This past week, I had the opportunity to go to St. Mary’s Church. St. Mary’s is a mission church that is hidden in the heart of Springfield. The Cathedral has quietly supported them for years.
Kathleen, one of our wonderful members here, took me to a Bible Study at St Mary’s. She picked me up here at the Cathedral and drove me over to Springfield.
We parked the car on the side of the road and got out. There was a tiny boy sitting on the sidewalk crying his eyes out. He could not have been more than two years old. He had great clumps of braided hair that stuck out from every side of his little head. He wore a blue shirt and plaid shorts. His eyes were red and blotchy from crying so hard. A woman who looked like she could be his mother stood nearby talking to some friends. She was holding a pink bundle, a newborn baby girl.
I went over to the little boy and knelt down to ask him if he was OK. He held out his arms for me to carry him. I picked him up and, man, did he hold on. He pressed his little self up against me and put his head on my shoulder. His crying stopped like a faucet that was just turned off. I held him and rocked him and time stood still for a moment.
The mother came over, grabbed him around his waist, and pulled him from me. He started to scream again. “He always goes to strangers,” she said to me. And my heart just broke. I had to walk away with him crying again, knowing that the moment of peace that we had together only made him long for more. It was heartbreaking.
Sometimes there is so much pain in the world that I do not know what to do. I cried for that little boy later that day. Just like I cried for the children in Russia that I knew so long ago when I worked in orphanages there. There was the little baby girl who cried so hard and loved to be held. They had found her in a dumpster just days before I met her and she still thought that someone might come when she cried. She had the most beautiful blue eyes.
When I encounter children who need more that I can give them, I wonder how God can cope with it all, all the pain. If it hurts my heart, God’s heart must be broken.
In the gospel for today, it is the night of the Last Supper. Jesus has just poured out his heart to his disciples and friends, washing their feet and feeding them with eternal food. And at the very moment when he is loving them with everything that he has – in that, perhaps the most intimate moment of all time – Judas gets up and leaves.
It hurts when someone just leaves without saying anything. When someone up and leaves a lecture it is seen as a sign of boredom or disagreement or even anger. And the Upper Room was no lecture hall. It was a small space, occupied by thirteen men who had been together through it all. And it was obvious to all of them that Judas was rejecting them. Just when Jesus was pouring himself out, Judas abandoned him in front of everybody. Without saying so much as goodbye, he walked out of their lives.
Jesus knew that he was about to die. He knew that this was his last night and that one of his best friends had just rejected him forever. You would think that this would be the bottom of the pit for Jesus, the last straw. You would think that he would despair, but instead he says something so profound that we usually gloss over it.
Now the Son of Man has been glorified.
Glorified? He was about to die a horrifying death. One of his friends was about to sell him for a few gold coins. How in the world could Jesus say that he was glorified in all this? Glorified in abandonment? Glorified in betrayal and treachery? How?
The word glory means brightness. It is the part of God that we cannot even bear to look at, the doxa¸ the glory. It is a word that only is used for God and God alone. Only God is bright, and the Son of God could only be made bright through the shame and suffering that he endured. The paradox is this: God is most glorified in the midst of pain and suffering. The brightness of God shines forth in the hardest of places and the darkest of times. The greater the darkness, the more the doxa or glory of God stands out and shines.
That is one of the great secrets of resurrection. Resurrection is born out of the pit of death and despair. Moments of pain, moments of darkness and of abandonment, are the greatest moments to glorify God. It is in these moments of greatest suffering that God is most glorified.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. The light shines in the darkness.
Sometimes people ask me why I decided to come to a church located in the heart of downtown Jacksonville. At the time that I was praying about becoming your Dean, I was also talking with a church in Beverly Hills, California. One of my friends kept reminding me of the house that the Rector of that church lives in. It is huge and gorgeous. So when I came here, I got a lot of questions, as I’m sure you get…
Why do you come to the heart of downtown? Why do you drive past numerous churches to come here, where there are homeless people and poverty and abandoned houses? Why worship in a place like this?
And I find myself answering, because I want to glorify God. And God is best glorified in the places of hopelessness and despair. God is glorified here in the heart of downtown whenever we find a job for someone who needs one, whenever we hold a child who is crying. Whenever a home is built for a family that needs a roof over their heads, God is glorified.
My five-year-old son, Max, is blessed to go to the Cathedral School, our incredible school for early childhood. Max and I have great conversations on the way to and from school and work. This past week he asked me a question in the car. “Mom, if you were a superhero, who would you be?”
I thought about it for a moment. And I came up with Water Woman. I could swim to the bottom of the deepest oceans and plant my feet on the ground, then jump and touch the moon, only to come back into the water again. And I could understand the songs of the whales.
Sometimes, I really wish I could be Water Woman – or someone a little more powerful than Kate Moorehead. Someone who could take that little boy that I held in Springfied and make his life better. I want to be able to help him and others who are in despair. Sometimes the feeling of powerlessness is overwhelming. I wish that I could save the world.
We cannot save the world, or fix everything, but we can glorify God. We can use these moments of helplessness to shine the brightness of God into the darkness. We can let our prayers rise up and touch the moon. And God will be glorified. Each time we offer a scholarship to an inner-city child here at the Cathedral School, God is glorified. Each time we welcome the stranger, God is glorified. Each time we bring hope to the despairing, bring comfort to the dying, bring good news to the hopeless, God is glorified.
Ben Clance, a prison chaplain, goes out of this Cathedral each week and finds his way into a maximum security prison. There, in the midst of darkness and despair, he glorifies God by bringing communion to the prisoners. When a man is about to be executed, Ben comes and washes his feet, giving him the chance to turn his heart to God even at the last.
It is not your job to fix the world. That is God’s work. But it is your job and my job to go into the places of darkness and despair and make God’s light shine. We are called to glorify God, one moment at a time. Let God work in you. Become His hands and feet. Work one small miracle at a time. Let God work in you to do this.
God says, in the book of Revelation, I am the Alpha and the Omega. The start. The finish. If God is all that, then God will surely bring all of us to the resurrection life, where we will stand with countless throngs of angels who glorify the Almighty day and night. But the best place to start glorifying God is here, where we find ourselves, in the heart of downtown – in a place of great despair, great need, and great promise.
I thank God that you and I chose to be in this place.
Amen.
