time travel

Let him who has ears to hear travel in time

Sunday morning we had a splendid sermon which our rector began by remembering his feelings and where he was that Friday, November 22, 1963 when news came that President Kennedy had been killed, then tied to our untimely gospel about Christ the King. Untimely because Linda just bought our Thanksgiving turkey and a new Christmas tree, and holiday season lights are going up around town, yet here we are on Calvary’s Hill with Jesus on the Cross, and it’s Good Friday afternoon not "sleigh bells ring, are you listening." 

Sermons have life and every sermon is different for every hearer as Spirit touches and Word speaks differently and personally for each one in the crowd. Sunday morning I heard every word clearly even as I was moved to a different time and place in my own life, not only a faraway city because we lived in Yokohama, and time because it was Saturday morning there not Friday as it was in Dallas, but also to a different age of my being, and then to different ages. 

Assisting at both services, I heard the sermon twice and it was even different for me each time. At eight o’clock I was stunned by what it did to me emotionally and where it took me spiritually, physically. At ten-thirty I was looking forward to going there again, to our little house on the very high bluff of a ridge overlooking Tokyo Bay, and being 28, and doting on a beautiful little girl and a tiny boy who now and then squabbled over who got to sit in Daddy’s lap. The phone call from Wayne's wife Beverly Hatchett across the cul-de-sac, rushing around the living/dining area to turn off the Japanese TV and turn on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. Falling into a nightmare when all sound changed to dirge. The next morning at our little Anglican church, the stunned congregation as our English vicar prayed for the Queen and for the soul of the President of the United States of America.

When Fr. Steve said that as a first grader it was his first experience of living in history as it happened, it took me to the April 12, 1945 instant when Bill Guy’s grandmother came outside and told our little neighborhood group that President Roosevelt was dead: my first thought was not believing this could happen, he had been president all my life, was in his fourth term as president and it was inconceivable that he would not be president forever. My second thought was fear: our president is dead, now we will lose the war. 

Steve in first grade for his first taste of history took me to another Sunday morning, Miss Violet Heyward’s first grade class at Cove School the day after Pearl Harbor, and to the December 1941 afternoon a week or so later when I came out of school and couldn’t find my mother because she was in our brand new 1942 Chevrolet with Gina and Walt in the back seat; in the front seat Mom, my beloved grandmother, next to Mama who was driving. The candy-striped seats and new car smell. Most of all Mom, in whose house I now live.

Sermons have life, and power. So does a child. Sunday morning Christian was there with his mom and dad, and I got to hold him. His soft blondness reminds me of Jody when he was tiny and we lived in Japan. Picking Christian up reminds me of Ryan at the same age running down the aisle at Grace Church and jumping into my arms. Ryan just turned 15 last week, and I have a picture of him holding his new drivers license. Not long ago Ryan’s mother pointed to me holding Christian and told him, “That’s your replacement.” 

Not so, everyone is still there, nobody ever replaces anyone in my heart. In Sunday’s gospel Jesus told the thief on the next cross, “today you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise: that’s exactly what happened to me, where I went during Steve’s sermon and all the rest of Sunday morning.

TW+