A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul Also
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Dear fellow preachers,
The terrible news about the shuttle Columbia was a shock to all of us, and it will certainly be on your members' minds during worship. Though time is short for getting anything together, we thought we'd share with you a homily addressing the Columbia tragedy that Immediate Word team member George Murphy has prepared for a service tonight, as well as a particularly appropriate poem.
Feel free to use any of it you wish in your own worship and sermon preparation.
A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul Also
by George L. Murphy
Luke 2:22-40
Feast of the Presentation (1-2 February 2003)
"A sword will pierce your own soul also," said the old man. It is a story with an old man and woman -- and a baby. It's the stuff that poems and greeting card pictures are made of, like those New Year's pictures you might have seen a few weeks ago with old Father Time turning things over to the baby representing the New Year on January 1st.
And we're continually reminded of new things. The human race takes further steps on our biggest adventure, the exploration of the universe. We are reaching for the stars - and that is new. There are still people alive who were born before the Wright brothers' first little flight a hundred years ago. And now we're the first people in history who can look up at the moon and say, "Some of us have walked there." Life means moving forward.
And in the midst of life we are in death. "Remember that you are dust, and that to dust you shall return." Without warning today we were plunged into shock at the suddenness of death and destruction. It was the shattering destruction of our finest machines and the best of our men and women as the Columbia came apart on re-entry.
Things no longer seem so new. We are in the midst of the old griefs and questions that the human race has experienced for thousands of years in the presence of death. Graves of prehistoric people show traces of flowers and other things that indicate that some sort of funeral ritual was carried out. Ceremonies surrounding death may be the oldest of all religious rituals. People knew that something mysterious and terrible had happened, and used whatever feeble ceremonies they could devise to appease death and keep it away. Gifts were buried with the dead to provide for them in the next world, and rituals were practiced to keep the spirits of the dead away .
Birth is just as mysterious, so there are a lot of rituals connected with it too. In the Old Testament law a woman had to be "purified" after childbirth so that it would be safe for her to enter a holy place and not be killed. A first-born son had to "bought back" from God so that he wouldn't have to be sacrificed. Ancient ideas ... we might even want to call them "superstitious" or "barbaric" ideas -- but maybe not so remote from us. Maybe if some little engineer's ritual had been done better, perhaps if we'd prayed a little harder for them, the Columbia's crew would still be alive.
And those strange old rituals of purification and redemption are in our Bible. They are out of date -- Christians don't need to "purify" new mothers or buy back their sons. But God doesn't just say, "Forget all that." Here in the Temple, at the place where Abraham was supposed to have bound his son for sacrifice and where David built an altar to appease God's wrath, God does something really new. All the old traditions become just a prologue to the real story in which a baby a few weeks old is carried into the Temple by his parents.
So the baby Jesus is held by old Simeon, just like the new year and Father Time. But that doesn't help much. The new year gets old quickly, and babies grow up and confront death like everyone else. All the astronauts were babies once.
There's something more than a cute baby here, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." All the hopes of glory are summed up in this one child.
"And a sword will pierce your own soul also." This mother will see her son die. The shadow of the cross falls across this happy scene. Some religions offer the cheap comfort that death doesn't really matter, but that is a lie. The destruction of the Columbia again shows that this is not a nice, safe world where everything plays fair and good people are always safe. As with the Challenger disaster, as with 9/11, children have had to grow up fast. Suffering and death are real.
God comes to confront suffering and death as enemies. He becomes one of us in a world of suffering and death. In Gethsemane he shrank back from the horror of the cross, praying to his Father that there might be another way -- but saying, "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done." Death could never be overcome simply by ignoring it: It isn't just a bad dream. And in Jesus Christ, God experiences death. This is a deep mystery -- that the One who lives forever entered into death, once for all, so that we might share in the life of God. Death is real, but it doesn't have the last word.
Words of comfort may help some in a time of tragedy, but God gives us more than that. It isn't a neat solution to all the questions we have about suffering and evil. But God knows about our suffering and death because God has shared it from the inside. The Son of God hung on the cross. God the Father was like those families of astronauts this morning who heard of the deaths of those they loved. That is part of the experience of the God who is always with us in our times of loss.
It is an old, old place where our gospel story takes place -- Mount Zion, where Abraham had thought he would have to sacrifice his son centuries before. Offerings have been made here, battles have been fought, and prayers have been offered. Ancient rituals have been practiced here. And it is here that God is doing something new. It is so new that it still has not really been heard by a world in which people continue to die and to mourn their dead. This child who will die on the cross is the firstfruits of the Resurrection, a promise that is given to the whole world. Already hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah saw God's promise of newness on Mount Zion:
The LORD of hosts ... will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the LORD God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
----------
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The following biographical information on this poem's author is taken from the website http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/276.html
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was an American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was born in Shanghai, China, in 1922, the son of missionary parents, Reverend and Mrs. John Gillespie Magee; his father was an American and his mother was originally a British citizen.
He came to the U.S. in 1939 and earned a scholarship to Yale, but in September 1940 he enlisted in the RCAF and was graduated as a pilot. He was sent to England for combat duty in July 1941.
In August or September 1941, Pilot Officer Magee composed High Flight and sent a copy to his parents. Several months later, on December 11, 1941, his Spitfire collided with another plane over England and Magee, only 19 years of age, crashed to his death.
