Resting in Peace

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. Lisa had been up very early to tend to our new puppy, Rocky. She then got a little work done, grabbed a quick breakfast, and headed into town to attend the memorial service of a friend who died from an aggressive form of brain cancer at 59 years old--it not being lost on either of us that this is my own age. By late afternoon, Lisa was worn out and I put her to bed for a nap.

Rocky was tired himself--after all, he had led the morning charge and that sort of responsibility can exhaust a man--so he and I stretched out on the sofa in the living room of our old farmhouse and relaxed. In short order he was sound asleep on my chest, my breathing and his aligned and synchronous. As he snored softly, I took from the end table a collection of the poems of Yeats and resumed reading.

I have spent countless hours with this book, and yet somehow always missed an early--and to some degree uncharacteristic--poem of his called "The Ballad of Father Gilligan." The poem begins by describing how tired the good father has become in the service of his flock, many of whom are ill, dying, or recently deceased:

"The old priest Peter Gilligan
Was weary night and day;
For half his flock were in their beds,
Or under green sods lay."

Another member of his parish, also on the precipice of death, sends for him, but in the midst of prayer the exhausted priest falls asleep before he can head off to administer the last rites:

"Once, while he nodded on a chair,
At the moth-hour of eve,
Another poor man sent for him,
And he began to grieve.

"'I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,
For people die and die';
And after cried he, 'God forgive!
My body spoke, not I!'

"He knelt, and leaning on the chair
He prayed and fell asleep;
And the moth-hour went from the fields,
And stars began to peep.

"They slowly into millions grew,
And leaves shook in the wind;
And God covered the world with shade,
And whispered to mankind."

Father Gilligan awakes, horrified to discover his lapse. He rushes to the man's home in the hope that he will not come too late:

"Upon the time of sparrow-chirp
When the moths came once more,
The old priest Peter Gilligan
Stood upright on the floor.

"'Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died
While I slept on the chair';
He roused his horse out of its sleep,
And rode with little care.

He rode now as he never rode,
By rocky lane and fen;
The sick man's wife opened the door:
'Father! you come again!'

The priest is surely puzzled by the word "again," but he presses on:

"'And is the poor man dead?' he cried.
'He died an hour ago.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
In grief swayed to and fro.

But Father Gilligan comes to understand what has happened as the woman continues to speak:

"'When you were gone, he turned and died
As merry as a bird.'
The old priest Peter Gilligan
He knelt him at that word.

Father Gilligan's voice closes the poem:

"He Who hath made the night of stars
For souls who tire and bleed,
Sent one of His great angels down
To help me in my need.

"He Who is wrapped in purple robes,
With planets in His care,
Had pity on the least of things
Asleep upon a chair.'"

As I am fond of saying, I do not pretend to know much about God. But this obscure little poem by Yeats perfectly captures some things that I deeply and resolutely believe:

There is a force in the universe that "made the night of stars" and that has "planets in His care";

He knows each and every one of us by name, and knows our needs, and shows us His grace; and

He will often come to us when we least expect but most need it--and this includes when we are spent, as we drop into our dreams in a house of sleep, while we rest.

I believe these things because I have seen them at work ...

most recently on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Praise Him that it is so.

Amen. And Amen.

Three Hard Truths

It is often said that, among the writers of the New Testament gospels, Luke is the master storyteller. In my view, the power of Luke's stories comes from his deep understanding of human nature and his capacity to reveal it through nuance. The good news: we can learn a lot about ourselves if we pay close attention to what Luke tells us. The bad news: we may not like some of what we learn.

Take the 22nd chapter of the gospel. Things happen quickly here: Jesus and his disciples meet for the Passover meal; Judas betrays Jesus and Jesus is arrested; and Peter betrays Jesus three times, just as his master had predicted. The narrative sweeps us along on a quick march toward the violence of the crucifixion.

The pace of the storytelling, combined with the familiarity of the subplots, may lead us to read past some of the things that I believe Luke wants us to see. Among those things are three basic truths about human nature. They are hard truths.

