Saved by Love

Rev. Fayre Stephenson

I would be willing to bet that I was the only one who was truly thrilled that we had an ice storm on Friday morning.   I had been kind of worried about speaking at the Good Friday Cross Walk.  The Cross Walk, for those of you who are new to it, is sponsored by the Oxford Hills Area Clergy Association (OHACA).  Someone has made a fairly big cross which is carried on the walk.  The walk starts at our church and proceeds to Second Congregational Church and then to every church between here and the Lutheran Church in South Paris, which is the last stop.  At each church someone, usually the minister, gives a reflection – a short talk – on Good Friday.

Last year was the first year I participated. Ann Johnson and I walked the whole way without too many mishaps.  I did fall in one mud puddle but wasn’t too much the worse for wear except for extreme embarrassment.  Anyway, I thought I had prepared a pretty good reflection last year about hope and renewal – the Easter message.  At the next OHACA meeting, during the rehash of the Cross Walk, one of my colleagues, said that some of us didn’t speak on the Good Friday topic but leaped immediately to the Good News of Easter.  I had a sinking feeling.  He didn’t single me out but I felt he was looking at me.  I didn’t really feel that badly – at least I had participated.

However, this year I vowed to address the Good Friday message, if I could figure out what it is.  I realize that Good Friday is the day our Christian brothers and sisters commemorate Jesus’s suffering on the Cross.  As I understand it, the folks on the Cross Walk believe that Jesus suffered on the Cross and then died to save Christians from their sins and that God, Jesus’s father, sanctioned this suffering.  There are those who feel that God’s sacrifice of his son is a model for child abuse but that is a subject for another sermon.

My challenge for Friday was how to talk about this Biblical event in a meaningful way to a group of people who believe that Jesus’s suffering was their salvation.  As a UU I truly have a different way of looking at the world.  The folks on the Cross Walk believe that everyone is born with original sin and is in need of salvation.

I know I can’t speak for all of us who are Unitarian Universalist but I think many of you may agree with me.  I believe people are born with a basic goodness – the worth and dignity that our first principle affirms. I also believe that bad things can and do happen to us during our lives and that we sometimes do bad things.  We often feel in need of salvation.  But the kind of salvation I believe in has nothing to do with an after life.  Salvation for me is getting through hard times in this life and finding a way to go on.  For me the idea that Jesus suffered to save me isn’t the comfort I know it brings my Christian friends.

And so I knew I couldn’t speak about the Jesus as Savior on the Cross part of the Easter story.  I had to speak about lessons we might learn from Jesus’s suffering.  The other day I was telling First Universalist Church member, Joan Beal, about my predicament.  She said, and I paraphrase, that although we UUs have trouble dealing with the Crucifixion story, that story does give Christians a way to think about hard times – the times when they suffer.  She said that we UUs don’t seem to have such a ready theological context to help us understand the unfair blows life deals us – to give meaning to suffering.  I agreed.

I told Joan that I had made a stab at reflecting on what we can learn from Jesus’s suffering on the Cross.  Here are some of those thoughts I prepared for my Cross Walk reflection:  Unitarian Universalist Christians believe that to be a Christian we must follow Jesus’s teachings such as those about helping the sick and the poor and we must try to live as Jesus lived.  “Being like Jesus” is how early Universalists thought we should travel on this sacred journey we share.  They knew that Jesus taught not only through his words but through his deeds. His life was a lesson in how to be – how we can be in this world – and his suffering on the cross was one of those lessons.  In his greatest suffering, having been tortured and ridiculed, Jesus forgave. He didn’t say, “Strike them down, Father, or Father, put them in jail.”  When he was in his greatest pain, he didn’t lash out at anyone – not innocent by-standers nor those who had done him wrong like the Roman soldiers.  What he did was forgive.  He said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

First Peter, chapter 2 tells us that Jesus left us an example so that we may follow in his foot steps.  In that letter, Peter says, “Jesus committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.”  One of the great lessons on Good Friday is that even when the unbearable happens, we can try to be like Jesus and open our hearts, trust in the God of Love, and forgive.

That is as far as I went in my reflection for the Cross Walk folks.  But, in all of my hand wringing, researching and deciding what to say to them about Jesus’s suffering, I came across a Ram Dass essay called “Suffering as Grace.”  You may remember that Ram Dass is a Hindu mystic and spiritual teacher who became famous – or maybe infamous – for traveling the lecture circuit with Timothy Leary, the champion of LSD.  However, infamous or not, I do feel that Ram Dass is a serious scholar and philosopher.

Of suffering he wrote, “For most people when you say suffering is Grace, it seems off the wall to them.  And we’ve got to deal now with our own suffering and other people’s suffering.”  Of other people’s suffering he says we need to listen at the level of the other person’s suffering.  Not to say you’ll feel better later or you’ll get over this but to say yes what you are going through is awful.

Then he had this next paragraph which I want you to hear in his words.  His ideas may be the handle we UUs need for thinking about suffering.  His writing style is a little rambling and stream of consciousness but I think you’ll get what he is driving at.  Here is what he said, “So, the hard answer for how you are able to see suffering as Grace, and this is a stinker really, is that you have got to have consumed suffering into yourself.  Which means, you see there is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive.  And so we want to distance ourselves from it.  Like if you have a toothache, it becomes that toothache. It’s not us anymore.  It’s that tooth.  And so if there are suffering people, you want to look at them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them.  Because you are afraid you will drown in it.  You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable.  And the fact of the matter is you have to.  You finally have to.  Because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you.  You are then at the mercy of suffering.  And to have finally dealt with suffering, you have to consume it into yourself.  Which means you have to, with eyes open, be able to keep your heart open in hell.  You have to look at what is, and say Yes, Right.  And what it involves is bearing the unbearable.  And in a way, who you think you are can’t do it.  Who you really are can do it.  So that who you think you are dies in the process.”

So that’s the part I didn’t think I could share with the Cross Walk folks.  In a way I feel that what Rom Dass is talking about is what Jesus did on the Cross.  He withstood the unbearable, his old self died, and three days later on Easter he was resurrected.  We do withstand horrors and when we live through them – when we get to the other side — we are a different person – a new person.  Some might say we are reborn.

When we are in the depths of the unbearable we can’t always will ourselves to tough it out until we get to the other side.  And likewise, we can’t jolly anyone else through their grief or suffering.  All we can do is get down in the mud of despair with that person.  To let those in despair know they are not alone.  This may not be so different from living the way Jesus taught.  Knowing we are not alone can be our salvation – this is how we are saved by love here in this life.

When I think of Michael Tino’s story, our reading this morning, about going to the Eno River UU Fellowship for the first time, I think of the sacrifices gay men of his generation made – always wary, always careful not to come out to the wrong person to be sure one’s job was safe.  And also knowing that some of life’s blessings – marriage, family – might be withheld from you because you were gay.   As a gay man he felt that he would never be welcome just as he is in a religious community.  In an interesting way, all of those UUs wearing pink triangles made a profound statement.  They were saying we understand the loss gay people experience because they have been made to feel different – because they have been excluded.  We are with you in your loss.  If you suffer, we are with you.  We’re down in the mud with you.  This is the love that saves.

I will close with Michael Tino’s words, may this be our pledge – to work for the salvation of our world, a salvation that is possible only when all of us know the depth and breadth of love that is available to us without condition.  May we as a religious community be a vessel of a love that saves.