The terrible news about the shuttle Columbia was a shock to all of us, and it will certainly be on your members' minds during worship. Though time is short for getting anything together, we thought we'd share with you a homily addressing the Columbia tragedy that Immediate Word team member George Murphy has prepared for a service tonight, as well as a particularly appropriate poem.
Feel free to use any of it you wish in your own worship and sermon preparation.
A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul Also
by George L. Murphy
Luke 2:22-40
Feast of the Presentation (1-2 February 2003)
"A sword will pierce your own soul also," said the old man. It is a story with an old man and woman -- and a baby. It's the stuff that poems and greeting card pictures are made of, like those New Year's pictures you might have seen a few weeks ago with old Father Time turning things over to the baby representing the New Year on January 1st.
And we're continually reminded of new things. The human race takes further steps on our biggest adventure, the exploration of the universe. We are reaching for the stars - and that is new. There are still people alive who were born before the Wright brothers' first little flight a hundred years ago. And now we're the first people in history who can look up at the moon and say, "Some of us have walked there." Life means moving forward.
And in the midst of life we are in death. "Remember that you are dust, and that to dust you shall return." Without warning today we were plunged into shock at the suddenness of death and destruction. It was the shattering destruction of our finest machines and the best of our men and women as the Columbia came apart on re-entry.
Things no longer seem so new. We are in the midst of the old griefs and questions that the human race has experienced for thousands of years in the presence of death. Graves of prehistoric people show traces of flowers and other things that indicate that some sort of funeral ritual was carried out. Ceremonies surrounding death may be the oldest of all religious rituals. People knew that something mysterious and terrible had happened, and used whatever feeble ceremonies they could devise to appease death and keep it away. Gifts were buried with the dead to provide for them in the next world, and rituals were practiced to keep the spirits of the dead away .
Birth is just as mysterious, so there are a lot of rituals connected with it too. In the Old Testament law a woman had to be "purified" after childbirth so that it would be safe for her to enter a holy place and not be killed. A first-born son had to "bought back" from God so that he wouldn't have to be sacrificed. Ancient ideas ... we might even want to call them "superstitious" or "barbaric" ideas -- but maybe not so remote from us. Maybe if some little engineer's ritual had been done better, perhaps if we'd prayed a little harder for them, the Columbia's crew would still be alive.
And those strange old rituals of purification and redemption are in our Bible. They are out of date -- Christians don't need to "purify" new mothers or buy back their sons. But God doesn't just say, "Forget all that." Here in the Temple, at the place where Abraham was supposed to have bound his son for sacrifice and where David built an altar to appease God's wrath, God does something really new. All the old traditions become just a prologue to the real story in which a baby a few weeks old is carried into the Temple by his parents.
So the baby Jesus is held by old Simeon, just like the new year and Father Time. But that doesn't help much. The new year gets old quickly, and babies grow up and confront death like everyone else. All the astronauts were babies once.
There's something more than a cute baby here, "a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." All the hopes of glory are summed up in this one child.
"And a sword will pierce your own soul also." This mother will see her son die. The shadow of the cross falls across this happy scene. Some religions offer the cheap comfort that death doesn't really matter, but that is a lie. The destruction of the Columbia again shows that this is not a nice, safe world where everything plays fair and good people are always safe. As with the Challenger disaster, as with 9/11, children have had to grow up fast. Suffering and death are real.
God comes to confront suffering and death as enemies. He becomes one of us in a world of suffering and death. In Gethsemane he shrank back from the horror of the cross, praying to his Father that there might be another way -- but saying, "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done." Death could never be overcome simply by ignoring it: It isn't just a bad dream. And in Jesus Christ, God experiences death. This is a deep mystery -- that the One who lives forever entered into death, once for all, so that we might share in the life of God. Death is real, but it doesn't have the last word.
Words of comfort may help some in a time of tragedy, but God gives us more than that. It isn't a neat solution to all the questions we have about suffering and evil. But God knows about our suffering and death because God has shared it from the inside. The Son of God hung on the cross. God the Father was like those families of astronauts this morning who heard of the deaths of those they loved. That is part of the experience of the God who is always with us in our times of loss.
It is an old, old place where our gospel story takes place -- Mount Zion, where Abraham had thought he would have to sacrifice his son centuries before. Offerings have been made here, battles have been fought, and prayers have been offered. Ancient rituals have been practiced here. And it is here that God is doing something new. It is so new that it still has not really been heard by a world in which people continue to die and to mourn their dead. This child who will die on the cross is the firstfruits of the Resurrection, a promise that is given to the whole world. Already hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah saw God's promise of newness on Mount Zion:
The LORD of hosts ... will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the LORD God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
----------
High Flight
by John Gillespie Magee
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The following biographical information on this poem's author is taken from the website http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/276.html
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was an American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was born in Shanghai, China, in 1922, the son of missionary parents, Reverend and Mrs. John Gillespie Magee; his father was an American and his mother was originally a British citizen.
He came to the U.S. in 1939 and earned a scholarship to Yale, but in September 1940 he enlisted in the RCAF and was graduated as a pilot. He was sent to England for combat duty in July 1941.
In August or September 1941, Pilot Officer Magee composed High Flight and sent a copy to his parents. Several months later, on December 11, 1941, his Spitfire collided with another plane over England and Magee, only 19 years of age, crashed to his death.
