead followers to desert and look elsewhere for fulfillment of their dreams, I find myself unconvinced, still wondering, what happened?

            But if human motivation and intent in the death of Jesus are difficult to fathom, how much more so is it difficult to understand and comprehend the faithfulness and love of God as revealed through Jesus.

            For let us not forget that Jesus could have turned from his path of radical obedience to God’s will, he could have turned from his self-giving love of us. Right until the end he could have avoided suffering and death – having been abandoned by his followers, he could have abandoned us; having fought the good fight and labored long and tirelessly to bring a prodigal people back to God, how could he have been blamed for calling it quits on those who had quit him?

And yet Jesus chose to endure it all so that we might know the full height and breadth of God’s love for us, a God who would stoop to take on our common lot and endure what it means to be human right through to the bloody end, a God who would model for us radical obedience and self-giving love, a God who was not content to give 95% and then get out of Dodge when the going got tough, but ran the race right to the end, and in so doing won for us the prize that we on our own could never hope to win, paid the debt we could never satisfy.

            On the cross, Jesus looks humanity’s brutality and cruelty square in the face and says, “I forgive you”.

Even as we pound the nails into his palms and feet, Jesus says to us, “Nothing can separate you from my love.”

Even as we throw dice for rights to his bloody clothes Jesus promises to clothe us with radiant garments fit for a heavenly court.

Even as his arms are stretched out wide on the cross-beam, Jesus freely offers to us an embrace of eternal love.

            What on earth happened? Or, maybe, what in hell happened? Or perhaps even better, what in heaven happened?

Who can comprehend the amazing and wondrous undying love of Jesus?

            Sometimes it causes me to

 tremble.          

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Breath of Hope

(A sermon based on Ezekiel 37 and the vision of the valley of dry bones)

     This valley of dry bones that Ezekiel is led to in his vision seems pretty crazy to most of us, perhaps something out of the opening of a modern sci-fi film – a vast, desolate plain littered by dry and brittle bones. And yet, in our own time and experience, we know the sort of thing he is talking about, this vision is not as strange as we would like to think it is. We have seen them, in news reels and magazines and newspapers and documentaries, the countless trenches dug for mass graves in Germany, in Poland, in Russia, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, silent testimony to man’s violence and inhumanity during the time of war. And time and again we have seen those photos and videos of communities beset by natural catastrophes, earthquakes in Turkey, mudslides in central America, most recently of the devastation wrought by the tsunami in northern Japan, where whole communities were wiped off the face of the earth.

            Like Ezekiel, we stand before the pit of grief and ask, Can these dry bones live? In a place where it seems like there is no future, can there be new life? In a time when the despair is overwhelming, can there be hope?

            These were our questions last April, when twenty folk drawn from this church, the Cotuit Federated Church, and North Falmouth Congregational Church, drove through the emptiness of neighborhood after neighborhood in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and its neighboring town, St. Bernard’s Parish. In some areas, decaying, rotting houses, once submerged under nine plus feet of water, still tottered, each marked with the four-quadrant circle spray-painted by rescue teams in the aftermath of Katrina, indicating whether the utilities were still on, whether the house had been searched, whether there were any pets in the premises, whether any human remains were still inside. In other areas, including where we were put to work, the streets were lined by empty foundation slab after empty foundation slab, all that remained after their decaying, mold-infested structures had been bull-dozed away. All this, over four years after Katrina, over four years after the forced evacuations, after FEMA’s bungling, after formaldehyde-saturated trailers, after families and neighbors becoming separated and relocated to housing hundreds and even thousands of miles away, after federal and state red-tape delaying and at times preventing families from returning to rebuild. If these were not our exact words at the time, surely they could have been: “Can these dry bones live?” Can there be a future for this community? Can these displaced folk ever come together again?

            This is the meaning of Ezekiel’s vision. The dry bones, Ezekiel is told, represent the house of Israel. The valley refers to their exile in Babylon, where the dry bones of the once proud nation now lie lifeless and without hope. The question which God had asked Ezekiel at the outset of the vision, “Can these bones live?”, in reality means, “Can this community live once again? Can the exiles ever hope to go home again, be reconstituted, and prosper? If so, how in heaven can this be?”

            How in heaven, indeed. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy, and when he does, the bones come together again, sinews bind them together, flesh covers them. But still they do not live, for one thing more is required – the breath of God. And so at God’s command the wind is summoned – wind being a Hebrew equivalent to breath, to spirit, and the bones live once more, the community is resurrected to new life. In the face of death, where there is the Spirit of God, there is creation, there is new life, there is a resurrected community.

            Resurrection, God tells Ezekiel, is not a privatized, spiritual matter. It is concrete, it is historical, it concerns your existence in the here and now. “Tell the people”, Ezekiel is told, “I am going to open up your graves and bring you up from your graves . . . and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. . . I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil….”

