On the Mission of the Church

"Mission is putting love where love is not."

St. John of the Cross

Documentary: The Saint of 9/11

Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM (1933-2001)

The Order of Saint Anthony the Great is exploring the life and witness of Mychal Judge, the New York Fire Department Chaplain who died at the World Trade Center on September 11th.  A Franciscan and a priest, Mychal's life was filled with joy, pain, love, and self-giving. 

One of Father Mychal's favorite prayer's sums up his theology:

Lord, take me where you want me to go;

Let me meet who you want me to meet;

Tell me what you want me to say

And keep me out of your way.

The documentary film, The Saint of 9/11, captures both the eternal joy and love of the friar along with inner turmoil that so often accompanies holy people.  Click on the title of the film to watch it, it's worth your time. 

The American Inquisition

If asked, my parents could tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing the day JFK was shot.  Likewise, I can tell you exactly where I was on the morning of September 11, 2001.  It's something that never leaves me. At the time, I was a senior at Hampden-Sydney College, and like most college students, managed to roll out of bed late and head to The Commons for breakfast, half alert to the comings and goings of the wider world.

I didn't even make it upstairs to the dinning hall that morning.  Walking inside the Tiger Inn, the campus watering hole, I saw scores of other students surrounding the televisions inside.  And there it was on the tube, the smoking twin towers of the Big Apple red hot with tragedy billowing from within.  Shocking does not even begin to describe the feelings going through my body.  The live video feed had a numbing, disorienting affect on me.  The eerie silence of the usual bustling restaurant hit each student as they opened the doors on that crisp September morning.  Something was horribly and unusually wrong.  It was palpable.

Later that day, the Dean of Students called and asked me to accompany him on a visit to a mutual friend and administrator who had just learned of his beloved aunt's death in the World Trade Center attacks.  As we sat with Ryan, it was clear to us that no words could bring back his aunt;  our presence was simply that of loving compassion.  The usually large former football player sat quietly smaller on the edge of the sofa.  Nothing made sense anymore.  

While I was safe in central Virginia that day, the events of our national tragedy are forever burned into my conscience and it still haunts me.

Hope, however, did find a way.  By sunset, students from Hampden-Sydney organized a massive prayer rally on the football field for those who needed to begin their own process of understanding.  It started first with prayer.  Standing hand-in-hand, the college community surrounded the entire field in a unified prayer for peace, reconciliation, and healing.  I was proud to be apart of a community that was willing to struggle in corporate unity for Christ amidst the day's horrific events.

More recently, the news surrounding a proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero in Manhattan reveals that the Nation's wounds have not healed. Pogroms, of sorts, erupted across the country in sacrilegious protest.  How bold of them, some opined, it's the enemy right in our back yard! The hysteria and media hype that ensued for weeks was akin to ripping the band-aid off fresh wounds still deeply felt by millions of Americans.  Christian extremists were quick to charge that God had demanded Islam's holy book, The Qur'an, be burned in protest.  Pundits spun the stories and debate on every possible side grew to an alarming pitch.

It also reveals that the soul of America is too cramped.  Too narrow and claustrophobic, America's capacity for healing and reconciliation needs to be widened, stretched out.  The western mind categorically rejects weakness and vulnerability in order to champion a form of social Darwinism that inevitably does great harm to the soul.  Christ said as much.

In the post-resurrection narratives of Jesus found in the Gospels, he disarms and assuages his scared disciples with the words, "Peace."  Retributive justice is not on Christ's mind.  Visibly bearing the wounds of the crucifixion, Jesus' glorified body does not erase the painful lacerations inflicted by his death sentence.  They are there, unambiguous to the human eye.  Why?  Because God does not erase the course of human history--it's too incarnational.  Even Francis of Assisi prayed to receive the blessing of Christ's wounds because they were to serve him as the sovereign reminder of God's power to heal through brokenness.

I fear, though, that history is beginning to repeat again in the twenty-first century.  The Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century sought to control and maintain Christian orthodoxy under the sentence of death.  Conversion by the sword is fleeting and fickle, history proves that this is not how we celebrate progress.  And now in 2010, the orthodox standards are being drawn from a clouded state of mind tantamount to an inquistion on American soil.

A narrow and cramped soul disavows anything contrary to what a pollster statistically proves.  American ingenuity has all but disappeared, and the financial markets are reeling for the time being.  "In God We Trust," is the motto found comically on our currency.  More Americans, I suspect, place trust in the almighty dollar than they do with The Almighty One. We blame politicians and political parties for not fixing our problems.  Changing the parties in charge of either the White House or Congress since 9-11, so it seems, has not solved much of anything.

Still, I don't lose heart.

Simply put, we should not put our faith in this or any government for salvific results; we should look to our faith communities to process through the hurt and anger of our woundedness to find answers for our way forward.  We have to reconcile ourselves to ourselves and to others.  Healing takes time.  It is clear that in the space of the past nine years, very little healing has occurred.  This can change and we can serve as instruments of that process.

Wounds, thank God, can and do heal.  They can serve as painful reminders of the past, or they can transform us into blessings for the future.  That decision, for now, is ours to make.

A Fisherman's Tale

Funeral Liturgy for Charles G. Michael

Friday, September 24, 2010

St. Peter's Episcopal Church

Isaiah 25:6-9, Psalm 121, Romans 8:31-39, John 11:21-27

"Martha said to Jesus, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection 
on the last day.'  And Jesus said to her, 'I am resurrection, and the life.  
Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.'" (John 11:24-25)

On September 3, 1925, the world was forever changed.  That day is a special day for so many of us, it is the day Charles Granville Michael came into the world.  He would grow up to change the world in only the way that he could--quietly, patiently, with love and gentleness. 

