Liturgies

Actor, comedian and writer George Burns whose career successfully spanned Vaudeville, film, radio and television died age 100 in 1996.

George Burns once quipped “The secret of a good homily is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.”

I would like to begin with a good story which hopefully will lead to a good ending without lingering too long in the middle.

I have told this story before but because it illustrates so well what I want to share with you, allow me to use it again.
In a large temple north of Thailand's ancient capital, Sukotai, there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha. Though not the most handsome or refined work of Thai Buddhist art, it had been cared for over a period of five hundred years and had become revered for its sheer longevity. Violent storms, changes of government, and invading armies had come and gone, but the Buddha endured.
At one point, however, the monks who tended the temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair and repainting. After a stretch of particularly hot, dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold! Inside this plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the largest and most luminous gold images of Buddha ever created in Southeast Asia. Now uncovered, the golden Buddha draws throngs of devoted pilgrims from all over the world.

The monks believe that this shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover our innate nobility.

Just as the people of Sukotai had forgotten about the golden Buddha, we too can forget our essential nature.

Today’s Gospel has both John the Baptist and Jesus staring hard at another and then naming what they see in the other. It is like the staring is looking into the very heart or essence of the other, their essential nature.

For John he sees in Jesus who he really is and names his destiny, to be the Lamb of God, sacrificed for a greater cause. For Jesus he sees in Peter (at least in the Gospel writer’s story) who he really is and names his destiny, to be the Rock upon which the church will be built, again according to John’s story.

To see into the heart of another and to see the Beauty and Nobility which is present and to name it and affirm it is one of the greatest gifts we can give to one another. But to take time to see it and stare hard as John and Jesus do in the Gospel.

Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, in an extended time of stillness and being quiet in the midst of a busy city affirms this essential essence in a large group.

He writes. “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time.

There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

 

The people of India have a wonderful greeting by putting their palms together and bowing to another and saying NAMASTE which means “the divine in me honours the divine within you.” Your divinity, your essence is who you really are. I am reminding you by this greeting and how desperately we need to be reminded.

Part of our nature is to forget on a regular basis, or we don’t want to even acknowledge.

Robert Johnson, the noted Jungian analyst, acknowledges how difficult it is for many of us to believe our goodness. We more easily take our worst fears and thoughts to be who we are. He writes that “our belief in a limited and impoverished identity is such a strong habit that without it we are afraid we wouldn’t know how to be. If we fully acknowledged our dignity, it could lead to radical life changes. It could ask something huge of us. And yet some part of us knows that the frightened and damaged self is not who we are. Each of us needs to find our way to be whole and free.”

Being affirmed by another and recognized is often the first step to believing in our inner divinity.

Jack Kornfield in his book THE WISE HEART tells this story about a High School history teacher and her class.

Some years ago, I heard the story of a high school history teacher who knew this same secret. On one particularly fidgety and distracted afternoon she told her class to stop all their academic work. She let her students rest while she wrote on the blackboard a list of the names of everyone in the class. Then she asked them to copy the list. She instructed them to use the rest of the period to write beside each name one thing they liked or admired about that student. At the end of class she collected the papers.

Weeks later, on another difficult day just before winter break, the teacher again stopped the class. She handed each student a sheet with his or her name on top. On it she had pasted all twenty-six good things the other students had written about that person. They smiled and gasped in pleasure that their classmates had notices so many beautiful qualities about them.

Three years later this teacher received a call from the mother of one of her former students. Robert had been a bit of a smart aleck but also one of her favorites. His mother sadly passed on the terrible news that Robert had been killed in the Gulf War. The teacher attended the funeral, where many of Robert’s former friends and high school classmates spoke. Just as the service was ending, Robert’s mother approached her. She took out a worn piece of paper, obviously folded and refolded many times, and said, “This was one of the few things in Robert’s pocket when the military retrieved his body.” It was the paper on which the teacher had so carefully pasted the twenty-six things his classmates had admired.

Seeing this, Robert’s teacher’s eyes filled with tears. As she dried her wet cheeks, another former student standing nearby opened her purse, pulled out her own carefully folded page, and confessed that she always kept it with her. A third ex-student said that his page was framed and hanging in his kitchen; another told how the page had become part of her wedding vows. The perception of goodness invited by this teacher had transformed the hearts of her students in ways she might only have dreamed about.

I would like to live in a world where we can encourage each other, as this teacher did, to look deeply to see our essential nature, our true self, and to see this in others and by acting from this deeper reality, we can bring greater love, compassion and profound respect for all of life. To remember and to keep returning our minds as the 8^th Century Tibetan Book of the Dead so beautifully reminds us, and I will finish with this:

“O Nobly Born, O you of glorious origins, remember your radiant true nature, the essence of mind. Trust it. Return to it. It is home.

Namaste

  Homily 17^th and 18^th January 2015