            And all this does not just happen. The message is clear – God is the source of life, and of renewed life, and if God is about anything, it is that God is in the restoration and resurrection business.  God will move God’s people out of death to new life, and God’s spirit will live within them.

            And so the people can live in hope. Appearances are deceiving. When it looks like a death valley, beneath the surface springs of life are preparing to gush up; when all that most people see is a graveyard, those with eyes of faith can see a field getting ready to blossom into new life.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair. The despairing might come to the valley of dry bones to lay cut flowers on the ground as a memorial; those with hope bring to the boneyard their gardening implements, getting ready to water and weed and hoe as the new life springs forth. The despairing are disempowered, weakened, sick at heart; the hopeful are filled with the Spirit, energized, emboldened for the work which lies at hand.

            And then this is what they do. They climb out of the vans, put on the work gloves and the knee pads, pick up the sledgehammer and the nail gun and the skil saw and the paint brush, and they get to work.  One day at a time, one home at a time, one small neighborhood at a time, they work to rebuild a community, to hasten the day when once again slabs will lie hidden beneath solid homes, driveways will be full, jumbalaya will be cooking for the weekend block party, and kids will laughingly play tag in back yards and run out front when they hear the ice cream truck coming. They do this work because they have eyes to see that there is a new world a’coming, and because they know that in this work they have not only each other, they also have a divine partner who breathes new life into dry bones and works tirelessly to raise the dead from their graves.

            People who live in hope, who have eyes to see the new reality which even now is almost ready to spring forth, can live differently than those who despair.  People who live in hope can take a look at declining church membership and attendance figures, at trends which tell the story of the increasing secularization of society, at the drop-off in faith among the younger generations, and not despair. And instead of sitting back and wishing for the good old days when church and the wider culture walked together hand in glove and were mutually supporting, instead they can get together, as you have done, and together seek to discern how God is at work beneath the surface of all these trends to prepare the day when new life will spring forth in our faith communities, and, particularly, here at West Parish. And then they try to figure out how we might get in step with this resurrecting God who will not let us just lie down in our graves, how we might take concrete steps in both the short and long term to make this faith community as full of life as it possibly can be. You do this, because God’s breath of hope fills your lives.

            Friends, hear this day the Good News which shall be for you and for all people: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.”

             

Opening Day – Ash Friday!

Opening Day for the Red Sox – is there anything like it?  More than just a sign that spring is actually on the way (yesterday’s snow aside), more than the promise of warm summer evenings at Fenway or listening to the game on the deck after dinner – on Opening Day every team and fan can say, “This could be the year….”  The possibilities are wide open, there are no entries in the loss column, every pitcher has a perfect ERA, every batter has yet to make an out, no errors mar the statistics of any player.

Opening Day is a day of new beginnings.

Some recently celebrated another day of new beginnings, a day which has historically been called “Ash Wednesday.” Traditionally marking the first day of the church season of Lent, worshippers are reminded of the old saying “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, and called to use the 40 days before Easter to be intentional about turning their lives around, making a new beginning.

Which calls to mind that major league bats historically have been fashioned from northern white ash, because of this wood’s hardness, durability, flexibility, and “feel”.  So maybe we could also call Opening Day, “Ash Friday”.  And possibly remember that every day is a day where we have the possibility of making a new start, laying the regrets and mistakes of the past behind us, embarking on a new and better life here and now.

I recently read a sad, but all too typical, account of an elderly fellow who would walk his dog past a church every day, often escorted by someone who the pastor assumed was his wife.  One day this woman was no longer with the man, and after several weeks without any sign of her, the pastor stopped the man and asked if that person was indeed his wife, and if so, what had happened to her. It turned out that she was his wife, and that she had died unexpectedly.  Noting that this man had often paused in his walks and looked wistfully at the church, the pastor asked him if he might consider coming in sometime. “No,” he replied, “it is too late for me; I’ve lived all this time without faith I guess it is just too late for me now.”

He was dead wrong, of course. There is a simply terrible parable in the Bible about how unfair God is about this. Seems that the owner of a vineyard went to hire some villagers to bring in the crop, agreeing to pay them a set wage for the day’s labor. By noon he realizes he needs more people, and goes back and hires some more, and does this again at mid-afternoon. At the end of the day he pays off all the laborers at the same amount, and those who began at the break of day are mad that those who came to the vineyard late get the same reward.

It is just not fair, and thank God for that. Each day is a day of new beginnings, each day is Opening Day with all the possibilities for new life that go with it.

So, Happy Ash Friday!

Red Sox fans: click here for some Opening Day music!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKHqWaTv9g