Humility at the Table; Sermon from September 1, 2013

You can listen to it here;  Sermon ("Buen Provecho - For Good Benefit")

Micah 6:6-12
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
    and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
⁷Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

⁹ The voice of the Lord cries to the city
    (it is sound wisdom to fear your name):
  Hear, O tribe and assembly of the city!
¹⁰ Can I forget the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
    and the scant measure that is accursed?
¹¹ Can I tolerate wicked scales
    and a bag of dishonest weights?
¹² Your wealthy are full of violence;
    your inhabitants speak lies,

with tongues of deceit in their mouths.

Luke 14:1, 7-14
1 On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.  8 "When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host;  9 and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, 'Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, 'Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11 For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." 12 He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

I just returned from Guatemala where I spent 6 weeks studying Spanish in Xela, a mountainous town in the Mayan Qui’che region of Guatemala.  Xela is actually the Qui’che word for Quetzaltenango, which is what it says on the map if you wanted to look up where I studied.  Guatemala is home to 21 different Mayan groups, who, even today, make up 51% of the population. The women still wear traditional dress, although men only don traditional clothing in certain villages.



They are a hard-working people.  Women carry their goods to market on their heads, which could be anything from laundry to chickens to roses.  Men carry the heavier goods on their back with a strong strap anchored to their forehead.   

In addition to my 5 hours of classes per day, my fee of $185 per week included boarding and meals with a Guatemalan family.  Maria Louisa, [CLICK] the 78-year-old mother of the house, prepared meals for her extended family and myself every day.  Dinners were usually black beans, tortillas, rice, and an egg.  Breakfasts were black beans, tortillas, and an egg.  Lunches might include stew, or might be black beans, tortillas, rice, and an egg.  This is the typical meal in Guatemala – because it is the cheapest food that will leave one feeling full.  In fact, the week before I left I made dinner for my Guatemalan family, a stew full of fresh vegetables.  They were very gracious in complimenting the meal, but were still going for the beans and tortillas after.  It’s simply the most affordable food to fill your belly on a budget.  Guatemala is the third poorest country with the highest rate of malnutrition in Latin America. 

After our meal we would share coffee. Guatemala produces some of the best coffee in the world!  But in our house we drank instant, because like the produce, the best coffee in Guatemala is exported, and too expensive for the average Guatemalan family.   At the end of a meal in Maria Louisa’s home, I would say ‘muchas gracias’ for the meal, and they would respond, “buen provecho”.  Buen provecho is usually translated by foreigners as ‘bon apetit’, but that’s not correct. Buen provecho actually means, ‘for good benefit’, as in, "May this food be of good benefit to you”.

  

In all my travels, the most memorable moments always happen when people eat together.  Eating together is an expression of comradery, generosity, and humility.  People offer the gift of food, and you offer respect by receiving their gift of food and their traditions. Sometimes you have to watch to see how your food is to be eaten.  Mealtime is when we all slow down enough to be generous with each other and listen to each other. Sitting at a table together humbles us and establishes us as equals.  Jesus knew this. 

Our scripture today from the Gospel of Luke has Jesus participating in yet another meal.  Pastors like to joke about how there’s hardly a verse in Luke that doesn’t depict Jesus either going to, coming from, or sharing a meal.  And as we know, he eats with all kinds of people – disciples, tax collectors, prostitues, Pharisees, and foreigners.  Earlier in Luke, the Pharisees complain about his habit of breaking bread with the sinful.  “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they ask.  He replies, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”. 

By our passage in Luke 14, Jesus has been invited to yet another dinner party but begins to take issue with the way people claim seats of honor in the banquet.  Today’s reading is about pride and humility.  Jesus lived in a culture of honor and shame.  It was a patron-client world; one did not survive by their own merit, as they do in our culture, but by being related to networks, family, friends, and brokers of other patrons. Being publicly embarrassed, such as being asked by a host to give up your seat for someone more important, could impact your immediate economic livelihood, like the ability to barter with your neighbor for basic goods, or to arrange a marriage in your family.  If you had the ability to throw a banquet, you were of the wealthy class, and you likely only invited those who would someday invite you in return.  Jesus contradicts this status-oriented culture immediately, calling on followers to serve the sick, lame, crippled, and people who could in no way return the invitation, and therefore put their status at risk.

