Sermon #58 (17th April 2022 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
Last Monday – no, Tuesday – it was sometime past midnight, I was sat with my dad – my 85-year-old dad – in a pretty crowded A&E waiting room at the Royal London Hospital over in Whitechapel. We’d been there since teatime, nine hours, advised by 111 to go and get him urgently checked out for a symptom that was potentially ominous (he’s fine now, by the way, turns out it was nothing too serious in the end, but that’s not the point of me telling you about this). I just want you to imagine the scene. In the A&E waiting room, in the early hours, surrounded by human suffering and grim-faced endurance, people in all manner of states of pain, misery, and disrepair, each with their own personal ‘cross to bear’. Nobody wants to be in A&E at 3am on a Tuesday morning – neither patients nor staff – unless you are driven there by urgent need or dire suffering and you’ve got nowhere else to turn.
Once the initial assessment had been made, they told us to go home, get some sleep (though not much), and come back the following afternoon for a follow-up scan and a decision on treatment. They would see dad in the ‘Ambulatory Care’ clinic. The phrase caught my ear: Ambulatory Care. I thought: ‘Ambulatory means walking, doesn’t it? This is a clinic for the walking wounded.’
Let me take a few steps back, though. Like I said at the start of the service, today we are reflecting on the Easter story and attempting to draw out those aspects of it that can speak to our condition in the here and now – in a world that’s going through a time of great turmoil and instability – and in which we know so many people are suffering in so many ways. We might think of the news headlines, some of those stories in which we are not directly involved perhaps, but which cause us such angst and anger to witness. The horrifying scenes coming out of Ukraine and the plight of refugees – especially in the light of the government’s proposals to ‘process’ (horrible word) asylum seekers in Rwanda – such dreadful stories are a source of second-hand suffering for many of us right now. But, for many of us, the suffering is getting ever closer to home, with the cost-of-living crisis, and the disintegration of the health, welfare, and social care system, having a significant and widespread impact on quality of life. And, of course, the last two years of the pandemic have certainly taken their toll on us all. Lest we forget, many, many people have died of Covid-19, and many more have long Covid, their lives have been suddenly changed – perhaps forever – as they learn to live with chronic illness and disability. Many relationships have broken up under the strain of lockdowns, people have lost their jobs and livelihoods, and the lack of social connection has been largely dreadful for mental health. But there are so many other sources of personal suffering we could name. ‘All is Dukkha’ as the Buddhists say.
For me, the Easter story is primarily about suffering, and the transformation of suffering. And this is why it is such a powerful story, one that’s so vital for us to engage with, in times like these. You don’t have to believe in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus (or indeed any element of the story) as historic fact in order to let the story have its way with you and maybe even offer a little hope. But to do that we have to see it as a universal, archetypal, story – one which can speak to the patterns of human life – and Holy Week certainly takes us through a rollercoaster of human experience: triumph, betrayal, downfall, denial, cruelty, suffering, death and defeat; silence and despair; and then… what next? Resurrection, somehow. An astonishing, inexplicable, return from a bleakness which seemed utterly final and inescapable. But Jesus isn’t quite the same figure he was before. His mates don’t even recognise him at first. They mistake him for a gardener, a fellow traveller. It’s not like the clock was just turned back a week and everything restored just as it was before crucifixion. He’s still here, but he is transformed. And he is visibly wounded. The gory evidence of his suffering is plain for all to see.
Perhaps this is where the story can speak to us, right now, how it might resonate in our lives. For, in a sense, we are all the walking wounded. At least, all of us who survive the initial blows of whatever it is life has thrown at us, so far. That’s what I was thinking when I looked round the A&E waiting room at 3am on Tuesday morning, at all my companions, all of us who would rather have been tucked up in bed instead of waiting and hoping for our names to be called and for care to be given. None of us get through this life without enduring some turbulence, at least, along the way. We mustn’t conveniently forget those who have not made it through the worst of life’s trials – that would be survivorship bias – it’s important to realise that in some sense those of us who made it this far, the ‘walking wounded’, are the lucky ones. But for those of us who are still here, on the other side of Easter – having endured our own ‘cross to bear’ – what might we take from the story? How might it speak to our condition?
These days we hear a lot about trauma – individual and collective – and its lasting impact. I’ve heard it said that the collective trauma of the pandemic is going to take us years to work through (this is something that Unitarian Universalist leaders in the US have been taking very seriously over the last year). I’m no trauma expert but one understanding that makes sense to me was laid out by UU minister Elizabeth Strong, who has a PhD in ‘trauma-informed worship’, and she says: ‘trauma, at its root, is any experience that sort of shatters our experience of reality. So, it breaks us open; it breaks us apart; it causes a rupture in our self-understanding and our understanding of how the world works. Pretty much everybody experiences trauma at some point or another in their life.’ (end quote) Yes, trauma varies in its level of intensity, and some people are carrying a great deal more than others. But it seems that pretty much nobody gets through this life unscathed. Such suffering is universal. I suspect that all of us carry at least a few wounds – be they visible or invisible – whether physical, emotional, or spiritual – or maybe they’re old scars by now, somewhat healed and hidden away.
Before I end this short reflection, I wanted to share a little excerpt from a piece by Nadia Bolz-Weber, the famously (and enjoyably) sweary and tattooed rock’n’roll Lutheran pastor. She published this a year ago and I think it really helps to connect the Easter story and our recent collective experience. It’s a letter to God written just as the first vaccines being rolled out and first little shoots of hope were emerging. She wrote: ‘Dear God… many of us are stepping into the first light of a post-pandemic dawn… and one minute I want to run full speed and the next I am unable to move. If I talk too much about what was lost, I feel like a bummer, but if I talk at all about the unexpected gifts, I feel like I’m callous. And I’m not sure I can ever be who I was before, but I’m also not totally sure who everyone else is now, either. My Easter request is this: Help us remember that resurrection isn’t reversal, that as we return to life, we are carrying our own wounds from loss and isolation. But we are also emerging with new beauty and new wisdom. We are not who we were. But we do get to discover who we are. Help us not foreclose on each other. Maybe just grant us a holy curiosity for a while? Please give me courage to trust the hope I feel right now. Save me from squandering this moment of new life. Remind me that all the fear and cynicism in the world never protects me from pain and disappointment in the way I think they will. Give us back to each other when the time is right. May we recognize you, our wounded and resurrected God, in our laughter and our tears…and maybe … even in each other.’
Words by Nadia Bolz-Weber which spoke powerfully to me and I hope they resonated with you too. It seems important to keep this understanding – ‘we are not who we were’ – in our awareness now. We have survived, but we are transformed, and we’ve been wounded too. So, let us remember to take great care with ourselves and each other, as we attempt to discern the way forward, together, in love.
And let’s reprise Cliff Reed’s words as a blessing:
The faith of Easter is that beyond darkness
There is light, beyond sorrow there is joy,
Beyond death there is life.
We are called to be messengers of hope
And compassion to each other,
To our neighbours and to the world.
When the crisis passes, may each of us be able
To reflect that we didn’t altogether fail the test
Of love, conscience, and humanity.
We are living through a bitter, fearful spring,
But it will come to an end, and we’ll see
Summer come again. Amen.
Sermon by Jane Blackall
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