Sermon: Reconciliation: The More Excellent Way

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Reconciliation: The More Excellent Way

By Charles Rush

March 16, 2008

[ Audio (mp3, 6.2Mb) ]

e first twenty chapters of Matthew follow Jesus from the point of view of the people that encountered him, the crowds, his disciples. The last 7 chapters that record his turn towards Jerusalem and his eventual death, are told in such a way that we are imaginatively invited to view his betrayal, his trial, and death, from God's point of view.

We mortals had wanted a Messiah that would vindicate our cause. God wants us to be reconciled. We would be disciples forcing Jesus hand, trying to provoke him into becoming a mere political Messiah and we unwittingly betray him. Through this unjust trial and his suffering unto death, we are given this contrast between God's steadfast patience for reconciliation, which is willing to absorb violence rather than overpower it, and the fickle whim of the crowd, who lauds Jesus as a savior and then turns against him. And there is the familiar expediency of power, represented in Pilate, the religious leaders and the disciples- compromise, violence, tragedy, dispatch, and shame. There is a brokenness in the heart of God. Reconciliation, so healing, so needed, and so elusive in our world.

Last week I was in a seminar in Jerusalem that was being led by a professor at the University of Tel Aviv. He happened to mention the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, so after the lecture I told him that image brought back fond memories of Princeton and that my wife actually taught nursery school at the Institute. He looked at me and said, “Kate Rush?” I said, “Yes”. And then we remembered each other, standing around at back to school night, drinking cheap wine out of paper cups, talking international politics. He was a professor and I was a graduate student, both studying religion and power politics.

We caught up on our wives, our lives, our work, our kids. Towards the end, he asked me about my younger son, the one that was always playing Army in nursery school. ‘Whatever happened to him?' I said, ‘Yes, he did become a soldier and served in Afghanistan and he just got out of the army.'

He nodded and I said, ‘your youngest son, he must be getting ready for college. What is he doing right now?' He said, ‘he is in a tank, headed for Gaza'.

We stood there looking at each other but neither of us could speak. We were sharing that anxiety and worry that parents of soldiers feel but it was more than that. We felt guilt that we had failed as fathers. Our generation, so optimistic in the 60's that we would be different… But the truth is, we have failed to do the things that made for peace and our own sons are paying the price. There is a line in the Torah that says, ‘the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation'. It is not a statement of the way things ought to be, but it is an observation of moral fact.

For me the most moving part of going to the Holy Land this time around was not standing at the Wall and praying, although I am grateful for that. It was not walking down the paths that Jesus walked, although that is important also. It was something very simple and short. A grandfather was walking by a series of photos of his family, explaining them to me, and when he went by a picture of his grandson. The boy was in his early 20's so handsome, so strong. I asked about the picture. He explained that it was taken two days before he was killed in the Second Intifada. He walked over to the picture, pressed his fingers to his lips and kissed the photo. So much pain, so much sadness… What are we doing?

Shireen Essawi is a striking young woman, her brunette hair tucked under a head scarf, her polite graceful demeanor as she is introduced, she is someone you would gladly hire right out of college to represent your firm as she is both courteous and professional.

She grew up in a small town on the West Bank in a largely segregated world. Most of her childhood memories of Israeli's were of soldiers that would come in the middle of the night and roust everyone on her block from their beds, forcing them to stand in the street in just their nightgowns and robes, sometimes for hours without water or food, sometimes very cold, always very uncomfortable. The soldiers would ransack the house looking for insurgents and information. She hated this routine but this was just the life of her people. As we would say, ‘it is what it is'.

Her family was committed to education and even the girls in her home were expected to attend college as far as her parents were concerned. All five of the children were quite close but her older brother, the second son, was her favorite. When they were kids, he sometimes disguised his sister as a boy so he could take her to see some things that she wasn't supposed to see. He walked her to school and protected her. He was quite bright and was accepted into college where he graduated with honors and was planning to attend law school.

A couple of years ago, he was out with his friends at night, when they were caught in a military operation in the street. It all happened so fast, he was shot and killed before anyone could figure out that it was a case of mistaken identity.

Her favorite brother, the smart one, the handsome one, killed by accident. She was just devastated. What happened in those next few months was so personal and painful that she could not give it words. She started to describe it but then she would just look down and shake her head. After a long silence, she could only say, ‘We could not see any reason for living. We just wanted to die'. There is simply no joy in living any more. This went on for many months.

One day, the strangest thing happened to her. The doorbell rang, she looked through the glass and saw an Orthodox Jewish man standing at their door. This had never happened before. And she had no idea what to make of it. She opened the door just a crack.

The man explained that he only came to talk, that if they would not receive him, he would completely understand. He had read about what happened to her family. He too had lost a son. Could he come in? Her mother called her father home, they let him in the house.