This type of pride and humility hardly affects us in our modern world, except perhaps when you travel. As an American, I have status that is welcomed all over the world.  There is a certain amount of pride that comes when you travel from being an American – our democracy, our prosperity, our free media, our freedom to determine our own merit.  But traveling sometimes teaches you a different aspect of being American – the unintended consequences of American foreign policy. 

You see I have a hard time talking about the poverty of Guatemala without talking about the cause.  And while chronic education deficiency, high birth rates to young mothers, and government corruption continue to plague Guatemala’s prospects, the country is still reeling from a 36-year civil war that began in 1960 and only ended in 1996.  And it’s difficult to discuss that war without pointing to America’s overzealous communist-era foreign interventions. 

Because in 1944, a government came to power in Guatemala that, for the first time in their history, bestowed equal rights to the native Mayan population.  The Indians received social security, education, and labor rights for the first time since the Spanish conquest.  Worker unions began to unite the Mayan Indian population with the rest of the peasant laborers in Guatemala, and their political power grew. Ten years later that same government started land reforms, attempting to force a government buy-back of land from the wealthy 2% who owned 72% of Guatemalan land.  However the largest landowner in Guatemala was by far the American-owned United Fruit Company.  As you might expect, the United Fruit Company complained to the US government, who subsequently orchestrated a military coup under a ‘communist threat’ that led to civil war. 

Over decades, a war that began with ideology coupled with systemic prejudice against the Mayan people and became something that’s been classified as genocide against the Mayans.  Through it all, according to a United Nations report from 1999, the US continued military support for the Guatemalan government while aware of the genocide because it was strategically to our advantage.

I didn’t know this when I first arrived in Guatemala.  I learned about it through movies and lectures provided by my Spanish school as part of our curriculum. This is, of course, the realm of giant political powers clashing around the globe, but it got me to thinking about when the US comes to the table of nations, claiming the place of honor and putting our interests first.  It becomes a different experience, then, to sit down at the dinner table in Maria Louisa’s home knowing the legacy of my country is connected to why my Spanish language program is so very affordable.  The sharing and caring shown to me was now humbling.

What does it mean for us to be Christians with this varied legacy?  What will it take to let God’s love shine through us to be a healing force in a world divided by wealthy and prideful interests?  All that is required, says the Hebrew prophet Micah, is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.  Walk humbly?  Perhaps walking humbly with God, and with each other, is key to finding a way to transforming that legacy into a way of saying, “May this be of good benefit to you.”

Humility is what is required when we are faced with truths that are uncomfortable to hear, but hearing those truths can bring healing.  Humility is required of the members of FCC who travel with Re-Member to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.  Learning and listening to the experience of the Native American is a memory that never leaves you.  But through that humility, our church has found a way to say, “May this be of good benefit to you”, with 18 bunk beds and countless donations. 

Humility is required with those we perceive as enemies, in order to find a way to not be enemies.  Earlier this year I visited Israel and Palestine with a class from my school, and encountered many organizations focused primarily on helping traumatized Palestinians and traumatized Israelis listen to each other’s pain as the only real pathway to peace in that region.  That sentiment is echoed by Rigoberta Menchu, a indigenous rights activist from Guatemala who lost nearly her entire family during the civil war.  Now after a lifetime of violence, she says; 

“I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same faculties. At some point they have to begin to understand one another.” 

We begin this understanding by humbly listening to each other.  

Humility is sometimes required to sit at a table with people different from us, taking the risk of being wrong.  Eating together is a great way to start the conversation.  As Rigoberta Menchu is famous for saying, “the world’s not going to change unless we’re willing to change ourselves.” 

There are many signs of light in Guatemala 17 years after the conflict.  Many enterprising social agencies have been founded to work with local populations.  There is no shortage of co-operatives working towards better trade, employment, education, housing and health for Guatemalans.  In fact, FCC has supported the work of one of those organizations, Mayaworks, since before the end of the Guatemalan civil war, with the help of Bob and Terry Davis.  I know this because I bought this folder from them, here, in high school, circa 1994.  Nowadays, because they are a welcoming and very affordable country, Guatemala receives good-hearted people from all over the world who travel with church work trips, volunteer organizations, and as students in Spanish classes.  

