The Miracle of the Fellowship of Suffering Love

 

“Jesus keep me near the cross”

 

What are we praying for, what are we asking, when we sing these words?

 

In the Good Friday story only five people are identified as having stayed “near the cross” with Jesus: Mary- Jesus’ mother, his mother’s sister- Salome, Mary the mother of Clopas- an aunt to Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the beloved disciple… All of the other principle characters, in his band of associates and disciples, as Mark tells us happened at the time of Jesus’ arrest, “deserted him, every one (Mark 14:50).” They fled in terror… They fled to safety… They disappeared into the crowd… They kept their distance… They did not stay “near the cross.” They missed out on something very special, very holy! They missed out on something that could be experienced only by those who stayed near the cross…

 

Taking flight, they missed out on what we characterize today as the blessings shared by those who practice “the ministry of accompaniment”- an experience of the depths of love deepened in the crucible of pain to become a love that never ends.

 

I never thought I’d ever find myself quoting Cardinal Ratzinger, now the Pope Benedict, but something he said, years ago, expresses a profound truth… He said that when people avoid pain and suffering, when people so avoid pain and suffering as to flee from sharing the pain and suffering of others, “the world becomes hard and cold”…because anyone who wants to avoid pain and suffering must also avoid love….We dare not care enough to stay…we dare not love that much: and, missing opportunity to love, we forgo the opportunity to be grown in love, to mature in faith, to share the fellowship of loving community sustained by a power of love that enduring all things, conquers all things.[1]

 

In the year 2003, Sgt. Zachary Scott-Singley was a translator assigned to work, in Iraq, with the 3^rd infantry division of the United States Army. One tragic day, he had an experience of being “near the cross” –not the cross of historical imagining on which the political powers of the day crucified Jesus, but a modern cross experience in which another “innocent” child was slain. Hear him tell his story:

 

 "It was still dark. I dressed in that darkness. When I was ready I grabbed an MRE (meal ready to eat) and got in the truck. The targets were three houses where RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) attacks had come from a few days before. Sitting there listening to the briefing I let my mind wander and said a prayer. 'Just one more day, God, let me live one more day and we will go from there ... ' It was the same prayer I said every day.

"There were different people to meet each day. There were some who would kill you if they could ... you could see the hate in their eyes. I also met people who would have given me everything they owned ... so thankful because we had rid them of Saddam.

"After the briefing we convoyed to the raid site. I was to go in directly after the military police who would clear the buildings. The raid began without a hitch. I was inside the courtyard of a house questioning a woman when I heard gunfire. Ducking next to the stone wall I yelled at the woman to get inside.

"When the gunfire stopped I peeked around the front gate. I saw a soldier pulling rear security who was still aiming his M249 machine gun at a black truck off in the distance. His was the weapon I had heard.

"I ran up and overheard the captain asking what had happened and why this soldier had opened fire. The soldier answered that he had seen a man holding an AK-47 in the back of the black truck. I was among the four, including the soldier who had fired, selected to go check on that truck.

"We were out of breath when we got to the gun-truck nearest to the black civilian truck. There were four Iraqis walking towards us from the black truck. They were carrying a body, a small boy no more than 3 years old. His head was cocked at the wrong angle and there was blood. So much blood. The Iraqi men were crying and asking me WHY?

"Someone behind me started screaming for a medic. It was the young soldier who had fired. He screamed for a medic until he was hoarse. A medic came just to tell us what we already knew: The boy was dead.

"I stood there looking at that little child, someone's child just like mine, and seeing how red the clean white shirt of the man holding the boy was turning. Then I realized I was speaking to them, speaking in a voice that sounded so very far away. I heard my voice telling them how sorry we were. My mouth was saying this but all my mind could focus on was the hole in the child's head. The white shirt covered in bright red blood. I couldn't stop looking even as I kept telling them how sorry we were.

"I can still see it all to this day. There were no weapons found and we accomplished nothing besides killing a child. I stayed as long as I could, talking to the man holding the child. I couldn't leave because I needed to know who they were. I wanted to remember. The man was the child's uncle, minding him for his father who had gone to the market. They were carpenters and what the soldier who had fired on the truck had seen was one of the Iraqi men standing in the truck bed, holding a piece of wood.

"Before I left I saw the young soldier who had killed the boy. His eyes were unfocused and he was just standing there, staring off into the distance. My hand went to my canteen and I took a drink of water. That soldier looked so lost, so I offered him a drink. In a hoarse voice he quietly thanked me.[2]

Sgt. Singley could have fled the scene: or, at the very least, he could have chosen to step back, to let the medics and those in charge take over, but he didn’t. He stepped forward. He stepped forward to stand with the uncle of the little child, facing the horror of what had happened…beyond words, beyond tears, being WITH that man, the other Iraq’s, and a little child as life dripped from his limp body…. Sgt. Singley could have stepped around his comrade, the shooter, outraged at his actions, making judgments, pointing accusing sneer: but, he didn’t. Instead he entered into that man’s suffering too- no words…a simple drink of water -his gesture of compassionate oneness…. Beyond words, Sgt. Singley stood near the cross there to experience a love beyond expression, too deep for words…a transforming love that rough hewn carved eternal depths in his soul, linking him for ever with those who, in that ugly scene could do nothing but stand together- mystically bound and empowered by the echo of the angst of God.

