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Breakfast at Tiffany's, ReduxApril 20, 2008 Fifth Sunday of Easter My vocation causes me to intersect with a wide variety of anonymous persons in various states of need. I have my share of walk-ins looking for cash, of course, but there are others with different sorts of needs as well, who, not knowing where else to turn, will stumble into a church, responding to it’s ancient mandate as sanctuary for any and all. Any given Sunday service can have its share of folks in that broad category, folks who wake up one morning and find their feet taking them through the doors of a church for the first time in a long time. My guess is that especially here in New York City, say on a corner like Park Avenue and 60th Street, this is a relatively common occurrence. I’m guessing there’s at least one or two persons here today who fall into that category. (Don’t worry, I won’t break your cover. You can stay anonymous if you want, that’s perfectly fine with me.) Sometimes I’ll receive a telephone call from a stranger in search of a minister, like I did some years ago, from the caretaker of an elderly gentleman, a man whose age was something north of 94, although I was told the precise number was not known. Just a week before he had recovered from a very serious illness the doctors were certain he would not survive, and surprising his caretaker, when emerging from coma, specifically requested the company of a Methodist minister. Checking the Yellow Pages then produced our phone number. I took the call that day. After a pleasant chat with this careful woman I told her I would come by that afternoon. In its details, my visit with this man was unremarkable. He was very frail, nearly blind, but his mind was sharp, and his memory intact. We spoke quietly about his life, his work – he had developed a successful consulting business, which had been abandoned decades ago with retirement. He told me that he had no close living relatives. I also learned that many years prior he had known the colorful author, Truman Capote, who took his surname for one of Capote’s most famous characters—Holly Golightly, the heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. This amused him quite a lot. The name, “Golightly”, caught Capote’s sense of irony, he said. As a child, Mr. Golightly had attended a Methodist Church somewhere in the south, and a number of years after moving to New York he had attended here once, which led to a home visit by the founding Pastor of Christ Church, Ralph Sockman. Though he did not make a habit of attending regularly – eventually quitting it altogether – this visit by Sockman had made an indelible impression. In the course of our conversation he looped back upon this encounter at least five times. It was the most important thing on his mind at present. And it was clear that my visit was important, even crucial for him, although as for that, he didn’t spill a great confession or engage a theological question, or even a simple existential one, for that matter. It was enough that I had come, that we spoke together, that he could tell me something about himself. Toward the end of our time I asked if he wished me to pray with him. He said, that yes, he would like that very much. I took both his hands in mine and spoke quietly of God’s provision of a loving home and homecoming. At the end he pressed my hands and thanked me. His eyes welled with tears, although he did not weep. As I said, the surface details were unremarkable. But I was struck by Mr. Golightly’s connection to his encounter with Ralph Sockman; that had to have occurred about fifty years prior when Golightly was in his forties. And of course, there is a lesson in that, a lesson about the importance of every moment of our lives, for there’s no telling which moments will prove the defining ones. And there’s no telling the impact we might have on someone with the smallest of gestures, or simply just doing our duty. No telling at all what we might be thinking about at the end of our lives. No telling who might be thinking about us at the end of their lives. Could be that an otherwise anonymous encounter is the fulcrum, the great benediction for each of us. It was not lost to me that Mr. Golightly had recovered from near death with the memory of a pastoral visit on his mind for a reason. I don’t pretend to understand the mysterious ways of the spirit, but every now and again, I tangibly sense its vital presence. And from time to time, I sense that I have a very specific role to play on its behalf. This was a small moment for me that spiritual instinct revealed was a huge moment for my new friend. And I was filled with a quiet awe. This story came to mind this week when reading a highly favorable analysis of Capote’s book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the Wall Street Journal. The reviewer ranked it right up there with novels like The Great Gatsby, A Death in Venice and Heart of Darkness. It’s no surprise, of course, that matters of life and death framed my moment with Holly Golightly’s namesake. But then, matters of life and death frame every moment of every day for us, even though we remain blissfully unconscious of this most of the time, that is, unless or until something grabs our attention and slaps or shakes us awake. The great spiritual quest is framed by our being born and having to die, and as we live into our days, the growing awareness of a great longing for a fulsome destination for our lives. We sense this longing deep down once we awaken to the reality of our finitude. Initially we more nearly feel it than know it. I suppose this is the primary cause for people to walk in here, and it’s often the reason for the occasional phone call from an anonymous person, whether or not they could specifically say so. Perhaps some directions might be found for the journey home is often the underlying subtext. Actually, the entire biblical text has a forward thrust to it. That is, the story it tells has a bent toward the unfolding future. We learn from its many pages of history, story and parable about the living of our days, but the story it tells starts at the beginning of time and pushes forward into the future. It has directionality. It’s going somewhere. Which informs the way we all live our lives. We all have this sense of directionality, of future unfolding. And whether or not we think of this as some actual tangible destination, we are prone to ask ourselves, things like, “Well, where is my life headed, anyway?” and, “What does it mean? What does the content of all my days add up to? To what useful ends should I invest my energy?” These questions have nuance depending upon our relative age. But what my visit with Mr. Golightly reveals, is that whether on the front side of these questions or the backside, this notion of future unfolding remains the animating life energy. Jesus was referencing this when he said to his friends, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…And you know the way to the place where I am going.” The disciples don’t really get it, so they quiz him, which leads him to tell them to look to himself, that in him they will find their way forward into a hopeful future. By the way, hope is a directional attribute, isn’t it? Hope is a present virtue about the unfolding future. It points us forward. Paul captured this when he wrote: “…the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, groan inwardly while we wait for…redemption… For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” [1] You can feel the forward thrust of his argument. This hoped for future empowers our present moment. After all, who among us has not had the experience of groaning in the present moment for a hopeful future? Not only in our individual lives, but everywhere we look in the human community – doesn’t it seem to groan in pain for what it might yet become? Jesus tells his friends that the way forward is the way he has been mapping for them. As I mentioned last week, the early Christians were known as people of the way. Again we ask, which way was that? Well, it was the way of love. In our Gospel lesson Thomas said to Jesus, “‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’” Jesus responds, “‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’” What happened to Jesus? He laid down his life for his friends out of astonishing love. Jesus mapped a way forward for humanity. People walk through these doors because they sense that when the church is functioning properly it conserves this truth. As William Sloane Coffin put it, let the church “conserve a vision of the world’s destiny and not the structures of the world’s past. Let the church in remembering Christ remember that it is conserving the most uprooting, the most revolutionary force in all human history. For it was Christ who crossed every boundary, broke down every barrier.” [2] Notice that Coffin speaks of the world’s destiny, its future, its consummation, which points to the nature of the church’s work in the present moment. Jesus says to his friends that if they follow in his way of love, that they will do the works he has done, and in fact, will do even greater works…confident that their future is secure in God’s amazing grace. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places…And I go and prepare a place for you…” Christ maps the way forward. That’s the simple message here at the end, friends. There’s no telling, of course, but this could be the great benediction of your life. You might remember this day fifty years from now as though it were yesterday. Probably not, but then you just never know. Like every other day, matters of life and death frame this one. The only difference is that today we’ve been bold to say so.
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