(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Living in Crisis, originally shared on January 11, 2021. It was the eightieth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
What do Christians bring to the table when
the bottom seems to be falling out for everybody? Today, we’re going to give
you a tool for Christian witness in a time of national crisis.
There is no question that in the midst of a
global pandemic our country finds itself in the midst of a national crisis.
When one player or another claims to be serving in the interest of unity and
reconciliation, I’m often reminded of the observation of theologian Gracia
Grindal, when a national leader of the Church came to speak to a group of
pastors who were opposed to an action that they believed had betrayed core
beliefs about what their denomination was about said, “The one who killed my
mother now wants to be my grief counselor.”
People are hurting, and angry and feeling
betrayed. What can we, as Christians, bring to our nation and to the world that
will make a difference?
Sally and I don’t have cable or use
streaming services, so we re-subscribed to the Netflix DVD-by-mail service when
the safer at home mandates started early in the pandemic. We’ve been watching
season 3 of “The Crown” lately and watched the fourth episode the other day. In
it, we meet Princess Alice, Prince Philip’s mother. I’ll try to remember is as
best I can.
Prince Philip,
Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, hasn’t had much contact with her since the family
had to flee Greece.
Princess Alice was princess of Greece and Denmark.
She was the great granddaughter of Queen Victoria and related to the Russian
tsars. Prince Philip had to be smuggled out in an orange crate when the
monarchy in Greece was toppled.
His mother entered an institution and he had
little contact with her from then on. He resented and was embarrassed by her,
and he tried to keep her existence a secret from the press.
She later returned to Greece, became a chain-smoking
Greek Orthodox nun, and founded a struggling order of nuns in Athens, caring
for the poor, which she often supported by the sale of her jewelry.
She was brought to Buckingham palace by the
queen, against Prince Phillip’s wishes, when another period of civil unrest in
Greece put her life in danger in 1967. She was given cigarettes and a room someplace out of the way. She was 82, I think, and lived another 2
years.
Around that same time, the British economy
was in a shambles, and the royal family was seen by many as a useless relic,
remote and out of touch and a drain on public resources. Prince Phillip feared
that his family might again be forced to flee. A TV public relations campaign
ensued, and only made things worse.
In the aftermath, an anti-royal reporter
visiting Buckingham Palace caught a glimpse of Princess Alice in her nun’s
habit outside smoking a cigarette and asked who she was. She was rushed out of sight. Later, the same
reporter was brought in to interview Princess Anne, who the royal family
thought was the most relatable royal, Princess Anne got cold feet and pushed
the nun into the view of the reporter, who asked to interview her. No
permission was given, but he approached and asked her anyway, and she agreed.
During this interview, she related how her
family thought she was slow as a child, not realizing that she was born deaf. She
was otherwise perfectly normal.
She was nevertheless diagnosed with schizophrenia and sent to an asylum. She was treated by
Sigmund Freud who, she said, was “not a kind man”. She was there a little over
2 years.
When
the article comes out, Prince Philip reads it and brings it to her, finding her
on the floor, praying. He waits until she finishes and then reads to her from
it.
The
article says that it is a common staple that having family for long visits is
stressful in any house, but that the presence of Princess Alice is a blessing.
She
is a member of the Royal family who has suffered more than the rest of us,
worked harder than the rest of us, and created more good than the rest of us.
That she has been marginalized and under-estimated, and that doctors have
performed untold horrors on her including those that brought on premature
menopause and reduced libido, and performed electroshock to treat hysteria. Instead
of bitterness, she has dedicated life to charity, public service, and social
justice often at great personal risk. He stops and says, “It's a love letter”.
I
owe you an apology for my faithlessness, he says. I've been trying to keep you
out of the sight of the cameras and you should have been center stage.
His
mother, Princess Alice, says that she owes him an apology. Your sisters had
something of their mother. When we were forced to leave Greece I couldn't cope.
I needed care. I needed help. Prince Philip replies that they didn't give you
help it was torture.
She
says, “they tried their best”. Prince Philip says, It was barbaric, your
courage was remarkable.
She
says, I didn't do it alone. I couldn't have. I had help every step of the way.
But, earlier you mentioned faithlessness. How is your faith?
Dormant.
What? Dormant? That's no good.
Let this be a mother's gift to her child, this
one piece of advice. Find yourself a faith, it helps. No, not just helps. It's
everything.
I’ve thought about this, and wondered about
her advice to find yourself a faith. I don’t think she was saying any old faith
will do, that’s just unfounded belief. I think her advice was to reconnect with
the faith, large or small, that is a living relationship with the one true
living God, the one that comes from outside ourselves, and therefore, the one
rooted in the transformational and sustaining power of God.
Paul writes to the Christians of his time,
during a time of persecution of the Church, when they couldn’t get work,
couldn’t get into the military which was the only path to work for the empire,
when they could be killed for the fact that they were Christians, in the book
of Hebrews, the 11th chapter, the faith chapter,
*Hebrews 11:1-3
We are at a point in the pandemic where 40%
of all California’s COVID-19 deaths are happening in LA County, averaging 211
deaths a day, which is greater than all other causes of deaths, combined.
Dodger Stadium is today being converted from a testing site to a vaccination
site and expects to provide 12,000 vaccinations a day.
Our nation is on
edge over the invasion of our Capitol on January 6th, the Day of the
Epiphany. We are anxious about what will happen on January 20th at
the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, nine days from now.
What do we have
to bring to the table for living in a time of crisis? Perspective.
Transcendence. A sense of what endures, and what will enable us to endure to
the end.
Faith. Not a
faith that removes us from the issues around us. But a faith that equips us to
engage them.
That faith is a
living relationship with the living God. It is rooted in the living water that
is the Bible’s metaphor for the Holy Spirit, the personal ongoing presence of
God for good in the world. We are the Body of Christ in the world. We are not
alone.
Find your faith,
or allow God to strengthen it, today. It doesn’t just help. It’s everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment