No matter what the calendar says it feels as if summer is over. All around our city these past weeks have been the tell tale signs of moving trucks, u-hauls and double parked vans. They serve to remind us that fall is here even if the calendar aficionados are sure to point out that technically there are 12 more days of summer. It matters because I know that the good summer parking places are gone, our cities students are back, dropping the average age of residents again by 20 years, and bringing with them a youth and vitality that drives this great city of ours. Summer is over and the signs of fall are all around us.
Fall is about fresh starts. First days. New beginnings. Kindergarten and 1st grade are big milestones for children and parents alike. For many it is the start of a new academic year - both those who teach and those who study. For some it is a move to a new home or a new city. And then there are the distinct sights and sounds and smells of fall. School buses and soccer games. Apples and burning wood. Fresh school supplies. You need not be a student to be drawn to new notebooks or pens at this time of you. Many of us, long out of school ourselves, stock up on our favorite items at this time of year - to start the year, as it were prepared. And there is nothing, whether you are 3 or 33 or 63 like the smell of a fresh box of Crayons. With colors like blue bell, cotton candy and electric lime, we are all artists. There is the sound of new binders cracking open for the first time. Boxes of new #2 pencils being systematically ground in an electric pencil sharpener. New shoes and the blisters that often accompany them. And under it all, a sense that there is something about to happen as the days shorten and the air cools and the leaves prepare to change color and fall from the trees. It is, in fact, change that is in the air all around. I suppose that is true at all time, but never as clearly as one season changes to the next. And no season is as marked with as many rituals of change as fall.
It was a crisp and clear beautiful fall day, the kind we all long for knowing that they are few and far between. It was a Tuesday just 5 years ago. We were all just living our lives, some starting the new school year, others heading to work in the season of fresh starts and new beginnings. Life seemed good that morning until the events unfolded and everything changed. Almost all of us remember exactly where we were when we heard the news about the attacks in New York and in Washington and when we heard that there was still a plane missing. After the initial shock of watching events unfold on TV, I finished getting dressed and came to the church office - just a block from my home. I will never forget the looks on the faces of those I passed on the street just outside on Boylston Street, most of whom were being evacuated from the John Hancock tower and other large buildings in Copley Square. There is no single word that can describe the look on all the faces. It was some combination of fear and shock. But here is what I remember most. Everyone, every single person, made eye contact with every other person they passed. It was almost as if we needed to look each other in the eye for some sense of comfort, solace, security, even if only for a fleeting second. That had never happened before, such intimacy with complete strangers on the street of Boston, nor has it since. But for me it was a defining moment in those days. Simple eye contact. Hoping to make some human connection in the midst of things we did not know and could not understand. The lines between us blurred that day and fell away. There were no friends or strangers we were all somehow connected in this web of confusion and tragedy.
A reporter recently asked me about the events of that day 5 years ago and how it changed our life as a parish here at Trinity Church. He was not looking for the immediate changes that happened in the days and weeks that followed - the fact that hundreds flooded through the doors to worship, or audibly sobbed as they sat in the pews that we stocked with Kleenex. That happened everywhere throughout our nation as we walked in a numb solidarity. He was not asking how many people came to the services in the days and weeks that followed. He wanted to know how, if at all, we were changed by those events of that clear crisp fall day 5 years ago. Did we sustain the bump in numbers at worship that all communities of faith initially saw? The answer is no. So what changed? In many ways everything. I told him that I thought that people have come in these years asking harder questions about the meaning of life and human suffering. People have come looking to see if we are who we say we are as a community of faith - if we preach and teach and pray about love and reconciliation and hope even in the midst of despair. If we are a community willing to look into each others eyes and make that human connection in the midst of things we cannot know and understand. I told him that I thought that the greatest change has been in our life prayer. That at every worship service since that clear, crisp day 5 years ago we have prayed this simple line "for our enemies and those who wish us harm." Week after week it is there in our prayer. Week after week it washes over us and shapes us. No other event, no other book or study group or lecture has had the impact that those 9 words have had. Why? Because they have required us to do what Jesus asked his followers to do namely to "love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you." The reporter asked me what I thought that prayer does for us and for God. And of course, it does what all prayer does, it changes our hearts. Prayer is not to change God or the events that unfold around us; it is essentially to change our hearts so that they might be more aligned with the generous, loving heart of God. When we pray for someone, when we pray for our enemies and those who wish us harm, we cannot be in a stance of hate or fear. Only then can we even start to see as God sees. Only then can we begin to comprehend how we are, each of us, loved by God.
So the change in these past 5 years has not been about the great crowds, but it has been about what has happened as we have prayed prayers and broken bread, as we have offered and received forgiveness for our failings from each other and from God, it has happened as we have looked into each others eyes across the pew or the choir stall or the altar rail and found there in one another, the face of hope, the face of God.
The Syrohoenician woman came to Jesus after he had left the great crowds and wanted to be alone. Jesus had been with the scribes and Pharisees and the great crowds teaching about the commandments, about the laws of Moses, about ritual cleanliness. She came asking him to heal her daughter. She came asking him to look into her eyes and to see her not as a Gentile, a non-Jew asking this Rabbi to heal her daughter but as a mother whose love for her daughter was so great that she would seek out anyone who might bring her healing and wholeness. One can only imagine that she had been everywhere and to everyone she thought might help her and this may have been her choice of last resort. He healed her, but only reluctantly and only after she pressed him, and pressed him hard. Nag is the word that comes to mind. It is not certainly is not a compliment to call someone a nag, but where would she be without it. It worked for her. She nagged Jesus all the way into healing her daughter because she believed he could. So too for those who brought the deaf man with the speech impediment. They begged him, nagged him, to heal their friend, just as the woman had to heal her daughter, just as we do when we have no where to turn. The story in Mark paints for us a picture of healing that is all about fresh starts and new beginnings for people who have no where else to turn and whose lives can do nothing but improve. These stories of healing are about the outsider receiving the mercy and grace of God and they point to the struggle that the early church faced when deciding its mission. For Jesus to heal in this part of the world and these particular people was an indication that the message of God was for all people, Gentile or Jew, male or female, adult or child and even for our enemies and for those who wish us harm. The lines of distinction that we create are blurred and fall away. The lines get blurred when an outsider is healed in the gospel. The lines get blurred when we pray for our enemies and those who wish us harm knowing that they are worthy of prayer and of being held before the same God who is able to hold pain and joy, love and hate, fear and hope together and who sent Jesus to live among us and to teach us another way to live our lives.
So back to the reporter's question about what has changed in these 5 years since that crisp, clear fall Tuesday morning. Sometimes it seems everything, sometimes it seems nothing all. Tragedies continue to unfold in our world, as does pain and suffering and loss. Some are of human making, some are not. Some belong to all of us, some are very personal. Yet our prayer continues and in that our hearts are changed, our lives are changed and even our world is changed just a bit. That was true for the Syropheonician woman, for her daughter, for the deaf man with the speech impediment. And it is true for us too on this clear, crisp, beautiful fall day. |
