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(In Memory)

April 23, 1995, Second Sunday of Easter, All Souls' Episcopal Church, Fr. James Law       

Bombing of Oklahoma City Federal Building

Boris Pasternak wrote, “Everything that happens in the world takes place not only on the earth that buries the dead, but also in some other dimension which some call the “kingdom of God.”

We have all spent the past four days “on the earth that buries the dead.” Four days of hell and horror, and apparently not soon to be over. Four days none of us will ever forget, for they are indelibly imprinted on our minds and in our memories.

Someone said to me this past week, “Fr. Law what kind of world is this anyway?” And I replied, with a flash of insight not my own, “ It’s the same kind of world it’s always been."  It is the world as old as Cain who killed his brother Able. It is the world that gave us Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler, and that’s the ugly side of the world that’s been given to us. But we must never forget that this same world has also given us Moses and Jesus, Albert Schwitzer and Mother Theresa.

The world is a mixture, the world is a combination of good and evil and this past week we have looked into the dark side of reality. It has become clear, I think, to each and every one of us that our primary relationship with reality is one of belonging and involvement . Our relationship with reality is not of distance and detachment. No, indeed we are part of what we see and we are connected to what we see, and we cannot escape that. There is not one of us who has not felt himself or herself, at one point or another this week, downtown whether we where physically there or not. Last Wednesday realty forced itself on us in an horrifyingly ugly way. Wednesday reality came to us as darkness, tragedy as evil and wickedness. It turned our word upside down, and that inversion left us confused and bewildered, not to mention outraged and angry.

The dark side of creation, the dark side of reality has forced itself into our lives with an intrusion of colossal proportions. We have looked into the face of evil and found it ugly beyond description, horrifying beyond words. We remember the words that Jeremiah spoke to us years and years ago: the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And, too sadly, we have discovered or rediscovered the agonizing truth of those words.

But darkness is not all there is. The earth that buries it’s dead is not all there is. There is another dimension to reality, another dimension to human existence which is very, very different indeed. “Come ye blessed of my father,” said Jesus, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world because I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, naked and you clothed me, sick and you visited me, in prison and you came unto me.”

There is that level of realty also, and we are witnesses of these things this past week. We have seen the best that humankind can offer come to the fore. Not one of us has been left untouched by the courage of the firefighters, the policeman and the rescue workers. Not one of us has been left untouched by dedication, the commitment, of the medical personnel and all the volunteers who has given of themselves so readily and so uninstintigly. They have shown us the beauty, the beauty of reality. They have shown us reality as God intends it to be. Reality where man loves man, and brother and sister, arm in arm, reach out in love, regardless of personal anger, and they do so just because they know that’s the way things ought to be. That’s the way we ought to behave and react toward each other.

I envy you Oklahomans. There is a part in me that is terribly, terribly humbled by you because you have shown the world how to love, you have shown the world how to care for each other, you have shown the world what it means to lay your lives down for each other. You ought to be proud. Proud in a very humbling sense of that word - not prideful but proudful.. Proudful of your brothers and sisters, your brother Okies and your brother Sooners, names that will forever be held in awe and wonder, not derision. The world has seen the best humanity has to offer, and the world has seen the best through you.

You have brought tears, tears of sadness, but tears of joy to the eyes of people all across this globe through your courage and your self-sacrificing love, your commitment to your fellow man, your quiet deeds of heroism. Think for a moment, not simply of the firefighters and rescue workers, but think of those ordinary everyday people like you and me who stood for hours and hours in line to give a single pint of blood, just because someone needed a pint of blood. It is incredible, all these examples to the whole world

No, I don’t pretend to understand the darkness that haunts God’s creation. I don’t pretend to understand, because I can’t, the suffering and pain that seems so central to human existence. I can’t give you a systematic analysis of evil, because he face of evil wears many masks. But neither, I fear, can I give you s detailed analysis of goodness. I can not delineate for you the component parts of the joys of love and the importance and happiness of family or what it means to be a community united together, united together in love. And I can’t do those things because love’s image must be seen to be felt, or felt to be seen.

Perhaps the picture of the policeman passing the baby too the fireman comes closest to showing us an image the earth that buries the dead and also at the same time that other dimension which some call the kingdom of God. In that picture we see in the midst of unspeakable horror such tenderness ad such gentleness, such care and concern, such love and devotion. In the midst of horror, that picture ought to remind us that God himself is in the middle of life.

Our task, it seems to me, is to see in that picture the image of Christ and to feel and perceive the tears of the weeping Christ as he laments the hurt children and his broken brothers and sisters. People hurt and Christ dies, and God somehow is as much the victim of evil as we are. That is what the crucifixation  is all about: that in Christ God himself went to the cross, that in Christ God himself suffered, that in Oklahoma City Christ suffers, and God suffers. God is in the middle of life, and Christ trudges with us to all our personal calvarys, large and small. In all of our tragedies ands all of our heartbreaks, all of this senseless loss of human life, Christ is with us, because he is a part of this world that buries the dead and also that other dimension we call the kingdom of God.

In the name of the Father , and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen

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