Well folks, this is our fourth week in my sermon series about intimacy. I still don't know how long this series will last, but I think I have a few more sermons in me on the topic. So far, I have spoken about our alienation and a crisis of intimacy in our society, and our hunger for intimacy. Then I spoke about the difficulties we have with gratitude, and how gratitude is at the heart of any intimate relationship, especially gratitude for the presence of the other. Last week, I spoke about -- well, how do I summarize it -- about how the felt absence of a loved one can lead us to deeper intimacy with God.

Any discussion of intimacy, however, would not be complete without addressing one additional topic related to intimacy, a topic that always looms large in my mind and on my heart. Any of you who know me even only superficially will not be surprised when I name this topic. Indeed, to discuss intimacy in a sermon series without discussing this topic would be nothing less than sacrilegious. For that matter, I don't know how any sermon series on any subject could fail to address this topic. I am referring, of course, to the deep and ontological connection between intimacy and a certain modern day country. Do any of you have any guesses as to which modern day country that might be?

Yes, of course, that's right, the answer is Turkey. When in doubt, the answer is Turkey. Now, I know what many of you are thinking, I know. I have a special gift that way, a way of reading minds. I know many of you are thinking, What does Turkey have to do with intimacy? Well, both Turkey and intimacy have the letter "t" in them, and both end in the letter "y". Coincidence? Hmm.

But there is of course a deeper connection between Turkey and intimacy. To tell that story, we will have to go on a journey through history. The question is, where to begin. Some simple-minded people might begin in the beginning, but not me, no, I would begin this story before the beginning, which is to say, before there even was any recorded history about Turkey. If you go back, back, way back, back before there was even an alphabet, there was a certain city in northwest Turkey, one of the oldest cities in the world. Its name was Troy. It seems that the people of Troy got into a conflict with the people of some of the Greek city-states. The city of Troy was destroyed, and part of the story of that conflict was later commemorated in the greatest epic of Greek civilization, the Iliad. That conflict was sort of chapter one in what developed over the centuries into sort of conflict between east and West, a conflict between the people of Greece and the people of Turkey. Of course, it is a bit more complicated than that, and over the centuries many other peoples were involved, including the Persians and the Macedonians and the Romans and the Arabs, etc. Although Greece and Turkey are modern day nations, the faultline for the divide between them goes way back. That faultline has frequently erupted in conflict. The Greeks ruled what is now modern day Turkey until the 15th century, when the Ottoman Turks took over Turkey, and what is now modern day Greece as well. From the 15th to the 19th centuries, the Ottoman Empire ruled Greece. Their rule was generally resented by the Greeks, who frequently felt oppressed. Indeed, when I was in Greece a few years ago, I was struck by the paucity of monuments from the almost 5 centuries of Ottoman rule. It was as though those centuries were a dark chapter in Greek history that many Greeks wanted to forget.

In the 19th century, the Greeks fought a war against the Ottoman Turks to achieve their independence. Almost a century later, the Turks fought against the Greeks to achieve the independence of Turkey after World War I. Indeed, that may be the only example in history of two nations each achieving their own independence by defeating the other. Needless to say, there was a lot of bad blood between the Turks and the Greeks. So much so that after the Turkish war of Independence, Greece and Turkey agreed to a population transfer that moved hundreds of thousands of Greeks from Turkey to Greece in exchange for a slightly smaller number of Turks who moved from Greece to Turkey.

This mutual antipathy continued later into the 20th century. Although both Greece and Turkey joined NATO, that didn't exactly warm their relationship with each other. Each of the two nations often had military exercises that imagined a war with the other. Indeed, the two nations almost went to war over problems on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The island was inhabited by both Greeks and Turks, living together under British rule, but conditions worsened between the two communities in the 60s and 70s, eventually resulting in a partial Turkish invasion and the danger of further escalation.

Although there were a few positive changes, problems and antipathy between the two peoples generally continued into the 90s. When I was first in Turkey in 1999, I remember a conversation I had with a Turk who spoke negatively about the Greeks.

