‘See The Angel’

By Emily Bruce
UUAC First Parish at Sherborn
February 2, 2020

Reading – ‘Call To Worship’ by Rev. Gretchen Haley

This world goes too fast
to say all the stories 
that fill our lives. 
We struggle for the words
and the friends that would listen, 
that would witness 
this much beauty, this 
relentless 
loss,
this courage 
to continue on
claiming confidence and joy.

Here in this place 
let us mark time
as if it is our friend
not running away 
but 
offering itself 
with a new abundance
like a gift
ready to offer healing
and mercy 

in the breathing together
and the silence
in the paying attention,
in the music
and in the mystery.

Not everything can be fixed in an hour
not everything can be forgiven
or saved
but here we remember
that this is how we
begin
moment by moment
making our lives
one choice
one spark
of hope
one willing yes
at a time.

Sermon – ‘See The Angel’

Good morning. Today is Groundhog Day. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the tradition – where a groundhog is supposed to accurately predict whether we have six more weeks of winter or an early spring? For the record, this morning the groundhog did not see his shadow, so we’ve got an early spring coming folks. The weather lately kinda holds that up doesn’t it?

I love Groundhog Day – not the day, actually, but the movie. 

How many of you are familiar with the 1993 film Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray? [raise hand] If you haven’t seen it, I’ll fill you in as we go along. I’ve seen the movie dozens of times but I always usually watch it around this time of year – because it’s funny (and there are several running jokes in my family around that movie) but also because it never fails to teach me something about struggle. I’ll get to that. 

In Groundhog Day, a Pittsburgh weatherman named Phil (that’s Bill Murray)– a cynical, ego-driven, narcissistic kind of guy – travels to Punxatawney, PA to report on their annual Groundhog Day Festival. The groundhog report I just gave came from there. 

So what happens to Phil is that he gets trapped in Punxatawney, in Groundhog Day, by reliving the same day over and over again – literally the alarm goes off at 6am and it’s Groundhog Day – again. And again. And again. So, each morning he sees the same people, in the same places, having the same conversations. And he’s trapped – he can’t find a way out, even through death (because yes, at one point he tries to get out that way too). 

He cycles through frustration, anger and despair – unable to accept the fact that forces beyond his control are keeping him in this place, on this day, with no escape. 

In a crucial scene, when he is at perhaps his lowest point, Phil is sitting at a bar, drinking heavily and talking to some locals. He says to one of them “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and everything you did was the same, and nothing mattered?” The guy pauses, and then answers “That about sums it up for me.” 

That’s when the movie gets me. Because who can say they haven’t felt trapped at some point by their life? Hopefully not as much as that guy at the bar, but we all feel it at some point. Have you felt that? I have. What grind do you spend your day chipping away at?

See, the human life is one of repetition. We wake up, we need food (and coffee), we take a shower, we get dressed and we go about our routines - our work, our kids’ schedules. Even if you love your work, it can often have a grind to it that wears on you. I feel that. If I’m not paying attention, I can get cynical about that grind – I often feel like I work for my calendar, rather than my calendar working for me. Do you feel that? 

Of course, there’s more to it – there’s a grind to so many of our struggles too. Maybe it’s a tense relationship issue with a family member that just doesn’t seem to be getting better; a difficult boss or co-worker that makes your work life stressful; an illness in someone you love that’s really hard to bear witness to. 

Or, how about just being alive and awake to the struggles of our world today, to the partisan mess in Washington, to our ever-warming climate, to systemic racism and transphobia, the list goes on…. 

What are the things that occupy your time and mind each day, every day? Are you making a list in your head? Are you?

And how many of you – right now -  feel like throwing your hands up and asking “Does anything I do matter?” Like Phil, like that guy sitting next to him, what do we do when we feel like nothing we do matters? When the world feels too big and too broken. When we wake up day after day having to chip away at the same struggles that don’t seem to be getting better?

That’s real – getting stuck in that place hurts. That’s where Phil is. And we feel it too – we have felt stuck in that place where struggle and fail to make the world more like the world we want to have. The world we want for our kids, the world we want for each other. 

Like us, Phil is stuck in that place. He can’t believe that he can’t fix it. He keeps trying, but he fails again and again and again. 

Until one day, he stops. He lifts his head up from his own struggle and starts to look around.  He starts paying attention to the people in the town – the ones who have been right there the whole time. He starts engaging in their lives, helping them and learning from them. He develops another routine – and I love this – where he goes around each day helping people. He helps the same lady who gets a flat tire, he gives the Heimlich maneuver to the same guy choking on a piece of meat, he catches the same little boy who keeps falling out of a tree. Day after day, he maintains this new routine. 

In the process, he learns a lot about the people around him. He develops care and love for these folks – he sees their humanity in a way he never could before, buried as he was in his own situation, his own struggle. And, because this is a movie, he falls in love with Rita, his tv producer played by Andi McDowell in the movie. 

My favorite scene in the movie takes place in the town diner. Phil is trying to explain to Rita what’s happening to him and, in doing so, he tells her all the things he has learned about her. In all the Groundhog Days he has lived through, he has learned about her family, her dreams, her fears and her longings. He has walked and talked with her for days. And he tells her about it, ending with “When you stand in the snow, you look like an angel.”

In his review of Groundhog Day, Roger Ebert (remember him? Siskel and Ebert?). In his review, Roger Ebert wrote about this scene “The point is not that he has come to love Rita. The point is that he has learned to see the angel.” 

This is where the movie really cracks me open. To take someone so cynical and mean like Phil and watch him evolve into someone who learns to see the angel. That he has awoken to the beauty of his life, the meaningfulness of connection, the possibility of hope. That’s what I need to be reminded of today and every day. That’s why I love this movie. 

“Angel” doesn’t necessarily mean a heavenly spirit with wings. I mean, if that imagery works for you, I say go with it. To me, the angel represents connection. Seeing the spark of divinity in another person. Stepping into your place in the interconnected web of existence. Feeling belonging and knowing the presence of wonder, mystery and grace. 

Like Heather’s story this morning – I love how Sophia is entrenched in the struggle of getting ready for a visit from God. How stressful is that? She’s working hard to make everything perfect, she anxious and distressed about making it good enough, doing enough, being enough – how many of can relate to that? 

And alongside that struggle, the angel shows up in the form of the mayor, the kids, the women from church – while she’s got her head down, chipping away at getting ready for God, she is surrounded by the love of her community. It’s only later when she gets the second note from God that she realizes what has happened. 

This is the thing about the struggle – it so often tells us that we’re alone. That we’re trapped in this cycle that will never end, that nothing we do matters and that that’s our burden to bear alone. That’s how Phil felt – alone. 

When you’re in the struggle, when you’re chipping away at the day to day, pick up your head and look at who’s around you. Look at your family, look at your community. Look at who’s company you keep. See the struggles they are chipping away at too. You are not alone in this, friends, you are never alone in this.

For me, that’s the angel I need to see every day. And that’s the angel I want you to remember too. In those moments when you want to throw up your hands and say “Does anything I do matter??” I need you to remember that angel. I need you to know that the spark of the divine resides in you. I need you to remember that you are part of the interconnected web of existence. That your life and your meaning are bigger – so much bigger – than the struggle. That who you are matters to a whole lot of people, that who are you matters, period. That you are loved beyond measure. 

When I am in the struggle, you are the angel to me. You are what reminds me that this world is bigger than our daily grind, our unsolvable problems, our struggle. You remind me that alongside that struggle is always – always - the opportunity to recognize our belonging, to embrace and be embraced by our community, to be loved.

We are all the angel, friends – all of us.

May it be so, Amen.