Prayer of Opening
Hidden Heart of the Cosmos,
Pattern within the chaos,
Chaos within the design,
Deep withinness,
in whom all things are held together.
Known in Jesus,
And in all souls,
who can imagine
wholesome futures into being,
just futures,
when the vulnerable are lifted up,
and the strong are offered the gift
of a broken heart.
Reign over us,
and in us,
and through us.
We bow before your sovereignty grace.
Amen.
Xavier le Pichon is a geophysicist. The seeds of this vocation were planted in Viet Nam, where his family spent WW2 in a Japanese concentration camp. He began to wonder what lay beneath the surface of the ocean. While still in his thirties, he was the first man to travel three thousand feet to the bottom of the ocean to get a first hand glimpse at plate tectonics of Earth’s crust. These are the enormous plates that are in constant motion, heaving and crossing over each other from time to time. Their shifting is what is responsible for the continents, earthquakes, and the renewal of Earth with rich minerals and water from below the surface of Earth. Prior to his discovery, most scientists were “fixists” believing that the Earth’s surface was fixed in place. They knew that it moved up and down, but he discovered Earth’s lateral movement.
Then one day, he realized that he was so obsessed by his scientific career that he had completely ignored the suffering of the human condition. He decided to go to Calcutta, to work at Mother Theresa’s orphanage. One day while feeding a dying infant in his arms he made a promise to the baby to never again ignore the suffering of the world. When he returned he lived in intentional community with multiply handicapped persons and their families. This was based in the work of Jean Vanier and the L’Arche community. He raised his own family in this kind of community. A wise priest praised him for this commitment to be with those who suffer, but also encouraged him to go back to his important work as a scientist, which he did.
Dr. le Pichon is a devout Roman Catholic who reflected theologically on the intersection of the two worlds of science and religion. He developed what we might call a theology of fragility. Just as new life is found at the fragile places in the Earth’s crust, so he has discovered, new life is found when we open our hearts to human fragility, in others, yes but also in ourselves. It is the weak spot, within and without, that evokes our greatest potential as human beings. Suffering is an evolutionary catalyst for that which defines what it means to be human and humane—the capacity for empathy.
Le Pichon connects the evolution of the human species to this orientation and impulse to care for the most fragile—the practice is to intentionally situate ourselves where our hearts can be broken open. When the tectonic plates of our hearts begin to shift, there we find renewal. There we find nutrients for our growth into the fullness of the human condition. Christians would say that it is there where we find the Christ, the very heart of God, hidden among the most vulnerable, within ourselves and within our neighbours. In biological evolution we associate evolution with “the survival of the strongest”, but with cultural evolution, the key is embracing fragility and vulnerability.
Le Pichon uses the metaphor of rocks to make a compelling point about our evolution as a species. At a certain temperature, far below the surface of Earth, rocks assume the form of lava. Lava is melted rock. As the lava gets closer to the surface and the temperature drops, the liquid rock assumes a solid form. It becomes hard. It no longer flows. It takes the pressure of an earthquake to get through the crusty layer of rock. By way of analogy, he sees human hearts as either remaining warm and flowing, or becoming crusty and rock-like. When the human heart becomes crusty the only alternative is revolution. This is what happens when there are revolutions. The hearts of the elite are no longer warm and flowing. They no longer identify with the most vulnerable and so their soul becomes brittle. The people then are forced to enact the social equivalent of an earthquake, a revolution. The only way for the evolution of our species to proceed by evolution and not revolution is to organize our personal, relational, and political lives around the most vulnerable.
I was listening to CBC radio’s Tapestry and heard a saying that struck a chord with me. “Be gentle, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle”. Everyone we meet has such fragility, such vulnerability, and in ways that are usually hidden to us. We know this, don’t we, because we know our own hidden fragility. Then I found this poem, describing an invisible crack in a crystal vase. The soft blow of a lady who was innocently fanning herself inadvertently caused the crack.
The Broken Vase[1]
The vase where this verbena’s dying
Was cracked by a soft blow of a lady’s fan.
It must have been the merest grazing:
We heard no sound. The fissure grew.
The little wound spread while we slept,
Pried deep in the crystal, bit by bit.
A long, slow marching line, it crept
From spreading base to curving lip.
The water oozed out drop by drop,
Bled from the line we’d not seen etched.
The flowers drained out all their sap.
The vase is broken: do not touch.
The quick, sleek hand of one we love
Can tap us with a fan’s soft blow,
And we will break, as surely riven
As that cracked vase. And no one knows.
The world sees just the hard, curved surface
Of a vase a lady’s fan once grazed,
That slowly drips and bleeds with sadness.
Do not touch the broken vase.
“Be gentle, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle”. Our cracks and fissures cannot afford to be touched by unkindness, for we surely all are this close to shattering. We may only be touched by tenderness, by hands that know our hidden vulnerability. And the beautiful thing is that when you see my fragility, and when I see your fragility, our empathy for each other, and our human condition, evolves. Our hearts melt. It is the recognition of our mutual fragility that melts our hearts, and makes us realize our deep unity.
“When was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” (Matthew 25:38-39). Matthew calls those who ask this question with innocence, “the righteous”. We might call them the open-hearted ones, the ones whose hearts have not grown cold in response to suffering, but rather were so in touch with their own fragile places, that the knew themselves to be one with those who needed care.
“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to the one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (25:40). The reason that the open-hearted ones acted with tenderness tender was not because the vulnerable belonged to their own immediate family, or tribe, or church. They didn’t do it to be good Christians. Their kindness and warmth rose to the surface because suffering and fragility unites helps us to realize that we are truly are one. We share the same beautiful and broken human condition.
On this Christ the King, or Reign of Christ Sunday, this is what we are celebrating: not a triumphant Christ who is stronger than all other contenders, and not any kind of exclusivist claims that makes us better than anyone else. We’re not celebrating that to be in Christ saves us from suffering. Far from it! This is not what constitutes the reign of Christ. What we claim is that the Christ, the very Heart of the Divine is hidden in our fragility, and in the fragility of others. We claim on behalf of the fragile and broken-hearted ones, including ourselves, that love and tenderness reigns.
On the Reign of Christ, we celebrate the weakness of God, who is made known in vulnerability, and made strong in our compassionate response. This is why the cross remains an important symbol—not that God sent Jesus to die for our sin. Rather, Jesus emerges, a child of this universe, and becomes one with all the fragility he sees. He embodies it, suffers it, and does not close his heart, even unto death. He becomes for us, the fault line of the fragile divine heart, where new life erupts. This is the same Jesus, remember, who told his disciples that he must suffer, because out of his innocent suffering, something new was being born.
By contemplating the fragility of the human condition, symbolized by the cross, and choosing not to shut down, compassion arises, warm and flowing, from the broken heart. We feel the promise of the emergence of a new human—homo empathicus. Surely, this is what the Easter is about. Surely, this is how Christ reigns. As we break bread this morning, let it be our own hearts that are being broken open. Connect with the fragile places within you and bring them to the table. As we lift the cup and drink from it, let it be the warmth of God’s love flowing into your soul.
[1] René François Armand Sully-Prudhomme (1839-1907). Translation from French to English © 2009 by Robert Archambeau.