Luke conveys the first of these during his description of the Last Supper. As you will recall, Jesus signals that someone is going to betray him. This prompts the disciples to ask among themselves who could do such a thing.

But then the text immediately adds this: "A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest." In other words, in the midst of a conversation about Jesus and the threat that someone will betray Him, the conversation abruptly shifts to the disciples talking about themselves and arguing over which of them is the best.

Welcome to hard truth number one: even in circumstances where our concerns should focus entirely on someone else, we find it hard--maybe impossible--not to think about ourselves, our own interests, and our own standing in the world.

Shortly thereafter we come to the story of the betrayal. A crowd assembles to arrest Jesus, and Judas approaches to kiss him. The disciples ask Jesus what they should do: "Lord, should we strike with the sword?" One of them promptly slashes at the slave of the high priest, severing his ear. Jesus admonishes his disciples and heals the man.

Luke gives us two telling details here. First, the disciples do not wait for an answer to their question--they resort to violence instantly, impulsively, and unthinkingly. And, second, the man wounded is not a religious or political authority or a crowd thug, but the slave of the high priest.

And this brings us to hard truth number two: we default to violence, including violence that is random in its implications and victimization. In a sermon I gave years ago I observed that war is not hell; war is worse; because, in hell, only the guilty suffer. Luke gives us here a glimpse of something that is worse than demonic and, disturbingly, it is all-too-human.

The chapter ends with Peter's denial of Christ. Peter denies him three times. And the denials are emphatic: I don't know him; I am not one of his disciples; I don't know what you are talking about.

But, again, Luke gives us an important detail. Peter makes the denials while Jesus is still in his presence, being led away. Indeed, Luke writes that, after the third denial and the crowing of the cock, "the Lord turned and looked at Peter." Peter remembers his words and weeps bitterly.

Hard truth number three: We will deny the truth for our own convenience, even when the truth is going right before us, even when the truth is looking us in the eye. This includes truths number one and number two and, ironically, number three: we will even deny our proclivity for denial.

Our instincts might tell us that violence is worse than denial, but I think that the 22nd chapter of Luke offers us another possibility. In my view, this narrative displays for us a hierarchy of ascending wrongs, where denial constitutes the greatest offense because it makes it impossible to address any of the others, indeed, even to address the evils of denial itself. The story conveys denial as the ultimate sin among sins, the flaw most likely to imprison us in error and reduce us to anguish and tears.

The 22nd chapter of Luke does not suggest a way out of this dilemma. But we have been given one by the man who in that chapter is betrayed, ignored, and denied. The way out, he tells us, is to recognize the truth, to know that it matters, and to speak it--clearly, compassionately, firmly. The truth, he says, will make us free.

Amen.

The Marriage of Marina Pascu to Lincoln Bandlow

The Marriage of Marina Pascu

to Lincoln Bandlow

New Orleans, Louisiana

Wednesday, February 18, 2017

Welcome, sisters and brothers, to this celebration of the love that is shared between these two wonderful people, Marina Pascu and Lincoln Bandlow. Today, they stand before us to make promises with their words that they have already made with their hearts. Today, they stand before us to confirm with their vows what they have already said through the joyful integration of their lives: that this is a deep, sacred, and imperishable union of two souls that were meant to be together, now and forever.

Many years ago, a theology professor of mine invited us to ask the question that we thought was the toughest for people of faith to answer. One student immediately blurted out: “What is the nature of God?” The professor smiled and said: “Oh, that’s an easy one. God is complete love. And God is complete mystery.”

That notion of “complete mystery” left me powerfully humbled and so I am quick to acknowledge that I do not know much about how God does business. But I have a hunch that He spends a lot of His time trying to figure out how to bring together people who should spend their lives with each other. So I can imagine an angel coming to God and saying: “Marina and Lincoln--they belong together.” And I can hear God saying in response: “Okay, but this is going to take a while.”

And take a while it did. Indeed, Marina and Lincoln had to come from two very different places and follow two very circuitous paths to get here, where we find them now. Let’s start with this data point: it is roughly 6,500 miles from California, where Lincoln was born, to Romania, where Marina was born. That’s almost as far as California is from the rest of the United States.