But then, only a few weeks after I left Turkey, something momentous happened, something that changed everything. Some of you probably remember the event. On August 17th, 1999, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, while everyone was asleep, an earthquake struck Turkey. This was no ordinary earthquake. It measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, it lasted almost 40 seconds, and it struck heavily populated areas. It shocked the nation. We still don't know how many people died in the earthquake, but estimates suggest around 20,000 people. A half million people were left homeless. Imagine a Katrina-like event, only on a much bigger scale in a much smaller country. Proportionally, it would be as if over 75,000 Americans died. The Turkish government was unprepared. The inept response of the Turkish government and the army shattered the faith of the Turks in some of their most beloved institutions. The effects of their frustration and disillusionment are still changing the face of modern Turkey.

For the purposes of this sermon, however, one of the shocking effects of the earthquake was the change it spawned between Turks and Greeks. Turks had been taught for generations that they were surrounded by enemies, and that "the only friend of the Turk is the Turk," but that perception was suddenly shattered. Over 70 nations sent relief and rescue workers. And can you guess who was the first on the scene? The Greeks. The very day of the earthquake, the Greek foreign minister telephoned the Turks and offered them whatever help they needed. They sent rescue workers and ships and planes that were loaded with supplies. In the first two days, more aid arrived from Greece than from any other country. (Information about the earthquake is from Crescent and Star, Stephen Kinzer, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giraux, 2001)

But perhaps more importantly, the Greeks sent their television crews to broadcast live from the disaster area. As Stephen Kinzer writes in his book about Turkey, "Greeks watched the same excruciating scenes that Turks were watching, and suddenly found it impossible to maintain the old stereotype of the Turk. No longer was he a brute waving a scimitar and waiting for the chance to grab some Greek island. Instead "he" was a wailing mother whose lifeless child had just been pulled from the ruins." (Crescent and Star, p. 213)

As the prominent Greek columnist Anna Stergiou wrote, "We have been taught to hate the Turks for years. But their unbelievable pain gives us no joy. We were moved, we cried as if the age-old hatred disappeared at the sight of dead babies." (Ibid, p. 213)

In Minzer's words, "This was a deeply intimate experience that shook Greeks to their emotional core." (Ibid, p. 194)

A deeply intimate experience. What made it intimate, I suppose, was the sense of shared pain that broke down walls and brought the two peoples closer together. Thinking about the intimacy that can result from a shared sense of pain, I am reminded of what happened in this country in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11th, 2001. Although the Turkish earthquake and the terrorist attacks were different in so many ways, there were several similarities as well. There was a sense of shock, and anger. And intertwined with that, a sense of pain. Things looked different, they felt different, September 11th seemed to change everything. The tragedy of that event brought people together. It was as if some deep desire to share intimacy suddenly bubbled up to the surface. People went to church and other houses of faith for the first time in months, if not years. Blood donations soared. Divisions across party lines melted away for a while. I'll bet all of us can remember where we were that morning. We were touched by that pain, marked by it, most of us will never forget it.

The shared pain of that experience even brought us closer together with the people of other nations as well. Citizens of over 80 nations died in the attacks. Le Monde, a leading French newspaper, proclaimed in its headline, Nous sommes tous americains" -- we are all Americans. There were demonstrations of solidarity around the world, even in countries like Iran.

In addition to these world-changing events, we often encounter the intimacy that can result from shared pain on a more personal level. A loved one dies, and suddenly family members who had been estranged from each other for years are brought together by their mutual experience of pain. A new intimacy is formed from their loss, a new beginning dawns in their relationship with each other. Or you experience a serious illness, cancer perhaps, and you will never forget the husband or wife who cared for you and cried with you, the friends who visited you and prayed for you, you will never forget, because through the pain of that experience, a deeper intimacy was formed, the relationship reached a new level. Or a people struggles against injustice and oppression, the ancient Israelites struggle against slavery in Egypt, or the blacks struggle for civil rights, or gay and lesbians struggle against prejudice, and the shared pain of that struggle is a catalyst for relationships of profound intimacy.