Early in his life, he came to know words like sacrifice and offering, words that my generation is only now beginning to understand.  Charlie was determined to join the war effort and secured a phony birth certificate in order to reach the legal age to join the US Navy.  At the tender age of 16, he left the comfort of home in Grayson, Kentucky, said goodbye to his mom and dad, and set out for a world adventure.  He would tell you that he was too young, too naive, and too green.  But he heard the call of service and deep in his bones he had to answer it.  Following the bombing in Pearl Harbor, Charlie was sent to the Pacific theater where he served faithfully for 8 years rising to be a bombardier flight pilot.  If you never saw the anchor tattoos on his forearms, you would never know of his daring journey in the Navy.  He never, ever talked about it. 

This past June, when the cancer was visibly taking over, I was able to spend a lot of time with him. I prodded him for information and stories about the war.  I even asked him if he ever had any regrets, to which he broke down and said that he knew so many men who died and could not let it go.  We never spoke about it again.

Following the war, Charlie returned to the tri-state area to build a life for himself.  The beautiful Nancy Mary Philip caught his eye and they married.  For 52 years, Charlie and Nancy would tear up the square dance circuit in a beautiful dance of true love and companionship. Because of whatever happened during the war, Charlie refused to take the Government's GI Bill.  He was determined to earn his own way in the world, again on his terms.  He found work at a local steel shop, Steel Products, and began as the low man on the totem pole, welding and fabricating steel out in the hot, hellish heat on the shop floor.  

He dabbled in television and small electronic repairs, as it feed his fascination with circuitry and engineering.  This would later serve him well as he invented train engine testers that were quickly purchased by CSX.  He had no formal training in any of this, for he had an insatiable hunger for knowledge--he wanted to know intimately why and how things worked.  It fed his scientific mind.  Charlie was smart and his inquisitive mind was going to serve him well.  Yes he would make mistakes, but he would mull them over and learn from what they had to teach him.

Eventually he was able to buy ownership of Steel Products and expanded the business.  His success model was simple:  he lived the 'golden rule.'  He was quite proud of the fact that his men never unionized--he knew exactly what it was like to work in the shop and prided himself on knowing from bottom to top what each man was required to know and do.  He cared deeply for his men and treated them like extended members of his family. 

Charlie's family was growing too.  With a son, Peter, and daughter Pam, the Michael family, I imagine, was the American family of the 50's and 60's.  When he could keep Nancy from secretly re-carpeting the house or control his emotions when he'd discover a house filled with new furniture, he managed to build a family and a business, grounded on his life of faith.

Charlie was a fisherman.  He loved to fish.  It didn't matter to him what he'd be catching, so long as the fish were biting.  Fishing, he believed, was the reward of patience.  Sure it was time away from the demands of work, but it was his way of putting the world in perspective--focusing on learning what Mother Nature had to teach about creation.   

A son, a brother, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather, Charlie cast his net wide into the world and all the while helping to shape a small part of it in the process.  His was a life of seeing Christ in every person he met.  No one ever felt like a stranger to him.  I doubt there is anyone here today that did not get a hug, a friendly kiss, or his incredible smile greeting them every time you met him.  From bishops to star football coaches to the local wait staff at Bob Evans, Charlie treated every one, every one as a sacred, special human being without exception.  Life, for Charlie, was about living and loving, giving of himself to others because this was all he knew.  Even in death, Charlie has given his body for medical research; those lessons learned at such a young age stuck with him all his life.   

           

Jesus was a fisherman too.  He cast his nets and caught the whole world.  Time and again when the disciples failed to understand Jesus, he implored them to cast their nets to other side, only to pull in a tremendous catch.  Jesus was no stranger to death either.  The story of Lazarus is, I believe, one of the more intimate stories of Jesus in the Gospel accounts that has something to say to us today about life and death about living and loving.  Jesus wept at the tomb of his dear friend, grief and suffering--something so profoundly human--overcame Our Lord.  But, something even more deeply powerful was in store for Lazarus:  resurrection.  After four days of lying in the tomb, Lazarus was called forth to leave behind the sealed tomb thereby showing the glory and power of God. 

Death, we know, is not our end.  If the Easter story ended on Good Friday then the whole Christian narrative would be radically different.  But it does not end at the cross.  Death is forever swallowed up by life.  The Easter proclamation forever marks us as people of life and light.  When we dip our toes into the waters of Baptism, Christ makes an eternal claim on our lives.  That claim does not end in death.  Death is but a means, it is not our ultimate destination. 

Paul, in his letter to the Romans makes clear to the Christian community that

God's love for us is manifest in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.  No matter how hard we try, no matter what challenges we face, God's love abides. 

We live to see the beatific vision, to be face-to-face with the risen Christ,  raised by Him as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  To delight in the heavenly banquet that Isaiah so eloquently describes, is the feast of our lives brought to fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.  And our invitation is wide open to all of God's children.  Life conquers death.  The light of Christ overcomes the darkness.  And especially now, we struggle to live into that reality each and every day of our lives. 

But the Good News is quite simply this:  "Even at the grave we make our song Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia."  What Christ has accomplished for us is eternal life, it's worth singing about today and everyday.  Yes the Easter life can be a struggle at times, but we don't have to go it alone.  We have Christ, the Lord and Author of Life who binds us together in the earthly Church.  When we break bread and join in fellowship with one another, we find the source and summit of our lives made whole in Christ.   

Charlie's theology was very simple and yet powerful.  He always told me to live my life by giving others their flowers now, and not at their graves.  Let people know that you love them, he said, and show it.  This is how he lived his life.  This is his powerful story, told to us by his many, many deeds. 

My sisters and brothers, today we are those seedlings, little flowers nourished by Christ through Charlie's witness.  May we live to be the sweet perfume of the Holy Spirit, radiating life, beaming love to every one, everywhere.  Amen.