First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Luke 19

“A Clear Commingling”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

April 5, 2009

A classmate in seminary, John Shuck, went home for the summer and he needed a fill-in for one of his jobs. He told me it was pretty simple. All I needed to do was go to this fellow’s house twice a week, help him to the car, and drive him out to an adult day care facility. He needed me to do this for a month. The man’s name was Wigner. He’s real nice is all John said.

When I arrived the first morning, Mr. Wigner looked a little disheveled, which in Princeton is more of uniform than a clothing mishap. He was in his mid-eighties; his white wiry hair was like wings beneath his balding pate. The first time, and each time after, when I arrived he was running late. His wife would invite me in to sit as he finished his breakfast: orange juice and raisin bread toast. The house was more a cottage filled with books and antiques and photos. Mrs. Wigner was petit as her husband was small of stature as well.

Once in the car we would drive for about a half an hour. On a few occasions I tried to make conversation with Professor Wigner, but his answers were riddled with the convolution of Alzheimer’s and age. For the most part he just smiled at me and sang Hungarian folk tunes. Although I could never imagine naming the songs he sang, a couple became favorites as we drove.

After John’s return he said thanks and gave me some money. It was only then I asked him who Professor Wigner was. By that time I had figured out that he was a retired member of the Institute for Advanced Studies, which is a kind of holding area for people who are too bright to be anywhere else. He confirmed this and said, “Wigner won the Nobel Prize a number of years ago. He solved one of Einstein’s theories.”

It was strange moment that followed for me. It was a moment I want to call of clear commingling. All of sudden life and death and limit and brilliance and frailty and strength and so on and so on were gathered together and they washed over me. Maybe I am just overly impressed with the Nobel Prize in physics; maybe Einstein makes me pay attention; maybe it was the Hungarian folk songs; maybe it was the orange juice and raisin bread toast, but at that moment I could sense the profound nature of life, the presence of God, a sense that life is complex without being complicated.

As a side-note the friend who had me fill in for him, John, became the pastor of Loweville Presbyterian Church for most of the 1990s. I didn’t know this until we moved here. Strange sometimes how close things come when they commingle.

In terms of commingling, I can’t think of a greater place for jumbled, convoluted, frenetic swirl than Israel. Webster’s should have Israel as an entry for the word commingle. For instance, on Mount Zion just south of the Old City is the tomb of David, which also happens to be the traditional site of the Lord’s Supper, which also happens to be a Yeshiva, or school for rabbis, today. Almost every spot in Jerusalem has these layers. They’re historical on top of cultural on top of theological on top of conflict.

In the courtyard of this Yeshiva, just outside the door to David’s tomb in 2006, a Methodist Pastor and I covertly distributed the elements of communion to our group. As he passed the bread he whispered, “the body of Christ.” At first I thought his tone was just reverent. Later I realized the reason for our stealth was that the rabbis get a bit annoyed when Christians conduct worship services in their courtyard. The idea that this was the traditional site of the Lord’s Supper doesn’t hold a lot of sway for them.

Each time I have made my way to Israel, to the Holy Land, there were moments like this. A moment where there is a clear commingling and you see what is rather commonplace in a new way. I have offered communion for years, but only once did I do it covertly.

There are also views that are contradictory and even polemical. In Jerusalem there is a tomb of Mary and a Church of the Dormition, which was built to celebrate that she wasn’t buried. There is a Garden Tomb which many believe to be the place of Christ’s burial and a Church that has been seen for 1700 years as the place of Jesus crucifixion and burial- the church of the Holy Sepulchre. On the Temple Mount, the holy of holies of the Jews, where Solomon and then Herod built great places of worship, is the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, which, for most of Islam, is just behind Mecca and Medina in terms of devotion. Trying to mesh all of these together, trying to settle the question of who has a right, or who is right, or what it would take to make it right after centuries of being conquered and reconquered is a fascinating puzzle many try to play.

Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, has to be the most commingled place. I can never predict where and how it will happen, the moment of revelation, but it does; there is always a revealing. This is more than learning or exposure or enlightenment. I could have studied and reflected upon the Beatitudes Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount forever; I could have made myself reckon with the interpretation of St. Augustine and how he saw them as a kind of mystical ladder leading to theophanic visions, yet none of this really compared to the swirl of commingling that was made clear by being in the setting. The mount where Jesus preached is a kind of natural amphitheater that rises from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is verdant and filled with flowers and allows you to see the Golan, Mt. Arbel and Gerasene all at the same time. When he said, consider the lilies of the field that was not a moment to use your imagination. Jesus was literally saying, “look around you.”

Being in such a place creates a clarity that cannot be summoned anywhere else. There is something to being in the place, to being there for a time, to step back in time as it were, and just abide for a moment in the vision that Jesus stood here, preached here, healed here, and the people beheld him, full of grace and truth and beauty.

It has taken me quite some time to understand what this is. I asked many questions to come to an answer. Is it a kind of simple wanderlust that justifies itself with mystical qualities? Is it curiosity that is unable to conjure without visual aids? Is it just a simple desire to go and see like mountain climbers speak of mountains: we climb because they are there? To all these a clear commingling would answer yes, and then say, but even more.

I had a vision of the more in perhaps the oddest looking church in all of Jerusalem. Jerusalem has a lot of churches, mosques, synagogues, but I am not sure if any of them rival the unique shape of the Dominus Flevit. Dominus Flevit is Latin for “the lord wept.” In our second lesson today you see the source for the name of the church. After making his way down the Mount of Olives on the foal of a donkey Jesus went into the temple, looked around and headed out. Then he went to Bethany which means he went back the way he came. Half way up the mount, tradition holds, Jesus stopped and looked back. Looking over the city he wept- dominus flevit.

On the site of his weeping the Franciscans have built a kind of dome church, but it is not a geodesic dome, it looks kind of like the top half of a football. It is supposed to look like tear drops. The Dominus Flevit is located closer to the top than the bottom of the Mount of Olives. When you leave the path Jesus traversed with the donkey you are standing at an elevation just above the temple mount when you reach this place.

I arrived by myself about five o’clock in the afternoon. There was a worship service for pilgrims just ending. Walking in as they walked out I listened to the American priest in charge of the group chitchat with the Franciscan priest in the vestry as they changed their vestments and picked up after the Mass. With their voices in friendly exchange filling the space I was allowed to simply look about. The sanctuary is not very large, although the shape of the roof gives the space a bigger feeling than is really there. Sitting down in a folding chair in the nave while some German tourists were taking photos I saw it- the reason for the church. The window.

The sanctuary has one window. It is a clear arched window that looks directly upon the temple mount and the old city of Jerusalem. Looking out the window I realized I was in a place meant for commingling. There are no other windows, no other place to look, just this one. The church was built for you to look as Jesus looked, to look over the city. Here was architecture, history, worship, theology, devotion, prophecy, and I in a swirl of images and emotions and time.

Time was alive in the moment. It is one thing to see the future or to see the past or even to have a clear grasp upon the present, but to have all of them converging at once plus the sense of time conveyed in Greek called kairos, or the right time, or timeliness, and then add the gravity of eternity juxtaposed with a time of judgment- a time to end- and the room was thick. The sanctuary wasn’t built to merely resemble a tear drop, it was built to create the context of Jesus’ tears, it was meant to embody the clear commingling that happened on the Mount of Olives as Jesus walked away from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And it isn’t meant for you to weep, or to cry, but to put you in the place of his tears.

Now you don’t need to go to the Mount of Olives to experience a clear commingling. It is fair to say that with enough of my children around a dinner table, with Kathy going back to college, and how the last year we spent a fair part amount of time in Africa and then added a new member to our family and then a day job that is often convoluting and complex I can find a moment of chaos everyday. There is no need for hotels and plane flights and name badges. It’s true.

Yet a clear commingling is not just a swirl of factors beyond your control, a confluence of events and images. A clear commingling is a moment where God is at work, where grace has room to change you. I have sat through enough bizarre family gatherings, stood in the midst of tragedy and violence, I have seen kindness that transcended all reasonable expectations, and abided in the suffering that has no justice, I have seen enough of these to know that life is not redemptive simply by being confusing. If confusion was simply the way mercy changes a person unto what God intended then I have seen more mercy than I could ever say.

A moment of clear commingling is when God enters our midst, stands before us. On Palm Sunday we see Jesus coming into our midst as it were. Riding down the Mount of Olives there is joy, happiness a bit too unique for the Gospels and then on the way out, he lingers and weeps and prays. There was joy and sorrow on the same path, on the same day, over the same place. Yet most important it was a moment where Jesus abided in our lives in our place and in our world- the human soul.

Yet, perhaps the clearest commingling of Jerusalem is what comes clear in the heart. Somehow in the chaos of centuries and riots of today, between the Hasidic praying at the Wailing Wall and the call to prayer for the Muslims blaring from the minaret, somewhere in the coming and going of Ethiopian monks and Armenian saints, it is strikingly clear that God is working on me.

After the German tourists were done snapping photos, for just a second as the American priest bid his comrade farewell, in the blink of an eye as I gazed upon the old city with the sun beginning to set making the dome of the rock’s golden dome have a strange luster, I got it. There are moments to be seized, life is not a repetition of opportunities but a unique unfolding with some things being saved and others lost.

O that you would have turned to me. Jesus looked over Jerusalem and wept. O that you would have turned to me. Jesus didn’t provide a formula here to be followed, he didn’t suggest that now was one time amongst others. This was a moment where transcendence was standing upon the earth. He was living in the confluence, the clear commingling of joy and sorrow, of grace and wrath, of mercy and justice. He was in us, with us, as us. It wasn’t one or the other; it was the swirl, the dance of angels whose presence is rendered clear in the whirlwind.

After all the poeticizing is done, I could see how my life was a moment where God was gathering me and that it was up to me be taken up, to be gathered as it were. All the joys and the sorrows, all the moments of mercy and truth, grace and justice I see, these are what they are, but they are also the moments where Jesus bids, come unto me. I will gather you.

Just what this gathering means, how it happens and when, Jerusalem makes it clear we don’t really understand that very much. There are as many interpretations as grains of sand in a castle meant for a day. Our attempts to marshal these forces, to direct the confluence of justice when it rolls like water renders us a bit bizarre, but still we try.

Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize winner, physicist, mathematician, mind of great renown sat in my car and sang Hungarian folk songs. The gift of clarity, the power to speak and know the portent of your words, the life given had slipped away. The gifts he was given were not meant for eternity, they were for a time. And so are ours. Just for a time. And for a time Jesus bids each of us, come unto me. I will gather you. Behold I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and invite me in I will enter and sup with you. The invitation, although patient, is not forever. It’s not meant to be. It is for us, people in time, living for a time.

This time of your life, let Christ gather you, draw you unto salvation. Do not wait, do not hesitate. Pray to Christ, implore him to hear your voice. Invoke the names of those who have been gathered unto him and bid them pray for you as well. Whatever it takes, realize the time of our confession and the time of our redemption and the time of our salvation are a whirlwind of moments where our choice and freedom and will are not trivial matters. They are the difference between tears of joy and tears of sorrow.

Dominus Flevit. The Lord weeps. There are tears of sorrow and tears of joy. What will Jesus weep over us? Amen.