My school offered volunteer opportunities for students in the medical clinic or family support center, and for reforestation on the mountainsides.  But I think the most important work of my school was our Stove Project, building concrete and brick stoves for the rural Mayans that still cook over an open fire in an enclosed space.  With the stoves they build each year, they help decrease the amount of respiratory disease in the population. 

So today, I pray that we may have the strength to live lives with more humility, more listening, and more understanding, knowing that if we take the risk to walk humbly, we won’t be walking alone. God will be right there, walking along side us, finding more ways for us to love kindness, and do justice.  So each day we may be able to say, in God’s name, “May this be of good benefit to you.”  Amen.

Driving in Guatemala; aka 'Fear and Trembling'

As you may expect, driving in Guatemala is a little different than in the US.  I thought I had seen harrowing traffic when I lived in Beijing, but it’s nothing compared to Guatemala. 

The city streets are mostly narrow, seemingly one-way streets that go up and down mountain hills and curve around blind corners.  The city streets are mostly made from cobblestone.  When it rains, these streets quickly become rushing creeks – and you better have worn waterproof shoes, because there’s little chance you’ll escape a mad rush of water somewhere in your journey. There is a preponderance of pedestrians on the roads– especially gringos, who magically appear en masse in July to study Spanish.  Sidewalks, however, are not always present, paved, or passable (they are only wide enough to fit one person at a time, and when the curb elevation makes it possible cars are often parked up on the curb, probably because the roads are so narrow).   There aren’t street signs in Xela, but the street names sometimes painted on the side of the building your shoulder is rubbing up against as you use the sidewalk, and you can usually spot it by standing in the middle of the road.  So as a pedestrian, you find yourself alternating between a steep, slim sidewalk and a wet, uneven road – until a rapidly approaching motor or abrupt honk causes you to scatter back onto the sidewalk.   

Mayan men and women transporting goods

In addition to the pedestrians, at any given moment the streets also hold buses, microbuses (a kind of van with the people packed in like sardines and hanging out the sides); cars; pickups – often with a full bed of cargo and/or people; motorcycles, dirt-bikes and scooters carrying at least 3 family members at once (I’ve seen 5 on one cycle – 8 year old kid riding on the gas tank in front of Dad, and two younger kids smashed between he and Mom, who is the caboose); bicycles, street dogs, goats, toddlers, and Mayan women (and men) carrying their load on their heads.  In the smaller towns, there’s also a plethora of tuk-tuks creating havoc through the streets, which are like motorized tricycles with a covered carriage for 2-3 on the back.  They can fit into alleys and maneuver around pedestrians easily, but come careening around corners without much warning.  In towns like San Pedro La Laguna, where most of the ‘streets’ are paved walkways with 90-degree corners (that fit 4 pedestrians across, but are also used by motorcycles and tuk-tuks), these tuk-tuks are especially efficient and alarming at the same time.

 

'Picop' (pickup) full of riders

 The common way to drive in Guatelmala is to accelerate as much as possible until you reach the next intersection, where you are more likely to apply your horn than your brake.  There seem to be essentially no stop signs or yield signs.  A local newsletter counted 41 stoplights in Xela with some malfunction that is in need of repair (it went on to note that the total number of stoplights in Xela is 41).  

There aren’t really bus ‘stops’, but any bus, microbus or pickup is liable to stop at any moment to release or pick up passengers.  The drivers have ‘helpers’ that stand in the door or hang off the side of the vehicle yelling ‘there’s space!’ and looking for new riders (their idea of ‘space’ is a wholly different blog post entirely).  As you can imagine, motorcycles and scooters squeeze into whatever space will fit them, including zipping around slowed traffic or between speeding cars.  No one wears helmets here.  Rules for ‘passing’ actually may not exist – when I rode with my host sister Jessica on the back of her scooter the other day, as we slowed to turn right (and I think she used her signal), a truck barreled past us on the left and then turned right immediately in front of us, giving me a heart attack.

