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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Give My Regards to Broadway." The Elephant Man. If I may interrupt the beauty of our service for what may appear to be a rather mundane comment, but one of which you might be aware. As you know, the television cameras are moving throughout the

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congregation during the preaching of the sermon. And there aren't very many of you here this morning. That means that the chances of your being on television are very great. And so you should be aware of that because it's really embarrassing to get telephone calls all the next week from people telling you, "Did you get a lot of rest in church last Sunday?" Let a word to the wise be

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sufficient. The scripture reading of the morning is from 2 Corinthians, the 12th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 1. "I must boast. There is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know. God knows. And I know that

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this man was caught up into paradise, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man, I will boast. But on my own behalf, I will not boast except of my weaknesses. Though if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I shall be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it so that

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no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect

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in weakness. I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." And may God bless to us this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy

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Spirit. Amen. I asked you to think with me this morning about a man who could weep but who could not smile. His name was John Merrick, and what we know of him we know principally because of the writings of Dr. Frederick Treves, an eminent British physician just before the turn of this century, a man whose clientele included members of the royal family. It was on December the 2nd,

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1884, that Dr. Treves met John Merrick and described him in his journal as being "the most lamentably deformed individual he had ever encountered." If you will look at the picture in the bulletin of the morning, you will find that he had an enormous misshapen head, that from his upper jaw there proceeded a large growth. Treves called it a "pink stump," which twisted his mouth

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into a kind of slobbering aperture. The back and the front of his body were covered with sack-like tumors. His right arm was enormous in size. Treves said it looked like a flipper, and the fingers were very much like gnarled roots, but his left arm was perfectly normal and indeed almost feminine in its beauty. The lower limbs of the man were as hideously deformed as the upper part of his body.

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He had to walk with a cane, for he was unable to support himself on the legs which were his. This John Merrick had a face so hideous and so twisted that while he could weep, while tears could flow, he was utterly incapable of smiling. He lived six years after meeting Treves in a small two-room apartment in the London Hospital, and while he was living in that place, his condition

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steadily worsened. The number of tumors increased, and to make things even more tragic, they began to seep a dark brown fluid which smelled very much like rotten cauliflower. This is John Merrick. The Elephant Man. Now in him we see the enigma of human suffering. The disease from which he suffered then has been identified today as Proteus Syndrome, and most of the medical

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questions concerning it are still unanswered. But I don't want to ask any medical questions this morning. I would like to ask instead why a man like John Merrick should be born into the world as he was. This is the question, it seems to me, which is especially appropriate to us as Christians. If we, for example, believe that at the center of the universe was some cruel

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and heartless deity, some dumb creature who ruled only by blindness and mere fate, then we could say that John Merrick is one of those aberrations that can be expected. Sometimes that's the way the cosmic cookie crumbles. But we believe that at the center of the universe is God, and that he is a being of infinite love, that it is God who has created us and sustained us, and that this

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God is just and holy. And if all of that is true, then why are there pitiable creatures like John Merrick? Now, I will not pretend to answer that question because I do not know the answer to it. In John Merrick we confront pure, distological, surd suffering. And I'm not going to make the mistake that many in the church make of saying too much about too many things with too little

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information and too little faith. I offer no answer to the question of why someone suffers as Merrick suffered. Instead, I respond to that question with another question. Suppose I were to put a pebble into your hand and I were to ask you what it was, and suppose you replied that it was granite, and I then said, "What is granite?" And you proceeded patiently to describe to me the

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chemical properties of granite. Suppose then I said to you, "What do you mean by chemical properties?" You would go on to attempt to describe to me forms of matter. But suppose I then said, "Well, what is the form of matter?" If you're sufficiently sophisticated, you would reply that it is a mode of motion. If I then ask you what you mean by a mode of motion, then,

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even though you are the wisest of all the scientists that lives, you will be struck silent. We can't understand in its essence even a pebble, but we are still able to build great things with stone. And just so, we may not be able to grasp the why and the wherefore of the kind of suffering we see in John Merrick, but that does not mean that we cannot build good from it. In him we see,

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first of all, the enigma of suffering. But the second thing we see in John Merrick is the eloquence of suffering. When Dr. Treves first examined John Merrick, he thought he was an imbecile. This great stump that stuck out of his mouth distorted his speech so much that Treves couldn't understand anything that he said. But eventually, he learned how to understand what John Merrick was saying.

