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            Do you know what I believe is the hardest spiritual truth to grasp? It’s this: God is doing a new thing. Whatever your situation – as a person or group or nation – whatever mess you are in for whatever reason – in the very midst of it, God is doing a new thing. What good news! Why then is this so hard to get?

Jim,

I just read your sermon from January about being ordinary and really enjoyed it.  I've liked the intention of 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable' (which I've heard applied to God, ministers, journalists, psychiatrists...) for a while, and have had it on my mind recently.  I've thought of it as being about finding the leading edge of growth in each person at that moment, which is sometimes about solace and sometimes about disruption.  For me, in this phrase both comforting and afflicting are about transformation through being brought face to face with the unfamiliar.  Comfort is too familiar to the comfortable and affliction too familiar to the afflicted for transformation to take place.  But I've been thinking that it is the surprise inherent in afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted that can startle the receiver into awakening and open him to transformation. 

That is really good! Transformation through the surprise of being brought face to face with the unfamiliar. That is just how God works. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Rather than welcome God’s new thing, we talk about creating “comfort zones” – areas bounded by predictability and familiarity. We don’t want anything new in our comfort zone, thank you. But God is doing a new thing. A surprise - and that comes as a jolt. And we create “affliction zones” as well. There our suffering is, if anything, predictable. We are like the prisoner in the cartoon I once saw, so fiercely clutching the bars of his cell that he doesn’t notice that on the other three sides there are no walls at all. In reality, he is free to walk out. God has done a new and liberating thing, demolished the walls – but it is going unnoticed. Freedom is so unfamiliar as to go unperceived. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:

The world in which we live is a vast cage within a maze, high as our mind, wide as our power of will, long as our life span. Those who have never reached the rails or seen what is beyond the cage know of no freedom to dream of and are willing to rise and fight for civilizations that come and go and sink into the abyss of oblivion, an abyss which they never fill.

            Lois and I traveled for twelve days in the Northeast of Brazil with a group of ten. All except us were Brazilians, only one of them spoke fluent English, and our guides lectured in Portuguese. Lois can get by pretty well in the language and I, barely at all. (I do know some essential phrases: like asking for directions to the men’s room, and how to order a caipirinha, the Brazilian national cocktail). When you are thrust into a very different culture you indeed are brought “face to face with the unfamiliar” - that is, knocked out of your comfort zone. Most of my little coping strategies were useless – my jokes, my theological analysis, the accumulated wisdom and brilliance of my sixty-four years. No good. But, still, God was doing a new thing in this.  As our little launch puttered down a tropical river and our guide explained the local flora and fauna in a language not mine, I was left helpless with no alternative but – to enjoy the beauty of it all. Just to sit and be aware – of the breeze on my face, the sounds of the buzzing insects, the perfumed fragrance of the lush vegetation. What a surprise! What a gift!

            An amusing aspect of this trip had to do with the fact that in Portuguese pronunciation words that end in the letter “m” are pronounced as if they end in the sound “ng.” This meant that I was not addressed as Jim but as “Jing.” So I was in a new zone of reality and had a new name to go along with it. At the end of our time together it was pointed out to me that my name (Jing) is pronounced exactly the same as the word gin. (G-I-N). And, as a group, they had decided that my real name should not be Jing but Caipirinha.

            Another traveler in Brazil during our time there was President Bush. It is definitely an uncanny feeling to find oneself in a foreign country and watching street demonstrations protesting your president’s visit on local TV. Our Brazilian friends were amused, and a little appalled, by the size of the Bush security retinue – which included some two hundred vehicles, all food and water, and thousands of personnel. Quite an encapsulated comfort zone. Many Brazilians know a lot about American popular culture and American politics. And, I am sorry to say, they know considerably more than we do about the ways that the U.S. has unhelpfully meddled in their national affairs – such as, in the case of Brazil, aiding and abetting a ugly twenty-year long military dictatorship, one that began with the open encouragement of President Lyndon B. Johnson and ended only when the students and workers rose up against it.

            One can apply what Rabbi Heschel said about our perceptual world being a vast cage to our American national consciousness. It is hard for Americans to conceive of anything higher than our minds can conceive, wider then our range of power and will, or longer in consequence than our 231 year national life span. I learned at my father’s knee that everybody in the world longed to come to America and enjoy our freedoms and our prosperity. We were the beacon of goodness and righteousness found nowhere else. But, after a modest amount of world travel, I still find myself ashamed of my amazement when I come across people who actually love their home countries, don’t want to live anywhere else, don’t want to impose their way of life on their neighbors, and don’t like being told they need to shape up by nations that know little about them. There is much to criticize in a country like Brazil – and Brazilians do it quite candidly. Poverty is wide-spread, corruption is rampant, the rule of law is frequently ignored, and the lasting impact of slavery and Portuguese imperialism is huge. And yes, there is tremendous internal violence. And, at the same time, it is interesting to note that in its 185 year history since independence, Brazil has never invaded another country, is truly one of the most multi-cultural nations on earth, provides free AIDS drugs to everyone in need of them, and is well on the road to total energy self-sufficiency.

            We are now approaching Holy Week. The story from John’s Gospel connects us with the Passion Story. Jesus is staying with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus outside Jerusalem in Bethany. The next day will mark Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem – Palm Sunday. Their hosts are serving dinner to Jesus and several of his disciples. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, Mary took some rich and perfumed oil and anointed Jesus’ feet, wiping them with her hair. And “the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.” Hers was an amazing and unexpected gesture of profound devotion and generosity. It surely must have caught everyone by surprise. I am struck how John stresses that “the house was filled with the fragrance of perfume.” That is what it is like when something surprising and beautiful happens. This fragrance created a whole new zone of being. Judas snarls and tries to put the incident in a bad light. But, as always, acts of beauty and generosity lay bare the hearts of all onlookers, for good or ill.

            But Jesus response’ to him is, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Let me close with two thoughts about Jesus’ words. First, he is saying that such surprising generosity can be counted on to always care for the poor. He is in no way saying that it is in God’s scheme of things that there be poverty. Second, Jesus sets Mary’s act in the context of what is to come. It is a prefiguring of the customary anointing at death in preparation for burial. But instead of evoking grief, this perfumed fragrance evokes heaven itself. Not sadness, but joy. Hell is a cage. Heaven is open fragrant space.

            Rabbi Heschel said that the world we create for ourselves is a cage – a cage bounded by three limiting factors – the limits of our minds, our power, and our life span. In the cage of our existence, we cannot conceive of or grasp the mysteries beyond our death. Yet somehow Jesus is saying that this anointing is a joyous taste of something that is to come. And what is to come will be good. God is saying, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” You and I are more than our limited minds, more than our feeble power in this world, and more than our brief life spans. More what? More life. Amen.

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