November 6, 2011 – “Which Reality”
Phil Blackwell
“Which Reality?”
Matthew 5:1-12
Charles Merrill Smith wrote a mystery series in which the hero is the minister of this church. Smith was a United Methodist minister who gave us the amateur sleuth, the Rev. C.P. Randollph, that is “Randollph”: with two l’s, the former quarterback of the Los Angeles Rams now minister of a skyscraper church in Chicago, who marries the beautiful female television news anchor, lives in the octagonal steeple of the building, solves mysteries in his spare time, and has a British butler who serves him sherry every afternoon at 4:00 p.m. Actually, that is very close to the present reality, except for the British butler.
It is a set of six novels written in the 1970’s, but we had visitors during our architectural open house a few weeks ago who came to the Temple just to see where the Rev. Randollph lived.
Well, Charles Merrill Smith loved poking fun at the church as an institution. He wrote a book entitled How to Become a Bishop Without Being Religious, perhaps the one that came just before leaving the ministry to become a full-time author. But I bring him up on this All Saints Sunday in order to read a poem that he uses as the front piece of another book, When the Saints Go Marching Out, a lampoon based on true stories about some of the more obscure saints.
When the saints come marching in!
There is a terrific din!
Those contemplating this
splendid procession of martyrs, virgins, and other
stalwart Christians,
praise their ways in verse and worse.
On the other hand,
when the saints go marching out,
leaving the odor of sanctity
with the debris of piety,
there is no doubt – regrettably –
sin is in but,
saints are something we could just about
do without.
We are surrounded by saints here today . . . in the stained glass windows. Here are the twelve apostles, labeled so that we can tell one from another . . . Peter, Bartholomew, Philip, and Jude, sometimes called Thaddeus. Judas is replaced in our iconography by Matthias.
Up here behind the altar across the bottom in canonical order are St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John, none of them among the twelve who followed Jesus during his earthly ministry. And up the window’s depiction of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection we see Mary, along with many other characters.
In a west window we find Martin Luther and John Calvin, but curiously, not John and Charles Wesley. They are enshrined in glass in their own glory on the 22nd floor.
So, the poet is a bit harsh when talking about saints leaving behind the odor of sanctity with the debris of piety because they also leave behind some beautiful stained glass windows. But these are not the people whom we honor today, the persons listed in our order of service and those whom we will name in the privacy of our own memories. We name them because we loved them and now they have died, yet our love for them still lives. And we name them because they made a difference in our lives which we cherish. It is unlikely that they will ever appear in a stained glass window, but that is okay. They are here in our hearts backlit a with love that will never grow dim.
“For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia!” We will sing that together in a few minutes. Let us confess now that the world beyond these walls most likely will not see the people whom we name as saints. Why? Because in the faith we honor attributes that people in the work-a-day world dismiss as silly or just plain weird. We are calling on a different reality in here than the world does out there. A different reality . . . than in the “real world.”
Look at the Beatitudes, our reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew. These are the very first words ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament; they constitute his political platform, what he stands for in the public square.
So, with what does he start? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there is the kingdom of heaven.” Blessed are those who are totally dependent on God and interdependent on one another, because that is the way to live a holy life. Really? Not here in America where independence, self-reliance, pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps (a physiologically impossible thing to do, by the way), where freedom from all attachments is a virtue. That is the reality of the public domain, but Jesus introduces a competing reality.
“Blessed are those who mourn,” who can earnestly lament how far short we have fallen from the glory of God. Glory, what glory? God, what God? There is nothing to feel sorry for, nothing to mourn. Be happy. That is the goal in life, isn’t it, to pursue happiness?” “Blessed are the meek.” Are you kidding? How real is that? No, to be successful in the real world you have to be proud, self-confident, self-promotional, assertive, not meek.
And so goes the clash of realities. Starve for justice, show mercy, desire to serve God above all else. Be a peacemaker. Here carved in the wooden facing of our altar is Jesus weeping over the city because the people do not know what makes for peace. Yet the call in our society is for more guns carried by more people in more places. Weren’t the six-shooters of the Old West called “peacemakers”? One reality in conflict with another.