The man asked some questions about her brother and asked the family if they would tell him how the boy died. Her parents talked for quite a long time while Shireen translated for them when she had to. They shared honestly and bluntly the bitterness that they carried towards the Army and towards Israeli's. The man simply received what they told him.

The man explained that he was part of a group called the Parent's Circle that brought together families that have lost children because of the Arab/Israeli conflict to meet with one another and to share with one another because the suffering that they have both borne binds them together. And the hope of this group is that out of this shared loss might come some shared compassion, some shared humanity, and some shared resolve to keep this pain from becoming corrosive for another generation of retribution and revenge.

Sitting right next to Shireen as she relayed this story was Aharon Barnea. His arms crossed, his chin supported by his hand, he does not move. In his late 60's, he could be mistaken for one of Norman Mailer's cousins. Like Mailer, he has that bearing that suggests he was probably a fighter as a young man. Indeed, he is a classic Israeli Sabra -- tough on the outside like a cactus and soft on the inside.

But when he sits next to Shireen he assumes a posture that he only learned later in life. He comes obviously bearing a heavy load that reminds you of the lines in Isaiah 53 that are often read this time of year with reference to Jesus, “a man of suffering and acquainted with sorrow… Surely he has borne our infirmities and has carried our diseases.” The lines are long in his face. When Shireen talks, his stolid downward gaze, almost motionless, exudes an intensity of a man really listening, a man who needs to hear…

He is secular, a socialist, an incisive mind that is broadly educated. He has little patience for the likes of President Bush or Ariel Sharon and the Likud party. He is capable of a detailed, passionate critique of our present political situation but that is not what he has come to talk about.

Instead, he describes a day last year in his apartment. His wife was looking out her front door and saw three representatives from the Israeli army get out of their vehicle in formal attire. She let out a gasp that he heard from the kitchen table where he was working. He got to the foyer just in time to catch her as she fell to the ground faint.

Aharon and his wife had three sons, two of them grown and married. The baby was still in the Army when they invaded Lebanon. He had only three days left in the army. His mother wrote him every day to stay out of harms way. She was passionately opposed to the invasion of Lebanon and was part of an organization of Mother's that protested against it. Indeed, in one of her last letters to her son, she had sent him a button from her group that said something like, “Out of Lebanon now”.

When Aharon and his wife went to identify their sons body and collect his clothes, they found that the pin his mother sent him, he had worn on his uniform the day that he died. There as here, you can't wear political pins on your uniform or anything else for that matter. Only his CO made an exception this one time because the kid was getting out in a couple days, they were in the middle of nowhere, and the kid clearly loved his Mom. A random rocket just happened to hit him on patrols.

Aharon never said it, probably because it would just be too much, but he was worried that his son had died for nothing- nothing, at any rate, that he could believe in, nothing that would console his wife or his sons. This is the kind of thing that can literally plunge you into a cynicism from which you cannot escape. And you can see that this is the path that he should have taken but he didn't.

Sitting there, listening to Shireen, he would occasionally shift his gaze from the floor to study her expression. Listening to her was clearly healing for him. Opening his heart in compassion was drinking in the fresh air of life itself after months of the fetid odor of deadening grief. I cannot begin to contemplate the myriad of emotions going on in his soul, but from a distance his eyes appear soft towards her almost as if she is the daughter that he never had.

Whatever else he may have been thinking and however complex and contradictory it really is, the fault lines of religion, culture, gender and war that separate these two people were momentarily bridged as they share their suffering compassionately. They are meeting in that miraculous oasis of shared vulnerability. Even if you know that it can only stay briefly, like a mirage in the desert, what a moving moment it really is.

My friend, Rabbi Gershon, says that our world is defined by people carrying around unresolved grief. It comes out in all sorts of destructive ways -- revenge, displaced anger, the interjected anger of drug abuse, extremist political movements.

And all of these just channel this unresolved grief, they do not deal with it. The only way to actually resolve it is the more excellent way of reconciliation. This is what God wants for us.

Reconciliation is not easy and it is not quick. In truth, it is the most profound dimension of our spiritual life. But it is possible. It is the road only rarely taken. But, ultimately, it is the truly profound way we can become healed and we can heal others. And there is no short-cut way to do it. We will need to do it one by one by one by one.

But what a beautiful thing to watch. It drives out cynicism, darkness, death, aggression. And it opens a door to a new humanity, a warmth, understanding, meaning… And finally, creativity… We have to break the cycle. We know where this cycle leads. Our problem is not a lack of knowledge. We can stop doing what we are doing. We can't stop ourselves.

My brother and sisters, God wants you to come home. God wants you to be healed. God wants you to choose the profounder way of reconciliation- for your peace and the healing integrity and peace of those around you. I hope you can stumble on the oasis of shared vulnerability, if only for a while. I hope you can start becoming whole. Amen.