Dogs in the street

Worse yet, speed bumps seem to be the method of choice for controlling speed – which might explain why everyone uses the accelerator like they are in an arcade game - because in just 400 meters, they will have to slow down for the next speed bump.  Some of these ‘tumulos’, as they are called in Spanish, are in fact a problem for something like a scooter, because instead of one continuous hump of concrete, they is a jagged line of smaller, metal humps, which requires a two-wheeled vehicle to come to an almost complete stop to cross without losing balance.  (Yes, it’s freaky from the back of a scooter).  Street dogs are also constantly strolling through the road in front of oncoming traffic, minor roads and highways alike.  Some cars slow for them, some honk, and some consider it a game to see how long it will take the dog to move.  The evidence of this can sometimes be spotted on roadsides like deer.   

Camionete parked at left

The common mode of public transportation in Guatemala is the Camionete, which is ‘chicken bus’ in English.  (Last Friday I actually saw a chicken, enveloped in a Mayan cloth and sitting in a basket, on top of the Camionete that passed below my window at school).  These are retired US school buses – the yellow kind that my generation rode in elementary school.  Whereas in my school, there was a max capacity of something like 57 persons (I remember it because it was always posted in the front of the bus), in Guate the seats that used to hold no more than 2 children often hold 3 adults, perhaps with children on their laps or strapped to their back.  In fact, I noticed today, rather than walk to the back of the bus some people seem to prefer sitting as a third with their butt half-off the seat – as long as the seat across also has 3 people and they can balance each other out in the aisle with their shoulders.  But it’s pretty humorous to watch additional passengers push through this human barrier in the aisle.  There doesn’t seem to be any common idea about moving to the back first.

Well, perhaps that’s because the tumulos have taught riders what we all learned in elementary school – that the back of the bus has more bounce after the second wheel.  More on those tumulos – perhaps you thought they were only near intersections or schools or alleys, like they are in Chicago?  Guess again.  Major highways (those rare roads that are not made out of cobblestone) are also covered with tumulos every few kilometers, forcing speeding, cramped and swaying buses and microbuses to come to a near stop constantly on any long journey. For a country that has chosen school buses for their major mode of transportation, I don’t think there could be a more painful way to control traffic.  

Finally, all of this pales in comparison to traveling via Chicken Bus into the mountains.  I’m not a mechanical type of person, but I can’t imagine the type of engine required for this feat.  Drivers doing the aforementioned acceleration technique (which I would call ‘careening’), carrying 50-some adults and cargo, while climbing thousands of meters on a road that snakes around a mountainside like those in San Francisco must be hell on an engine.  It’s certainly hell on my peace of mind!  Having just visited Golf and Games before I left Illinois, I have to say it bears a striking similarity to a go-cart race with buses, sometimes even in competition.  When passing through mountain towns on the way to San Pedro La Laguna, rather than slow, the driver felt it adequate to lay on the horn all the way through the town like our train whistles in rural areas, even though these buses were passing mere feet in front of residential homes!  And let’s not forget the brakes; even though they don’t like to use them, when heading down a 45 degree incline with a bus full of people in a tropical rainstorm on a street that has maybe 1 ½ feet to spare on either side of the bus…you better be sure the brakes are well padded.  On our mountain descent Friday, one curve was so severe that our bus had to do a 5-point turn to get through it.  (This is also a function of the ‘helper’ – to guide.  And to climb up on the roof while the bus is moving to retrieve baggage).

But the best part is when the bus is hurtling around one of the mountain curves, with a wall of earth on the right and nothing but sky on your left, at breakneck speed, only to round the curve and find all traffic stopped in front of you because a mudslide has occupied half of the road after the last rainfall.  Rather than slow, bus drivers move to the left lane, and when that’s occupied, into the lane for oncoming traffic until all available space has been filled like Tetris, regardless of the fact that it is impossible to see what was causing the backup.  On our return to Xela this afternoon, this resulted in a single line of oncoming traffic being forced to use the shoulder, passing us so close that if I had opened the bus window I could have dirtied the side mirrors of all the drivers.