And then, after listing the Beatitudes Jesus continues in the Sermon on the Mount to proclaim, “Turn the other cheek, give away you coat, go the extra mile.” It is absolute silliness, completely unrealistic, until . . . until we see Jesus. The rules of Jesus and all of the radical dictates of the gospels make no sense until we see them embodied in the person who espouses them. And when we see these unrealistic virtues lived out in a real life, we see that there is an alternative reality to the one that dominates in our world. And then comes the question, “Which reality do we choose?”
The Beatitudes are not abstract rules for life that we can extract from the bible and post on a wall, but simple footnotes to a life lived so convincingly that we say, “I want to be like that.” The reality of a saint is that she or he inspires us to see what we before could not see.
Wednesday night we saw clearly something that was so hard to look at – the violent deaths of more than 300 children in Chicago over the past three years. About 250 people were here for an extraordinary convergence of words and music, of youths holding candles around the altar, of shoes of dead children laid before the altar, and the names, every one of over 300 names read out loud. “Urban Dolorosa” is the name of the experience, conceived by Susan Johnson, the extraordinary minister of Hyde Park Union Church, scored by Father Vaughn Fayle, a splendid composer, thoughtful philosopher, and dear friend of the Temple, sung by soloists and a community chorus, anchored by some of our choir members. It will be presented this evening in Hyde Park, for the fifth and last time during this All Saints week. Here at the Temple we ended with a candlelight procession into Daley Plaza and rang a handbell 17 more times for those who have been murdered since September 1st of this year.
The cumulative effect of hearing all of the names read produced a new reality that simply reading the names one-by-one in the daily newspaper, not even in the headlines anymore, does not do for us. It is a reality that most of us try to ignore. Susan named that in a stanza of her lyric:
Beside the Lake, the native grasses bow their heads
in hushed remembrance of summers past.
Her children are no longer free; there are no children here.
Yet, the city, unmoved, big-shouldered, carries on –
Is there no balm, no remedy, no physician anymore?
The city, buried in its own reality that ignores the slaughter of its children, unmoved, big-shouldered, carries on.
That was Wednesday evening. Early Thursday morning I went to breakfast at the Union League Club to hear Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. I, as one who grew up in Wisconsin and owns property there to which Sally and I occasionally escape, was curious to hear his “take” on his reality. There was a contingent of “Occupy Chicago” people that had bought tickets and dressed for the occasion who interrupted his speech with shouts about union busting and a lengthy call-and-response litany detailing their grievances. Then they left and the governor continued with his own litany of campaign promises he had made and his self-congratulation for fulfilling all of them in his very first year. Clearly, two realities in conflict with one another.
After the governor’s talk I introduced myself to him and said, “I know that you are an evangelist for guns and just signed into law a concealed weapon bill that permits residents to carry guns most anywhere that they want, including bars, grocery stores, and banks. But five Roman Catholic bishops in your state have pleaded with you to offer a blanket exemption to houses of worship. Would you please publicly declare churches, synagogues, and mosques off limits for your gun carriers?’ And he said, “No. Let any church that doesn’t want guns say so for themselves. It is not the guns that kill people . . .” and his comments trailed off in the usual justification as he brushed passed me.
And it left me to wonder, “Had he been here at the Temple the night before to hear the 300 names, perhaps even to read aloud a portion of them himself, would he have experienced a different reality that might have led him to be more moderate?” Probably not.
But then, it left me with the decision, “Which reality will inform my life? Which reality will dictate my actions? Which reality most closely mirrors the reality Jesus embodied?” The refrain over and over Wednesday night as we heard name upon name:
Pour out your heart like water
for the lives of your children –
let justice roll down like waters
righteousness like an everflowing stream.
This is a saintly reality.
The saints whose memory we honor today are not encased in stained glass but enshrined in our hearts. Somehow in their lives and in their deaths, they have revealed a new reality which makes life richer, and deeper, and more valuable than any possession. Those who do not share this beatific moment with us may not understand; they may not understand the real power of trust, confession, meekness, justice, mercy, purity, and reconciliation. But we are here to affirm such a reality. We have seen it in others, the saints, and now we embrace it for ourselves. Amen.
Philip L. Blackwell
The Chicago Temple
November 6, 2011
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