SERMONS

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Sean Gilbert – 10/4/11
Christ Church

John 11

We spent this Lenten season in our worship, talking about - reflecting upon - those deeper places from where truly spirited life responses come. For instance:

• When we have been graced in life …(given things of great value for no real rhyme or reason. Grasped by grace, as Paul Tillich helpfully suggested)
• When through our laughter - even hilarity - new insight comes or existing stress/tension is greatly relieved.
• When through the recognition of goodly desire, we set a new direction, claim another, more authentic way of being and doing.

And finally

• When through needed consolation/comfort, life's challenges and lessons take on another face or dimension. Hope, therefore, has a chance to be reborn.

Related to this, yet even more specific perhaps, is the place and gift of tears; in this soulful context, tears that water the new ground we walk upon.

In my pastoral experience at least, tears are not talked about much at church and certainly if our embarrassment at times for shedding tears so publicly is any indication, perhaps they are not too welcome either. At least historically; they seem to be too emotive, too noticeable.

The late Graham Wilks said to me not long before he died "Sean, tears are good". A simple and pithy statement really, yet given the man and his experience with people, not one to easily ignore; certainly not one I've forgotten, as I have shared it with many since..

Tears are good. Perhaps like no other human expression, they reveal not only a depth of soul but a clarity also.

"Jesus wept", caught up in the sorrow afoot, the human loss and dislocation so keenly felt and experienced out there and in here, and so significantly the text speaks of him being moved; taken, perhaps invited, somewhere beyond his control, and yet for his and others' good.

It strikes me that this movement, this 'taking beyond' lies at the very heart of the faith experience, a movement well beyond cognition, self control or mere belief, a movement of soul that might be messy at best, ambiguous at worst, yet is the very essence of the spirit filled and directed life.

For the last time this Lent I want to share another short reflection around the life of Etty Hillesum. Her genius, if I may call it that, so far as the spiritual, self-giving life is concerned, was that she was attuned and responsive to inner movements of soul and spirit. She was moved to lament, to cry, to pray, to write, to offer thanksgiving; to allow the heart speak its own unique language, not to filter, edit, or dumb it down with clichés and banalities, or give in to social expectation.

Importantly for us today, she allowed her tears to water new ground; the tears of despair, injustice, loss, fear, all these she cried and more, and yet so that there might be a brighter day:

"In this tempestuous, havoc ridden world of ours," she writes, "all real communication comes from the heart. Outwardly we are being torn apart, and the paths to each other lie buried under so much debris that we often fail to find the person we seek. We can only continue to live together in our hearts, and hope that one day we may walk hand in hand again."

Healing, cleansing, clarifying, sobbing, grief-stricken tears of the heart, all potential movements forward, yet deep expressions of humanity irrespective; humanizing gifts of the inner spirit.

At the beginning of Lent I told a somewhat veiled story from my own experience - the watching of a movie and tears coming in an unexpected way - the touching of a nerve, the connecting with something previously not consciously noticed or acknowledged.

Well, time (perhaps) to be a little more specific.

It was a scene in the movie, Lars and the Real Girl, when the older, responsible, strong and self sufficient brother, sitting opposite his pregnant wife, and by virtue of something she says, emotionally breaks under the strain of holding so much together, and from the guilt of not fully caring for his younger, somewhat handicapped brother.

"Come here", his wife says, at which point he makes his way sheepishly across the room and falls into her almost maternal embrace, sobbing deeply.

Ah, the quite human need to be radically accepted held and loved in the very midst of our failures, complexities and inner contradictions. Needless to say it connected with my own needs and desire, hence the silent, sub versant tears; tears that I've gradually learned to listen to or at least to notice when they may be falling and for what reason. Tears that clear one's vision a little, unlock the heart a bit more, thus give expression to what pains and therefore potentially what freezes us out of fuller life.

"Jesus wept". I mean it is not a proof text but it does say something powerful about what is both human and divine; the movement of pathos, the openness to love and renewed compassion.

If nothing else tears take us to places of raw vulnerability that can and will water a new ground of being, be it corporately or individually. They leave us defenseless admittedly, wide open to non-care, but in that open and tender place, grace, healing and goodness can have a certain way with us. Renewal is no longer a concept or a strategy. It's flesh and blood, body and soul; lives being put back together again, coming alive to a greater fullness in life, one which we'll readily share with a needy world.

Rumi to conclude:

Be helpless, dumbfounded (weepy)
Unable to say yes or no
Then (then) a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up…..

Let us take a few precious moments for our own prayer and reflection.