SCARS A sermon preached by the Rev. Aaron Billard St. John s United Church, Moncton, NB April 15, 2012 When well-known atheist, entrepreneur, and billionaire Richard Branson was in Moncton, someone from the crowd asked him who he admired. To my surprise, he didn t name another billionaire but instead he responded with the name Desmond Tutu, a South African activist and retired Anglican Bishop. Tutu wrote, Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through the One who loved us. A good friend of mine died this week. Two years ago she was diagnosed with a late-stage melanoma. She began her treatments, changed her diet, exercised, painted, lived, loved, and laughed. Lori- Ann and I loved her. We had all been through a lot together. We had worried with Monica through her sickness; she was the first person we called on our way out the door when Lori-Ann went into labour; and we were all sued by the Province of New Brunswick for something that had happened to a land development nine years before we even lived in the province. Monica and her partner Matt soon became good friends, which was ironic because they were devout atheists. In the condo on their left was a lovely fundamentalist Christian couple named Hue and Sue, and on their right were a United Church couple who enjoyed a bottle of wine. It sounds like a great sitcom on CBC like Little Mosque on the Prairie. Matt and Monica would often ask me to watch videos or read something about atheism, which I happily did. Most of their critiques of the faith were mine too. I don t like to give advice, but if there is one bit of advice I could give you, don t let religion get in the way of relationships. The God that Jesus described is one who rose above religion and encouraged relationship.
One of the things that I loved about Monica is that she wouldn t sacrifice intellect or science or relationships on the altar of religion. Monica had spent her teen years in a fundamentalist Christian church and she later described that as brain washing. After a while, Monica and I stopped avoiding the elephant in the room, and she would say, You make me almost want to believe. As a minister, I thrive on the almost. After funerals I often hear, You make me almost want to go back to church. I live for the almost! For Monica it was the difference between innocent hopefulness and the scorn of bitterness. I told her once about the haunting hypothetical meaning, what if it s true? And she wrote back to me and said, Nice try, Billard. I got my fire insurance a long time ago when I got saved as a teen. Once saved always saved, right? She loved to tease me. After her diagnosis, Monica said that she wanted to come to church out of curiosity. She wrote, I'm still planning on going to church tomorrow. I think you bewitched me! I'm all nervous! I haven't dated God in a long while. I'm not sure he'll still like me. Ha-ha. When she came to St. John s a few times last year, she said that she hadn t dated God in a long time and wasn t sure what to wear. She told me later that you were all very friendly to her, and one day I even received a message about a particular sermon that she liked. On May 1, 2011, Monica wrote to me, It was a nice service. Funny enough, I sat all alone this time but felt the most comfortable being there yet. I'm happy I gave your church a try. Shhhh...Don t tell. People might think I've gotten soft! In one of our conversations, she said, Honestly, you make me want to believe in something again... I really didn't think it was possible for anyone to make me want to enter that world again. It's been so long and I've been so shut off from that part of my brain. But then, things started to move quickly for Monica. She was accepted into a drug trial in Quebec where she stayed with a group of nice nuns who treated her well while she received her treatments. She created an online diary of her journey with cancer on Facebook. She posted pictures of the scars from her operations, her surroundings, and her life in general as it unfolded. I m going to post a link to a YouTube video that her friend Matt made. Through her online diary, Monica opened up her life and her soul so that people could see what 2
it was like to be someone on that difficult journey. She invited us to touch her wounds. One Sunday, I quoted a book and I sent it to Monica following yet another surgery, and she really resonated with it. This is the quote: On the girl s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, do these scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived. In a few breaths time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile. On Tuesday afternoon, at 2:07 pm, Monica died, surrounded by the people who loved her. And that s how I think of her now: marvelous, and turning around with a smile. In this story from John s Gospel, Jesus showed his disciples the holes in his hands and his side. He showed them his wounds, and invited Thomas to touch them. It was a moment of heaven standing in the room. And I am in awe of those moments because so often we think of the kingdom of heaven as someplace else. We do it all the time. When someone dies, we say that they go to a better place. We think of heaven as the great reward for a faithful life on earth. We think of heaven as a place of golden roads and no more tears. We anxiously prepare for the there because we can t handle this kind of here. Peter Rollins talks about a kind of Christian atheism that realizes that the easy-to-believe-in God is dead. This easy-to-believe-in God turns out to be nothing more than an idol of our own creation. This easy-tobelieve-in God is the antithesis of authentic Christianity. The true God, it turns out, is right there in the midst of our existential crises. The true God is right there in the midst of our suffering and pain, even 3
there in the midst of our most profound doubts - just as God was there in the midst of suffering, pain, and doubt - while Jesus hung on a cross and died - or when anyone suffers, for that matter. A number of years ago I was preaching on a Good Friday in a little country church filled with families and I made the comment that Jesus had died. One of the regulars who attended that church was a little boy named Callum who started crying and said to his mother, Jesus is dead?!? I thought, Uh oh My heart broke for this little guy because it was obvious to me that Jesus was alive for him in a very real way. I asked his mom about him after church to see if he would be ok, and she said he would each week I ve got to stand here and somehow talk about faith in such a way that you are able to connect to God through the scriptures, or connect to anything in your life, or at the very least I ve got to talk about faith in such a way that you re going to come back next week! Because we re never sure you know if you all are buying into at least some of what we re saying here at the church, that in some way, Jesus is very much with us. And we still feel strong connections to those whom we have loved who have died. Kristin Saldine sums it up best when she says, It is not the degree of doubt that endangers faith; it is the loss of connection with a community of faith. May we too experience the risen Christ in this community as we re-imagine ourselves, and find out together what it means to have faith. It s about learning a language of faith. But it s hard to learn another language. A local business was looking for office help and put a sign in the window stating: "HELP WANTED. Must be able to type, must be good with a computer and must be bilingual. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer." A dog trots up to the window, sees the sign & goes inside. The manager tells the dog, "I can't hire you. The sign says you have to be able to type." The dog goes to the typewriter and types a perfect letter. The manager is stunned, then tells the dog, "But the sign says you have to be good with a computer." The dog jumps up, goes to the computer, demonstrates his expertise with Word, Excel, Outlook, Power Point and produces a sample spreadsheet and presents it to the manager. 4
Stunned once again, the manager replies, "I still can't give you the job. You have to be bilingual." The dog looks him straight in the face and says, "Meow." Two men faced God on the Day of Judgment. One looked beat and beat-up. Arm in sling, forehead bandaged, clothes tattered and torn. He looked awful. Moreover, his life had been so hard, he felt a failure. Ashamed, he would not lift up his face to look upon the Lord. The second man looked as if he just stepped off the tennis court after winning his morning set. Dressed smartly, he was tanned and fit. His teeth gleamed. He appeared to have been nipped-and-tucked in the right places. Relaxed, he smiled confidently at the Lord. The Lord looked at the two men, then turned to the one who was tanned and tucked and said, "Where are your wounds? Was there nothing to fight for down there?" My friend Monica showed her wounds. We see and hear stories of those who place themselves at risk for others all the time. Jesus showed his hands and his side to let us know that this world isn t perfect, but when we go to the cross for someone else, we come alive. Kate McIlhagga, a poet, challenges Thomas and us to come in to the touching place in her poem, Thomas. Put your hand, Thomas, on the crawling head of a child imprisoned in a cot in Romania. Place your finger, Thomas, on the list of those who have disappeared in Chile. Stroke the cheek, Thomas, of the little girl sold in prostitution in Thailand. Touch, Thomas, the gaping wounds of my world. 5