All Saints Episcopal Church, Hilton Head Island, SC
May 1, 2007
Starting with Imus early in one week and crashing into a beautiful Monday morning the next at Virginia Tech, my mind has been bursting with thoughts, images, questions, and a sadness that has probably been there, under the surface, for a very long time. News of the world's corruption, brutality, and fragility has been a constant in our lives seemingly forever...a constant now sadly a part of our children's and grandchildren's lives. For a long time we have withstood the continual barrage of ''bad'' news with stoic resilience, protectionism, and perhaps a naiveté that the world is out there yet not part of "our" world.
I grieve for those wounded and killed at Virginia Tech and all who loved them and who will grieve for them forever; I am insulted by the insensitive racial remarks of Imus (he has been at that for a long time). But I also grieve a world that acts very much like a dysfunctional, murderous, family. I grieve that much of humanity has lost the ability to be civil or, in the words of Jesus, ''to love," to make room for, to connect at a level deeper than our own.
I also grieve on another level. I have never thought of myself as a person willing to confront what I have always abhorred. It is one thing to have reactions and feelings about something horrible and unjust and unthinkable. It is another to be moved by such cruelty and, by our own sadness, to strike out with the equipment that Christ has given us with His own life. Often I look out and see an overwhelming world before me. At times, it seems tough enough just to keep my own life in order along with those things in life that I have some control over. But Christ asks more of me and perhaps of you. He speaks of moving out beyond our safe and familiar territory and placing the markers of faith a little bit further afield. In effect, he asks us to move beyond the safety of our current lives.
I am reminded of a book I am currently reading, entitled "The Caged Virgin" and subtitled "An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The author of this book writes with a defiant call for clear thinking and for Islamic enlightenment. This is a call not for people to understand the complexities of Islam but for Muslims to explore the deep and persuasive fissures of their own faith.
Born in Somalia and raised as a Muslim, but outraged by her religion's own hostility toward women, Hirsi Ali has freed herself from a cage and is now willing, at great risk, to speak and do that which is unheard of -- to stand alone and for others, and to encourage other people's lives, especially those of Muslim women.
We seem to always manage a "but," as if her situation is no different than our own, that what commands us to act in the 21st century is somehow so different than the first century. How does this have anything to do with today's headlines? Everything! Our faith, our post-cross, empty tomb faith, is about being, at least personally, proactive, hopeful, and indeed resurrection-directed people.
It is about being with those who mourn, praying as if our prayers have the power to move mountains and even people. It is about setting ourselves as living examples of Christ. It is about sacrifice for others, holding up that which is good and honorable. It is about respecting the dignity of every human being.
Christ died for the sins of the world, once and for all. Christ rose on the third day to show us that resurrection is a reality...even in the midst of death and degradation.
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