The Rev. Canon Eugene T. Sutton
Washington National Cathedral
Lent V
March 25, 2007, 11 am

Text: Isaiah 43:16–21; Psalm 126 ; John 12:1–8

Tell us what we need to hear, O God, and show us what we need to do to become disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.

In my defense, I had a legitimate excuse to not want to sit with anyone on that evening a few weeks ago at a conference in Boxburg, South Africa. I was there at that conference, a mission conference of the World Wide Anglican Communion, the purpose of which was to refocus the Church from undue energies on our own internecine theological battles—which apparently will not be solved—but to focus the Church again on its reason for being, mission, to be sent out into the world to do God’s work. And what is God’s work? It is to stand with Jesus in the places of suffering in the world. And all week long I heard the stories. I heard the stories of whole villages, societies being torn apart by conflict and war. The stories of the ravages of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, the stories of the break down of governments, of health care systems, and of educational systems that were to relieve the suffering of the poor. I heard the stories. The stories by missionaries of how when the Church responds with compassion and mercy in times of trouble, it helps their witness of Christ, and it gives them an audience.

But by that time in the conference I didn’t want to hear any more. I had been overloaded. My heart was full. My head was aching. I wanted to be left alone. No more stories. No more pain. No more suffering. And so I took my tray of food and found a table in the corner of the cafeteria to be left alone.

But then he shuffles in. An older man, a bit distinguished, but helped by someone who was carrying his tray, and as he was shuffling and limping closer and closer toward me, I was saying, not proud of this, “Don’t sit next to me. Leave me alone.” And he looked at me, and all those empty spaces around, and he chose to sit right beside me. It wasn’t so much, I believe, that he was limping a bit. I don’t think it was even so much that someone had to take him with his tray, and he was obviously a bit hard of hearing. But what really took me over the top was the fact that he had no hands. There in the place of human hands were metal contraptions. And these things taking the place of hands, he was negotiating, I thought, remarkably well. And as he sat down and we exchanged some pleasantries I couldn’t help but look at those clamps at the end of his arms pick up the spoon and the fork and even cut meat. It was remarkable how he could work with those clamps.

He had asked me about who I was. Why was I there at that Conference. He asked me about my work here at the National Cathedral. He had a warmth in his voice, and so I felt safe in asking him something that I normally wouldn’t of complete strangers who are disabled in that way. I felt safe in asking him, “Your hands, how long have you been without them? Were you born that way?” He said, “No, not born that way. I haven’t had them for 17 years.” “Was it an accident?” I said. He said, “No. They were deliberately blown off.” And he began to tell me the story, his story, his being an Anglican priest from New Zealand who felt called by God to go to South Africa to help people in their suffering in the ’70s and ’80s, and to be with them and to stand with them in the anti apartheid movement. He joined one of the movements, became a chaplain in one of the liberation movements, and was so effective that the government banned him. While he was banished in Mozambique he received a letter from the South African Government one day. Opening the letter, it blew up. They planted a letter bomb that tore off his hands, shattered his hearing, left him blind in one eye, a bloodied, mangled mess.

And as he proceeded to tell the story, at first I was brought back to the wilderness that I had been experiencing in that conference. Do you know what I mean by wilderness? The Bible does. In our first reading in Isaiah 43, Yahweh, the Lord God, is saying, “I am making a way for you in the wilderness.” The wilderness was a frequent theme in the Scriptures, suggesting not just a geographical desert, not just a place that was impassable and unlivable. But when the Scriptures speak of wilderness, the desert, they are also speaking of the wilderness within, that dry place, that place where you do not want to be, where your life doesn’t seem to get its shape. And you would do anything to get out of the wilderness.

In Isaiah 43, the Lord God is saying to the people, “A new thing is happening here. Behold, it is springing forth already. Can you not perceive it?” But alas, most of the hearers could not perceive it. The Hebrew people at the time of that writing in Isaiah 43 were in exile. They had been driven from their land and taken in captivity to Babylon. And for some 75 years, almost 75 years, they were in Babylon, until in 539 B.C. Cyrus had conquered the Babylonians and made it possible for them to return to their land. But guess what? Most did not. There in the wilderness of exile, they had focused so much on the past, so much on their good old days—the Halcyon days when they were Israel—that they could not perceive that God wanted them to be in liberation—so focused on the past. So in the prophecy, the Prophet Isaiah first reminds people of what God has done with them in the past. But then he said, don’t dwell on that. You are stuck. You are stuck in the wilderness and exile, but more than being stuck in Babylon, you are stuck in your own desert.

That’s not so hard for us to get our minds wrapped around, is it? Don’t you and I get stuck sometimes by clinging on, hanging on to the past? We as individuals can’t move on because of the past. It’s the past, it’s what happened to me. We sometimes as societies can’t move on because we’re clinging to the past—and yes, even in the Church. (Why aren’t you surprised?) The good old days. If only we could return to the way the Church was. Let there be no changes, no new advances in theology. Don’t change the liturgy. Don’t change anything. It’s the past. But you have to wonder what kind of past are we clinging on to. Were they the good old days? Good for whom? Were they the good old days of the Crusades, when the Christian Church justified mass slaughter of unbelievers, in the past but also in the present? Are those the good old days? Or the good old days of the Church battling science over and over again over every new discovery, only to be embarrassed generations later to say, “we were wrong; we were not able to see what God wanted us to see because we were clinging to the past.” Are those the good old days?

