The only thing dividing us and on-coming traffic on a two-lane highway is a usually a yellow line. Our trust in others to remain where they are on the road is actually remarkable if we think about it. Other drivers are precariously close to us and a couple feet can mean life and death. The only thing between stopping a bus and rolling through a stop light off an interstate highway is a quarter inch breakpad on the front driver’s side rotor! Direction moving in an opposite direction at a high velocity when not channeled properly can have a damaging effect. Just ask Nathaniel Binversie who unfortunately was injured water skiing yesterday. However, if we are traveling parallel with one another like a group of bikers, runners or hikers, moving together in tandem with a common goal there can be a forceful change for the good. The gospel reading for today is saturated with verbs for direction. Journeyed, drew, carried out, moved with pity, stepped forward, halted, arise, seized, arisen and visited. These dynamics of direction play an important role in St. Luke’s gospel accounts of Jesus’ healings. The ultimate healing is the reversal of the direction of death to life. Jesus brings the son of a widow, the only son of his mother to life and declares, “Young man, I tell you arise!”
Young people, I tell you arise! We have been steadily declining in the direction of what I like to term, “relational entropy.” Like the young man, we have fallen away from concord with our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We have steadily began to break down in our ability to sustain relationships with others without the ability to make a commitment to anything worthy of remaining faithful to. Entropy is a scientific phenomenon described as lack of order and a gradual decline. You see, we have fallen to discord and disorder by allowing ourselves the false freedom of retracting and retreating from human relationships. Unbeknownst to ourselves, we have allowed a culture that cherishes death to become death within us. We are the young man in the large crowd in the city of Nain lying at the city gate dead. Jesus is moved with pity as his directional thrust reverses the breakdown of human relationships. Jesus Christ restores us to a healthy sense of life.
A couple of you mentioned after immediately stepping off the bus last night how Father Peter spoke of really trying to get to know one another. Asking questions about one another. One of the most beautiful parts of of being entrusted with the authority of Christ as His priest is the ability to move the momentum of life’s movements to death to that of life. One of the most frustrating is knowing so many stories of all of you out there, but no one taking the time to ask each other about one another! You would be surprised at what you learn about the lives of one another. There is a treasury of beautiful sanctity within this sanctuary. Our own egos and self-engrossment have deadened us to the gifts of one another. Like Jesus, as participators in the drama of humanity’s condition of original sin, the priest walks with Jesus and journeys into a city of nain, or a community of Saint John and draws near, steps forward and raises the dead to new life. These visitations of clarity within the clarion call of the Word’s piercing effectiveness is a participation within the Trinity. Father Peter humbly said afterward that he was just a mercenary bus driver for CYE, but his insightful perception of this community’s relational entropy or breakdown was diagnosed quit quickly and he said something, “Young man, I tell you arise!” And many of you noticed a shift in direction on the way home...and you noticed the bus was now breaking too!
I imagine Simeon’s prophecy of Jesus explosive power to reverse the direction of death proclaiming to Mary and Joseph and those present in the temple some thirty years earlier. His gift of prophesy of Jesus’ future priestly ministry is perhaps a forgotten gift of the Spirit in this day and age, but his words may have been as such:
“You are a herald of this mighty storm of grace. The word of the Lord will come upon you as fire. The graces of heaven shall increase upon you beyond your ability to fathom, heaven's Kingdom will arise in you to a point that speech will give way to fire, and words will give way to incarnation. Thy Kingdom come thy will be done!” And Jesus said, “Young man I tell you arise!” Sons and daughters of God, stop your downward descent into the netherworld of deaths frozen abyss of darkness. Allow the fire of God’s love to envelope you and disband the crowds of doubt.
Elijah was moving into a different town--Zarephath and was with another widow. A widow is one who has tasted the impact of death to a considerable degree. One whom she had given to herself is now dead and gone. Now in Nain, her son dead and gone. The pain of loss in the wake of death for a widow is an archetype of the crumbled devastation of our soul’s condition of death and separation. It is the directional dysfunction of this perverse and crooked generation failing to see the one way sign as we avoid the oncoming traffic of God’s kingdom among us. Elijah, as prefigurement, carries the widow’s son to the upper room where he was staying and pleads to the Lord God, “Let the life breath return to the body of this child.” The life breath returned in the upper room again some centuries later for the followers of Jesus and now some centuries later, here, in this sanctuary --this upper nornthern room. God’s direction of life points in a linear time-line shooting through the ages and expanses of time in the Eucharist, but we remain as fish swimming against the streams of living water. The woman replied to Elijah, “The word of the Lord comes truly from your mouth.” And Jesus says, “Young man I tell you arise!” Now the word enfleshed shatters death’s trap of destruction through the living presence of the WORD incarnate. The Word has traveled to Nain through Calvary, into the cave and up into heaven! It has moved from Illinois, Florida, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, Louisiana, California and Puerto Rico to this place, Saint Joseph’s Formation Center in Baileys Harbor, Door County WI! It is enfleshed and alive!
Even Saint Paul’s direction was pointed out of himself and into others, beckoning those in darkness to the same life-breath we claim today. Saint Paul preaches a Gospel not of human origin. Participator in the life of Christ, Saint Paul had been set apart through grace. Jesus revealed His love through Paul as He plumbed the depths of his deadened soul. Paul, knocked off his horse (or so they say) reversing his direction from persecuted death of innocence to praising the victory of life over death and darkness. He even decided to really move in the direction away from the in-house dysfunction of Judaism into the territory of the Gentiles in Arabia and Damascus. We, unfortunately, remain within the confines and restrictions or our own houses of Israel with back-biting, competition and breaking down one another. This community will have to turn a corner to establish the reign of God if it is to last for three months. Stop thinking of yourselves so much! Move away from this direction of sin and death. We are dead at the gate! We lie helpless in the arms of distress with the crowds of disbelief. Jesus says,
“I tell you young man arise!”
When a priest distributes holy communion, he steps forward from the altar of life into the fray of humanity’s discord and you move toward the bread of life and divinity meets humanity in a rare exchange of paradoxical disunity. This antithetical direction of spirit is none other than a re-enactment of Jesus encounter with the dead young man in the city of Nain. Two opposing forces clashing. Life and death. Joy and sadness. Healing and pain. Light and dark. Replicated here in this place, we move in varying directions but so very often we allow the center-line of life to get the better of us. Thomas Merton has a beautiful prayer on a young man’s direction and it seems to be written for young adults. Let’s bow our heads to pray it. Let’s change direction as a community and begin working together knowing we are all in the same boat or bus.
“O Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me,
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
And that fact that I think
I am following Your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe
That the desire to please You
Does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire
In all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire to please You.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road,
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust You always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
For You are ever with me,
And You will never leave me
To make my journey alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment