LOVE AGAIN A sermon preached by Galen Guengerich All Souls Unitarian Church, New York City April 5, 2015 Several days ago, the UK newspaper The Telegraph published a photograph of Gunter and Ursula Lubitz arriving at a chapel near the village of Seyne-les-Alpes in France. The photo was taken the day after Germanwings flight 9525 plowed into a nearby mountain, killing all 150 people aboard. Even from a distance, Gunter and Ursula Lubitz appear stunned and somewhat detached, both from each other and from the police officer escorting them. And why wouldn t they be in shock? Their 27-year-old son Andreas, who served as co-pilot on the flight, was among the dead. What we now know is that their nightmare had barely begun. Their son had battled depression for years and had occasionally contemplated suicide. For reasons yet unknown, his suicidal thoughts metastasized into homicidal intentions. After locking the pilot out of the cockpit during flight 9525, Andreas Lubitz set the autopilot for an altitude of 100 feet in a region where ground level is 6,000 feet. Then he sat in silence while the plane drove itself into a mountain. Bernard Bertolini, the mayor of a small village near the crash site, met with Gunter and Ursula Lubitz after they knew the full scope of the horror. He described them as people whose lives were in ruin. He said, They are at the center of a tragedy they did not seek. Nearly 2,000 years ago, after a brief career as an apocalyptic preacher in the hinterlands of Palestine, an itinerant Jewish teacher named Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The modest crowd gathered to welcome him hoped he could defeat their brutal Roman overlords. Christians today celebrate what they call his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as Palm Sunday. Within a few days, however, the Romans had convicted Jesus of sedition and sentenced him to death by crucifixion. Over the years, the Romans had erected thousands of crosses to execute dissidents and dissuade their followers. As Jesus hung from one of them, the gospels say that he uttered seven last sayings. One saying was directed to his mother, who had gathered with Jesus friends and followers to keep him company during his final hours. Jesus said to her, apparently while directing her attention to John, Jesus favorite follower, Behold your son. And then he said to John, Behold your mother, thus conferring upon them a new relationship, one of mother and son. Apparently, Jesus hoped that having John as a replacement son would ease his mother s pain. It s a touching gesture by a dying man who obviously loved his mother. But when Jesus said to her, Behold your son, my guess is that her eyes never left the cross. Within five days, he would go from being a minor hero to being dead. As his ~ 1 ~
mother, this was not the destiny she desired for him. This was a tragedy she did not seek. While the differences between the deaths of Jesus and Andreas Lubitz could hardly be greater, my mind has been drawn to their parents. Whatever they might have desired for their children, it certainly wasn t this. Easter is about finding ourselves in the center of a tragedy we did not seek. Sometimes, as with the mother of Jesus and the parents of Andreas Lubitz, we are bystanders to a tragedy involving our children, our parents, or our friends. It may involve bad choices, bad outcomes, or just bad luck. At other times, tragedy may happen to us. We may have caused it, and we may even have deserved it. But, as with tragedies involving people we care about, it s not what we were looking for. It s not the outcome we had imagined. In one of her recent poems, the contemporary American poet Ellen Bass describes the feeling of being annihilated by loss and enervated by grief. It s a time, she says, when everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief. you think, how long can a body withstand this? Have you ever felt grief so heavy that it seems to weigh more than you do? Has your life ever crumbled like burnt paper in your hands? Have you ever wondered how long you can withstand the weight of whatever burden you are trying to bear? If so, then you re ready for Easter. Easter begins when something we care about crumbles. Easter begins when we feel suffocated by grief. If you are celebrating Easter at All Souls for the first time, this emphasis may surprise you. In many churches today, the Easter anthem proclaims that Jesus Christ is Risen Today. Here at All Souls, we typically don t use the name Jesus Christ. Our preference is to speak of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was an itinerant Jewish teacher who believed the world would end within the lifetime of his disciples. He urged his followers to become, as the poet William Blake put it, the human form of love divine. We call him the Jesus of history to distinguish him from the Christ of Christian doctrine. Christians believe that the Christ the term means Messiah was both fully human and fully divine. As such, he is believed to have lived a perfect life, died a ~ 2 ~
blameless death, and risen from the dead. In this way, he became Christ the king, sovereign ruler of history and savior of humanity. If you find the Christ scenario hard to accept when presented as actual history, which it usually is, you re in good company. But my guess is that you did not come to All Souls this morning because of what you don t believe in. Like me, you have come because somehow, inexplicably perhaps, you believe in Easter. According to the earliest gospel account, three women who were close to Jesus took spices to his tomb on Sunday morning to anoint his body, as was customary. To their surprise, the tomb was open, and a young man sat inside, dressed in a long, flowing white robe the conventional garb of an angel. He explained that Jesus had been raised lifted up. The verb translated raised is a widely-used Greek verb that would typically have meant something like he has been lifted up and taken elsewhere. The verb was sometimes used metaphorically, so you can read it as resurrection if that s what you re looking for. In response to the empty tomb, the three women, according to the gospel, went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. In the earliest manuscripts of the earliest gospel, the story ends here. Easter doesn t begin with a peal of trumpets and a profusion of daffodils. It begins with terror and fear. It begins when everything has crumbled. Monica Lewinsky certainly knows what it s like to have your world crumble. You may have noticed that she s back in the public eye. Last year, she wrote a long article for Vanity Fair, and her recent TED talk has gone viral. After reading the article and watching the TED talk, I m deeply moved by her prophetic moral courage. For the past 15 years, Monica Lewinsky has existed in our public discourse mainly as the punchline of unremittingly sexist, sleazy, and sophomoric jokes. After having been continually crucified by malicious politicians and a salacious public, however, Lewinsky has recently come back to life. Her story is indeed a resurrection story, just in time for Easter. Lewinsky begins her recent Ted talk by saying, At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss Like me, a few of you may have also taken wrong turns at age 22 and fallen in love with the wrong person, maybe even your boss. Unlike me, though, your boss probably wasn't the president of the United States of America. Lewinsky goes on to describe the unprecedented political, legal and media maelstrom that engulfed her. In addition to being falsely maligned by Clinton s supporters and duplicitously manipulated by his opponents, she found herself making media history. She says, It was the first time the traditional news was usurped by the Internet for a major news story, a click that reverberated around the world. What that meant for me personally was that overnight I went from being a completely private figure to a publicly humiliated one worldwide. I was patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously. ~ 3 ~
Surreptitious recordings of her phone conversations were aired on television and made available online. She acknowledges that, in those unguarded chats with a friend she mistakenly trusted, she sometimes comes across as catty and uncouth, even cruel and unforgiving. As she listened deeply to the worst version of herself on tape, she says, she felt deeply, deeply ashamed. She says, The public humiliation was excruciating. Life was almost unbearable. Lewinsky points out that stealing people s private words, actions, conversations or photos and using them for shame and public humiliation has become one of our society s favorite blood sports. This pattern of cyber violence has created a culture of humiliation, leading to an increase in suicides, especially among young people. As a nation, we should be ashamed of ourselves. Lewinsky s prophetic call for a return to our long-held value of compassion is well worth heeding. She notes that we talk a lot about our right to free expression, but we need to talk more about our responsibility for free expression. She quips, Just imagine walking a mile in someone else's headline. For her part, Lewinsky had to walk in her own headlines. She says, looking back, I lost my reputation and my dignity. I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life. In her poem, Ellen Bass writes: [when] everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands When grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it you think, how long can a body withstand this? The message of Easter is that tragedy need not have the final word. Whether the tragedy is ours or someone else s, whether caused by bad decisions or bad luck, we always stand at the intersection of what s past and what s possible. In response to whatever has happened, we need to accept ourselves as we are. And we need to accept our circumstances as they are. It may not be the life we desire, but it s ours either to spurn or to embrace. In her poem, Ellen Bass goes on to describe the Easter option. She writes: The thing is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you again. ~ 4 ~
After 15 years of trying to hide from the world and from herself, Monica Lewinsky decided to love her life again. As she puts it, she decided that it's time: time to stop tiptoeing around my past; time to stop living a life of opprobrium; and time to take back my narrative. She adds that anyone who is suffering from shame and humiliation needs to know one thing: You can survive it. I know it's hard. It may not be painless, quick or easy, but you can insist on a different ending to your story. The same is true of other tragedies. I don t know what calamity has ambushed you. I don t know how you have failed yourself and those you care about. I don t know where your weaknesses have sabotaged you or your fears have thwarted you. But I know that you can survive them. It s Easter, the season of new possibilities. Whatever bad turn your story has taken, you can insist on a different ending. Today, hold your life like a face between your palms. Say yes, I will take you. I will love you again. ~ 5 ~