One
of the most poignant and truly heart-wrenching scenes I’ve ever run across in
literature occurs right near the end of the novel by Richard Llewellyn called How Green Was My Valley when the last of
the sons of the large Morgan family leave their dying coal-mining valley in
South Wales and say goodbye to their mother. Their future has collapsed there as
the mining industry has gone belly-up and a huge slag heap has crept down the
mountainside, threatening everyone’s way of life. What used to be so green and
full of life is now gray and covered with coal dust. Beth and her husband
Gwilym have watched their family’s way of life erode within one generation and
their children start looking to other places for better opportunities. By the
end of the novel, each son of the Morgan family has reached the conclusion that
in order to have a future they must leave the valley. Of course, this is the
1920s and decades before anything like Facetime or Skype. You realize Beth
Morgan will likely never see from her sons again, or maybe even hear their
voice.
The
scene I’m talking about comes right after the last two sons leave when Huw, who
is the only son who had the benefit of a school education, attempts to comfort
his forlorn mother by getting down an altas and showing her where all her
children are. He takes a pencil and draws lines from Wales to each of the
places they’ve settled: two in America, one in New Zealand, one in Germany, another
in South Africa. She meanwhile sits there, mending socks to distract her
grieving mind, and doesn’t even put on her glasses to look at the map her son is
placing in front of her. A person who hasn’t really read much and had had no
reason to be familiar with maps and atlases Beth says it just looks like he’s
drawn a big spider.
“‘One line from us to Owen
and Gwil,’ I said, pointing it for her. ‘Down here to Angharad [his sister].
Over there to Ianto, and down by here to Davy and Wyn. You are like the Mother
of a star, Mama. From this house, shining all that way across the continents
and oceans.’”
‘All that way,’ my mother
said. ‘Goodness gracious, boy, how far, then, if they can have it all on a
little piece of paper?’
‘Only a map, it is, Beth,’
my father said, and a wink to me to be quiet. ‘A picture, see, to show you
where they are.’
‘They are in the house,’ my
mother said, flat. ‘And no old pictures, and spiders with a pencil, if you
please.’”[1]
I
find it heart-breaking ever time I read it, the grief of the mother as strong
as her denial as to where they actually are. She has watched her children grow
up around her only to see them scatter, the unity of the family she has
sacrificed to maintain broken forever. No matter how Huw tries to spin it, she
can’t see her heritage like a bright star beaming across the world. It’s an
ugly spider crawling across a piece of paper. This is just a scene from a story
and yet I know is real and has happened millions of times before throughout
time—and still today—as children leave their mothers and fathers and hometowns to
stake out a better living elsewhere.
I
think of Beth Morgan and all parents and children on a day like this, but not
because it’s Mother’s Day, but because it is the Sunday after Jesus’ Ascension,
the Seventh Sunday of Easter. I think about families because in the words of
our gospel lesson this morning Jesus sounds like a mom who is pleading for the
children to stay close to home but knows they won’t and they can’t.
All
this time the disciples have lived in a glorious valley—they’ve “grown up”
around him, seen him perform marvelous signs and heard his teachings. And he’s
cared for them, often like a shepherd. He’s washed their feet, fed them with
bread and wine and loaves and fishes. He has prayed for their protection from
the Evil One. But now it’s reached a crucial hour and the valley is growing
dark. It’s the night before Passover, and Jesus is disengaging a bit, maybe
darning socks over in the corner now, losing himself in prayer, almost as if he
knows the disciples are going to be scattered, their tight community broken
apart.
This,
too, is a moving, heart-wrenching scene, for we hear it now not quite as they
did then. At the time, they were unsure of what would come—the cross, the
death, then the resurrection and the doubting—and so they likely listen in to
this conversation with some wonder and pride. Jesus is praying for their
future, for the wholeness of their fellowship and community, no matter what
lies ahead. They are listening to Jesus pray to the Father on their behalf.
