Veteran's Sunday 1998

As a child, I read about people who believed that by rubbing a stone on their warts, the malady could be discarded when the stone was cast away. "How stupid," I thought, in my third-grade Eurocentric arrogance.

One thing I've learned since is not to dismiss the concepts I've found in other religions, but to come to them with profound respect and a recognition that the ideas and rituals speak to the very heart of my own being, and in fact are themselves central to the faith I embrace and practice, though adorned with centuries of Christian spirituality and tradition.

This practice of transferring evil, sickness, and sin from the afflicted to something else, be it an inanimate object, an animal or another human is found around the world, in both Native traditions and in most of the major world religions. In southern India a village practice is to lay hands upon a calf while reciting a litany of sins upon the animal, which is then driven into the wilderness, carrying with it the people's sins. This is nearly identical to the Israelite ritual found in the Torah concerning the scapegoat, and, similarly, Muslims in the Middle Ages rid themselves of plague by leading a camel through the village and then sacrificing it in a sacred place. In India a holy man, for a certain fee, will bear the sins of another and exile himself to take them away forever. This is a central concept in Christianity, where Jesus, the divine scapegoat or lamb, willingly bore our sins himself.

It is not uncommon in Native religions for a sickness to be borne away by another. A Celtic healer may take the sickness upon herself to the relief of the afflicted. (In fact, a woman, Agnes Sampson was put to death for just such a ministry in 1590.)

What do we make of such a ministry today? Is this superstition? Are such occasions miracles? Can they actually occur?

A story is told of the famous Oxford apologist, C.S. Lewis, whose wife was suffering so terribly from terminal cancer that she was unable to rest. Lewis, it is said, took and bore her pain for an hour, himself experiencing the agony of the disease while his wife sank into a much needed sleep.

I was incredulous upon hearing this story for the first time, until I came across the work of the great Anglican mystic and author Charles Williams, who, in his novel Descent Into Hell, describes a character who offers to carry the paranoid fear of a young woman so that she might have the strength to face what she must. The young woman rejects his bizarre offer, humiliated, "Would I push my burden on to anybody else?" she replies. "Not if you insist on making a universe for yourself," she is answered. "If you want to disobey and refuse the laws that are common to us all, if you want to live in pride and division and anger, you can. But if you will be part of the best of us, and live and laugh and be ashamed with us, then you must be content to be helped." As the novel continues, she finally consents and is so overwhelmed with the grace of her surrender that she herself mystically travels to the aid of an ancestor several hundred years past at his martyrdom, and bears much of his pain as he is burned at the stake. So she had entered into communion. She can receive, and also willingly and in love, bear the pain of others.

Williams calls this the "theology of exchange," and takes it as obvious that this principle is operative at every level of life. The plants and animals we eat exchange their lives for ours. Parents willingly and usually without thinking, exchange their freedom or enjoyment for the safety and well-being of their children.

These are small, everyday events, but no less effective avenues of exchange for all their mundanity. The principle is also operative on grander scales, as you might expect. Perhaps the greatest example of this theology is what soldiers do for their countries, and for each other, on the battlefield.

In preparation for this sermon, I went to see Steven Spielberg's new film, "Saving Private Ryan." The main plot of this film involves a mother from Iowa whose four sons are all on the front lines in World War II. Inexplicably, three of her four sons die almost simultaneously, and the fourth, private Ryan, is lost behind enemy lines. Apparently the army has a policy that parents will not lose all of their children in battle, and so a special squad is sent into occupied France to find Private Ryan and escort him safely home.

When they finally find him, Private Ryan is indignant, and refuses to return, "These are my brothers, now," he says, "and I am not going to abandon them." He then blanches when he is informed that the squad had already lost two men just trying to find him. Before the movie is done, nearly everyone from the special squad is killed, for the sake of one Private's life.

