Faith: Portraits of Reconciliation

Photographer Pieter Hugo went to Southern Rwanda recently, almost 20 years after the genocide that took nearly 1 million lives. What he captured in his tableaus, which he entitled “Portraits of Reconciliation,” goes so far beyond what most of us can imagine when we think about forgiveness. In one photo a woman’s hand rests on the shoulder of the man who killed her father and brothers. Karenzi and Nyiramana offer this testimony about the reality behind the photos: Karenzi, the perpetrator, said, “My conscience was not quiet, and when I would see her I was very ashamed. After being trained about unity and reconciliation, I went to her house and asked for forgiveness. Then I shook her hand. So far, we are on good terms.” Nyiramana, Karenzi’s victim, shares her remarkable response saying, “He killed my father and three brothers. He did these killings with other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders who had been in prison helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.” As you can see, these photos don’t capture warmth between the reconciled, but simply that they are together. Each photo captures a Hutu perpetrator who was granted pardon by the Tutsi survivor.

            The non-profit organization, AMI, knew that these people can’t go anywhere else. They must live together. So they created a formal reconciliation training program to cultivate a measure of peace in the midst of an otherwise hopeless environment. “Hutus and Tutsis are counseled over many months, culminating in the perpetrator’s formal request for forgiveness. If forgiveness is granted by the survivor, the perpetrator and his family and friends typically bring a basket of offerings, usually food and sorghum or banana beer. The accord is sealed with song and dance,” the New York Times Magazine article reports. The forgiveness that is cultivated arises out of survival instinct, not benevolence. But this practical need for reconciliation doesn’t take away from the emotional strength it takes for them to live into it. Even more powerful is their willingness to be photographed together. This was a completely voluntary decision.

            John’s gospel for today (John 13:21-32) makes it clear that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was something Jesus predicted, and something God would use for His glory. But the part of the story that we don’t hear today, but that we know is coming, is Judas’ overwhelming shame and grief once he realized the implications of what he had done. He hangs himself. When I saw Pieter Hugo’s tableaus of reconciliation, I immediately thought of Judas. In the time between when he betrayed Jesus and when he hanged himself, what could have been done? Beyond the common interpretations of this text lies a much deeper commandment to us. The clues to this commandment lie is one very crucial piece of the story. While Judas is Jesus’ betrayer, and Jesus knows this, Jesus still welcomes him at the table. Jesus feeds him. They are together. As we follow Christ this Holy Week on his heartbreaking road to the cross, we must wonder how things could have been different for Judas if he had been offered the opportunity for pardon and reconciliation.

We traditionally tend to focus on the betrayal here, and the ways in which we too have betrayed Christ by what we have done or left undone. And we must go there. We must recognize ourselves in the person of Judas if we are honest about our brokenness and serious about the gravity of what Christ has done for us—in spite of our brokenness. But I think we must go further down the road with Judas to find out what God asks of us in the midst of our brokenness. As the Body of Christ we are called to offer reconciliation, and to receive forgiveness. We are called to follow the Judases of our lives into reconciliation—for that is where Christ goes all the time. This is painful, uncomfortable, heartwrenching, and feels unfair sometimes. But it is what Easter day is all about. Let us meditate for a moment on these portraits of reconciliation. What are the portraits of reconciliation in your own lives? What are the portraits that have yet to be taken, but need to be taken? Nyiramana’s testimony could easily be Jesus’ mother Mary’s testimony, spoken about Judas, had he lived for such an encounter. “He killed my only son. He did these killings with the help of other people, but he came alone to me and asked for pardon. He and a group of other offenders helped me build a house with a covered roof. I was afraid of him — now I have granted him pardon, things have become normal, and in my mind I feel clear.” Every day we have the chance to build houses of reconciliation with sturdy roofs of grace. Here we can make a home for the Kingdom of God—a Kingdom in which hopelessness and destruction is transformed into new life. When we can do this, I believe that God seals it with a song and a dance.” Amen.

Feeding Abundance

 A Reflection on The Feeding of the Four Thousand

A friend of mine is the chef at a non-profit organization here in Kansas City called Safe Home. Their mission is to serve as a safe place for adults and children who are victims of domestic violence. They help them to break the cycle through shelter, counseling, education, and prevention. My friend shared with me that it usually takes about 6 cycles of 90 days at Safe Home before someone is finally able to completely cut ties from their abusive environment. These are incredible odds to overcome. It is an uphill battle. For my friend, the uphill battle is providing 3 meals a day, every day, for 27 people with a grocery budget of just $366 per week. Every week he makes his grocery list and meal plan knowing that his budget will not be enough. Some weeks he needs 10 more boxes of cereal than he has. Some weeks he needs 10 more pounds of meat than he has. Every week he worries about how to stretch things in order to feed these families. But he puts one foot in front of the other, makes the best plan he can, and begins working with what he has. When I asked him how his job was going, he began to tear up as he shared that what he has experienced has been nothing short of a miracle. He shared that, every week, just as he is scrambling to figure out how to make these meals stretch, what he needs always seems to show up. One day he walked into his kitchen and 20 pounds of meat had been donated and left there for him. Another week he walked in to find 20 boxes of cereal. He loves his job because every stressful day is a miraculous intersection between overwhelming odds and miraculous abundance.