The connection between intimacy and shared pain was readily recognized by the Israelites. Indeed, the foundation of their faith was that the Lord of the universe heard their cries, that God somehow sympathized with their pain. Of course, as Christians, we see the connection between shared pain and intimacy most clearly in the life and death of Jesus Christ. In sharing our human condition, in suffering the effects of alienation produced by our sin, in God's intimacy with us through the sharing of our pain, the potential for a new relationship is born, a deeper intimacy becomes a reality. The cross is the symbol of that reality. It is a symbol of shared pain. Our Ephesians text for today (which, incidentally, was written to a community in which modern day country?) speaks about God using the cross to reconcile all of humanity to each other and to God. Another way to put it is that all intimacy is made possible by, it is rooted in, the fact that God shares our pain. Because God knows our pain, and enters into it, all experiences of tragedy also become opportunities for deeper intimacy with the one that is nevertheless still present in it. The cross is at the heart of all intimacy, it is at the heart of reality, the heart of who God is. I don't know why that it is the case, but as Christians we affirm that is true.

But our affirmation doesn't end there, because the story doesn't end there. There is of course, the not-so-minor thing of the resurrection, which we celebrate this season. In thinking about this sermon, my best friend asked me, How does the resurrection change your understanding of intimacy? How does the resurrection change your understanding of intimacy? What a great question! The resurrection suggests to me that out of the shared pain of the cross, out of the depths of God's intimacy with us, there is a mind-blowing, death-conquering, earth-shaking, life-altering power. A power that surprises, that makes all things new. The New Testament writers struggle to express this power, they don't quite have the words, no one does, but they do the best they can with what they have. Matthew's gospel speaks of an earthquake, a shaking of the foundations, an earthquake that doesn't bring destruction and death but that accompanies new creation and life. By the power of the Holy Spirit, out of the depths of shared pain comes a joy and a wholeness that cannot be known in any other way.

Part of our task as individuals and as a church, therefore, is to witness to the power of God's intimacy with us, to witness to the resurrection, it is to share the pain of others as God shares our pain, trusting that the Holy Spirit will bring newness and joy and something unexpected.
That Holy Spirit is still at work in our world, at work in our midst, it is at work in communities that struggle for justice, in hospital rooms as family and friends gather around a loved one, in the ears of those who listen with compassion to the pain of others, in the arms of those who give a hug to the lonely.

That power of the Holy Spirit was even at work in Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the earthquake. You see, the earthquake in Turkey marked a new beginning in the relationship between Greece and Turkey. They called off military maneuvers that simulated war between the two countries. They signed agreements to encourage trade and begin cultural exchanges and cooperation in tourism, environmental protection, and other matters. Turkey's leading basketball player signed a contract to play for a Greek team, and the Greek parliament approved construction of the first new mosque in Athens in over a century. (see Crescent and Star, p. 214)

On the anniversary of Turkey's victory over its Greek occupiers, a time traditionally marked by outpourings of anti-Greek sentiment, a Turkish columnist instead wrote, "I have been writing a 'Greek-Turkish piece almost every September 9 for twenty-five years now. I pulled them all out of the archives. I tore them all up and threw them away. I am now starting a new September 9 series. This is the real starting point, a fresh beginning, the first step toward the twenty-first century." (Ibid, p. 215)

It was indeed a resurrection of a sort, the work of the Holy Spirit bringing hope from pain, newness from ancient antipathy.

A few days after that, twenty-seven days after the Turkish earthquake, Greece was struck by an earthquake itself, not quite as horrendous, but still shocking. This time it was the Turks' turn to go to Greece to share in the rescue efforts. Television announcers followed the efforts of Turkish volunteers as they worked to free a buried child. The Greek announcer could not contain his excitement as he exclaimed, "It's the Turks! They've got the little boy! They saved him! And now the Turkish guy is drinking from a bottle of water! It's the same bottle of water the Greek rescuers just drank from! This is love! It's so beautiful!" (Ibid, p. 215)