Tenebrae
31 March 2015
Salisbury Cathedral

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

The birds they sang at the break of day
Start again I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove She will be caught again
bought and sold and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.[1]

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian Jewish-Buddhist poet, musician, singer-songwriter, and novelist. He’s 80 and he’s wrestled with depression on and off most of his life. He is also profoundly grounded in the realities Jesus encountered.

The drama of this week called Holy is the underlying narrative of the way of Jesus, the journey of our lives as followers and companions, the life we seek through baptism, holy meal, and the great commandment. We seek the fullness of the reign of God, life in right relationship with God and all creation.

For that dream of God, Jesus is crowned the prince of peace, yet he meets violence whenever he proclaims shalom: beginning in Nazareth, where he claims Isaiah’s vision as minister of healing to the world’s brokenness; as he challenges religious and political authorities over God’s vision for justice; even among his friends, as he seeks to build a beloved community. Those friends betray and abandon him in his hour of need, and the world throws its worst at him – public humiliation, torture, and the most cruel and agonizing kind of execution it knows. His very being seems to attract trouble and offense – it is a wonder that anyone follows him.

The world does much the same to most professors of a just peace. Jesus accuses his opponents in Jerusalem of killing every prophet God has provided.[2] The world has done the same to Raoul Wallenberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero, and has tried to extinguish countless others, like Nelson Mandela. Yet the dove’s message of peace and justice continues to roll out, unfurling again and again in new conflicts and contexts. The God who made us all yearns for a world without war and violence. Jesus came among us as a witness to that possibility, to work for a world beyond brokenness. The chasm that lies between us and that future has been bridged by the work we remember this week.

Jesus’ passion is not only the suffering he endured at the hands of the Romans. It begins with that scroll of Isaiah in Nazareth: ‘I have been anointed to bring good news, to heal and set free, to befriend the poor and suffering.’ He claims that work as his own, and as he begins to make the love and justice of God evident, the powers of the world recoil like vipers or cannons hurling death toward their victim. There will be pain and death on this journey, beginning with the pain of solidarity in shared suffering and the dying to self that is true compassion. Jesus asks his companions to stand with him, and share the work of compassion. Mostly, they quail – and fail. They flounder when confronted, they slumber when solidarity is needed, they flee and reject their friend – ‘don’t paint me with that brush! I don’t know him!’

Jesus built a bridge across the gap between the here and now and God’s dream of peace and justice. He built it with his life, the passion he exercised for that dream, and the passion he endured at the end. That bridge is built of fragile human flesh, an outstretched hand to heal or feed or comfort, and the body flayed and stretched out on the cross. All that frail flesh is consumed like the candle that will not last the night.[3]

That bridge grows with other offerings – the filaments we add in forgiving one another and ourselves, in offering our frailty that another might be strengthened or relieved, in the courage to confront evil and death with holier possibilities. We do it bit by bit, in imperfect offerings, yet every act of courageous solidarity adds to the heft of that crossing place.

It wasn’t easy then, and it’s not easy now. Peter gave up at least three times – ‘no, I don’t know the guy!’ He got it wrong plenty of other times, yet the dream made flesh lured him back again, in hope for more life.

There are cracks in the armor those weak friends have donned against night terrors. Several women stand watch at the cross, unable to change a thing, yet present to share the suffering. Another beloved one comes to stand with them in solidarity. When the mortal body is taken down, one offers his own tomb. Then they scatter to their holes to endure the long dark night of despair.

What has prompted your despair? The death of a dear loved one, rending one heart in pieces? A lost love, or livelihood, or dream? Living the daily cruelty of aging? Rejection and shaming by erstwhile friends for your newly claimed identity or passion? The world may call one a misfit, but Jesus calls us beloved – and tells us to find the others and do the same: feed them, heal, love, and stay through the pain.

When the disciples gave up their terrorized flight, turned around and returned to that pitiful little band, the light grew. They remembered some glimmer of hope, they let go some of their shame and despair, they stood in solidarity with doubters and deniers, yearning for the vision of beloved community they had seen in his presence.

The crack of dawn, the crack that lets the light get in, lies in brokenness and imperfect offering. We will never do it wholly right in this life, yet the depth of the love showered upon us can nerve us to hang in, to haunt the midnight garden and the halls of justice. Will we notice and companion the suffering? Try again, ring the bell, sound whatever alarm you can – human beings suffering, justice needed, the community of creation in danger!

It is our despairing need that makes us fit for the beloved community. Indeed, we can’t join it until we recognize that brokenness and claim it. It is the crack that lets the light get in. Jesus’ own rejection and abandonment has shown us the way. Will we follow? Will we stay and listen for echoing brokenness? Sit with a teenager, taunted and shamed by bullies, afraid he has no place in this world. Ponder the terror of crew and passengers over the French Alps, and pray for the peace of their souls and their families – pray for all of them.

Stay long enough to hear the pain and counter the adrenaline, calm the quivering heart and let it break open. That is the price of love and life abundant. It puts a few more fibers in that bridge of wood, and lets in a ray of light.

[1] “Anthem” Leonard Cohen. 1992

[2] Matthew 23:29-39

[3] Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig.” Poetry: June 1918.