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Seventeen-year-old Angelania dreamed of being a model. But she did not leave anything behind, according to her cousin Emmanuella, who lived with her — “not a dress, not a notebook, not a trace.” Having fended for herself since her parents abandoned her at the age of four, she was often stressed out. The Haiti earthquake seemed to push her over the edge.“ She was freaking out, screaming, ‘I have no school. I have no house. I have nothing. Why go on?’” her cousin said. “Two days after the earthquake, these guys started pounding on the gates of the yard where we were sleeping, yelling, ‘A tsunami is coming.’ Everyone panicked and ran out, except Angie. “Her heart stopped.” (The New York Times, February 15, 2010) One more tragic story from a traumatized part of our world. The people of Haiti. The people of the Congo. The people down your street or mine. They are stressed out, pushed over the edge, hearts ready to stop. What are we to do? On this Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, Christians around our world are reminded to stop: to pray, fast and give to others. And so we listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah, and there seems to be an answer: Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them… If you are new to this church, you may not know that outreach is in our DNA. Reaching out to the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless and the naked; caring for our sisters and brothers in Panama and on the Gulf Coast; helping those who come to Frederick’s Religious Coalition or emergency shelters…the people of All Saints’ do all those quite things well. We listen to the words of the prophets, both the Biblical and the modern ones, and we do something about the pain and suffering in this world. We listen, and we act. But there is another prophet, someone whom Christians also call Savior. Jesus reminds us today that there is more to outreach than reaching out. There is also reaching in – making time to reflect, not just to act. Jesus reminds us that there is a time to act, to put hands and feet on our prayers, and then…there is a time to stop acting, to stop doing, to stop helping others and, simply, to stay home for awhile. “Whenever you pray,” Jesus tells his friends, “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” But what is that reward? In his 1977 book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Dutch priest Henri Nouwen speaks of reaching out to our fellow human beings. As we move from hostility to hospitality, he says, we create a space for others to be who they need to be, welcoming them just as they are. He also speaks of another kind of reaching out – reaching out to God, moving from illusion to prayer. The people of Haiti, I would suggest, are under no illusions. They pray, as one recovering alcoholic once put it, as if life depended on it…because it does. Before he speaks in his book about reaching out to God or reaching out to others, Nouwen dares to describe the reaching out we all tend to forget or put at the bottom of our list: reaching out to our innermost selves. He talks about a “suffocating loneliness,” using these words: “It is far from easy to enter into the painful experience of loneliness. You like to stay away from it. Still, it is an experience that enters into everyone’s life at some point. You may have felt it as a little child when your classmates laughed at you…You might have felt it as a young adult…(or) as a teacher (or student)…” or as a teenager with no parents. “And,” Nouwen says, “you still might feel it day after day during staff meetings, conferences, counseling sessions, during long office hours or monotonous manual labor” (anyone shovel some snow lately?) “or just when you are by yourself, staring away from a book that cannot keep your attention….Loneliness,” Henri Nouwen reminds us, “is one of the most universal human experiences” (p. 14). So what is the solution to our loneliness? What is the answer? What is the secret reward Jesus promises us when we go into our room, shut the door and pray? It is a movement, like the movement from hostility to hospitality, when we reach out to others. First, last and always, God calls us to reach out to our innermost selves, in a movement from loneliness to solitude. In our solitude, in our room with the door closed, we are all alone – and yet, we are never alone. We are all alone with our loving God. And we pray, “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made…you (are) the God of all mercy…” Today we are here, for a little while, trying to pray, just trying to be alone with our God. The God who has not abandoned us. The God who has been waiting for us just to be – here, now, in solitude, so we can go back out and reach out to others. For today is a new day with the God who forgives and loves us. - The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg |
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For more on the interruptions of life, go to http://fathermom.wordpress.com |
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