Now, it is no secret that my generation is disillusioned with war, and in my opinion with good reason. The war we grew up on was the farce that was Vietnam. But "Saving Private Ryan" belongs to a different era, the era of a the just war, when young men were putting their lives on the line, not for the sake of corporate profits, but for the very freedom of the world. World War II was not an optional war, but a conflict to decide the fate of the earth.

Charles Williams wrote during this war, and in fact, moved from London to Oxford during the worst of the air raids. He was profoundly affected by the news reports he read of England's youngest and finest willingly putting their own bodies between the enemy and the people they loved back home. They exchanged their life, and health, and freedom for the life, health and freedom of the nation they loved, for the sake of their families, for the sake of love. This, surely, is the ultimate example of the theology of exchange, and to Williams - who believed in the sacrificial atonement of Christ - these young men were, by their actions, participating in the sacrifice of Jesus. Much as a tree participates in the Platonic form of treeness, these soldiers participated in the Platonic ideal of exchange, of one life as a ransom for many, of one life carrying the burdens of so many, many others.

Fortunately, not all of those who bore this burden did so at the cost of their own lives, but on this Sunday, even while we thank and honor those still living among us who risked their lives for the sake of our own, we also take a special time of silence to remember those whose sacrifice was total. "Greater love hath no one," Jesus says, "than the one who lays down his life for his friends." Today, we honor this great love, and as we bless the veterans in this community, we extend this blessing and our gratitude to the fallen.

In this way, we honor and receive their gifts, for exchange as the young woman in Williams' novel discovers, is a two-way street. It may be freely given, but it must also be freely received to be efficacious. "If you will be part of the best of us, and live and laugh and be ashamed with us, then you must be content to be helped," Williams says. We cannot truly enjoy our freedom if we do not acknowledge and receive the astounding price paid to purchase such freedom. How can we receive it if we do not know? And how can we pass it on if we do not know the stories? And how are we to be moved to do likewise if we do not experience the almost crushing sense of gratitude that such a precious and costly price was paid for each of us?

I must admit that I thought of Williams' theology of exchange as just so much interesting fantasy until I myself was almost paralyzed by fear of an impending event when I was in college. A friend noticed my suffering, and in all sincerity, offered to receive my disabling worry, and to carry it as long as I needed. I laughed nervously, incredulously, "This isn't some novel," I replied, "This is real life." He insisted that he was willing to share my burden of worry. I was amazed that I was clinging so desperately to this affliction. So I confronted myself, and in a few seconds I was able to let it go. "Okay," I said to my friend, "Please help me." Instantly a wave passed over me, and the burden was lessened. My friend had indeed helped me and enabled me to meet my fear with courage.

It all seemed terribly primitive to my "enlightened" intellect at the time, but I eventually had to reconcile myself to the fact that I do indeed believe in miracles, and in at least one sense, I do believe in sacrifice. Just as importantly, I am now willing to be an agent of such healing grace, now that I have experienced it firsthand. Why is such a phenomenon so incredible to us? Whether we want to admit it or not, we have all experienced this miracle: in our families, in our work, on the battlefield; we carry the pain of others, and we do it with love.

When in Paul's epistle he exhorts us to "bear each other's burdens" we should perhaps take him more literally. It is natural for us to exhibit compassion-"suffering with"-towards one another, and to accept such kindness and communion. We may be the instruments of grace and profound healing to one another. The witness of our tradition and the wisdom of so many of our sister faiths, and the experience of our mundane lives, and the loud testimony of our veterans, and of the fallen, all speak this to us, that we may indeed "bear each other's burdens." And there is a world around us groaning with the weight. Amen.

Let us pray:

Holy and generous God, you who went Shadrak, Meshak and Abednigo into the fiery furnace, you who carries us in our hardest times, and does not abandon us to the grave, look upon us your servants with grace, and give us the eyes to see the law of love and the principle of exchange in our daily lives. Help us to remember with gratitude those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom, and to be inspired to bear each other's burdens even in the smallest of ways. For we ask this in the name of one who gave his life and his ministry so that we may live, even Jesus Christ. Amen.