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And as he listened, he was led to write in his journal, Dr. Treves, that John Merrick was, and I quote, "an earnest, intelligent man with great romantic imagination and sensitivity." Treves discovered that Merrick could read and write, and that he had an especially remarkable knowledge of the Bible. He also discovered that he knew the things of his faith, and he delighted

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during the time he lived in the hospital and having long theological discussions with Bishop Howe, who was an Anglican clergyman in London at that time. He was confirmed in the Anglican Church and spent most of his time reading in the fields of theology and faith, and also in meditation and prayer. His only entertainment or hobby was to build, using his one good arm and hand, a precise

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model of St. Philip's Church, which he could see from the window of his hospital room. And you can still see that model in the museum of the London Hospital. The money to pay for John Merrick's accommodations and care there at the hospital came through public subscription. Discreet mentions of him were made in the newspapers, and people were asked to help. And many people did. But what was

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more remarkable than that was that many of these people wanted to come and talk with John Merrick, not because they wished to see some spectacle. No, they came because the word spread that there was in him a remarkable compassion and understanding. Dukes, Duchesses, businessmen, military men, the Queen of England, they all came to visit him. And they didn't come so much to

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help him as to be helped by him. Dr. Trees notes that he was never arrogant, that he was always intensively attentive, and that those who spent time with him invariably went away feeling that they had received much more than they had given. People listened to him. His speech had become a bit better in the time he was in the hospital, still very difficult to comprehend. But people

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listened to him attentively, and they learned from him. This unique sufferer had the ability to enter into the sufferings of other people. He had become so much the friend of God in his hurt that he could be the friend of others in theirs. Out of his own personal calvary, he brought something that was remarkably good. Suffering has a way, of course,

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of making people sensitive and serious. You don't have to think very long to be able to name personalities who have made great contributions to our civilization and who have done it out of great pain and suffering. Milton with his blindness, Beethoven with his deafness, Van Gogh with his epilepsy, Steinmetz with his crippled deformity, Michelangelo and Tchaikovsky

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with the burden of the homosexuality which was theirs. All of these, out of the pain that these things brought upon them, still made contributions to the human story that amaze us. Amy Carmichael, who was a very great missionary to India and who herself suffered a great deal from many ailments, writes in one of her books that there is a lily which grows only in India. It grows on a long vine

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and it crawls along the ground until it finds a cactus plant. And then it climbs up the cactus plant on the thorns of the plant. And finally, when it gets to the top there at that place, it unfurls the banners of its beautiful petals. The flower is known as "Gloriosa Superba." And what is it? It is beauty built on thorns. It is magnificence that comes out of misery.

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We understand as Christians that we are to be available to God. We know that our first responsibility is not to serve ourselves. It's not even to serve others. Our first responsibility is to be yielded totally to God so that we can play that part in human drama which God wishes us to play. Paul is a perfect example of this. I read in your hearing a few minutes ago his writing

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to the Corinthians about what he called his "thorn in the flesh." Now scholars differ as to what the thorn in the flesh was. John Calvin, our theological progenitor, thought it was spiritual temptation. Luther thought it was persecution. I have read some Roman Catholic scholars who believe that it was sexual temptation. But the vast majority of scholars, and I would stand with them in this,

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believe that this thorn in the flesh was either some ophthalmic condition or it was a particular kind of malaria which seemed to thrive in and around Tarsus, the place where Paul was born and reared. Now Paul asked again and again to be relieved of the pain of this thorn. But then he writes to the Corinthians that God said to him, "It is enough for you to know my grace. My strength

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will be made evident in your weakness." And commenting on this, Paul says, "So I boast of my weaknesses. Because of them I am forced to rely more upon Christ. And the more I rely upon Christ, the more of his power I know. His strength comes through my weakness." You've heard it said many times that until a person reaches the end of herself, she will not come to the beginning of

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God. Well, suffering, intense suffering, leads you to come to the end of yourself very quickly. And you are thrown back upon God. And that's what we see in John Merrick. His sensitivity, his serviceableness, this man who could weep but who could not smile, made other people beautiful by wiping away their tears and bringing smiles to their faces. You see, in John Merrick, we see

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suffering conquered. As I have walked the dim aisles of the cathedral of his soul, I have noticed that the light that illuminates his life comes from an eastern window, and silhouetted against that window is the sign of a cross. And it is because he was one at a cross, and it was because he endured the cross, his own cross, that he was enabled to triumph as he was. Some of you may be

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familiar with the writings of Christ of St. John of the Cross, the great Spanish Christian, mystically oriented. John of the Cross talks about what he calls "the dark night of the soul." Now, the dark night of the soul is not the result of evil. It is instead the result of that which can be very good. The dark night of the soul is not a punishment. It is instead a kind of divine human

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encounter with God. It usually begins with spiritual dryness, followed by a deepening depression and a feeling of lostness and hopelessness. It's in the dark of this that you're somehow able to hear God more intimately than you can hear him under other circumstances. But it doesn't begin that way, because you see, initially, in the dark night of the soul,