Needless to say, every time I travel in Guatemala I learn fear and gratitude, again.

Bienvenidos a Xela, Guatemala

So I've been studying Spanish in Quetzaltenango (Xela for short) for over 2 weeks, and I don't want to spend too much time writing because that's time I should be spending studying.  But I can't resist posting a little bit...

Xela is in the Western Highlands of Guatemala.  The altitude here is 2,335 meters above sea level at the town level. I only had mild altitude affect - one day of extreme fatigue and hunger at the same time - but some people have it much more seriously.

Volcano Santa Maria is just south of town.  She feels like my constant companion - the first thing I see when I leave the house in the morning, in view throughout all my classes, visible from everywhere.  

My school, Pop Wuj (pronounced Pope Woo, so named for an ancient, sacred book of the Mayans - Popol Wuj) is a co-operatively owned project that partners with many community efforts.  My teacher (mi maestro) for the last three weeks has been Benedicto (to the right), who is pretty awesome.  We have class every morning from 8 am to 1 pm.  On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday there are volunteer options for students to do in addition or in lieu of class, depending on if you are a morning or afternoon student.  Here, he came with me on the reforestation effort on Thursday morning.  (His shirt says "Solidarity is our Language".)

We were planting 'arbolitas' (little trees) on this woman, Victoria's, private land.  Xela is strongly populated with Mayans, and Victoria is in typical Mayan dress.  Another of our school projects is a Family Support Center, which operates as an after/before school tutoring center and resource for women raising children.  Note the kids in the background - they were on their week-long break during this Thursday morning.

 We planted trees with 10 kids, 3 adults, one hoe and one machete.  First time I've ever used a machete!

On Friday, we took a field trip to the nearby town of Zunil, that is 100% Mayan.  It is a little pueblo in the middle of the mountains.  The major industry is farming, and you can tell.  On the bus into town, the smell of cilantro wafts in the windows, and standing on a balcony above town carries the unmistakable smell of onion. Note on the right, not only do people carry loads on their heads, but many of the workers in Zunil transport multiple sacks of vegetables by strapping cloth over their forehead, under the sacks (see the guy in the very edge of the photo), and running.  It's shocking. All these things end up in the market, and big trucks pull out regularly.   

Weekend trip to Volcan Chiqubal

It looks like a lake at the end of the world, especially given the fog.  In fact, the Mayans may think so - it's a cold lake at the top of a volcano that is fed by natural spring, and sacred for the Mayan people.  Swimming is not allowed in this lake, but offerings of flowers are given. Legend has it that years ago, 3 tourists (from a group of 4) decided to disregard the ban on swimming, and three of them were pulled under by the serious undertow.  The fire department only ever found two of the bodies because the lake is 600 meters deep. 

Do I look tired?  With the altitude, there were times I wondered if I'd make it to the top. After spending about 1 1/2 hours on a, at times, very steep ascent, we descended crazy treacherous jungle stairs to the lake below.

Which was beautiful with mysterious, rolling fog.  When we first arrived, it was clear, then it became completely obtuse.  At right, note the flower offerings of the previous Mayan ceremonies.

Even though the setting was full of beauty, it was muy dificil (very very difficult).  And, suprisingly, the descent is not much easier with the slippery dirt road after a little drizzle, and the steep, steep desent.  Here is Daniella and I making our 'gremlin faces' (the face my sister Kassi makes when she encounters a Gremlin, which scares the daylights out of her) when we realize that we are only 1/2 the way down. 

On Demons and Marathon Bombers

Scripture: Mark 5:1-20

They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.

The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighborhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

Years ago my younger sister visited me in Chicago during her college break.  She flew into Midway, tried her hand at our ‘El’, successfully mastering the orange line to meet me.  What ensued from there has become one of my favorite stories to tell about Chicago. We got onto a crowded, Friday night rush hour Red Line, luckily grabbing seats against the wall.  The first oddity we met was Jesus, in the flesh, dressed in sheets and sandals and carrying a life-sized cross with dramatic pause through the train car.  (As we watched, we were amused to see him uncharacteristically sprint the distance between train cars to catch the next open doors.)  That was interesting.  But in fact, perhaps it was a premonition – a sign of what was to come.

