On a bright autumn day, I
stood with my father at the college war memorial—an open space at the crest of
the hill overlooking the athletic fields below and the Mount Holyoke Range
beyond. Three Marine helicopters circled the campus and landed on the fields.
On the roof of the nearby gym building stood a man wearing a dark suit and
holding a rifle with a telescopic sight.
It was October 26, 1963.
President Kennedy had come to Amherst College, my father’s alma mater and much
later mine, to attend the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library and to
receive an honorary degree. I was eight years old.
Later on, among an outdoor
crowd of 10,000, I struggled to see the President speak on the wooden platform
erected for the occasion. My father hoisted me up onto his shoulders, so that
I’d have a better view.
Less than a month later, I
was standing in the hall of my grade school when it was announced that
President Kennedy had been shot and killed. A teacher was crying. We all went
home early that day.
But the memory that has
remained with me over the years—much sharper in relief—was of those helicopters
and of that dark-suited secret service man with the rifle and of sitting up
high on my father’s shoulders straining to see the President of the United
States speak.
Many years later, in her
application to Amherst, my daughter Anna was asked to write a brief essay on a
theme from Kennedy’s address that day in 1963. He said: What good is a private college or university unless it is serving a
great national purpose? It seems to me incumbent upon this and
other school’s graduates to recognize their responsibility to the public
interest...unless the graduates of this college...are willing to put back into
our society those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the
compassion...then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are
based are bound to be fallible.
Anna wrote about that day I
sat atop my father’s shoulders, about her grandfather’s service to his country
as a Naval officer in World War 2, about my work as a hospice chaplain and as a
minister, and about her desire to
serve her country—to put her gifts back into society--fiercely and bravely, as she wrote—and with broad sympathy, with understanding, and with compassion.
Kennedy spoke that day about
the responsibility of college graduates to serve the greater good of the
society. And he spoke, reflecting a theme from Robert Frost’s inaugural poem,
about the right uses of power, this just one year after the Cuban Missile
Crisis and in the midst of an ever expanding nuclear arms race.
At bottom, Kennedy said, [Frost] held a deep
faith in the spirit of man, and it is hardly an accident that [he]coupled
poetry and power, for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself.
When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.
When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the
richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
Then he said, in a quote now
carved on the wall of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington:
I look forward to a great future for America, a
future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral
restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be
afraid of grace and beauty.
In the calendar of the church
year, this is the Last Sunday after Pentecost, sometimes referred to as Christ
the King. Odd name, you might say, for one who was a Palestinian peasant Jew
crucified by the Roman authorities. Odd, indeed.
Today the language of
kingship is largely outmoded. We no longer live under kings, so the meaning of
the term is largely lost on us. The reign of kings was anything but benign,
their massive power and wealth often amassed by means of exploitation and
violence.
The inscription over the
crucified Jesus read: This is the King of the Jews. With this mockery
of Jesus and the Jews, Pilate wrote much more than he could have ever known
or imagined.[1]
What is this power of Christ
the crucified King?
It’s the power of the wisdom
from before time and forever. It’s the power of self-giving love, whose purpose
is for healing old wounds. It’s a
power unafraid of grace and beauty, revealed even at the darkest of times.
Today we support the life of
St. Nick’s not only with our financial pledges, but with the power and purpose
of our love. We pledge to use our gifts, fiercely and bravely, for the sake, not only of this place, but of the
wider world; forever offering our broad sympathy, our understanding, and our
compassion.
AMEN
* A Sermon Preached at St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Scarborough, Maine; Last Sunday after Pentecost: Christ the King; November 24, 2013
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