Or the good old days of slavery? Of Jim Crow laws and of racial discrimination? Should we return to those good old days when the Church justified that? Or the good old days of denying women leadership, any leadership role in the Church over men? The good old days of shunning people who are different, disabled, divorced, who have same sex orientation, or any other reason to be scapegoated by the Church or society? Should we return to those days? The days of justifying all of these abuses by appeals to obey Scripture which are nothing more than religious smoke screens for justifying bias—shall we return to those days? Those days, for a lot of my people, were not good old days. And we choose not to cling to the past.

In Isaiah 43, the Lord God gives us two ways of getting out of the wilderness, of getting unstuck. First he said, stop dwelling on the past. That word, remember the past no more, means in Hebrew to not cling to it, to not get stuck there. Of course, you recall the events of the past. In the Prophecy itself Isaiah reminds them of how God in the Exodus made a way in the Sea so that they would not be captured by their oppressors. And in the Prophecy that was read this morning, it was also recalled how God made water appear in the desert—the Sinai Desert—when the children of Israel were there for 40 years; he provided for them. So recalling that, the instruction is, “don’t dwell there,” because if you do, you will fail to see; you will not be able to see that God is doing a new thing.

In fact, in that conversation with the man next to me with no hands, he said to me, “Eugene, I am not full of hatred about this. If I were full of hatred and bitterness, I would be a victim forever. Instead, I use what happened to me to seek justice, but not the retributive justice that we are so fond of here in America: someone did something so it’s time to crack out the whip or the gun or the lethal injection or the bomb. No, not retribution, but rather restorative justice. The justice of God that seeks healing.” And he said his work was dedicated to making sure that not only he, but the ones who did that to him, would be made whole. Justice.

Stop clinging to the past, Yahweh said. But second, and more importantly, we ended that Scripture reading by the Prophecy, “…the people whom I formed for myself that they may declare my praise.” The second thing that Yahweh says is: start praising. Notice, though, this is not the praising of some deity lacking self-esteem who needs people constantly to be praising him. Not the kind of praise that would have you bow down before a hierarchical, authoritarian God, and in your humility, praise, praise, oh praise. But rather it is the praise with arms up. It is the praise of enjoyment, the joy of being in God’s presence, the delight of being able to be in the household of God and do God’s work. That’s the praise. That’s a prescription for escaping the wilderness.

How do I know so? Because of the stories. In 1995, a year after the apartheid government was brought down in South Africa, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was speaking before a crowd of 2,000 at Yale University. And his speech was a simple one. He said, “I’m going to give you seven reasons for the miraculous change in South Africa. Reason Number 1: God.” And then the next five reasons were the usual social, political, cultural things that were happening in society that caused the fall of apartheid. And then reason Number 7, he said simply again: God. Desmond Tutu firmly believed that God saved South Africa. And somehow when they kept turning to God and in the praise of God, they caused their own liberation, but not only the anti apartheid movement in South Africa led by the Churches. But I also rehearse the stories of the Civil Rights Movement in our nation, led by the Churches, praising God, singing freedom songs, knowing that God is doing a new thing, making a way in the wilderness.

Or I think of Solidarity in Poland in the late ’80s, how in trying to get from under the thumb of oppression, Lech Walesa and others called the people to prayer and praise, and they were made free. Or the team conference where I was in South Africa: the praise and the prayer of the people from all over the world, many in dire circumstances, but theres they were praising in ways we can only imagine. The very first church service, the Eucharist that we had in that township where we had the service, a thousand people had lined the streets, waving and singing, praising God for our presence there. What a welcome! Such hospitality! The praise of God. And the stories all during the week, including the story of my handless friend who was right there in the march praising God.

Maybe it’s not so hard to think, then, why Mary in the Gospel was wiping Jesus’ feet with expensive oil. There in the presence of the Holy One, she wanted to praise. Judas Iscariot said, “Why are you doing that? What a waste. Don’t waste that perfume. Give it to the poor.” Not that he cared for the poor. He had forgotten to praise. The poor will always be with us and the poor will help us to know the way out of our own deserts as well as their own.

Well, my friend had to get up and leave. I didn’t want him to, at that meal. But he was helped along, and I found out later that he was to be the plenary speaker for the next session. His name is the Rev. Michael Lapsley. And after his tragedy, he began the Institute for the Healing of Memories, in South Africa, seeking justice in healing. And he gave a powerful speech. I didn’t want him to leave then, and I wish he was with me today. I miss him.

But if Michael Lapsley is anything like Jesus, and I think that he is, I think that Jesus, too, has another meal. And Jesus searches even places like this Cathedral and seeks out those who want to be left alone. And Jesus comes and sits right by you, and if you come forward for the sacred meal, he will walk with you and stand with you and say, “Let’s talk.” And even though Michael isn’t here, I’m glad that Jesus is here, who suffered even more than Michael, who will lead me out of my own wilderness, and yours. If that’s all we do this day, that would be perfectly fine with me.