In the midst of our chatting about the sudden Incarnation of Jesus, I noticed a guy offer the person next to him a paper hat folded out of newsprint.  This was not a small paper hat like you might see a chef wear – it was a tall, cuffed, wizard-like hood of newsprint that could in no way be mistook for fashion.  The woman next him declined, and I saw him refocus on the stack of newsprint on his lap.  Next time I looked up, the two kids across the aisle from him were both wearing these paper hats.  His seatmate was reluctantly putting one on, while laughing, and he was hard at work folding the next one.  He had my full attention now.  A hat got passed back to us, and I tried to get my sister put it on but – cool college junior as she was – she wouldn’t do it.  So I did. 

There was something hilarious in having that ridiculous hat on my head.  I found it hard to stop smiling out of chagrin for how uncool I must have looked. In a train car where everyone does their best to mind their own business, avoid eye contact, and assume an unoffensive stare out the window or at the overhead ads…I was breaking the unspoken code of nonchalance and anonymity.  But the thing is, I wasn’t alone. The hats had spread like wildfire throughout the train car. Newcomers on the train started asking me where I got my hat, and how they could get one.  Even my sister put one on, eventually. 

I leaned over to ask the man what was behind his making of the paper hats – but his seatmate told me that he wouldn’t talk.  She had also asked, but he had written down for her that he was unable to speak. 

In the meantime, the entire atmosphere in the train car was transformed.  The normally stone-faced strangers were laughing, initiating conversation, snapping pictures and swapping numbers.  We were all fully amused at ourselves – and perhaps doubly amused at how easy it was to become amused rather than recalcitrant and aloof during our train ride.  It was one of those moments when you feel wholly and totally at home and comfortable with the entire human race – and it was manufactured by a single man making paper hats without explanation. …, inviting people to participate in silliness.

That sister, Kassi, now lives in a suburb outside of Boston, with my other sister and her family. Last year during my visit, we went to watch a leg of the Boston Marathon. As I marveled at the runners pushing their bodies to the very brink of exhaustion, my 6 year old niece Elliot held a sign that said, “Keep Going”.

The surprise for me, in this last public tragedy, was that my overarching emotion wasn’t heartbreak or sadness, but anger.   Is nothing sacred?  Is no human endeavor safe?  The ego of someone – or someones – choose this event, this celebration of the human spirit of endurance and health – how dare they pollute this event with blood spilled, trauma, and fear incarnate?  How dare they rob people of this memory…how dare they rob a woman athlete of her legs.  It just made me so angry.

Jesus’s cure of the Demoniac at Gerasene has always conjured ideas for me of addiction and mental illness.  But last week it held entirely new meaning.  With all the rage I was feeling…I was the Demonaic.  This raging lunatic lived in the cemetery – not willing, I suddenly imagined, to leave the graveside of his stolen loved ones.  He is heard day and night, howling at the stars about these deaths.  He is strong enough to break through chains and shatter the shackles, but only known to bruise him self with stones. “My name is Legion,” he says, “for we are many.”  And all I could think of was, how many deaths?  How many people are similarly robbed of their loved ones, and rage all day and all night with the pain and grief of that injustice?  Of course it wasn’t confined to Boston.  Palestinians jumped to mind. Afganis and Iraqis.  The parents in Newtown, CT, and the parents on the Southside of Chicago.  How many of these people rage into the night, wanting only to retreat to the graveside of the person they miss so much?

The 26^th mile of the Boston Marathon this year was dedicated to the 26 families of Newtown, CT.  Many of them were in attendance.  Their faces were fresh in my mind, as just recently I watched the 60 Minutes episode featuring their struggle to grieve and channel their pain into something productive.  So many of them related how they were only emerging from the fog of loss, and fighting for gun legislation gave them purpose so they didn’t retreat into despair. 

My mind flashes to my niece Elliot and her sign saying, “Keep Going.” 

I know most of us wanted to retreat this last week.  From life and limb lost at the Marathon, to political failure in Washington, to then, worries about Islamophobia, and the inevitable struggle against scapegoating, so clearly on display during the Boston manhunt, I really just wanted to head into the tombs, howl, and beat my head against the stones.  

