On the night of December 21, 1988, a bomb exploded on board New York– bound Pan Am Flight 103 and ripped the aircraft apar, its wreckage then raining down on the sleepy Scottish town of Lockerbie below. All 259 passengers and crew perished, as did eleven local residents. One of the passengers was forty-five-year-old Frank Ciulla, who had been traveling home to his wife and three children in New Jersey for the Christmas holidays. His body was discovered on Margaret and Hugh Connell’s small farm in Waterbeck, nearly eight miles from the main crash site.
Almost four years later, the
Ciulla family finally found the strength to visit Scotland. They went to Minsca
Farm and spent time with the Connells; and they saw the quiet spot where their
father and husband came to rest, far away from the chaotic scenes in Lockerbie;
and they asked all of the questions they had been desperate to ask since
getting the news. After the visit, the Connells wrote a beautiful, thoughtful
letter to the Ciullas. It was cherished and read aloud on the seventh
anniversary of the tragedy, as the Lockerbie Cairn, the red Scottish sandstone
memorial to those killed, was dedicated in Arlington National Cemetery in
Virginia. The two families remain close.
Here is the letter:
My Dears Lou, Mary Lou and
family,
I can hardly believe that I
am writing to you. This is something that I had longed to do since 21st
December, 1988. When your dear one came to us from the night, it was so
unbelievable, haunting and desperately sad. You said that your visit altered
the picture for you in many ways; this is just how it was for us too. Frank was
a young man with a name but connected to nobody. Now at last we can match him
with a loving family. Sometimes I would stop to think as the months went past,
“I wonder how his loved ones are coping now, I wonder what they are doing?”
We were told maybe some of
the relatives would never come; we were afraid that you’d come and not want to
get in touch. I was so thankful that you made the effort to come and ask all
the questions you had always wanted to ask. You had at last found someone who
could fill in those last hours, that piece that had always remained a mystery.
It’s the “not knowing” that can bring so much pain and bewilderment. We all
have imaginations that can run riot in us, and I’m sure your dear souls must
have had untold agonies wondering and worrying.
It was just wonderful to
meet you face-to-face. We needed to talk to you all too. As you said, we will
get to know Frank through you. He was never just “another victim” to us. For
months we called him “Our Boy.” Then we found out his name. He was “Our Frank.”
Please believe me we were deeply affected by his coming to us. We will never
forget our feelings seeing him there, a whole-bodied handsome man, the life
gone out of him in a twinkling. We were just past trying to grasp the whole
thing.
Then to have to leave him there, but he was visited throughout the night by police and a doctor and we went back again in the morning. He was a fellow man and he had come to us in the saddest way. So now through him we have you in our hearts, and please, we want you all to know that you are welcome here whenever you come.[1]
The Connell Family
Agape is a hard concept to define.
On the surface, it’s easy, I suppose.
The Greeks had four distinct words and concepts for love, whereas in English we
have just the one word.
The Greeks have Storge, the kind of love
that exists in families, particularly between parents and children. It’s
defining characteristic is it’s natural state of being.
There is also Phillia, an affectionate
regard between equals. This can be felt between friends, community and lovers
even. Being of equal social standing seems to be the place where this rests.
Eros, is of course love in the sexual
passion realm.
Agape is the version of love that is
most entangled in our world with 1 Corinthians 13, the Love Chapter:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.[2]
Jesus taught his followers to engage in
this kind of love, this agape form, brotherly love, charitable love, love for
the others who share our planet.
Even though the concept of agape was not
created to illustrate the story and lessons of the man known as Jesus, in 2,000
years the two concepts have become so intertwined that it is hard to see one as
clearly and distinct….without the other.
The story of two families, connected by
tragedy, though, is one example of people doing it. No one in the story, not
the Ciullas, and not the Connells are divine, they are just ordinary human
beings, brought into relationship with each other by an event.
We have our own examples of agape as
well.
(Here I told the story of 18 of our members--nearly 1/3 of the whole congregation--going to a Olivet Institutional Baptist Church as part 1,151 religious people to make a statement about the police brutality in Cleveland.)
My question to you, is how can we as a
body, and as individuals return again and again to practicing this kind of love
of our fellow beings? What inspires us
to do so, and what might inspire others to join us.
We have been talking about wanting this
congregation to grow, to become even more relevant to the world outside our
sanctuary.
I say that there are people out there in
the world who are looking for us, even if they don’t yet know we’re here. There
may be students at Case, or Triple C or CSU.
Or maybe even professors and staff.
There may be people right down the
street from us who are looking for a way to bring more meaning into their
lives, but don’t know which avenue makes sense to them.
Like you, they may feel that a more
orthodox Christianity doesn’t speak to them, or that they never went to church,
and so church doesn’t come to mind when they think about matters of the soul.
They may describe themselves as
“Spiritual, but not religious,” only because their understanding of what
religious means has been narrowly defined by big box churches, pastors who tell
their congregations that gay people are hell-bound. Their whole view of a
religious person might be an image of Jerry Farwell, or of the person at work
who talks about their Bible constantly but shows no evidence of having read it
in their actions.
We are a congregation that practices the
kind of love and regard for others in this world. We care about those we don’t
know, and we care about those who sit in this sanctuary with us week after week.
Like all love, agape isn’t perfect and
we don’t always do a perfect job of expressing how agape makes us feel in the
world, but we do feel it.
And we are not alone.
Ask the 1,1151 people who gathered
together in Olivet Institutional Baptist Church this past Tuesday.
Ask the people who went to the March on
Selma almost 50 years ago when they could’ve stayed home, comfortable.
Ask our Universalist and Unitarian
ancestors who pushed for the abolition of slavery. Those who helped fund the
beginning of the African Methodist Episcopalian churches, just after the Civil
War.
No, we do not practice agape love in the
same way as more orthodox churches, we don’t follow the example of Jesus as
directly as they might—but in not just words, but in deeds, with our pens, with
our bodies—we demonstrate our affection for those with whom we share our
planet, and those who will share it in the future after we are gone.
As Dr. King said in the video clip that
served as our Reading from the Global Scripture, Jesus didn’t teach the world
that we should like our enemies, but that we should love them.
“Agape is more than friendship, agape is
not simply affection, agape is understanding creative, redemptive good will for
all men. It is an overwhelming love that seeks nothing in return.
Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart.”
Agape is love, operating in the human
heart.
May we be ever open to the works of love
in our heart that call us into action.
Blessed be.
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