Community United Methodist Church
“One Hand Clapping”
1 Peter 1:17-23
April 6, 2008
Native American Sunday
“Whoever is on a journey towards God goes from one beginning to another beginning. Will you be among those who dare to tell themselves: ‘Begin again! Leave discouragement behind! Let your soul live!’” –Brother Roger of Taize
Huston Smith—Religion begins with the experience of things that are invisible. This gives rise to symbols “as the mind tries to think about invisible things” (p. 340). Because symbols are ambiguous, the mind introduces thoughts to resolve these ambiguities and systematize them.
Smith defines theology as “the systematization of thoughts about the symbols that religious experience gives rise to” (p. 340).
The direct experience of God, direct experience of Jesus, the encounter on the road to Emmaus—it’s not what we believe that counts, but that we open ourselves to experience God, and share that experience with others along the road.
Have you asked yourself recently, What happened with Easter? Has nothing changed in our world? The psalmist speaks for us—O Lord, I feel stuck in the mud; but still, from the bottom of the pit, I will give thanks to you.
“1 Peter says: we know who we are and whose we are because we experience Jesus present in the way we live with one another.” Awaken p. 38.
We are redeemed, not to get stuck only talking about theology, but to experience the love of God in our lives, and to live as the love of God alive and present to other people.
What does the experience of Jesus in your life accomplish? Are you left feeling hopeless, confused, and unloved? Or are you left feeling all powerful, that all things are possible, overwhelmed with graced and love?
There is a famous Zen koan (philosophical riddle) which asks, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" The student of Zen is supposed to meditate on this riddle until some degree of insight or enlightenment occurs. The tricky part is that there is no right answer. What you are, or what you know, or what you believe, is what you get.
Writer Anne Lamott tells the story of a woman who answered the riddle of one hand clapping in her own way. (“One Hand Clapping” Annie Lamott, Plan B p. 205)
Anne, a different Anne, was sitting in the front row, with her husband Dwight. You couldn't miss her: She had only one hand.
Anne had gone through treatment for breast cancer. She was clearly brilliant, an activist, and a passionate Christian. She spoke from her heart about her own needs, and the world's children, and American politics. But she was too intense, and sometimes I wondered if perhaps she was a little cuckoo. Sometimes she sounded like a mad Old Testament prophet, beseeching us to feed the starving people of the world, and save the rain forests. She waved her stump for emphasis, or testimony. She waved it when she sang. She was like your craziest aunt, the religious one, with funny eyes, who drinks.
Anne Lamott tried to keep her distance and make her understand that they were church family, not friends. But little by little, Anne Lamott let the other Anne into her heart. She was so odd, but also courageous, and dear, kind and feisty, and very tender toward the children of the church school.
One Sunday last year during the Prayers of the People, the other Anne announced tearfully that her cancer had returned, and she'd been given only a few months to live. She and Dwight had decided against any more chemo, had decided to trust God's grace and love to see her through.
Because she needed stronger pain medicine, her prayers grew longer and stranger, but she was not afraid of much. Her message was always the same: God still loved the world, all evidence to the contrary, and we must not give up on God. The light still shone in the darkness, and the darkness had not overcome it.
Then one Sunday she came to our one-room classroom, which has kids ranging in age from 5 years old to teens. She asked each of the kids their names, and then, if any of them had noticed anything unusual about her. There was a polite silence. The children shook their heads with puzzled looks, until one kid all but smote his forehead, and said, "Oh! You mean the hand!" She nodded.
She let them examine it, up close. She showed them the scar tissue where she'd had the surgery as a baby. She told them her story. Her mother had been a chemist for the military in WWII, helping develop chemical weapons, and even though several of her colleagues had given birth to children with defects, her mother couldn't cope with Anne's. She was disgusted by the stump, and always arranged Anne in family pictures so that it didn't show. Anne called it her paw.
She told them how she learned to pass as normal, as whole, to do so many amazing things that it took the attention off her body. "I was a good student, a terrific pianist. And such a good girl. But I was very lonely. My mother found me disgusting. And no one wanted to hold my hand. I was all alone. Until one day, Jesus came into my great loss. Into that emptiness."
It happened when Anne was 6 or so. She was sitting in her bedroom on her rocking chair, when she suddenly noticed a baby's face in the scar tissue. She wrapped the end of her arm in a scarf, swaddling it, so only the features in the scar tissue showed. "It looked like a doll," she told the children. "And she was looking at me. And I felt Jesus looking up at me, from inside the baby. And he was saying, 'I'm sorry it turned out this way, but you are whole in my eyes.' I found in Jesus a real mother. Now I have cancer again, and I'm getting weak. Soon I'll be like a little child. I won't be able to walk, and I'll be totally dependent. But Dwight has promised to take care of me every step of the way. So at last I'm getting to have the earthly experience of being a small, cherished child.
"But having this paw made me notice how much suffering there is in the world. It makes me ask, what's that suffering about? The suffering means nothing, is the answer. But the answer is also that I couldn't look away from it. I saw that God wanted me to help alleviate the suffering. And that has given me peace."
Anne came to church nine days before she died. She asked us to pray for Dwight and herself as her life ended. They were teary but calm.
Dwight called me a few days later. Anne was still alive, and she needed a favor. She had asked the funeral home to deliver the box in which her body would be carried away for cremation, so she could get comfortable with this last piece of her death, but in the meantime, it made her terribly afraid. She wanted the children of our church to decorate it for her.
We asked the parents' permission, and when the kids came to church the next Sunday, we commissioned several dozen paintings. They painted angels, and bridges to heaven, with her cats waiting for her on the other side. The little ones made stick figures of Jesus, cats, hearts and Power Rangers; the older ones wrote messages beside their drawings, telling Anne not to be afraid. Then the next day some of us grown-ups from church drove to her house in the woods to paste the art onto her casket. We would take turns sitting on the bed with her, singing, praying out loud. She was as stripped down to nothing as you can be while still breathing, like a plant, or a yogi, barely able to open her eyes, but she smiled a few times.
We had a beautiful memorial
Amen.