 

From a thousand worlds away beyond Iraq, an observation… Dr. Elizabeth Johnson works with the Hospice Foundation. She tells us:

 

The term compassion comes from joining the Latin words cum meaning with, and pati meaning to suffer. It means to "suffer with" someone; to have a certain fellow feeling that allows you to gain an interior connection to someone else's pain; to enter into a relationship with a suffering person in such a way that he or she feels respected and empowered; simply to stand with someone, recognizing that despite the pain or disfigurement he or she is a person of mystery, beauty, and strength. Through their own compassionate hearts, those who do hospice care have the profound calling of embodying divine compassion, of being the ones through whom God's care is in reality poured out over dying persons[3]renewing them and all who stand with them in a certainty of life beyond every eventuality, beyond every tear and every grave secure in a love that never ends.

 

In response to continuing tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, the Word Council of Churches has set up, what they’re calling an Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel. Chuck Curry, from the Methodist Church, describes it:

 

 The EAPPI is an initiative of the World Council of Churches under the Ecumenical Campaign to End the Illegal Occupation of Palestine: Support a Just Peace in the Middle East. Its mission is to accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation. Participants of the programme are monitoring and reporting violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, supporting acts of non-violent resistance alongside local Christian and Muslim Palestinians and Israeli peace activists, offering protection through non-violent presence, engaging in public policy advocacy and, in general, standing in solidarity with the churches and all those struggling against the occupation.[4]

 

World Council of Churches volunteers working this program stand near the cross to share God’s tears, to hear and tell the story of God’s pain borne in many faces, to proclaim a hope that sees beyond even the cross to God’s new day –with God’s people enduring by the power of a deep and spiritual hope within them- one spirit united, enriched and strengthened to become the heritage of life.

 

Jesus keep me near the cross… Lord, give us courage to be where you would be, to cling with desperate arms, with others, to hope borne of love as deepest springs of living water wash life’s wounds of pain with blessing.

 

We need not look far to find Christ crucified…. Sgt. Singley found him incarnate in a little child and grieving family. Palliative Care workers find him as they stand with patients who become deep friends to share life’s last breath- first sigh of birth’s beginning. World Council of Churches volunteers stand every day under the shadow of the cross looming- terrors gnarling grip but a heart beat away… We need not look even that far to find Christ crucified. His is the wrenching agony we see in starving children, in mothers clutching babies no food at their breast, in the distraught face of parents whose children have gone astray, in the gaunt eyes of the homeless, the muted expression of soldiers carrying war’s victims off planes in Canada… We need not look far to find Christ crucified: the pall of resignation clouding the joy of those who are sick, the limp reflex of society’s weary victims, the remnants of lives torn asunder by crisis, in despair…. We need not look far to find Christ crucified –the hidden hurting places in lives near us, the pain of loved ones, the silent suffering of neighbours -often scantily buried beneath forced frivolity inviting us to share denial, to turn away not naming what only our innermost voice dares whisper.

 

Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane: and, he said to his disciples, “Sit by while I go over there and pray.” He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and he began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death: remain here and stay awake with me. And, going a little further, he threw himself on the ground and he prayed. When he came back to the disciples, he found them sleeping…Three times he found them sleeping and then it was too late. The Betrayer was at hand…and they deserted him, every one.

 

Christ crucified calls out in gentle voice today- “Stay with me…” How often we turn away- asleep to the desperate plea of his voice.

 

But Mary and those with her, they heard the silent plea and finding courage born of inner spirit, beyond anything they couldn’t do, they did what they could do, they stood near the cross. They shared its fellowship of suffering- a love that knit its binding cords, transforming them… And the miracle of that experience brought peace to our Lord’s dying heart as noticing it, he remarked on it, celebrating it.

 

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then, he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother and, from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:27).” The beloved disciple didn’t literally take Mary into his own home -in the sense of giving her a place of abode: Mary had other children. She lived with them and would continue to do so…. What Jesus is suggesting and naming, using the language of home and family, is a new relationship forged in the crucible of shared love that will forever bind Mary and this disciple and all who stood near the cross that day in profound and mystical union- the home of hearts beating together to become a well-spring of compassion, a spring of living water that, sustaining each, will grow to be a fountain of blessing renewing others.

 

Those who stand near the cross shall be a blessing deeply furrowed, well planted and eternal.

 

So let us not shirk the darkest night, but rather by courage of spirit resolve to be there with and for others, one, with them to be transformed by the radiance of light that meets each suffering soul in the hope of God’s new day.

 

Behold, your sons and daughters in pain, behold your mother: and, clutching hands, behold your God.

 

Amen

 

Charles Love

St. Andrew’s United Church, Bayfield

April 14 2006