A tale of woe suffused with wondrous light

Not long ago, I saw the film Precious, based on the novel Push by the American poet and writer, Sapphire. To say the least, it was a deeply disturbing and a quietly redemptive film, one which prompted me to read the novel. Precious is the name of a sixteen year old teenager who lives in New York with her wildly abusive mother. Precious is pregnant and about to give birth to her second child, a boy. At age twelve, she gave birth to her first child, now a toddler with the name Little Mongo – her simple description of her Down-Syndrome baby.

At ages twelve and sixteen, Precious became pregnant because her mother, Mary, allowed her boyfriend, the biological father of Precious, to rape Precious – and to do so repeatedly. Thus, Precious gives birth to a daughter and a son, who are also her sister and her brother. When asked by a gritty social worker why she would ever allow her boyfriend and the father of her daughter to have sex with her young daughter, Mary cries out that she just wanted to be loved “by her man.” But to get him to love me, she explains, I had to let him love her … “Who doesn’t want lovin’?” she asks the social worker now stupefied by the mother’s behavior. Indeed, we might ask the same question: Who doesn’t want to be loved? Yet the “price” of that “love” (which was no true love) was her daughter – her daughter’s safety, well being, and dignity. “Yeah, my boyfriend her daddy,” Mary spits out defensively and defiantly, “but he was my man!”

What comes to mind are the words of the prophet Ezekiel: “The parents have eaten sour grapes and their children’s teeth are set on edge” (18:2).

Precious loves school because it is her one escape from a tyrannical mother who does virtually nothing but eat, sleep, and watch television. Yet she is failing almost all her classes, her life filled with such misery. It is her principal, a woman who senses the spark of life and smarts in Precious, who leads her to enroll in a reading program called “Each One Teach One.” There she is befriended by her instructor, Ms. Rain, a teacher who knows, deep in her soul, that learning to write and to read will give her students the one thing they don’t believe they have: the sound of their own distinctive voice, their own precious dreams and aspirations which have been overwhelmed by poverty, brutality, and the dreary sense that nothing – nothing – can change in their lives.

Precious persists in learning the alphabet, the spelling of words, the almost magical meaning of words, and the writing of sentences in her journal, sentences which at first are nothing more than individual letters or half words which slowly are transfigured into full words and full sentences. Even when her envious mother discovers her daughter’s hidden life of learning and then violently, violently pushes her daughter and new-born grandson out of their squalid apartment on to the street, Precious continues to be drawn to Ms. Rain; she continues to uncover her own distinctive voice; and she comes to recognize something which has alluded her mother throughout her life: she is capable of loving another human being, of giving herself freely and graciously and lovingly to someone else.

“It’s Sunday,” she writes in her journal. “The sun is coming through the window splashing down on [my son]. I love to hold him on my lap, open up the world to him. When the sun shine on him like this, he is an angel child … brown sunshine … and my heart full … Look his nose is so shiny, his eyes shiny. He my shiny brown boy. In his beauty I see my own” (Push, 139-140). Yes, in his beauty, I see my own. This is a tale of woe which slowly has become a tale of wonder suffused with sunshine, filled with light.

We hear these words from another writer today: “Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain … And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw Moses and Elijah talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem … Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my son, my chosen: listen to him’.” Here is tale of wonder, a series of words set next to each other which disclose his deepest identity and true name: a child chosen by God and suffused with radiant, dazzling light. Look: his face, his eyes, and his garment are so shiny – and note this: no one, no one wants this wondrous moment to end; no one wants to leave this safe place, this vision of beauty. No one wants to be pushed, pushed down the mountain; no on wants to leave this experience of seeming escape from the ordinary, the sometimes mundane or troubling or harsh or conflicted or deathly realities of daily life in the city.

Yet the story does, in fact, lead us from the mountain into the town, the city, where the reluctant, often timid, and hesitant followers of Jesus are drawn into a world that is not much different than the brutal world of Precious: “A man from the crowd shouts, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, my only son: he shrieks, he convulses until he foams at the mouth’.” What the three disciples witness and we with them – those three who wished to God they were settled in smart little tents on the Mount of Transfiguration – what they see before their very eyes, what we witness in city, is Jesus’ “glory” in action: engaging the deadening power of sickness, impoverishment, and social isolation. They witness him “making whole palsied limbs and fainting soul,” they witness him – as our hymn notes – “in valiant fight, quelling all the devil’s might … ever bringing good from ill.” What they see is this: the holy light of God shining brightly and more clearly within what appear to be – what appear to be – the most God-forsaken places and experiences … in the midst of this tale of woe – a father’s desperate call for his son’s healing – a tale of wonder begins to shine.

Dear brothers and sisters, you know as well as I do that we live on the other side of the story, the tale. We know that Jesus and his reluctant, often uncomprehending followers will go up to Jerusalem, that he will share a last meal with them, that he will be arrested, tortured, and put to death – that he, too, will experience a lonely and frightening death. We know where this tale of wondrous light on the mountain leads: to a tale of woe on a hill outside the city, in a seemingly God-forsaken place.

And we know this, too, or … I wonder … do we know this? That he will be raised and continue to be raised, by the power of God, into the lives of his often hesitant and, at times, timid followers, into the lives of ordinary women and men, children and infants; that he will be raised – is raised – into your life and my life through that holy mystery we call holy baptism; that he will continue to give himself away to us as our food and drink, our bread and wine cup, to strengthen us for life in the city.

“It is Sunday,” writes Precious. Indeed, it is Sunday. The muted light of the sun and the flickering candlelight shine around us and down on us. We are, dear brothers and sisters, we are – if we are anything – the shiny children of God. Though we may be quite old or quite young, though we may be strong or weak, though we may be confused or clear in purpose, though we may live alone or with a tribe of children … though we may hold hidden regrets within and unspoken affections in our hearts … we are, nonetheless, the shiny, beautiful, sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ.

If we are willing – if we are willing – we can learn, again and again, how to write, how to speak, how to enflesh the words of God’s love for those around us, for those who are walking down that street outside this place of shining lights, for those who find refuge and a bit of sleep in the shelter of our porch.

The tale of this world’s woe, and any woe we may hold within it, can yet become a tale of wondrous light.

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