“Bread
of Heaven and Cup of Astonishment”
John 11:1-45
First Presbyterian
Lent
5
The
Sacrament of Holy Communion
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A poet whose name you might recognize (smile), Mary Oliver, says in a poem about writing poems,
…I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I
want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want
them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything. (1)
There is something in those few
lines of poetry that says almost everything I ever really want to say to you or
have you understand. “I want
to…look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable.
I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world;
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.”
Mary Oliver, if ever there was one, is a poet of attention.
She is also a poet of astonishment. Attention
is the prerequisite to astonishment. She
pays rapt attention to what is before her eyes and alchemizes them into such
wordless things as love and holiness, grief and sadness and beauty.
She is constantly astonished. It
is astonishment that is at the heart of faith and that serves the world as its
light…the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
Overwhelming wonder, surprise, or amazement is how the dictionary
describes astonishment. When we
drink of the cup of astonishment we are surprised or amazed into a deeper sense
of the coherence of life, into the essential oneness of everything, and into
life’s vast and encompassing spaciousness that bears, believes, endures, and
hopes all things. Astonishment
allows us to greet life in all of its fullness rather than to be limited by and
to our preconceived notions, prejudices, expectations, ideologies, and
theologies.
Will you indulge my desire to
read to you yet one more Mary Oliver poem? This
one is called “The Fawn.”
The Fawn
Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal
the church bells rang, but I went
to the woods instead.
A fawn, too new
for fear, rose from the grass
and stood with its spots blazing,
and knowing no way but words,
no trick but music,
I sang to him.
He listened.
His small hooves struck the grass.
Oh what is holiness?
The fawn came closer,
walked to my hands, to my knees.
I did not touch him.
calling out to him dolefully
and he turned and followed her into the trees,
still I sang,
not knowing how to end such a joyful text,
until far off the bells once more tipped and tumbled
and rang through the morning, announcing
the going forth of the blessed.
It is Sunday morning and Oliver
goes to church in the woods or, more precisely, for Oliver the church is the
woods. In a matter of minutes, a
fawn appears and Oliver, being human, has no way of communicating with the fawn
except to use words, and to sing. So,
she sings and the fawn listens. Indeed,
the fawn not only listens but responds to her song by striking his hooves
against the grass. This lovely
interplay between poet and animal occasions the pivotal line of the poem: “Oh
what is holiness?” The answer
in this and virtually every one of Oliver’s poems is that this moment
is holy and sacred, this and every instance of communion that bridges
estrangement or separation, in this case the separation between human and
animal. It is astonishing.
Oliver insists that holiness is not something that is limited to the
religious world or the supernatural; holiness is something that happens in the
natural world, in everyday life. In
another of her poems, she says that such holy astonishment is “the
world/that is ours, or could be,” if we only would attend to it.
(2) We
live by astonishment.
Does not Jesus urge us to drink
from the cup of astonishment both in the interaction between human beings and
nature and in relationships between humans themselves, ourselves?
Are we not astonished by the ability of lilies of the field and
birds of the air to teach us so much about ourselves?
Are we not astonished when we read of the father’s unwavering
and spendthrift love for his prodigal son? Are
we not astonished by the Samaritan’s transcendence of religious and
social boundaries in order to care for another person?
Are we not astonished by the vineyard owner’s extravagant
generosity in paying those who worked only an hour a full day’s wage because
they were in need as much as those who had worked since sun up?
Was not the whole world astonished
a couple of years ago when the Amish mourners lavished forgiveness on the
shooter of their children and compassion on his family?
Was not the whole world astonished a decade or so ago by the
creation in South Africa of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission whereby the
perpetrators of apartheid atrocities came face to face with their victims and
their victims’ families to confess and to hear of the pain they had inflicted
and then to be forgiven their sins?
I was astonished a few
days ago by this sanctuary being filled to overflowing for the memorial service
of David Love who died last Sunday at the age of nineteen as it witnessed to how
his young life had touched so deeply so many people.
I was astonished this week by my conversation with Ruth and Marty
Carnahan after they had received the word that Ruth’s cancer has reoccurred
and that there is no treatment for it this time and there were no bitter words,
no fearful remonstrations, but only grace and gratitude for a long life and a
great family, only deep appreciation for a faithful circle of friends and a
church they love. I was astonished
this week by the sheer and utter beauty of a Dvorak setting of the Twenty-Third
Psalm that Carolyn Whitehead sang at our Lenten service for I knew as I was
hearing it that my soul had been hungry for fifty-two years for just that slice
of the bread of heaven.
The writer of today’s gospel
story intends for us to be astonished by the life-changing news that, by
the power of God’s Spirit, every single one of us may come out of whatever
tombs we inhabit, out of the dead places in our lives, out of whatever it is in
our lives that binds us up or keeps us from being our true selves.
The story of the raising of Lazarus is not about something wonderful that
happened to one man one time long ago. That
would be silly. What would that
possibly mean to us in our lives? No!
“Come out,” is the Christ’s astonishing call to each
of us to live into the freedom for which we have been set free by the love of
God.
In a few moments as we gather at
this Table set before us, we shall eat of the bread of heaven and drink from the
cup of astonishment. For that is
what it is, is it not? A cup of
astonishment. “The gladness that
says, without any words, everything!”
The cup of astonishment that says, without any words, that love is
stronger than death and fear and hatred and violence and doubt.
The cup of astonishment that proclaims the paradox, without any words,
that if we try to save and hoard and keep our lives safe and secure and neat and
tidy that we shall not experience life at all, not really, but
if we pour our lives out at risk and cost to ourselves for the sake of others
and the world around us, then we shall be filled to the brim with the experience
of abundant life and living.
So, my friends, from the cup of
astonishment, drink ye today and every day, all of you.
Amen.
(1)
Oliver,
Mary, New and Selected Poem, Volume Two.
(2)
Mann, Thomas W., God of Dirt.
© Copyright 2008 First Presbyterian Church