A Vision Glorious

If you’re my age, you know where you were.  You know where you were when JFK was shot in that motorcade in Dallas, Texas.  You know where you were when Dr. King was gunned down on that balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  You know where you were when those planes flew into the World Trade Tower in New York City on September 11th.

Some tragedies indelibly are etched in memory, living with us throughout the rest of our natural lives.  The pictures at times unexpectedly flashing before our eyes, unbeckoned.  Blindsiding us in moments of vulnerability.

Sometimes it’s a private, family tragedy, like the day my mom called to tell me my father had had another heart attack and was now in Long Beach Memorial Hospital.  He had somehow survived that one; it was his fourth. 

“No, don’t fly back here, he’s recovering.  The doctors say he’ll make it.”

“Be sure and call us every day, and if he takes a turn for the worse, “I’ll be there.”

Mom had waited a few days to call.  Like many families, ours did not do well with bad news.

There are times, public and private, when the bottom just drops out.  Hope dies.  With bated breath time stands still.  When just getting out of bed seems an insurmountable obligation of the day.

It is on those days we desperately long for a way forward.  A word of hope.  The message of faith that this is not the end.

This past week, at a preaching conference put on by our Episcopal magazine, the “Living Church,” a group of a little over a hundred of us, clergy and lay, wrestled with our most difficult of assignments – preaching the Word of God. 

We had three bishops at the conference.  One of those, on being introduced from Saskatchewan, gave the following advice: “The best way to accommodate a bishop in ceremonial functions is to assume he’s blind, he can’t hear, he smells, and he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Now, Jai said that this story doesn’t really fit in here, but it’s too good to pass up – a preacher’s prerogative.

Preaching today — on the face of it, how presumptuous!  To speak for God!?  Especially in a secular age, when such seems most irrelevant.  A task so inconsequential as the world rushes on.  Often, from one catastrophe to another.

And THAT’S exactly why our task is so utterly important – to bring a message of hope and redemption.  To speak to the heart and the mind.  To bring a message that binds up and renews!

Our minds, our hearts, as of late have been transfixed by the calamity unfolding in Gaza and Israel.  Every evening on our TV screens, tragic, sorrowful remnants of families are interviewed, asked to go through their loss one more time.  “How was it in the midst of that music festival, running for your life as all about you your friends were being slaughtered by Hamas gunmen?”  “What do you want to say to those who have kidnapped your three-year old daughter?”  One more day of disaster porn.

Images of total and absolute destruction of Gaza flash on the screen over and over.  Paramedics rushing hopeless cases through piles of rubble, gray with the settling dust of an overnight bombing.  Scenes of distraught survivors picking through mounds of broken concrete, desperately hunting for lost loved ones.

For families on both sides, the End of the World.  Waiting for news that never comes.

And we who watch this unfolding tragedy from across an ocean, from miles away – yes, we’re caught up in the sorrow as well.  If we have any heart at all.  If we haven’t lost our soul.

And we who watch this serial disaster unfold, we wonder, what of our complicity?  Will we find our nation before the World Court, forced to answer for our role in this slaughter of innocents?

Honest contemplation forces us to consider the seeds of this disaster.  It was years in the making.  Since the founding of the State of Israel.  The foundation for some and the nakba, the catastrophe, for others.  As one writer has put it, “The Too-Much Promised Land.”  So many hopes pinned on one small piece of real estate.

How does one preach a word of hope in such a world?  Let alone the Word of God?

A young seminarian is said to have asked the great theologian Karl Barth: what could be preached after the news came of Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany.  What saving word was there to be said?  Barth responded, “Preach as if nothing happened.” 

God’s Word transcends the daily setbacks with a Vision Glorious – the enduring Word of God’s purpose for a restored world, restored relationships.  Take this message to Herr Hitler.

Coming out of Babylonian captivity, the Psalmist could proclaim:

“Come, let us sing to the Lord; let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation.  Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.”

Such vision has pulled us through the muck and mire of daily tragedy.  Even decades-long disaster.

Reading of those Conductors on the Underground Railroad, they were guided by such hope.  Cold, wet, terrified.  Leading small bands on the journey from slavery, with the baying of vicious dogs of the trackers on their heels.  Follow the Drinking Gourd.  Following that constellation to a dreamt of future.  No guarantees, only keep one foot going in front of the other.  Breath searing aching lungs.

And what inspired them?  it was the faith of a Risen Christ proclaimed and put into action.  A gospel literally with feet.  It was the belief that human beings are meant for something better than drudgery and degradation.  Recited at church Sunday after Sunday, in prayer meetings, and in the hymns your mother sang while at her daily chores about the house or in the field.

And here’s the secret – we all get there together.  On that Last Day, on that “Great Getting Up Day in the Morning,” gathered into glory, only one question – did you give your sister, your brother a helping hand?  That’s the only question on your Final Exam.  Did you give a care for the very least? 

Today we celebrate the consummation of what this whole Christianity thing is all about – The Reign of Christ.  We celebrate a Vision Glorious where all will be seated at the Table of God’s Plenitude.  A seat for all.  Yes, ALL MEANS ALL!

Each one of us who follows that crucified carpenter from Nazareth is commissioned to be a Conductor on this Railroad of Freedom, this Railroad of Promise.  “Get on board, little chillun.”

It is this vision, this hope, shared with friend, family and stranger that daily sustains.  This is what, on our best days, we would preach.  And in this Vision is Salvation.  Amen.

November 26, 2023
Last Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 29
Christ our Sovereign

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Psalm 95:1-7a;
Ephesians 1:15-23; Matthew 25:31-46

“A Vision Glorious”