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your senses are deadened, so that the beauty of nature about you is no longer seen by you. Your imagination is crippled, so you lose hope. Your memory ceases, so you cannot bring light to the shadow of your days from your beautiful yesterdays. Your intellect darkens, so that you cannot reason your way through this thing. You come to know a kind of aching emptiness, a cloud of separation

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that comes between you and God. The words of the Bible mean nothing. Prayer becomes meaningless. Sermons, offensive. People come and seek to minister to you, and you wish they'd go away. Even your friends, because they have this tendency to say, "Oh, come on, a little more believing and you'll snap out of it." Or they'll say, "I pray for you," like they say so easily to

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so many at so little cost. You're looking, and you find nothing. And so eventually, you come to a place where you yield. You have nowhere to go. Nowhere. Nowhere at all. And you tumble into that nothingness. And you fall, and you fall, and you fall, until at the very moment when you do not believe that your heart can bear one more instant of falling, you are caught by Christ, and by Christ

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alone. There are no six easy steps out of the dark night of the soul. Most people are altogether ignorant of it, because they've never gone through it. It is an experience so profound, so intimate, so costly, so utterly beyond the petty mouthing of biblical phrases and ritual prayers, that John of the Cross can only describe it by saying, "Christ seduced me. Christ ravished me. Christ

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penetrated me. Christ did those things which only Christ can do." I'm very much aware that many of you do not understand what I'm talking about. And that is because you have not risked enough in your religion to have paid a price for it, or because you are afraid to make yourself so vulnerable before God that even the gentlest movements of his Spirit in your heart give you

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exquisite pain. But I want you to listen to me anyway, because sometime in a hospital room, or in a suddenly empty house, or by the ruins of an automobile smashed to smithereens on the side of a road, you're going to suddenly discover yourself to be falling. And in that moment, remember, God will, in his time, catch you and hold you up. I don't know for how long John Merrick

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walked in the darkness of the soul. God alone knows what Christ did and said to him there. But you see, that's the point. God alone knows. And that's enough. Out of that darkness... [silence] [silence]

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[silence] [silence] Bernard Pomerantz in 1978 took the story of The Elephant Man and without embellishing it, wrote it for the stage. It was produced on Broadway in New York City, where it won the Antoinette

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Perry Award, the Tony Award as the best drama of the year. I saw the play three times, and I was led then to read the complete manuscripts of Dr. Frederick Treves and some other material about John Merrick, which really wasn't much worth the time. And somehow in the process of all of this, I felt I got close to The Elephant Man. And you know what struck me? What struck me was not his

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ugliness, but mine. What John Merrick endured and brought beauty and blessing from it is more than I ever had to endure. And I looked in my own life, misshapen, crippled, and deformed, and I wondered if I had ever come truly to the end of myself and thus to the beginning of God. It seems to me that very few I know have done this, and that is the reason for the poverty of our work and of our witness.

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After John Merrick died, Frederick Treves finished his journal concerning Merrick with these words, "He had passed through the fire and come out unscathed. His troubles had ennobled him. He showed himself to be a gentle, affectionate, lovable creature, free of any trace of arrogance or resentment, without a grievance or without an unkind word to anyone. His journey through life had been a long

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via dolorosa, but when the night was at its darkest and the way most steep, he was filled with gratitude." John Merrick's head was so large that he couldn't sleep like most people do. The weight of his head was too great, pressure on his neck too much, so when he would go to bed at night, he would prop pillows behind him and he would lean against those pillows and then he would pull up his knees and he would lean

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his great head forward onto the points of his knees and put his arms around his knees, and that's the way he would sleep. And one time, for some reason which no one knows, he decided that he would like to try a different way of sleeping. So he arranged his pillows in a certain way and then he sat down and he turned and he lowered his great, misshapen head onto the pillows. But the weight of his head was so great

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that it dislocated his neck and in a matter of minutes he had suffocated to death. He was 27 years old. John Merrick, the elephant man, Christian. He could weep, but he could not smile. Yet, he took away the tears of others and brought joy where only sadness had been. Let us pray. O God, forgive us for our petty complaining, for our picayune protestations. Help us to see that all

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things, even things we cannot explain, work together for good to those who truly love thee and are called according to your purpose. Make us sensitive to the great suffering that goes on about us so that we will never knowingly or even unknowingly inflict greater hurt upon another. And help us to grow enough in our faith that we, if we have courage enough by thy grace to enter the dark night of the soul, will find what it is

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at the moment of most profound despair to be caught and held fast by thy great and loving hand and heart. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]