Cracks can be made beautiful
Who is Jesus speaking to in today’s Gospel reading? The young man. The disciples. But surely he’s also speaking to us! The young man today thought he had it all, and he just wanted Jesus to confirm that he had it all. How often do we also look to others or to religion to confirm our preferences and prejudices?
Once upon a time a man approached the rabbi who was learned and wise, saying: “Rabbi, I don’t want to boast but I consider myself a devout and learned Jew. I have been through the Talmud three times in my studies!” The rabbi smiled back at him, nodding, and said: “Admirable. Admirable. But my friend, I have a question for you. How much of the Talmud has been through you?”
I found this story in the book, Send my Roots Rain, by Megan McKenna, which is full of wonderful stories like this one.
The rabbi’s question is for us too. How much of the Gospel has been through you, through me, through the church? How many times do we hear warnings about the climate and the environment? Do we listen, do we care? The Ecumenical Patriarch has set aside September 1st to pray for the environment every year. Nice, but has it become just another day in the Orthodox calendar? The Orthodox Church has wisely treated the Book of Revelation with caution because it is so open to misuse. So we never read it in any of our services. But the imagery and language of Revelation have penetrated our tradition, even the Liturgy. Look up at the Pantokrator in our ceiling. The words inscribed around the image of Christ are Chapter One, Verse 8 of the Book of Revelation! Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ ἄ καὶ τὸ ὦ, λέγει κύριος, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὁ παντοκράτωρ.
Many people like to talk about the Book of Revelation. But have you ever heard any of them quote Revelation 11:18? I’m sure you haven’t. “The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth.” The time has come, the voices in heaven cry out – the time for God to judge the dead and to destroy those who destroy the earth. Fearful words. Do we care? Should we perhaps stop talking about the earth, since no one cares? Here’s another story McKenna tells:
Once upon a time an old Buddhist monk went to the town square every day to cry out for peace with justice and for an end to hostility and anger. His cries were ignored and had absolutely no effect on his country’s violence or the hatred and petty selfish lives of his neighbors. After a while the other monks were embarrassed for him and they begged him to stop, saying that he was having no effect and that people thought he was senile or crazy. They told him, “No one cares what you say. They don’t even listen to you anymore. There’s still fear and war, selfishness, greed and killing. Why go on?” He looked his fellow monks right in the eye and answered: “I cry out for peace and justice so that I will not go insane!”
Some of us just have to continue speaking truth so we don’t go insane in the midst of lies that everything is okay, nothing to worry about, nothing to be alarmed about. I don’t know, but I get alarmed when I read today’s Gospel story. It will be easier for a camel to go through the eyes of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven? Wow, that’s pretty discouraging. It doesn’t fit the lies that people prefer to believe. The young man walks away from the vision of life that Jesus offered. The disciples are shocked – and so are we. Who then can be saved? Ah! With God all things are possible. There’s that glimmer of hope that Jesus liked to inject when things looked hopeless. With God all things are possible.
Mark’s version of the story gives us one little detail that Matthew and Luke left out: Jesus looked at the young man and loved him – Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἐμβλέψας αὐτῷ ἠγάπησεν αὐτὸν. Jesus loved him. That’s the key that opens the door I spoke about last week, and I want to finish like Jesus did, with an open door to God’s mercy. I wanted to prevent going off in more negative directions, that’s why I chose to use stories from Megan McKenna’s book, just to keep me from being too preachy today. Here’s another good story that spoke to me. Perhaps to you also.
Once upon a time there was a king who ruled a small kingdom. It wasn’t great or powerful. But the king did have a diamond, a great perfect diamond that had been in his family for generations. He kept it on display for all to see and appreciate. People came from all over to admire and gaze at it. Soon the people felt the diamond was theirs; it gave them a sense of pride, of dignity, of worth.
The diamond was guarded day and night, but one day it was found with a crack right through the middle. Immediately the king summoned all the jewelers of the land and had them look at the diamond. One after another they examined it and gave the bad news to the king: the diamond could not be repaired. The king was crushed, as were the people.
Then out of nowhere came an old man who claimed to be a jeweler. He asked to see the diamond. After examining it, he looked up and confidently told the king, “I can fix it. In fact, I can make it better than it was before. Give me the jewel, and in a week I’ll bring it back fixed.” Now, the king was not about to let the diamond out of his sight, so he gave the old man a room, all the tools and food and drink he needed, and he waited. The whole kingdom waited.
At the end of the week the old man appeared with the stone in his hand and gave it to the king. The king couldn’t believe his eyes. It was magnificent. The old man had fixed it, and he had made it even better than it was before! He had used the crack that ran through the middle of the stone as a stem and carved an intricate rose, with leaves and thorns, into the diamond. It was exquisite.
The king was overjoyed and offered the old man half of his kingdom. But the old man refused in front of everyone, saying, “All I did was to take something flawed and cracked at its heart and turn it into something beautiful.”
Dear friends, we are all flawed. There is a crack in every one of us. There is a crack in the Church, the Country; and there is a crack in the Earth. But God creates beautiful new things from cracks. If we would only listen and allow Christ’s words and love to go through us and heal the cracks. Until that happens, some of us will continue to speak so we don’t go insane. You can speak too, so you don’t go insane in an insane world.