However,
now we hear it after all of those things have taken place. Jesus still prays
it, and we can’t help but think about the way in which his followership has, in
fact, been fragmented. There is some regret when we hear this, as we realize
that the last thing Jesus prays to his Father for is for the strength and
solidarity of our life together. Such a selfless man! And yet we have often
been so selfish, not tending to the unity and cohesion of his life like he
prays we will. Jesus’ final words on the night before his death are hopeful and
powerful but they should haunt us to some degree especially when we look out at
how his followers often treat each other in the world. They should chasten us for
the ways in which we have let Christianity be turned into a private,
individualized religion.
Discipleship
in Christ is about togetherness, about serving as a team, although teams are
usually in competition against other teams and Jesus never talks like that. Jesus
never pits us against any other group, as if part of our witness is attacking
or insulting other faith traditions. But he does speak about how we are to get
along with each other and how it will be a critical component of living as one
of his own in the world.
Here’s
the thing: Jesus doesn’t want us to be one because it’s good for us, although
it is. Jesus doesn’t pray for our unity because sticking together is such a
beneficial thing for our sake. There
are plenty of organizations that hold up unity in this way, like military
units, the a football team, and even families. In those communities thinking
and acting as one is helpful or even critical because it helps everyone survive
or get something done.
Jesus,
by contrast, wants us to be one because it’s good for God. Jesus prays for
unity because he knows the quality of our life together says something not
about us but about the Father and Jesus, and Jesus is concerned about how God
is perceived in the world. Our relationships with each other reflect the character
of God—a character that is reconciling, a character that sacrifices self in
order to forgive and renew. That’s because the church is not really an
organization, with values and traditions and objectives. The church of Jesus
Christ is an organism. We are a body that seeks to present the life of a
person, crucified and risen, to the world.
Furthermore,
our unity turns out to be our greatest tool for witness. Jesus doesn’t just pray
to his Father on behalf of his current disciples. He prays on behalf of those
who will come to believe in him through our word. Our commitments to remain in
dialogue with one another even when we’ve hurt one another, our ability to work
through tension and discord, our capacity for forgiveness by the power of the
Holy Spirit will all be huge factors—in fact, will be the greatest factor—in
our attempts to reach other people with the love of Christ, no matter how far
we get flung.
Pastor
Joseph and I got a taste this week of just how far-flung our own community is
in this region. Realizing that just about every week we have people drive from
at least six different counties to worship with us and take part in our
ministries, on Thursday, the Ascension of our Lord, we took off from here and beat
the bounds, driving as close to the perimeter of Epiphany’s territory as we
could. Beating the bounds is an old church tradition from England that has long
since died out here, if it ever even was really practiced. When we initially planned
this, the original intent was just to get us outside of the church’s four walls
for a day and give us a better appreciation for what was going on out there. It
also might have been an excuse for eating out at a few places and ending at a
brewery, but that’s neither here nor there.
Whatever
it was supposed to be, it turned out to be more joyful than I’d reckoned. Never
in my planning of this event did I anticipate just how neat it would be to walk
into a Panera Bread or a Starbucks and see one of you already waiting there, or
to sit at a Waffle House in eastern Mechanicsville and see one of you walk
through the door. Never did we think about the fact that people who have been
attending here for years might meet each other for the first time over coffee
in Midlothian.
By
the end of the day we were back in the city of Richmond, giving thanks for the
ways in which each of you are embodying Christ in your individual lives,
wherever they get lived, but also a part of a whole. I suppose went out with
the idea of learning about how spread apart we are, but was I took away was how
connected we actually are.
As the
people who joined us spoke and shared in the discussion, it drove home again how
each day God forms his own map on our atlas. But, in our case, at least, its
design does not form an ugly spider, something to mourn and be frightened of. We
do form rays of a star—the bright and morning Star, in fact, as the writer of
Revelation describes him at the end of his book.
Yet
in one way, Beth Morgan is correct in her denial as she watches her last two
sons leave the village, never to return. We, the baptized, are still in the
house. No matter where we are, we are
in the household Christ, one family, children of the one eternal God.
And
one day, Jesus promises, we will fully understand and know that, reunited with
all those we love who have come and gone from this dark valley.
Amen.
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
[1] How Green Was My Valley, Richard
Llewellyn. Collier Books, MacMillan Publishing Company, NY, 1940. p460-461
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