For
example, it used to be that many churches were built with graveyards adjacent.
Every Sunday as young and old attended church, there was a reminder of one’s
own mortality, as well as the loss of previous generations. Of course with increasing
urbanization, land in population centers became very tight. However, many new
churches today, built in expanding suburban areas where there is still ample land
to be had at a price, rarely build with cemeteries adjacent. Parking lots are
a much higher priority.
There
are numerous self-help books and popular TV shows which promise to provide successful
therapy for the emptiness inside each of us. Yet for the most part, these so-called
easy, simple and anonymous cures cover up, deny, or sweep away the problem rather
than face, name and embrace it. They tend to pronounce, you are OK, because I
say that I am OK, and if I say I am OK, then you will be OK, OK? OK!
Needless
to say such approaches are easy because they demand scant reflection, examination,
or effort. They tend to provide quick, but shallow relief. They fit in well with
a disposable, throw away society that then moves on to try something else. They
focus on promises of solutions, rather than teaching us the value of endurance.
There
is a medieval folk tale about a monastery that began to experience tough times.
Since fewer young men wanted to join, the community began to die off. They called
in experts on monastic growth from the diocesan office, they tried new forms of
worship and growing different crops in their fields, but nothing seemed to arrest
the steady decline. Hence the monks began to blame each other for their situation,
and the atmosphere around the monastery became bitter and disillusioned.
In
desperation, the abbot went to the rabbi of the neighboring synagogue for advice.
Before the rabbi the abbot unburdened his heart and confessed his fear that the
monastery might have to close. The rabbi listened, and then told the abbot that
he himself had had a dream about the monastery the other night that indicated
that the messiah may very well be arriving in their midst. The abbot returned
and told the monks, “Be alert as you look into your brother's eyes. The
rabbi thinks that the messiah may be among us.” The community’s life
seemed to take on a new gentleness and kindness. All the monks would wonder as
they helped each other in their chores or when they welcomed an overnight guest:
“Is it He?” Their reputation for hospitality and fellowship began
to spread and gradually the monastery grew and flourished once again.
Some
say that it was when the abbot was willing to entrust his heart to the rabbi.
Some say it was the rabbi's sage advice to be alert for the signs of the messiah
among them. Some said it was when the monks were able to acknowledge their fears
and sorrows, and allow that they could not defeat their sense of decline and death
alone. Yet in some way, it was when the soreness of their hearts was recognized
and acknowledged, that death was arrested and a resurrection began.
In
one sense, the rich man who feasted sumptuously every day and the poor man who
starved on the periphery of the rich man's boundary is a metaphor revealing a
map within each of us. The more we try to hide or deny the emptiness and fear
within us, the more isolated we become. That is why when we totally deny or kill
the sense of need or incompleteness within us, the rest of us, in a sense, begins
to die, too. It wasn't Abraham the rich man called for in his distress in Hades,
it was the poor man. Too late, the rich man realized his need to acknowledge his
loneliness, his aches and longing. Again, it was there at his gates, never far
away, yet the rich man spent all his life creating the great gulf between it.
The
parable’s warning is just as stern for us today.
And
I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