Lincoln grew up steeped in all things American: the beach, surfing, volleyball, and movies. Marina, in contrast, did not come to the United States until 1990, at which point she spoke not a word of English. It may be just as well they did not meet each other then, because Lincoln would not have understood Marina and Marina would not have understood Lincoln. Of course, understanding Lincoln may still be a challenge for her, as it is for all of us, for reasons having nothing to do with language, but as the Latin saying goes “love conquers all.”

In the course of their journeys toward each other, Marina and Lincoln built families that continue to have a central place in their lives. Lincoln deeply loves his son Dean and his daughter Valentina and, Marina, her boys Adrian and Colin. And Lincoln and Marina hold close in their hearts his mother Vikki and sister Lisa, and her mother Marilena, dad Stephan, and brother Val. This is the mystery of divine math: two became eleven, and today eleven become one.

But even when the universe managed to move Marina and Lincoln into the same space—which took some doing—they proved a little slow to notice each other. They actually worked together for years before they saw what life might hold for them. And then, of course, they couldn’t un-see it.

Those of us who have the blessing of their friendship see it, too. We see the unalloyed joy that they take in each other’s company. We see the happiness that beams out of them as they chase life down. We see the delight that they take in the adventures, and occasional misadventures, that they share. And we see them, always, standing close to each other as if there were no real existence apart, because, of course, they know this to be true.

Like many of their friends, I have watched all of this unfold on Facebook, where Lincoln and I routinely agree about everything except politics, because he is consistently wrong on such matters. And in those Facebook photos it has been wonderful to see their love mature without losing any of its light or heat. To the contrary, it is clear that with every day their relationship grows in all its dimensions—in depth, in height, and in reach. I understand that they hear this sort of thing from their friends all the time, which is understandable: after all, to look at a picture of these two is to look straight into the face of love itself.

But there is something subtler going on as well. To look at this couple is also to see two people whose journeys have finally brought them to a place of incredible peace. Lincoln loves the ocean, and Marina—whose father was a sailor—is named for it, so permit me a nautical metaphor if you will. It is as though after lots of rocky seas they have at long last come into a safe and secure harbor. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s a harbor where vodka and whiskey are served.

In just a moment, Marina and Lincoln will exchange vows. But before they do so I’d like to share a favorite passage from the great theologian Martin Buber about the holiness of everyday activities. When Marina and Lincoln asked me to officiate here today, this passage immediately came to mind, because I think they exemplify it. Buber wrote:

“One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the [dinner] table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and he raises up the sparks that hide themselves in all tools. One drinks in holiness to each other with one’s companions, and it is as if they read together in the [scriptures.] One dances in holiness, and a brightness shines over the gathering. A husband is united with his wife in holiness and the [glory of the divine presence] rests over them.”

Marina and Lincoln, when you two eat and drink with friends, it will now and forever be an act of holiness. When you dance together, it will be an act of holiness. When you laugh and weep and celebrate and worry together, it will be an act of holiness.

For God, in a glorious act of complete and love and complete mystery, has brought you into each other’s arms. Never forget what has been done for you. And always kiss each other goodnight.

I know that Marina and Lincoln want to thank everyone for being here: Steve, Karen, Cynthia, Joe, Carolyn, Tim, and Lisa. You are part of their family, too. They asked me to convey that it means a lot to them to have you here. 

Vows

We come now to the exchange of vows.

Lincoln, let’s begin with you. Please place the ring on Marina’s finger and hold her hand.

Lincoln, will you take Marina to be your wife, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor her, and keep her in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live, unparted even in death?

Marina, please place the ring on Lincoln’s finger and hold his hand.

Marina, will you take Lincoln to be your husband, to live together in holy marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor him, and keep him in sickness and in health, for as long as you both shall live, unparted even in death?

Lincoln and Marina, I pronounce you man and wife. Congratulations.

Blessing

Marina and Lincoln, the Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace;

Now, and forever, and forever, and forever.

Amen.