Headlines

Photo of The Rev. Carol Sanford by The Rev. Carol Sanford

A lot has been happening in the world around us lately, and much of it is not good news. We open our newspapers and websites to headlines like “Joplin Shredded,” “Disgraced Priest on Suicide Watch,” “Civil War Anniversary Raises Controversy on Slavery” and “Floodwaters Rising.” It can get pretty discouraging.

One person, trying to find some humor somewhere, said that maybe the Rapture had happened after all last week, but that nobody made the cut. Sometimes our Easter Alleluias and songs of praise do seem out of sync with current events. We’ll get back to that in a moment, but first let’s have a look at Holy Scripture, because a lot has been happening there, too.

Last Sunday we heard about Stephen being stoned to death for proclaiming Christ.  His eager executioners, perhaps to avoid getting dirty or bloodied or just mussed up, left their outer garments with an observer named Saul. Since that passage, much has transpired in the Book of Acts to bring us to our reading today. After the stoning of St. Stephen, that same Saul goes on to become a vicious persecutor of Christians and the disciples scatter throughout the countryside. Saul pursues his seeming goal of eradicating the followers of Jesus, dragging them without mercy from their homes, and making ugly headlines, indeed, for those who had placed their hope in the resurrection.

Saul is seemingly bent on their destruction until, that is, he, himself, encounters the risen Jesus on the Road to Damascus. When we meet up with Saul again today, he is our St. Paul, and he is passionately preaching the very views for which he once threw people in prison. Those scattered disciples have also been active. In various adventures, they have been preaching and healing and teaching, making conversions, laying on hands and baptizing.

There is one immediate and, I think, very important moral to the arc of the story in the book of Acts, which is this: people and circumstances can and do change.

As we see in our news reports, some changes are devastating. But we must continue to remember that, like the crucifixion of Jesus and Saul’s fury against the Christians, our recent headlines are neither the full story nor the end of the story. We are still celebrating the great fifty days of Easter, and as Easter people all year long, we know better than to believe that the final chapter of any event or of any life is doom. God ‘holds our souls in life.’

For some years before I was ordained, my spiritual director was a Benedictine nun. I’ll never forget the first day I met with Sr. Julia in her small and rather dingy office in the great stone buildings the sisters occupy in Atchison. After I had rattled on for some time about my puzzling call to the priesthood, how shaky I was in my faith and how for years I had refused to go to church and looked down on people who did, she looked at me and said, “Oh. You’re Paul.”

Believe me, Sr. Julia was not suggesting that I was a saint. It couldn’t have taken her long to figure that one out!  What she was telling me, was that the road to faith can be rocky and beset by resistance and full of surprises. And bad headlines. In the world and in our own minds and hearts.

My own headlines during that period would have proclaimed chaos and confusion, and no small measure of grief, but would be very different ones today. New life in God will insist on pouring forth, and when we are open to it and look for it and even just act as if we believe in it, we allow it to happen.

Our Scriptures were written in frightening times. What kind of headlines would they make? For the Book of Acts, we might say something like, “Former persecutor proclaims faith.” For first Peter, how about: “Christian leader cites powerful assistance from heaven for those who suffer.” And for the gospel of John, from that beautiful passage we heard earlier, we might write a headline like this, “Messiah assures followers they are never alone, never unloved, and never abandoned, even when appearances say that they are.” I rather like those headlines.

When you think about it, our present day notices are really quite similar. I am, of course, referring to headlines such as “Supplies Amassed at Cathedral for Transport to Joplin,” and “Episcopalians Rebuild Church in Haiti one Brick and One Healthy Baby at a Time. ” Or how about these: “Freedom Riders Honored for Risking Lives for Justice,” and “Memorial Day Activities Honor Those Who Gave Their Lives.”

Our God has been true to his promises. It is clear in the love and mercy among us that we have not been left desolate orphans, unloved or unempowered by God.  After all, “in him we live and move and have our being.” I have heard it said that we are like fish in the ocean who are always searching for water. But we are inseparable from the water of life, we are children of that very sea, and at times of crisis, it shows.

Listen to some words written by a worker at Freeman Hospital in Joplin. He says of the tornado, “Our phones were out instantly... the cell towers were inundated, couldn't get out…we couldn't call for reinforcements...they just started showing up…  from every where… emt's, nurses, doctors, local and even from out of town.” 

And this from Dr. Kevin Kikta of St. John’s, the shattered hospital we’ve been seeing in the news reports. Dr. Kikta wrote, “Tragedy has a way of revealing human goodness.  As I worked, surrounded by devastation and suffering, I realized I was not alone…” [i]

Human goodness reveals the goodness of God. The outpouring of love and labor toward Joplin is the love and labor of God in the world. The promised Counselor, ‘even the Spirit of truth,’ moves within and among us,, showing up no longer in the incarnate flesh of Jesus himself, but as human beings bearing water bottles and diapers, and searching for, and being in themselves, signs of life in all the many sorts of rubble in our world.

We are called to proclaim life in the midst of death and salvation in the midst of sin.  Like the earliest disciples, we often do so at personal risk; risk  to our pocketbooks and  to our emotional comfort, and even to the risk of our lives, as with those who died protecting others during the tornado, as when families and rescue workers began their searches before the storm had even ended, as when soldiers and protesters step forward under fire for causes of peace and freedom.

However frightening or discouraging the headlines that trickle down metaphorically through history or explode on our pages and screens today, there are far more powerful messages of hope and faith and love, written by God on our hearts in life everlasting.

Building on the breathtaking words of our burial service, I say to you that even at the site of the devastation of tornados, even beside the flood waters, even in the midst of racial and ethnic persecution, even in the shadow of priests preying upon children and hierarchies slow to get the point, even in the face of our own bad decisions and outright defections from the way of Christ, even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

The hospital worker I quoted earlier, surrounded by death and destruction, ended his communication with these words, in bold print, rather like a headline ‘He never said it would be easy…He just said follow me. Blessings to you from Sean and Cathy.’ *

Blessings, indeed. Amen

[i] www.mercy.net/joplin/stories-of-mercy/45-seconds
* Names changed to protect privacy