When you think of chaos what comes to mind? The formless void that existed before God moved and life burst into being? A natural disaster: Flood, tornado, forest fire? The current state of the world perhaps? How about an epic temper tantrum by a three year old in the middle of the grocery stores? Puberty (your own or that of the people who happen to live in your house)? An unexpected turn in your life that impacts work, relationships, health? When you think of chaos what comes to your mind?
Officially, Chaos is defined as: complete disorder and confusion. Ultimately, it is the feeling that moves in when everything is out of control, very specifically out of your control. And I won’t speak for any of you but for me when things start to spiral I instantly kick into fit it mode with the introduction of list making and compulsive organizing, it’s a super power, really! I suppose there are people out there who enjoy chaos times, who relish in creating chaos in the lives of others, who thrive in the perpetual state of upheaval… but those people are rare and, dare I say it, dangerous. And the very thought of existing like that is enough to send me into a state of chaos which then leads to more chaos – because chaos tends to feed chaos.
When a person feels like life is “out of control” stress, anxiety, overwhelm, fear, desperation tend to rise manifesting in all areas of life: mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional. Our cortisol levels spike, our sleep is disrupted, our ability to cope with stress decreases and the feeling like things are even more out of control today than yesterday increases. It’s a nasty cycle which painfully reminds us that the chaos of the world around us creates chaos of the heart, mind, and spirit within us.
On the day, Jesus finally arrived at the house in Bethany things were already in an upheaval state. The deep grief over Lazarus’ death was palpable and evident as there was a number of people who had come to support Mary and Martha. But in addition to the sorrow there was a undercurrent of anger. And it really isn’t unexpected….”if Jesus had just come sooner, come when he had first been asked to be here, Lazarus wouldn’t have died.” We hear this more than once in the story.
And really, who could blame the sisters for being mad? They weren’t wrong and it’s not an uncommon grief response. When things are out of control we generally try to figure out what could have been done differently? What could we have done to avoid living in this mess? Nothing makes us feel better than having someone or something to blame the mess on…. And Jesus seems to understand this. Martha, not one to mince words, let’s Jesus have it and then Mary, and then there’s the epic side eye from the entire community. In response, Jesus doesn’t get defensive or argumentative or even apologetic…. He simply asks to be taken to his friend’s tomb. Once there, standing in reality of the situation, he weeps.
There are many in this room, if not all of us, who knows how this feels. To stand at the tomb, the grave of someone who have and always will love, weeping. The poet Rumi, a Muslim philosopher, scholar and teacher, who walked the earth more than 800 years ago, wrote: “you left ground and sky weeping, mind and soul full of grief. No one can take your place in existence or in absence.” These were words inspired by the loss of his spiritual guide and beloved friend Shams. The two had been inseparable for years, despite the many who disapproved of the friendship. Then one day Shams disappeared. Some believe he chose to leave, others think he was murdered. Regardless of what happened, Rumi’s heart was shattered and he descended into a deep grief that overwhelmed him. Chaos it would seem is intimately tied to loss. What was, what could have been… gone… and it’s enough to drive a person mad, and for Rumi it did.
Jesus, like Rumi, knew sorrow. His grief was manifest in the tears at Lazarus’ tomb but he also mourned the political, religious and moral climate of Jerusalem. Sound familiar? It is said that Jesus wept over the city and the chaos that existed there. I don’t think that I am off base in thinking that Jesus likely would be doing the very same thing now. But there is a little voice in the back of my head that wonders why Jesus wept for Lazarus? Why weep if he knew he was going to raise Lazarus. He kinda told the disciples that this was the plan that he knew the grave was not the end of the story for Laz and he was going to use this moment to prove it. Jesus could have chosen to stand there and judge the crowd spouting words like “oh ye of little faith!” or he could have looked at Mary’s tear stained face and said “get behind me Satan!” He’d done things like that before, slammed the disciples willingness or ability to believe even in the face of a miracle. But he didn’t. There’s no condemning or shouting, no rebuking or ridiculing. He just moved in close, entered the chaos and wept with them.
