Strength in Weakness

STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS

(Preached August 1996)

This is not the sermon I had planned to preach today. Rather it is a sermon I wrote in the early hours of this morning after considerable prayer and reflection.

As some of you may know, my wife's health declined very rapidly towards the end of last week. In fact, you may have noticed that she was not in church last Sunday, the first time in her whole life.

On Monday, she was admitted into the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for chemotherapy treatment. Whilst there, they became aware that her lower vertebrae were severely damaged and unless treated immediately, she could be paralysed from the waist downwards within two weeks. Needless to say, we were delighted when it was suggested that she should receive immediate radiotherapy treatment on the lower part of her back. This she is now receiving, and if all goes well, will be coming home this Tuesday.

In the meantime I have been spending time at her bedside, besides trying to maintain the life of the parish as best I can. I am thankful for the help of both Churchwardens, visiting clergy and others who enable me to be free.

Please forgive this rather autobiographical approach to a sermon, but I am sure you will see the reason why, and why I would not be able to preach this if Mary was here.

As you are fully aware, Mary is a strong independently minded person. How else would she have survived growing up alone since her mother died at her birth, and her father died when she was nine, let alone putting up with me for the past 27 years.

She is a person who is never happier than when she is caring for other people, whether in a professional capacity as a nurse, or as a wife or mother, to say nothing also of her care shown towards friends and parishioners.

As I have sat at her bedside this past week; wheeled her down to radiotherapy treatment: done her personal washing; carried her personal belongings and helped her to learn to walk with the aid of two walking sticks, I have become aware of how dependent she has now become upon other people. Instead of being the carer she is now the person being cared for. Instead of her washing the feet of Jesus, she must now allow Jesus to wash her feet.

When I recall the person she was just four months ago, it is hard to realise how things have changed so rapidly.

But the greatest change of all has been her attitude towards her new limitations or captivity. Whereas I had dreaded her fighting a long resistance battle in order to preserve her independence, I have been amazed at her quiet and gentle acceptance of how things must now be, and her consequent willingness to allow others to care for her, not least myself.

Now that is not to say that she has given up the fight for life. She is a fighter and will fight to the bitter end against the cancer which has invaded her body and now seeks to destroy her life.

Whilst we know that it will inevitably destroy her physical life, it need not destroy her spiritual life. That life is growing stronger and stronger day by day. Her brightness, her humour, and her inward joy amidst so much pain shines through evermore strongly. Little wonder the locum hospital chaplain found himself at the receiving end of her ministry this week, rather than she at the end of his ministry.

The secret is that she has accepted that this is the way life is. She does not, and has not, asked the question "why me?", but rather the rhetorical question "why not me?". As I have indicated before, Christians have no right to expect to be spared physical suffering.

In her experience of being stripped of her independence and of her powerlessness, she has become more and more open to the presence of God. In her captivity she has discovered a new freedom - the freedom of abandoning oneself into the hands of God.

I am reminded of an anonymous poem I read recently in Edward Farrell’s Disciples and other Strangers.

He writes:

"What is an abandonment experience?

Is it leaving oneself on God's doorstep,

walking into the rest of life,

not allowing anxiety,

fear,

frustration to enter into one?

Is it expecting God to keep one warm,

secure,

and safe,

unharmed?

Is that abandonment?

Abandonment has nothing to do with warmth of

womb or arms

or close clasped hearts.

It is something done by a child.

It is done to him.

It cannot be done to an adult.

It is done by him.

Abandonment is committed only with and in the

maturity of Christ Jesus.

It is not just a hanging loose.

It is a letting go.

It is a severing of the strings by which one

manipulates,

controls,

administrates

the forces in one's life.

Abandonment is receiving all things the way

one receives

a gift

with opened hands,

an opened heart.

Abandonment to God

is the climactic point in any man's life".

In other words Mary is learning to abandon herself to God and allow him to do his will in her life.

I am also reminded of some other words I have read this week by Sheila Cassidy. You may recall that in 1975, she hit the headlines when she was arrested and tortured in Chile for treating a wounded revolutionary. Upon her release she explored the possibility of becoming a nun. Eventually she became the medical director of St. Luke's Hospice in Plymouth, which I was instrumental in pioneering over 20 years ago, and is now the palliative care physician at Plymouth General Hospital.

Cassidy writes:

"This option for abandonment is available to all who find themselves trapped by circumstance and is the means by which the imprisoned can transcend their bonds. Like a bird in a cage they can choose to exhaust themselves battering their wings against the bars - or they can learn to live within the confines of their prison and find, to their surprise, that they have the strength to sing. Those who are given the courage to accept their situation find that they have far greater reserves of emotional energy than they had realised, for that strength which they had hitherto exhausted in a vain effort to escape is now available to them to adapt to their situation".

I like to think that Mary has discovered the futility of using one's limited strength against the bars of the cage and has chosen rather to use such strength with which to sing.

This new image of Mary which she is cheerfully allowing to emerge amidst the pain and general discomfort, we see also in God in whose image she is made and whose image she seeks to reflect in her life as do we all.

On Good Friday in 1995, I referred to William Vanstone's book "The Stature of Waiting". Those of you who were present may recall that I drew attention to the fact that throughout the life of Jesus, he always took the initiative. He was always in control, and other people were always the object of his actions.

However, you may also recall that I pointed out that, after his arrest, other people took the initiative; other people were in control of him; and he became the object of other people’s actions.

And so on Good Friday we finish up with a God who, in Christ, appears to be impotent as he hangs helplessly from the cross. A weak God. A powerless God. Not the triumphant God of Palm Sunday.

I find Sheila Cassidy's image of "God in a Wheelchair" perhaps more helpful at this time than the God hanging helplessly from the cross. They both present the same image of the helpless, powerless, weak God.

And yet we know that through weakness came strength and new life. The letting go was followed by the resurrection. New life emerged from the shell of that tortured powerless body which was entombed.

May we too learn to abandon ourselves to the God who has the whole world in his hands, and may we too find that new life from which neither death nor life can separate us. Amen.