This is no coincidence. At Safe Home,  in the desert with Jesus and the hungry thousands, and in the desert places of our own lives, we are faced with a choice about how to respond to overwhelming odds. The disciples raised very realistic concerns—there isn’t enough. “We can’t waste the little we have and end up with not enough later. We just can’t take this on right now.” Jesus responds to them, not with numbers and a bottom line, but with a call to compassion. He reminds the disciples of the pain and struggle the thousands are facing. He reminds them of how the people’s physical exhaustion is fast becoming spiritual exhaustion. Jesus understands that these people need a miracle, but that miracle is much bigger than a the number of loaves matching the number of bodies. Jesus understands that his people need to know that He cares for them, that the disciples care for them, and, most importantly, that God cares for them. Compassion is different than sympathy. When Jesus has compassion for them, he is not simply feeling bad for them. He is feeling hunger, pain, sorry, and helplessness with them. He has walked with them, talked with them, laughed with them, heard the stories of their children’s tummy aches and hurting feet. He has overheard them whispering to each other that “maybe God doesn’t care for us after all.”

So when Jesus rallies the disciples to gather everything they have and start to distribute it, God miraculously intervenes with the real miracle—the miracle of God’s compassion poured out through the hands, feet, words, arms, and eyes of all those who shared what they had that day. The real miracle is that the famine of both body and soul was met with compassion, love, service and thanksgiving. The disciples said, “there’s not enough.” We worry that there is not enough. Jesus proclaims that there is always enough when we open ourselves and feel with those in need. Christ calls us to participate in the miracle of God’s abundance. He calls us to surrender our fear and our focus on what we don’t have. He calls us to stop dwelling on what we can’t do. He calls us to set out in faith, preparing a feast with what we do have, fully expecting that God will meet us there and provide for us—not only for our physical needs, but for our spiritual needs as well.

The Good News is that when we look in the face of overwhelming odds and say, “how can I help?”, “What can I share?”, “What can I give?” it’s contagious. Compassion in action is catching. It transforms hunger into nourishment, fear into hope, and scarcity into abundance. So as we leave this place, let us go out and participate in the miracles of abundance all around us. Let us not ask ourselves, “Is there enough?” but rather “What can I give?” Let us step out in compassion, taking the risk of feeling others’ pain with them, and walking the desert places beside them. For it is not just the physical care we all need, but the soul care. We all need to know that people care for us, that the church cares for us, and that God cares for us. Go from wherever you are and be the hands, feet, arms, and eyes of God’s care, fully expecting God’s abundance to help you build a safe home for his Kingdom of love there. Amen.

           

Marked for God’s New Beginning

 

On May 18, 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted, blowing the top off of the 1,314 foot tall mountain. The avalanche of rocks filled the Toutle (Toot-el) River Valley, creating a 23-square-mile zone of barren land. Another blast flattened the surrounding forest, and a cloud of ash reached to 80,000 feet in 15 minutes, circling the globe in 15 days. The volcano destroyed everything in its path, killing 230 square miles of forests, lakes, meadows and streams. 57 people and countless animals and plants were killed. The Oregonian newspaper reported, “Death is everywhere. The living are not welcome.” But if you travel there today, you will find more than 150 species of wildflowers, shrubs and trees. There are even Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir trees that aren’t even supposed to be there yet. They usually require the kind of soil amended by generations of other plant growth. The newspaper would now have to report that “Life is everywhere. The living are thriving.” Virginia Dale, one of the first ecologists to land at Mt. St. Helens after it erupted, is quoted as saying, “It seems life can take hold even in the most desolate landscape, and in ways no scientist could have foreseen.”

On this holy day which marks the first day of Lent, we prepare to be marked with ashes—the dust of death. To some this ashen mark seems to have nothing to do with faith and hope, and more to do with grief and desolation. For some all this talk of self-examination, confession, repentance, and absolution may seem like a morbid, somber exercise. After all, why focus on the dust of death while life is all around us?  There is  life all around us. But right alongside that life exists the very real, life-smothering forces of injustice, oppression, violence, greed, poverty, and hunger. Alongside the joys of our lives comes the little desolations of anger, broken relationships, bitterness, resentment, and selfishness that can threaten smother our connection to God and one another.

When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray the Lord’s prayer, he knows that the ashes of this life can cover some serious ground. He knows that this world is not an easy place, and that sometimes, for so many in our world, it can seem as though death is everywhere, as though hope is not welcome. So when Jesus teaches them how to pray, He gives his disciples, and us, the tools to be gardeners for hope. He calls us to go beyond the ashes, and to till of the kind of spiritual soil in which life can take hold, survive, and thrive. For Jesus knew something about ashes that we often forget: they are not the end. Like the Western hemlock and Pacific silver fir trees that refused to wait for generations to take root, we are meant to defy hopelessness and root ourselves in God’s merciful love. In receiving we make way for God’s Kingdom of love to blossom here and now.

