St. Gregory’s Church Woodstock
Sunday, 28 June, 2009, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev’d Susan Auchincloss
For the past two weeks Stuart and I have been
on a trip through Russia with an alumnae group from my college. Our leader was a
retired professor of economics, Marshall Goldman, whose special field of
interest has been the USSR and now Russia. In addition to his lectures he
introduced us to several Russian leaders along the way, including Gregory
Yavlinsky, the leader of one of the opposition parties. If you asked me what
made the deepest impression on me, though, I would have to say the people – not
the special people, such as Yavlinsky, but the ordinary people we passed on the
street. I thought to myself: they look like victims; not a glimmer of joy .
You will say to me: what would you expect? In St. Petersburg some of the older
people survived the 900 day siege in World War II, forced to watch while so many
starved to death. Across the country people remember Stalin's purges, and even
afterwards, ever-present repression. Still today they have a lot to worry about
with corruption running rampant. I agree, and yet the question remains: must
human beings be the victims of history? Must events over which we have no
control force us into mental states we would not choose? Chronic bitterness?
Resentment? Suspicion? Cynicism? Are we here in the United States also at risk,
given our current economic crisis, of becoming victims of history? I cannot
speak to you about any economic strategy for turning history toward a happier
outcome, but I can do something better. I can show you that we need not become
victims as history rolls over us.
A brief vignette that I heard on the trip illustrates this point. As you know,
Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 with the greater part of his army, and
successfully pushed through to Moscow. When he arrived victorious in the Kremlin
he found no one. The Czar and the government had decamped into the countryside,
leaving behind a burned and empty city. Napoleon had to march back to Europe,
and in the process he lost most of his army to starvation and winter's fierce
cold. In his memoirs he wrote of that campaign, “I was victorious, but Russia
was invincible.” I'd like to turn that paradox around. History, it seems to me,
will always be victorious, but we can be invincible. In other words, world
events, large and small – what I am calling history – may bludgeon us, and we
cannot help but feel the pain and grief, and yet it need not touch our joy.
Religion exists to show us the way.
Jesus did this time and again, not only in his teachings but in the way he
lived. Today, for instance, we heard how Jesus handled a real dilemma. To put
the story in context, we have to realize that the religious and social
authorities despised Jesus and his followers. So when a man in the inner circle
of power, Jairus, comes to Jesus for help, Jesus' disciples feel vindicated. At
last! Some recognition from the people that count! Jesus responds at once and
they set off to Jairus's home, with the riff raff that usually accompany Jesus
jostling around him as he goes. In the midst of this hullabaloo a sick and
impoverished widow sees her chance. I am not sure how many religious and social
taboos she was breaking. Certainly a woman does not touch a man. Possibly a sick
person does not touch the healthy. In any case, she was out of line and she knew
it. She must have thought that Jesus would not notice in such a crowd, or that
the urgency of his mission would force him to ignore her breach of the law. She
was wrong on both counts. Jesus did notice and he did care. He cared enough to
stop.
The Gospel, as usual, glides over the details; but we may imagine that Jesus did
not just pause. He really stopped and took time with this widow. He wanted to
hear her story. He needed to know who she was in order to say the healing words,
“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your
disease.” Her symptoms were cured, yes, but Jesus gave her more than that; he
gave healing of mind, body and soul. As I said, all of this took time.
Imagine the disciples' impatience! Here was Jesus, spending precious moments
with this no-account widow, and keeping a truly important man waiting. Not only
that, but every second might count if the man's daughter was at the point of
death. And sure enough, they were right. Word came that Jairus's daughter had
died. If Jesus had hurried right along he might have prevented her death. What
could Jesus have been thinking? Or maybe he was not thinking at all!
I suggest that they were right: Jesus was not thinking. He did not have to think
at that point. Jesus dwelt in the present moment, and the present moment
presented him with a human need. Suppose he had done the kind of calculus his
disciples were doing: weighing alternatives, imagining possible outcomes, asking
himself, who could he least afford to offend? Whatever he did then, he would
have done with a sense of compulsion. Doesn't that describe a victim? Someone
driven by circumstances? A scapegoat of history?
You may remember the so-called Good Samaritan psychology experiment conducted
back in 1978. The psychologists were testing for altruistic behavior, using
divinity students for their subjects. In the experiment the students were given
some religious instruction and then, one by one, they were sent to a near-by
building where each was to give a lecture. As she or he went between the
buildings, the student came across a man lying injured and in desperate need of
assistance. The man was a plant, of course. Some of the students had been told
that time was of the essence in getting to the other building; others had been
told they could take their time. Of the latter, unhurried group, two thirds
stopped to help the injured man. Only one tenth stopped to help among those who
were told to hurry. As I see it, the experiment showed how easily history – that
is, outside circumstances – can make us its victims. Can there be an
alternative? Yes. Those who operate in the present moment – responding to what
is here and now – master circumstance. To operate outside of the present
moment, which is to say, in our imaginations, our fears, and our cravings, makes
us victims.
To live in the present moment, as Jesus did, depends on a well-established
faith. I am not speaking of our beliefs, but of a conviction that God has the
whole world in God's hands. Jesus did not stop to help the widow because he knew
he could always bring Jairus's daughter back to life if she should die before he
got there. No. He stopped because he dwelt in certainty that always and
everywhere God is working God's purpose out. So when he, Jesus, got to Jairus's
house God would fill that present moment as well; and God would use him, then as
now. The outcome would be according to God's will, not his.
If only we could reach such a place of conviction! To live in the certainty that
all will be well. Not that all will turn out to our liking. It often does not.
But if we really held the conviction that God has the whole world in God's
hands, then we could live, fully alive, in the present moment. No matter if
circumstances threaten and the tide of history goes against us. History, like
Napoleon, may be victorious, but we, like Russia, are invincible.
Friends, we do not know what the future may bring; and I do not have any bright
ideas for dodging around whatever comes. I do know this. Our faces need not be
set in chronic lines of bitterness or resentment or suspicion or cynicism. We
can radiate joy, even in the midst of suffering. The secret lies, as Jesus
showed us time and again, in living in the present moment, not as victims of
history, but as masters in the present moment.
This is simply said, and at the same time it is the whole goal of the spiritual
life. Try to stay in the present moment and it slips away faster than a greased
eel. Yet it makes all the difference to know it is possible. I'll
close with one last image from our trip that speaks to the power of this
possibility. We visited the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. One large canvas by the
landscape artist, Isaac Levitan, drew me strongly. It showed a dark sky, roiled
by leaden clouds. Below it, sullen, stretched an arm of the sea. A barren
peninsula reached into the sea from the lower left corner of the frame, and out
on the tip of the peninsula, grey in the dull evening light, clustered a little
group of weather-beaten buildings. I could scarcely tolerate the sense of
oppression until I saw a tiny point of light: a dot of glowing orange, scarcely
bigger than the head of a pin, in a window of one of the buildings. That one
tiny dot transformed the entire landscape. So too, one tiny dot of possibility
can transform our inner landscape.