“What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? By God, do not torment me.  Leave me alone in my misery.  Do not make me do more.”

But Jesus whispers, “Keep Going”.

Sometimes, you can run towards healing and yet pull back.  The Demonaic runs to Jesus, flaunts his pain and rage, but then asks to stay in his misery.  Man, do I know how that feels.  I know how it feels to deliver that behavior, and I know how it feels to receive it.  That friend who shows you how much hurting underlies their attitude, but when you try offering a hand, your friend retreats back into the tombs with the chains and the howling and the bitterness and the self-punishment. They are not able, or not ready, to lean into the hope of a new dawn.  Yet, somehow, we need to give them the rope to trust that they can ‘keep going’.

I was so moved by Dr. Laurel Schneider’s admission the other day, during our Anti-Racism Colloquium, that she needed to learn to face anger in order to be a good friend to Dr. Butler.  I found so much truth in that statement – because I, too, am uncomfortable with conflict and confrontation, but also because if we can’t endure someone else’s emotions – what are we really doing here?  True, it’s hard.  When you feel that hot breath of anger or raw hurt, the human condition is to retreat. Back away from the fire.  Stop causing upset to someone.  This kind of pain  - the raw grief of Newtown, the shock of Boston, the rage of the Demoniac - this kind of pain is scary. 

But Jesus doesn’t retreat from the demons, nor let the demoniac live in his misery.  Jesus ‘leans in’ to the situation, demanding, what is your name?  And then he breaks through their hold on the man from Gerasene.  What will it take for us to break through our desire to retreat with our demons?  How do we lean in to someone’s hurt – or worse yet, or own – to succeed in evicting the demons?

I often think about that newspaper-paper-hat-maker on the train.  I am convinced, almost completely, that it was a stunt designed by a sociology or psychology grad student, to time how long it would take average people to break out of their routine anonymity.  And I wonder if this was the first time he tried the paper hat trick, or if he had to work up the courage to do it.  Had he prepared himself for those first few paper-hat deniers?  Was he certain that he was going to keep going with his plan, searching for willing takers regardless of how many suspicious looks he received?

You see, because he did something amazing.  He changed that day, and maybe that week, for all of us on that train.  He changed our understanding of ourselves, and our capacity to have joy with complete strangers.  The Marathon bombers, the tragedy and the manhunt brought out the demons that we already know are there – the demons that we always retreat to.  Blame.  Anger. Suspicion. Rage.  They also brought out the hero of the human spirit, and that one-ness of purpose so common after a tragedy.  But the paper-hat maker – he caused us to surprise ourselves.  He was able to bring about that spontaneous public joviality – the kind that we see during holidays, or certain elections, or yes, when the bombing suspect was captured alive.  But he did it with hats.

At the end of the story, the villagers beg Jesus to leave, fearful of his power, fearful of hope – but the demoniac begs to stay with Jesus.  He wants to remain where hope is incarnate, and spontaneous displays of love and joy are not looked at suspiciously.  But Jesus refuses, commanding him to return to his friends and attest to his transformation, to bring this miracle into the heart of his community.  He must keep going , re-enter his community, with testimony to this in-breaking of the divine, this joy.  I think Jesus is saying, don’t retreat.  If you just keep going, you will find a way out of the tombs.  And we will be here to weather your grief and your rage, and help you find joy…perhaps with silliness.  I’m ready to keep going, but sometimes I’d just like a paper hat.

In Boston yesterday, someone decided to give away free hugs.  The newspaper said, “After a week of terror, confusion and sorrow, people in the Boston area needed a hug.  At 10 a.m. on April 21, a group of people wearing shirts asking “Do you need a hug?” and “I (heart) Boston” gathered at the Public Garden, offering hugs to any and all who wanted comfort. Davis Square resident Zachary Sciuto said,  “I just held my arms open and looked at people and said ‘Do you want a hug?’ And they just came gave me a hug,” he recalled. “It didn’t feel weird or anything, I don’t know how to explain it. It just felt natural, it felt really good.”