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 Living with Christ |
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23
April 2006 Our primary story for this morning comes from the gospel according to John, the least historic of the gospels. John is written two full generations after Jesus' death. It is not intended to be the written version of a video-taped drama. It is intended to convey beyond any doubt, that the followers of Jesus continued to experience his presence among them. It is intended to convey beyond any doubt, that the tomb, the victory which is possible through the blade of a sword is not the final word. And how do we tell that story except to enter into the good news of the gospel, and see for ourselves that the marks of Jesus' nails cannot keep God's living presence from being known and experienced. And so we tell stories. We tell the story of Jesus. We tell the stories of those who follow him because we are entrusted with the continuing story, entrusted with living it, entrusted with telling it. The stories of two witnesses have been on my heart this Easter season, the season in which we enter fully and deeply into our Christian story of the tomb of violence, and the grace of resurrection. The first is the story of 81-year-old William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who died during Holy Week. Coffin's journey to becoming perhaps "the most influential liberal Protestant clergy[member] and leader of his generation,"[1] a self-described "Christian revolutionary" was anything but straightforward. Despite the sudden death of his father when Coffin was only nine years old, Coffin enjoyed a privileged background. Gifted in languages, he served as a liaison officer with the French and Soviet armies during World War II. At the end of that war, he took part in Operation Keelhaul, the forced repatriation "of tens of thousands of refugees, supposed Soviet 'traitors' who did not want to return to Stalin's rule.[2] These refugees were shipped back east by boxcar; many were beaten in transit and [faced] years in the Gulag....[The] series of suicide attempts [Coffin witnessed left] a life-long burden on his conscience."[2] Following the war, Coffin ping-ponged between seminary at Union and Yale, along with three years of service in the CIA. By 1958 he began his 18-year tenure as Yale University chaplain, inaugurated by roaring onto campus astride his motorcycle. Coffin's caricature by Garry Trudeau as the Rev. Scot Sloan in Doonesbury is well known. Within
three years of beginning Yale's chaplaincy, Coffin made headlines
as one of the first white men to go South, where he was arrested
in Alabama for his part in the civil rights movement. By 1965, he
was convinced that the Vietnam war was both illegal and immoral.
It is from that era that Jim Wallis relates an extraordinary story
described by Bill Moyers. It stems from an interview Moyers once
did with the Religion News Service, while Moyers was press secretary
in Lyndon Johnson's White House. "[T]he religion reporter kept
challenging the administration's arguments for the Vietnam War,
and kept citing anti-war points made by a ...chaplain at Yale. No
matter what Moyers' rebuttals, the reporter kept coming back with
Coffin's [clearly reasoned] objections to the war. After the interview,
a frustrated Moyers instructed an aide to 'find out who this guy
Coffin is' and to get his arguments against the war. Moyers got
them; he read them carefully, and the encounter with [Coffin's]
critique was the beginning of Moyers(sic) own change of heart on
Vietnam and, eventually, many other things."[1] Coffin left
Yale in 1976 to continue his prophetic ministry at Riverside Church
in New York City, adding disarmament, poverty, bigotry, the environment
and homelessness to his call. That continuing story takes form in a second witness, the Christian Peacemakers, who became known popularly with the kidnaping of four of their members on 26 November 2005. We know of Tom Fox, who was murdered just two short weeks before the other three were rescued. And we know of James Loney as one of the remaining three. Loney witnesses that for 118 days, the three of them lay in a tomb. For Tom Fox, it was 104 days.[4] Their "tomb was a 10-ft.-by-10-ft. room...[with] paint-peeling walls...dim light filtered through stained bedsheet 'curtains';...pebble-speckle pattern[ed]...floor tiles;...never-ending hours and days of sitting, sleeping, three-times-a-day eating, handcuffed and chained except when let free to go to the bathroom."[4] Their tomb was guarded by captors who "wanted [ransom] money to fund their war against the occupation of Iraq."[4] It is the policy of both the Canadian government and Christian Peacemaker Teams not to pay ransom. In the end, the remaining three CPT members were freed by a unit of British Special Forces in full battle gear....They were entombed again with a big step up and a big hatch down in an armored personnel carrier, a squat, steel machine that moves on a rolling tread of metal plates. Then in a helicopter fixed with a heavy-caliber machine gun, then in the Green Zone.[4] Loney writes of the universe of things he is grateful for. "Among them is a new and deep appreciation for the women and men who wear the uniform of military service."[4] He acknowledges that he likely would not be alive and free if it were not for them. Loney also expresses honest ambivalence about his conviction as Christian pacifist peacemaker and the release he and the others gained because their rescuers had bigger guns than their captors. Loney's story enters full bore into today's gospel. He is clear that he was as imprisoned by his own moral cowardice in the face of his captors as the disciples are pictured being in the face of their co-religionists. He is learning that there are many kinds of tombs; that the tomb the disciples were locked in by their own fear was no less real than the multiple tombs he experienced. He is learning that faith is about finding "our way through a broken world."[4] He is learning that faith is about living the continuing story, complete with struggles between the paradox of call and failure.[4] Faith is not about easy answers, about simple doubt or proof. John knew that-it's why he tells this story for all the generations of followers who will never meet the historical Jesus. But this doesn't mean that we can't be faithful to the risen Christ. In the parlance of our times, faith is about lifestyle. It is about choosing to believe that the way held before us, the way shown to us by Jesus of Nazareth, is one that brings peace and life, community and health, wholeness and wisdom. It recognizes with honesty the power of evil, the power of violence, the reality of the tomb and proclaims that despite all that power, there is an alternative vision, an alternative way of living. Faith is about hearing Jesus' words, "Peace be with you" as both blessing and commission, entrusted to each of us to live with Christ in the continuing story. *** [1]
Jim Wallis, "Remembering William Sloane Coffin," SoJoMail,
04.20.06, SoJoMail@sojo.net |