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New Testament Reading—Ephesians 4: 1-7 and 11-13
For her fourth birthday, Rachel Naomi Remen’s grandfather gave her a story as a gift. Remen’s grandfather was an orthodox rabbi who adhered to a mystical tradition within Judaism known as Kabbalah, so the story was a Kabbalist story about the beginnings of the universe. Remen refers to it as the story of the world’s birthday. The story goes as follows: In the beginning, there was only darkness, and from this darkness emerged a great ray of light. This great light was contained is vessels, but soon an accident occurred, and the vessels broke. The light of the world scattered into countless shards of light. These fragments of light fell everywhere. They fell into every event and every person, and to this day, they remain hidden all over the world. According to Remen’s grandfather, the entirety of the “human race is a response to this accident.” Humans are born with the ability to find this hidden light, to lift it up, to make it visible once more, and to thereby restore the world to its original wholeness. In essence, our purpose as humans is to mend the world, to repair it, to heal it. We can only do this task collectively, but each of us has a part to play in it.
Christianity can be thought of in similar terms. The great light of Christ came into this world, and this light made us aware of God’s presence in the world. As our scripture says, it is this God “who is above all and through all and in all.” When Jesus died, it was as if the great light went out only for us to discover that we each hold a piece of the light and that our calling isn’t just to burn bright all by ourselves but it’s to join with other bright lights seeking to restore the great light that once was. We might say that our scripture refers to the pieces of light that each of us has as the gifts that Christ left for us. These are the gifts that enabled some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some pastors and teachers. We each try to shine our light in our own way, but we all join together as one giant constellation of lights known as the Body of Christ.
I like to think that we recognize saints by how bright their light shines, by the extent to which they live out their calling from God, so when I hear Remen’s story about the shards of light, I think about how there are a zillion of pieces of light out there, and so there are a zillion different ways for us to be saints. We don’t all have to be like Mother Teresa. We just have to find the light that is in us and seek to unite our light with the light that’s all around us. Remen suggests that one way to connect with the light around us and the work of mending the world is to focus on who we touch on our way through life as well as who touches us. Remen contrasts this focus with the focus on how much wealth one accumulates. I wouldn’t be surprised that if most people were to reflect on this they would find themselves drawn more to focusing on touching other people’s lives and being touched in return. I don’t think most people want to be some stereotypical scrooge counting his pennies. Yet, what would happen if this same group of people were to compare how much time they spend on a weekly basis thinking about their own material desires and financial goals with how much time they spend thinking of ways to touch the lives of others? Would their actual lives be different than their ideals? In their actual lives, would they find the scales tipped toward the material and financial? Perhaps, saints are simply people who have managed to shift their thinking in the other direction, and perhaps part of what enables them to do that is a religious community that provides continual reminders of what truly matters. In other words, maybe our light grows brighter simply by virtue of being around other lights.
One of the discoveries that Remen made later in life is that its not just our modern focus on material gain that distracts us from the spiritual and from our finding light in this world. As a young doctor, she noticed a growing gap from the world of religion that her grandfather inhabited and the world of medical science in which she worked. She became attuned to how an emotional and spiritual wall often existed between doctors and patients. Doctors frequently lost the sense that they were even touching their patient’s lives in any way other than the surgeries they performed and the pills they prescribed. At the same time, the converse was also true. These same doctors became insulated from having their own lives touched by their patients.
One of Remen’s experiences illustrates this. Long before it was a common practice, Remen began running cancer support groups because she realized that the needs of patients were not being adequately met by the medical model of her time. In one of these support groups, there was a refugee from East Germany named Dieter. Dieter told the group of how he suspected that his chemotherapy “was no longer helping him.” He had suggested to his doctor that they stop the treatments. Still, he wanted to come meet with the doctor every week to simply talk. This might seem like an odd request today, but I think we have to remember that this was in the days before hospice when people had even less in the way of emotional support in facing illness and their own mortality. As you might expect, the doctor was not keen on the idea of weekly meetings to talk. In a cold, abrupt manner, he informed Dieter that if he refused treatment, then there was nothing more he could do for him. As a result, Dieter decided to continue with the weekly treatments just “to have those few moments of connection and understanding with his doctor.” In a soft voice, Dieter confided to his group saying, “My doctor’s love is as important to me as his chemotherapy, but he doesn’t know.”
As it turned out, Remen also happened to counsel Dieter’s doctor who suffered from chronic depression. The doctor would tell her about how “no one cared about him, [how] he didn’t matter to anyone, [how] he was just another white coat in the hospital, a mortgage payment to his wife, a tuition check to his son. No one would notice if he vanished, as long as someone was there to make rounds or take out the garbage.” And here is the sad irony of the story. The doctor could have had his very own needs met by the patient whose needs he couldn’t see and whose needs he didn’t even know he was meeting every week. Perhaps the story of Dieter and his doctor shows another reason why it’s important to connect with someone else’s light. Maybe one of the secrets of saints is that they are able to do what they do precisely because they are both feeding others and being fed in return.
I believe one of the ways we are fed is through stories, and it’s through the passing along of stories that we often are able to then feed others. The story of the light shattering into a zillion pieces has been passed from Remen’s grandfather to her and from her to countless other people. On a radio show, a host once brought up this story and how she had shared it with her seven year old son. Her son had listened to her with rapt attention, and at the end said, “I like that.” Long after Remen’s grandfather was gone—63 years to be exact—he was still touching lives. Every now and then a saint’s life can have that incredible kind of far reaching impact. The glow of their light can keep shining long after he or she has left this life.
Remen tells another story about a birthday gift her grandfather gave her that I think is worthy of being passed along and that might offer another clue as to how one becomes a saint. For her fourth birthday, Remen’s grandfather brought her a little paper cup full of dirt. She was disappointed with the gift and let him know that. In response, he simply smiled and then turned to pick up a small teapot from her doll’s tea set. He took her to the kitchen and filled it up with water. They went back into the nursery. He set the cup on the windowsill and gave Remen the teapot. He then said, “If you promise to put some water in the cup every day, something may happen.” Remen did as she was told, but as the days passed, she found it harder and harder to keep up the task. At one point, she tried to give the cup back to her grandfather, but he simply told her she had to keep it up everyday. With much effort, she did just that, and eventually she woke up one morning and there she saw two small green leaves sprouting out of the soil. She was amazed by what she saw, and everyday she watched the plant grow bigger and bigger. When she saw her grandfather again, she told him all about it thinking that he would be just as surprised. He wasn’t. The grandfather then explained to her how life was everywhere and how it was “hidden in the most ordinary and unlikely places.” Remen was excited by this, and asked, “And all it needs is water, Grandpa?” Her grandfather touched her gently on top of her head, and said, “No…All it needs is your faithfulness.”
With the faithfulness of saints, may we discover the light that is all around us. May we find it here in this church, and may we find it in the most ordinary and unlikely places. Amen.