But we can’t do this alone. The kind of forgiveness and reconciliation required for God’s Kingdom to thrive in this world is not easy. It is not easy for us to be honest about our weaknesses and pain. It is hard to find our way out of the desolation of bitterness and anger that can consume us when we are hurt by others. Giving up our own comfort so that others may have what they need does not always come naturally to us. Speaking out against all kinds of injustice can be uncomfortable and risky. And yet this is what Christ calls us to do as gardeners for hope. When we get down on our knees and offer up our brokenness, we are transformed by the One who knows something about ashes and desolation that we often forget. They are not the end. When we come to the altar to ask for forgiveness, we are invited to leave behind everything that stands in the way of God’s healing love. We are invited to leave behind our bitterness, anger, selfishness, greed, and resentment, and go out into the world as bearers of hope. We are invited to open ourselves to God and to the needs of others, so that we can go out planting the seeds of God’s healing in our communities. When we come to the altar we find our identity. We know we are God’s beloved. When we come, we find our purpose—to bring God’s healing love into this broken world. When we come we find our security, knowing that we don’t need to acquire things or status to thrive, because we have one another. When we come we find community. We belong to one another because we are all God’s children, bound together by one bread and one cup. When we come to the altar we find freedom and peace, knowing that the temptation and suffering in this life is not the end.

So as we come to be marked by ashes on this holy day, may we know that they are a sign, not of the end, but of God’s new beginning. We are marked by our identity as gardeners for hope because we know something about ashes that some may not realize—God can bring life even into the most desolate places. Ashes mark us with the earthly dust that springs forth from what Bruce Epperly calls "God’s multi-billion year holy adventure".  Where the world reports, “Death is everywhere. The living are not welcome,” we may proclaim “Love is everywhere. All are welcome”. So remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You are marked for God’s new beginning. Amen.

Long Live the Storytellers: A Reflection on Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman

The passing of Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both in the space of just a couple of weeks, really hit me hard. On the face of it they are two very different men, with very different biographies. But as I listened to some of their old interviews on NPR, my sense of what we have lost just felled me. At first I couldn't quite name it, but then the full weight of it emerged in one word--storytellers. These men not only told stories, they embodied story.

The interview with Pete Seeger was a kind of banjo workshop. With a group gathered outside, and the seagulls punctuating his pauses, he talked about picking. His tone was characteristically soothing and kind, with a lyrical lilt that made you feel like you were a child on the carpet at story time. He shared some of the techniques he discovered, all-the-while demurring. He said that his books made it seem like he was an expert, when really he just experimented and shared it because people had asked. As he demonstrated each technique he sang examples of the kinds of songs that paired well with each combination of notes and cords. With each song he told the story of its place in history, and the experiences of the people who lived it. By the end of the interview it felt as though everything in the world was going to be okay. Not because everything was okay, but because this gentle man had collected all of the threads of so many heartaches, struggles, injustices, and sorrows and weaved them into songs. His songs danced onto the strings of his banjo, leaped off of his strings, and took us up into the melody of hope. He didn't tell stories, he lived them, breathed them, wrestled with them, and transformed them. Through his art he invited us in, making banjo picking and activism seem one in the same, and like something any of us ordinary humans could do.

Philip Seymor Hoffman bore a more painful countenance. Written on the lines of his face, in the asymmetry of his self-effacing frown-smile, and in the half-forgotten shadow of his beard, were the stories of struggle. While we don't know what it is he struggled with, we do know that he brought every atom of that struggle to the stage. In each of the characters he played he looked physically transformed. Not just the way some actors put on a few pounds or dye their hair. Hoffman incarnated the characters, transfusing their stories with the emotional DNA of his own story. His scripts seemed to dissolve as every line, expression, gesture and word became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. His storytelling pulled us out of our complacent, self-absorbed heads and commanded us to see and feel deeply into the soul of all kinds of people, even those whom we thought disgusted and repulsed us. He forced us to acknowledge that in the "other" we could actually find pieces of ourselves. He didn't just act the story, he put blood and sinew on the bones of the story. He made dry bones rise up and dance before our very eyes.

As we reflect on the passing of these two very different but equally astonishing men, I hope we will accept the invitation to read more; to listen to others more attentively; to take in the details of stories that seem totally unlike our own. I hope that we will take up the call to consider our history, rather than just googling things pertinent to us in the moment. May we truly appreciate the value of sitting on the shore, with seagulls cawing, picking a banjo--learning for the sake of learning. May we immerse ourselves in poetry and plays, symphonies and film, seeking to understand for the sake of learning empathy. These two men called us back to our humanity and invited us to live into it more fully. Long live the storytellers!