Sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday, April 17, 2016, "The Good Shepherd Navigates Our Curragh"

C Good Shepherd 4 BFC 2016

Acts 9:36-43

April 17, 2016

In the tradition of Celtic monasticism, a very unique practice of pilgrimage arose called peregrinatio. The Irish monks would set sail in a small boat [called curraghs, in the indigenous language, a coracle, in English.]  Without oar or rudder, [the monks would set sail] and let the winds and current of divine love carry them to the "place of their resurrection." The river or sea would bring them to a place of rest that they had not chosen themselves. The impulse for the journey was always love. It was a practice of profound trust in the One who guides and shepherds us to the place of new life.

This metaphor for journeying was a powerful one that shaped much of their vision of the way of the Christian spiritual life. Peregrinatio was the call to wander for the love of God. It is a word without precise definition in English and is a very particular kind of pilgrimage rooted in a willingness to yield to holy direction. This wandering was an invitation into letting go of our own agendas and discovering where God was leading.

In this profound practice, God becomes both destination and way, companion and guiding force. God is in the call to the journey, unfolding of the journey, and greets us at the end of the journey.[1]

But that understanding, that language, seems so foreign to us in a progressive Christian church, right?  As the great Christian ethicist and theologian from our own tradition, Reinhold Niebuhr suggested, to talk about the transcendent is a striving for the literal, pejorative definition of utopia—meaning “nowhere.”  Niebuhr thought it to be a fool’s errand.  Progressive Christianity has all too often followed Niebuhrian realism and given up the seeking and discernment for the transcendent and holy will and love of God.    

In a church like ours, when the name of God is invoked too often, we might assume that someone is seeking to strong arm us, pull the wool over our eyes, unwilling to discuss the grimy details of the work to be done.  But I think that pragmatism has left progressive Christianity so cold and so stale, so absent of resurrection and new life.  I think that pragmatism leaves all of our hearts broken. 

We should dream.  We should dare to believe that God may be leading us, gathering up the souls of all of us, to something that is bigger than all of us, to a vision that might even span generations. 

I don’t know about you, but to me, it would seem the struggle of the church is the same in each age.  For that very reason, we have the Scripture passage in front of us today.  In Hebrew Scripture, the prophets Elijah and Elisha resurrect someone from the dead and bring about new life.  In the Gospels, Jesus resurrects a young woman from the dead and brings about new life.  In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter resurrects from the dead and brings about new life.  The Gospel healing story of the young girl uses much the same language to talk about the healing done by Peter in the Acts of the Apostles.  Isn’t it always the way in a place, that even though you might bring new life to a synagogue leader’s daughter or one of the elderly women of the community, you had better prove it has some historical connection to someone who has come before you, or you are toast?  We are forever seeking out new life on our terms. 

“Why?  Who is this that raises people from the dead and brings new life?  Could it be the devil himself, come to ruin us?”  Jesus has to prove he is just like Elijah and Elisha.  Peter has to prove he is just like Jesus.  Except . . . I found it significant that the main change in the two healing stories is that Jesus brought back to life a young girl while Peter brings back to life a faithful widow.  The movement has now aged.  Is new life still possible?  “You know, I didn’t think this Peter guy was anything like Jesus until I saw him bring that woman back from the dead.  Maybe the kid is alright.”

 “No!  Nooooooo!” shout the town elders with big buckles on their hats, pointing their fingers.  “He’s a witch!  Wiiiiiiitch!”  The ability to conjure up new life and dark spirits always seem to be closely linked for the most anxious among us.

I have to say that although there are plenty signs in the world of war and environmental destruction, I also experience incredible, transcendent movements afoot that are full of the Heart of God.  At a time in my life, when I just turned 54 years of age and should be losing hope, I find myself, almost every day, in tears as I hear the courage of people and peoples as they strike out on pilgrimages that are by, all accounts, fools’ errands--stupid, nonsensical, and unrealistic.  I am heartened by the teaching of Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy who said,

Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.”[2]

The Good Shepherd never promised us a life that would be free from danger or absent of wolves.  What our story tells us is that in every generation we will be called to unreasonable courage, broadening solidarity, and to a pilgrim’s path that God has already walked, is walking with us, and is making through us.  Big deal, it looks bleak.  Without oar or rudder, the love of God will carry us.

          To live and love in today’s world takes a great deal of courage.  We are living in an age where we are living longer and dying slower.  I know one of my great fears is not my own death . . . but worry and concern I have over losing my faculties and abilities.  And in all of the congregations I have served but one, the counseling issue I had to deal with more than any other was adults trying to determine how to deal with the failing faculties and abilities of their parents.  

          In Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal, Gawande, a practicing surgeon, critiques the role modern medicine plays in practices running counter to what would be the best wishes of an individual and their family.   Gawande defines courage as “strength in the knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped.”[3]

Gawande asks for a change in medical practice that will honor and respect the will and wishes of people who know that the end of their lives is near.  As people think about the quality of the life they have led, Gawande argues, endings matter.  Even among the peregrinatio who take to the sea without oar or rudder, there is an intention to learn the direction and will of God as Good Shepherd.  Instead, we have too often defaulted to cultural values that lead to cruel endings and immense suffering. 

As a church, we are actively trying to respond.  It is one of the reasons that Stew Taylor has been distributing to everyone he sees in the church “Five Wishes”, a ministry which seeks to help us all age with dignity and intention.  The “Five Wishes” asks:   1) who is the person I want to make care decisions for me when I can’t; 2) what is the kind of medical treatment I want or don’t want; 3) how comfortable do I want to be; 4) how do I want people to treat me; and, finally, 5) what do I want my loved ones to know. 

If death is the final resting place, then, as our curragh, our small boat, sets out to sea we should remember what our medical technological society has forgotten.  There is a “dying role” that needs to be played.  I reference it as grieving toward resurrection.  “People want to share memories, pass on wisdoms and keepsakes, settle relationships, establish their legacies, make peace with God, and ensure that those who are left behind will be okay.  They want to end their stories on their own terms.”[4]  Endings matter. 

Our culture often seems unwilling to talk how we might grieve toward resurrection—how we might die faithfully.  Maybe that unwillingness to talk about grieving toward resurrection is rooted in one of many difficult hopes and fears:  our hope that we will never arrive at a place where we have to make difficult decisions, or our fear of contemplating our own death or the death of loved one, or our hope and dependence on medical technology, or our fear that we will lose faculties and abilities.  Out of those hopes and fears, we too often try to scrape, claw, fight for a reality that is no longer possible or we only find joy in speaking wistfully and romantically about what once was. 

Our faith calls us, believing that God is present even in our dying, to know that intention and meaning are important for bringing about resurrection and new life in our world.  God may have brought joy to our lives in the past, but God also intends our joy into the present and the future. 

Even when the end of our lives is not smooth sailing, when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we are called to be a people of unreasonable courage, broadening solidarity, and to a pilgrim’s path that God has walked before us, is walking with us, and is making through us as a Good Shepherd.   

On the death of his father, the late great Irish poet, John O’ Donohue, wrote a blessing for his mother that conveys the beauty, intent, and love for God in the midst of our deaths.  O’ Donohue wrote it, caring for the grief of his mother, hoping she might make a way through her grief.  I now find myself using this beautiful poem at so many funerals.  O’ Donohue wrote:

 

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The gray window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colors,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the curragh of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.[5]

In the curragh of thought, the small boat on the sea without oar or rudder, we are all perigranitios, seeking to find our way safely home, to a final resting place.  Know that it is God’s great desire that we might greet and grieve death well so that resurrection and new life break forth and an invisible cloak of love minds our life.  Our faith story says, even in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, God’s rod and staff will comfort us and we will be led.  May the wind now fill our sails so that we might greet a path of yellow moonlight that leads us to new life and resurrection in the house of the Living God our whole lives long.  Praise God.  Amen.

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[1] Christine Valters Paintner, “Pilgrimage of Resurrection:  Wandering for the Love of God,” patheos, April 24, 2015, http://www.patheos.com/Progressive-Christian/Pilgrimage-of-Resurrection-Christine-Valters-Paintner-04-24-2015.; “What is a coracle?” coracle.  http://inthecoracle.org/about/the-name-coracle/.

[2] Joanna Macy, “Joanna Macy:  On how to prepare internally for WHATEVER comes next,” Exopermaculture, April 2, 2014.

[3] Atul Gawande, Being Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End (New York:  Metropolitan Books, 2014), p. 232.

[4] Ibid, p. 249.

[5] “Interview with John O’Donohue:  The Inner Landscape of Being,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, August 6, 2015, http://www.onbeing.org/program/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty/transcript/7801#main_content.