The moment described in our “Words for
Meditation” this morning is one of the most gripping I know in dramatic
literature. Helen Keller, deaf and blind, comes to “sight.” I never can
get enough of that moment in “The Miracle Worker.” Through learning to name
one thing, water, the whole world of meaning opens to her. What a tribute
to the power of self-discovery, self-recovery, in anyone by whatever means,
no matter what the “blinding,” -- the crippling, the enslaving, the
paralyzing, the deadening of our condition. And what a tribute to the
teacher, the mentor, the colleague, the friend who sticks with us through
all our resistance, through all of our failing, again and again, until that
moment of empowerment! That moment of breakthrough, of revelation, of
conversion, into a whole new way of seeing, of feeling, of thinking, of
doing, and of presenting ourselves to others!
One of the great loves of our lives serving
congregations was Marjorie Keenleyside, whom we met in her early eighties
in Chicago. One of her husbands had died, another had left her. So she
“married the church,” as she said, and she let us know in no uncertain,
fist-clenching, foot-stomping, word-sputtering terms if we crossed her about
the church in any way. She was in charge of communion, the coffee hour, the
thrift shop, just for instances, and they were done her way or no way!
Every Monday morning I would stop for coffee with the Red Cross sewing
circle, and Marjorie would unload her fury at something someone, usually I,
had said or done the day before! I took more tongue-lashings than Jesus
took real ones according to Mel Gibson. Yet so often, by mid-afternoon,
when the group stopped sewing, I would hear a timid knock upon my office
door. Marjorie would be there to say she had thought things over and saw
them a little differently now.
I remember how long she firmly protested
against our congregation breaking the law to give sanctuary to political
refugees from Central America. But Marjorie in younger days, speaking of
Women’s History, had all but finished a Ph. D. in Spanish literature at
University of Chicago before she was talked out of it as something women of
that time just did not do. She had spent time in Guatemala. One day
Marjorie tapped on my door to say she had imagined one of the persons she
met there years ago coming to her door for sanctuary. She knew she could
not turn that person away. Marjorie taught me, again and again, how to pay
“selective attention” to all she unloaded on us. For God is not done with
us yet! It is never too late for any of us to learn to see and hear in new
ways. I was glad I always waited so long to form any fast and lasting
judgments on Marjorie.
Women and so many others in our world today
are like this blind man coming to light. Virtually no one really believes
any more that some sin of our parents or of our own causes such conditions.
We know a lot of cruel “stuff happens,” as we put it. But we agree with
Jesus. God needs no explaining, excusing, defending, protecting from us.
God needs no careful “theodicy,” as we call it, to rationalize how one or
more persons suffer more than others. Martin Buber says often the best, the
only thing we can do is “address” God in our confusion, frustration, anger,
despair, -- in what Paul calls “sighs too deep for words” – and hope that
God will “address” us some way in return. We need no scapegoats, no victims
to blame, says Jesus. Rather, we believe in the God who never gives up!
Who never stops working with us, as the potter does with clay, -- to use
even the cruel stuff that happens as cause to begin, albeit heartbroken and
weeping, again!
It is also part of world Women’s History
today that we hear the story of Mukhtaran Bibi. Nicholas Kristof of the
New York Times calls her “one of the gutsiest persons on earth.” She never
attended school as a child and lives in a poor, remote village in Pakistan.
Kristof writes, “As a part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council
decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped. She begged
and cried, but four of her neighbors immediately stripped her and carried
out the sentence,” then “made her walk home naked while her father tried to
shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers. “Mukhtaran was meant to be so
ashamed that she would commit suicide.” Whether or not we mean to, suicide,
self-destruction, can be the effect of the “spiritual violence” we do when
we speak in the name of God’s judgment to condemn one another to fast and
lasting shame at the person we are created, or otherwise forced, in this
instance, to be.
“But in a society where women are supposed
to be soft and helpless,” Kristof continues, “she proved indescribably
tough, and she found the courage to live. She demanded the prosecution of
her attackers, and six were sent to death row.” (Though just last week the
sentences of four of them were reversed, and Mukhtaran lives in fear for her
family again. Please see: www.mukhtarmai.com) “She received $8,300 in
compensation and used it to start two schools in the village, one for boys
and one for girls, because she feels that education is the best way to
change attitudes like those that led to the attack on her. Illiterate
herself, she then enrolled in her own elementary school.” Amazing! Sisters
and brothers, Jesus is our “attitude-changer,” by any means at his
disposal. Jesus, by example, is our “courage to live,” whatever our
circumstance or condition.
But Jesus only shows up at the very
beginning and at the very end of this long story. Everything in between is
left up to us, as to Mukhtaran. Sometimes we have to pay “selective
attention” even to ourselves! And learn to love ourselves not only at
“first sight,” but at second, and third, and forever, if that’s what it
takes! To see the strengths, the hopes, the opportunities and
possibilities, in ourselves as well as in others, and to build on them,
often against many odds and much opposition. Jesus gives us that chance to
“tap in” to God, -- as promise, as passion, as presence, as power. To
expect a miracle! To be surprised by God. Even to the point where others
may wonder, as in the story, if we are the same person or people we used to
be. The answer is, yes! I am! We are! Only someone, -- someone like
Jesus; someone like Annie Sullivan, teacher of Helen Keller; someone like
“Stoney” the organizer among us, whose too-short life we now risk for
ourselves – someone has seen something else, something new, something
different, something life-giving, in us! And we will not see, or feel, or
think, or do, or present ourselves in quite the same way ever again!
Jesus not only sees us for who we are but
also for who we can be. How we can become connected again, related again,
body parts and spirit congregations again. With common ministry, common
mission, even when we may differ in ways and means, agendas and goals. The
burden of proof, as with this blind man who sees, falls, as it must, upon
us, each and all, to show again who we are! How we have been “saved,”
changed and set free, healed and made whole. Everyone wants to be saved,
but nobody wants to change. If we can possibly find even “one good reason”
to disbelieve, disregard, disdain and dismiss any sign of new life, in
others or in us, we will! Seeing again, in new ways, ain’t easy! It may
take “selective attention” to who and how we used to be, as well as to who
and how so many others around us still are! “Selective attention” even to
the Book of Discipline. Dare we say, even to the Bible itself? For Jesus
has come to “fulfill it,” make it flesh, in real life, and put it in action
to change the whole world!
Once when I was lost and looking for a place
in the country along the Ohio River, I asked a farmer how to get there. He
told me to go “three sees” down the road. I told him I did not understand
what he meant by “three sees.” He said, “You just look down that road and
go as far as you can see. When you get there, you look down that road again
and go as far as you can see. When you do that three times, you’ll be
there!” So all I am asking of us this morning, with our first steps into
new light and new life, -- with this blind man still in self-discovery,
self-recovery, I am sure, -- with all of our rocks and stones, our rough
edges and our hard places, -- as persons and as congregation, -- all I am
asking as we take a few steps toward Jesus, his body, his blood, to change
us and to sustain us, -- all I am asking is that we go “one see” down the
road at a time! When we get there, we’ll look again. I’ll bet we ain’t
seen nothing yet! And, amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
