The Blue Line train to Mall of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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This past Monday I arrived in Minneapolis for a conference and decided to take the light-rail train. I was staying downtown but needed to go to the Mall of America to buy a gift for my niece. I boarded the train and watched southeast Minneapolis rush by, noticing some of the many changes that have transformed this region since I last lived there, in the 1990s.
Suddenly, a man behind me exploded in anger. He shouted obscenities into his phone. He simmered down, but then he filled the train again with another startling outburst. After the third or fourth episode of rage, a woman a couple of rows in front of me got up and walked to the forward part of our train car, where there were more people. This left me alone with the angry man in the back half of the train car.
The man turned his rage against the woman. He shouted insults at her about her fears, but also about her personal appearance, specifically her weight. He mocked her. I fretted in my seat. I thought, I should just get up and follow the woman, and sit down next to her, and tell her, “I’m just going to sit up here with you,” or something. Yes. That’s what I should do. I should get up and follow the woman, and sit down next to her. I imagined the man turning his rage on me. A couple of days later, reflecting on the experience, I thought of some good movie dialogue I could say back to the man, something like, “Why don’t you shout at me for a while, and leave her alone. Just keep yelling at me, if you need to.”
But I kept my seat. I did nothing. I said nothing. That same day, on the plane, I had watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Tom Hanks movie about Mr. Rogers, and I recalled how courageous Fred Rogers was – courageous but also sensitive; bold but also gentle. Surely Mr. Rogers would have handled this situation on the train with skill and poise. Mr. Rogers taught children how to work with their emotions, including and perhaps especially the painful emotion of anger. He might have gone and sat next to the shouting man, and said something to help the man regulate his rage, breathe it out. At the very least, the Fred Rogers in my imagination would have gone to be with the woman.
But I was scared. That’s the raw truth. I thought, “He could be armed. He could attack me, right here in the train. I could be killed.” And then it was too late: the woman got off at the next stop (which I seriously doubt was her actual stop – it was not a convenient place to get off the train, not a likely place to get off). She was gone. I prayed for her, but I felt futile and even ridiculous as I prayed.
“Then all the disciples abandoned him and fled,” I thought. That’s a line from Matthew’s Passion. I was one of those fleeing disciples, in this situation. The woman had no companions on that train.
The next day I visited my dad, and we talked about this experience. He empathized with my fears, which I confess I needed and wanted – I wanted a friend to tell me they understood, and all the better if that friend is my father, who I greatly admire. But then my dad and I talked about Dr. King’s take on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Dr. King felt empathy for the priest and Levite who walked on by, leaving the victim in the ditch, but then Dr. King said that the Samaritan “asked [himself] a different question,” and in doing so, the Samaritan chose bravely to offer assistance, even though helping a victim on Jericho road is an easy way to get yourself killed. Dr. King, in his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, said that the priest and Levite had asked themselves, “‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’”. The answer is clear: they could be injured or killed themselves. So they walked on by. Dr. King then said, “But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”
I clearly asked myself the first question as I kept my seat on that train – if I do something, what will happen to me? But I do remember asking myself the second one, too – I did wonder what would happen to the woman if I didn’t get up to stand and sit alongside her. If I don’t get up, I reasoned, she will leave the train alone, in a world that’s just a little dimmer for her, a little sadder, a little more lonely and hard. And finally I asked myself a question Dr. King did not pose in his great speech: "If I do not help this woman,” I asked myself, “what will happen to me?” By not helping – by not doing something, not doing anything – I also left the train diminished. My world was a little dimmer, too.
I say all of this not to get your empathy, and I ask you not to try to console me after mass. I really am okay, and I’m not being too hard on myself. I doubted the value of my prayers for the woman as I sat there on the train, but those prayers were fervent, and she did have a friend on that train, if not a brave one. And it’s all learning: I am ready to board another train. The universe doesn’t let us go back and do things differently, but it continually gives us new opportunities to make a different choice.
I say all of this not to get your empathy, but to encourage you to join me in failing upward, as they say, to notice those moments when you forget who you are, or you forget the life of self-giving love to which you are called – and to learn from those moments of failure. Maybe we fail in these ways because we forget that Jesus says we are under God’s protection, and so no matter what happens to us in train-car encounters like this, even if we are badly injured or killed, even then, God is here with us, holding us, and yes, protecting us.
Here’s how Jesus says it in the High Priestly Prayer. Today we heard the first third of this long prayer, including this particular line: Jesus said, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
“Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”
God protects us by joining us together as one. We still may be injured or even killed, as we move through this world so damaged by rage and injustice, so distorted by fear, so benighted by ignorance. That shouting man on the train: he is suffering, as surely as the woman is. He is probably suffering more than I can imagine, and I’ve seen a fair amount of suffering as a therapist, a pastor, and a person with an ordinary personal life marked by change and loss. But that poor suffering man is potentially lethal, and God does not protect me – or any of us – from the damage we could sustain when we do the right thing on the train car.
But God protects us by joining us together as one. The risen Christ – still bearing the wounds he sustained when he was riding in his train car – the risen Christ breathes God’s Spirit upon us, and binds us together. We may be hurt by this world – no, we will be hurt by this world – but we will be hurt together. We can give one another more courage when we’re out in the world. We need only remember, while we sit and fret on our train cars, how brave our Neighborhood Action ministers are here at St. Paul’s; or how compassionate and sensitive our Godly Play teachers are; or how the dance and rhythm of our liturgical servers forms us to recognize beauty, harmony, and peace in this world, so troubled yet also so beautiful.
We enjoy God’s protection when we recognize the risen Christ active and alive in one another. When we pray as one, when we serve as one, when we give our hearts to the world as one, we draw on God’s wisdom, God’s strength, God’s grit. Jesus fervently prayed to God that his followers – and that includes us – would be one, as God is one. This is not merely because we would be happier if we agreed on most things and hung together as a group. No, we are one because that is precisely how we receive God’s protection in this daunting and dangerous world, and it is how we bravely offer God’s protection, too. We are one because that is how God gives all the train passengers – including that poor shouting man – friendship, connection, consolation, and peace.
If you’re in Minneapolis, a train ticket costs two dollars and fifty cents. You can catch it on South Fifth Street, in front of City Hall. Go ahead, take the train. We’ve got you. We’ll protect you, no matter what happens.
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Preached on the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year A), May 21, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36
1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
John 17:1-11