Richard Rohr gives space to the power of tears or what he calls Weeping Mode. “Weeping,” he wrote, “is different than beating ourselves up. Weeping is a gentle release of water that washes, baptizes, and renews…. Weeping is the opposite of blaming…the opposite of denying. It leads to deep healing when inspired by the Spirit….” When we fight what we are feeling our grief tends to turn into anger, blame, and futile attempts to fix and control, like those gathered with Mary and Martha. But when we are brave enough to give space to the chaos, when we allow ourselves to do what Jesus did, not sliding right into fix it mode but instead let the tears flow first, then something new can take root (Everything Belongs, p.147-48)
It was until the disappearance of Shams that Rumi began to write. One of humanity’s most quoted and bestselling poets of all time didn’t write a single word until after his heart had been shattered. It was through that time of chaos and brokenness that Rumi began to see what Shams’ friendship and wisdom had taught him: that God was part of everything, even the chaos.
In his sorrow, Rumi grew to understand that the created world was filled with swirling movement and that when he allowed his body to join in that movement, he could more easily and honestly communicate with God all that his heart was holding. It was from this insight that the Whirling Dervishes came to be. The dancers begin draped in black, a symbol of the chaos and the grief that is experienced in life. When they cast of the shroud revealing their white clothes underneath, the dance begins, a symbol of new life. Whirling with the right palm up, to receive God’s grace, and the left down, to pour that grace upon the earth, the dance itself becomes a prayer meant to draw the dancer closer to God grounding them in their faith and connecting them with the universe.
Now, don’t panic, I am not going to ask all of you to start whirling… I mean the thought did cross my mind for a moment. I have a feeling it would be good for us, and we’d be pretty good at it. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) I am not going to move us all in to the gym to embrace our internal dervishes. The theology is, however, sound even if we don’t partake in the whirling.
Rumi’s believe was that everything around us is moving and whether he was aware of the actual science of it or not he wasn’t wrong. Everything does move: air, molecules, the blood in our veins, the synapses in the brain of the person sitting next to you, even the ground beneath our feet is moving – the planet isn’t standing still, the sun moves within the milky way, our galaxy, it is moving within in the universe. The movement from life to death to life beyond death is also very much a part of who and what we are. And one way to look at all this movement is to see nothing but Chaos. This unhinged disorder that we have zero control over as we hurtle through space.
But when we can join the movement, or merely glimpse now and then that chaos is a natural, unavoidable part of life then it suddenly is no longer a chain that holds us in place… bound, powerless, unable to move. Instead, it becomes a driving force and through it we find the ability to create something new. “Stop acting so small. Rumi said You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
As Jesus felt the grief filled chaos of that community, he asked for the tomb to be unsealed. Not surprisingly this lead to more chaos… “Open it? Are you mad Jesus? He’s been in there four days!” yet from that space of ending and death, his face still wet with tears, Jesus spoke words that became life giving. And as he called Lazarus to step out into the day, Jesus said one of the most powerful lines in scripture: “unbind him and let him go.”
There is absolutely no denying the chaos of this world… you know it, I know it. There’s no denying it in our lives when it swirls in unexpectedly/ And it always sucks. But I am coming to understand that we have been given what some would call a bum steer when it comes to dealing with the chaos. We’ve been taught to fight it or run from it, push through or try our hardest to control the uncontrollable and I fear that we’ve gotten very tired, very stuck, and very confused.
Then my colleague shared the words of her favourite Holy Troublemaker – Elder Liz. While my friend lamented about the chaos of her life to Liz, she shared that the only way for something new to come to be is through chaos. She said the problem is that most people find destruction and chaos far too unsettling to embrace it so we do everything we can to run from it. But no new life will come of that. New life will only come when we allow things to change, or even die, and then what comes to life next will be amazing.
May it be so. Amen.
