Holy Now

a Palm Sunday sermon preached by Rev. Khleber M. Van Zandt V at First Unitarian Church, Alton, Illinois, April 5^th, 2009

It matters how you see the world, and it matters how you tell the story.

If you were a Roman legionnaire watching over the Passover celebration in Jerusalem that long-ago day, you might have seen some sort of disturbance.  You’d tell the story that someone was disturbing the peace.  And the Roman peace was not to be disturbed.  As someone officially charged with keeping the peace, you took care of it.  Peace was restored, trouble averted, no problem.

If you were a member of the Sanhedrin, that political gathering of religious leaders, you had a slightly different view.  You saw that the trouble-makers were breaking the Jewish law, not the Roman one.  Still, the peace must be kept, and so you did what you had to.  Peace was restored, trouble averted, no problem.

If you were from the outlying regions around Jerusalem and were in town for the celebration of Passover, you might not have noticed much of anything - oh, maybe a few people chanting and clapping, but things like that always happened on these high holy days.  People were always ready to party, ready to go a little wild when they were in town.  So there was nothing too far out of the ordinary.  Peaceful enough, no trouble, no problem.

If you were with the small band of Jesus’ followers from the hinterlands, you might have tried to get him noticed by those throngs of partiers, you might have tried to make a scene worthy of your Lord.  But people just seemed too passive, too peaceful, and not enough people took notice.

If you lived fifty years later, and were a newly-converted Christian writing about the events of the so-called “triumphal entry” long, long after the fact, you might say that the whole city was abuzz with news of the coming of the One.  That’s how you wanted it to be, that’s how it felt when you talked about it among your community of faithful followers.

I’m not a legionnaire or a Jewish priest or a Jerusalemite or a first-century follower of Jesus so I might see it differently and tell it differently.  I envision the actual event to have been more like a Monty Python skit, one bedraggled guy riding into town on the back of a broken-down donkey, his dozen-and-a-half followers laying down a palm branch in front of the donkey, singing and clapping while the donkey walks past, then picking up the same palm branch and running to the front of the line to lay it down again.

It matters how you see the world, and it matters how you tell the story.

I don’t want to sell this story short, because something happened.  Something happened.  Maybe it was something holy.  How do you tell people about the holy?

 

It matters how you see the world, and it matters how you tell the story.

I went to see someone in the hospital a few days ago, and one way to tell this story is to say that I left a perfectly beautiful day outside and walked into a gloomy hospital to talk to a woman and her family for a few minutes before returning to my own particular life in the beautiful day outside.  Talking about my own life and ignoring what happened in the hospital room might keep it all peaceful enough, no trouble, no problem. 

Another way to tell the story might be to address all the medical issues the woman is dealing with.  I might even speak as if the woman has become the medical issues she has faced – you know, the heart attack in room 1041.  Talking about her medical issues in this way might help keep her issues at an arm’s length so that we wouldn’t have to take into account her real struggles, her real pain, or her real joys and real victories.

But here’s the way I want to tell the story today because I think there’s something holy here.  I had met this particular woman in the hospital before when, recovering from surgery, she seemed to have a bright enough future - her smile bright, her conversation animated, her life force strong.  The second time I went, though, she’d taken a turn for the worse and was unconscious and didn’t know I was there, didn’t even know she was there.  Which might have been good because the doctors said she’d had a really rough day of it, and she was left hooked up to a battery of machines with bells and whistles and alarms and big digital displays of number after number - and the numbers didn’t look good.  My memories of that second visit made me wary as I headed for the room this particular day.

On this particular day, when I turned the corner and stepped into this particular hospital room, my friend’s eyes met mine, her mouth opened in a big smile, her arms went up and she started frantically reaching for me to come closer.  As she took my hands and very nearly pulled herself straight up, I noticed there were a couple more people in the room, and they seemed taken aback at such a wild and unexpected display of emotion from the lady in the bed.  When the tumult subsided and a daughter had come back into the room, introductions were made:  these other ladies I hadn’t met yet were the sister-in-law and niece in town for a visit.  Jewelry was displayed, a chalice necklace – sister-in-law and niece were Unitarian Universalists from the hinterlands, and so, so glad to find that they – and their beloved family member - were not alone.  We mentioned the names of people we might know in common.  What had we heard about so-and-so who’d been ill years ago?  Which minister was where now?  Hugs and kisses ensued, lots of hand-holding, exclamations of joy and relief.  Good stuff, connections so deep and wide that they were hard to fathom.

Ah, but then the questions.  What had I talked about the past Sunday?  “Communion,” I said.  “Communion?  I thought you were Unitarian!” the sister-in-law exclaimed.  The niece responded, “Well, that’s what I’ve been telling you!  Being Unitarian Universalist doesn’t mean we have to quit doing things, it means we’re open to trying everything and seeing what it means!”  “Well, it just reminds me too much of my past…”  The discussion got louder, the peace was coming apart at the seams.  If I’d had a watch, I might have checked it to see if it was time to leave.  Instead, I turned to my friend in the bed and asked how she was getting along.  Her eyes brightened, she pulled me close, and said, “I love this!  I’m gonna be fine now!”

A bevy of doctors interrupted us, the family was ushered out, and I left.  But I knew in that moment that something had happened, something holy had happened.

 

It matters how you see the world, and it matters how you tell the story.

I just returned from the Gulf Coast where I spent the early part of the week working with our crew of a dozen or so construction missionaries on Katrina relief projects near New Iberia, Louisiana.  One way of telling the story would be to say that the Gulf Coast is an awful long way from here, a drive of some 750 miles each way, the weather this time of year always iffy, the traffic dangerous and full of big trucks, the scenery on the way down and back not particularly exciting.  It’s peaceful enough, but if I chose to be grumpy, I could say it’s just not worth the trouble. 

Another way to tell the story would be to use my cynic’s façade and say that’s it’s a fool’s errand to go so far to work so hard to fix up houses that will just be destroyed again if another hurricane blows in – and another hurricane will blow in.  Why do those people live there, the inner cynic asks?  Why don’t they just pack up and move where it’s safer?  Why should we waste our time and energy?  We have better things to do than worry about other people’s houses.

But here’s the way I want to tell the story today because I think this is the story of something important.  Something happened, something holy, and I don’t want to shortchange it by getting it wrong.

When driving across the coastal plain of southern Louisiana, the attentive visitor encounters lots of interesting landscape with bayous and marshes, cypress groves, wildlife of all kinds.  You can see lots of beautiful plantation-like homes, some raised up on stilts to avoid the storm surge from hurricanes off the Gulf.  You also see, now three years on, many houses that were badly damaged by Katrina and Rita but that have yet to be repaired, some of them left for dead, some you can’t believe that people would actually live in, but they do.  Three years after Katrina and Rita, the people there still need lots of help.

Working with Southern Mutual Help Association again this year, we met a family whose home had not been visibly damaged, but floodwaters had stood in the crawlspace under the house for weeks after Katrina and the subflooring had begun to rot away, meaning that all the flooring and the drywall needed to be removed and replaced with new wood and wallboard.  You wouldn’t have known it to look at the house – it looked pretty nice from the outside.  After we started work, though, it became obvious that there were seriously dangerous problems.

First of all, Jim Moore’s foot went through the old floor scraping his legs up pretty badly.  Then, Dave Kraus fell through the floor twice (that I know of).  Jerry Johnson received a bloody head wound when a loose floorboard flew up and cut his forehead.  Diane Thompson has a deep bone bruise on her collarbone where a piece of wall landed on her.  And that’s just our first day-and-a-half on-site.

By Wednesday morning, we’d had to turn the gas off because we found a leak in the water heater, we had to turn the water off after we cut through a pipe, we’d torn out the floors all the way to the mud of the crawlspaces in the dining room and kitchen and two bathrooms.  This in a house that the owners were living in until we showed up!  And I thought, “Oh, my God, all we’ve done is tear their place apart.” 

But by the time I left on Wednesday afternoon, things had slowly started to turn around, with the floors beginning to be reinstalled and progress being made in every room – which is a good thing since the owners were set to serve up dinners of rib-eye steaks to the crew on Wednesday night. 

All that’s fine.  But here’s the special part:  even with the injuries on the job and the frustrations of the situation and the anxieties of being way outside our comfort zones, we still found time for serious and deep conversation, we still found time to be together in special ways, we still found opportunities to connect with each other in ways we never would have in coffee hour or in committee meetings. 

One particular case in point:  on Tuesday, a group of us sat eating our lunches under the trees in the front yard of the house we were working on.  The weather was perfect, the grass green and cool, the trees fully leafed out and providing shade under the blue sky.  We talked of many things, but when the talk turned to church matters, one of us had the audacity and the courage to express her distaste for something that had happened at church four years ago, namely that I had been called as minister - truth-telling may be what we want to be about, but it often takes some amount of real courage to begin a serious conversation.  The speaker continued, though, that her distaste may have been misplaced, that things were actually going pretty well in most areas of church life, that she realized we all had something to learn and that we all might begin to see things in a new light if we pay attention. 

Something happened in that lunchtime conversation sitting in the grass beneath the trees under the Louisiana sky.  Something happened that could have easily been overwhelmed - by the hard work we were doing, by our physical or mental exhaustion, by our own cynical attitudes, or by our unwillingness to hold each other in high enough regard or by our inability to see this existence as an unwarranted blessing.

The same was true of my hospital visit a couple of weeks ago as well.  Something happened in that room full of medical bells and whistles and family from far away.  Something happened that could have easily been overwhelmed – by not paying attention to what was happening, by not listening to each other, by ignoring the needs that we brought to that time and that place, by our own cynical attitudes, or by our unwillingness to hold each other in high enough regard or by our inability to see this existence as an unwarranted blessing.

I don’t know about the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  I wasn’t there.  But by several reports, something happened.  Something happened that could have easily been overwhelmed by the busyness of the Passover holiday, or by the ominous presence of the Roman Legions, or by the political or religious intrigues behind the scenes. 

Something happened.  Perhaps it was only later that they saw it, long after the darkness and confusion and abject terror of those next few days had subsided that they recognized it for what it was – a time of joyous celebration, a time of close connection with one another, a time for paying attention to each other, a time when they had been touched by the divine, a time when they had lived fully in the present, in the “holy now.”

It matters how you see the world, because when you are able to see this existence as an unwarranted blessing, something happens.  Something changes in your life. 

It matters how you tell the story, because when you are able with courage and audacity to share your deepest self, the lives of others are changed as well.

“When holy water was rare at best, it barely wet my finger tips.

But now I have to hold my breath, it’s like I’m swimming in a sea of it. 

It used to be a world half there, Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down, but now I’m walking with a reverent air, ‘cause everything is holy now.”

May you find yourself walking with a reverent air as you remain open to the possibility of being touched by the divine in the holy now.

 

So may it be.