June 5, 1968 – Juan Romero cradles Robert Kennedy’s head (Bill Eppridge, Life Magazine)
Please take the lectionary insert and join me in praying aloud today’s collect.
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and on earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
“Put away from us all hurtful things.”
This coming Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles, California. Right after making a victory speech at the Democratic convention, Kennedy came down the service elevator and was shot only seconds after he had started down the hallway behind the kitchen.
Many of you will recognize this iconic photograph, which appeared the next day on the front page of The Los Angeles Times.
In this photo, cradling Robert Kennedy’s head, is Juan Romero. He recently shared his memories of that night with StoryCorps.
Juan had come to the United States from Mexico as a child. By the time he was a teenager, he had gotten a job at the Ambassador Hotel.
The day before the assassination, Juan got to meet Kennedy while helping out with room service for the senator. He remembers that when he they got to the room, Kennedy was on the phone. He put the phone down and said, “Come in boys.” And Juan says that “the senator was looking at us, not through us, that he took us into account.” And Juan said he left the room feeling ten feet tall.
So the next night, when Kennedy stepped off the service elevator, Juan was excited to see him again, and he extended his hand out as far as he could, and Kennedy shook his hand. And just as he let go, Kennedy was shot.
Juan says that “I kneeled down to him and put my hand between the cold concrete and his head, just to make him comfortable. I could see his lips moving, so I put my ear next to his lips and I heard him say, ‘Is everybody okay?’ I said, ‘Yes, everybody’s ok.’
Juan says that he could feel a steady stream of blood coming through his fingers, and he took his rosary out of his shirt pocket, thinking that Kennedy needed it a lot more than he did right then. He wrapped it around Kennedy’s right hand, and then they wheeled Kennedy away.
Soon, streams of letters poured into the hotel, addressed to “The Busboy.” And there were some angry letters that said things like, ‘If he hadn’t stopped to shake your hand, the Senator would have been alive, so you should be ashamed of yourself for being so selfish.’
In today’s gospel, the Pharisees are like some of the people who wrote to Juan and said things that made Juan feel for almost fifty years that somehow, Kennedy’s death had been his fault.
The Pharisees criticize Jesus and his disciples for plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath, which would have been considered work.
And then in the synagogue that same day, the Pharisees watched to see whether or not Jesus would do anything for the man who was there with a withered hand.
So Jesus asked them a diagnostic question to see if their hearts were diseased. He asked them,
“Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save a life or to kill?”
And the Pharisees were silent.
Sure enough, they were afflicted with that often fatal disease, hardness of heart–hardness of heart, that on the way to death, causes spiritual dementia and cataracts.
And hardness of heart is dangerous because its onset is gradual and insidious.
After all, the Pharisees had the right intentions. “Incline our hearts to keep thy law,” they would have prayed. In fact, in the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.
But by trying to keep the letter of the law, the Pharisees had forgotten the two great laws to which all other laws must point — to love God with our whole hearts, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
Spiritual dementia had set in for these Pharisees, and they loved the letter of the law more than they loved the intent of the law.
So there they stood in the synagogue, glaring at Jesus, their arms clasped tight against their bodies in disapproval, their hands clenched, their hearts hard as stone.
They, the proper keepers of the Sabbath day, had not kept the Sabbath well at all.
Because if they had, spiritual dementia never would have set in, and they would have remembered who is in charge. They would have remembered that God is the one, who with a mighty arm, brought the enslaved Israelites out of slavery into freedom. God is the one who, when they were hungry in the wilderness, filled them with food.
They would have remembered their own vulnerabilities and their dependence on God, their dependence on one another and their dependence on the earth itself for their mutual well being.
The Pharisees, almost blind because of their spiritual cataracts, could not see that Jesus was doing God’s work, that Jesus himself was Lord of the sabbath, bringing freedom to those enslaved by injustice, and that Jesus was filling the hungry with good things.
True sabbath time would have kept those spiritual cataracts from ever developing, so that the Pharisees could still look for and find the light of God, and to absorb this light, so that God’s light could shine out of their hearts out into the darkness of the world.
They would have been able to see that the man with the withered hand there in the synagogue was not an object that would serve to help them prove that Jesus was a law breaker, but that he was a vulnerable person just like they were.
Jesus looks around at the Pharisees with anger, because he is grieved at their hardness of heart.
When Jesus looks around at us, what does he see?
Does he see us huddled in judgmental disapproval, seeing others as only objects, our hands clenched?
Or when he asks, do we come forward with our hands outstretched, holding out our weaknesses so that Jesus can make us strong again?
Now look at this photograph.
When you look at this photograph with Juan Romero kneeling next to the dying man, what do you see?
All around is darkness and impending death. Someone’s hardness of heart has murdered a fellow human being.
And yet, light is shining out of the darkness.
Here, at the top, is a shining light.
Right beneath this shining light, a disembodied hand of light reaches down.
Light rests on Juan’s head. And he, dressed in his white uniform jacket, shines in the darkness, as does the face of the dying man. And Kennedy’s right hand over here, is also light against the dark background of the floor.
These two people have been thrust into the darkness created by someone’s hardness of heart. But the light shines through them both as one kneels down and places his hand protectively under the man’s head, and the dying man asks if everyone else is ok.
And that rosary that Juan wrapped around Kennedy’s outstretched right hand was the visual symbol of God’s own vulnerable and sacrificial love that wrapped the two of them together in God’s light before Kennedy was wheeled away.
An inevitable part of living in this world is that hurtful things will be thrust upon us.
But if we have obeyed God’s commandment to observe sabbath time and to keep it holy on a regular basis, then when these hurtful times come, we will more easily be able to see God’s light shining out through the darkness and to stretch out our hands to God. And Sabbath time well spent, allows us, in the awful moments that come in our lives, to reflect God’s light—so that as Paul says, “The life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh.”
“God, your never failing providence sets in order all things in heaven and on earth.”
Juan carried the burden of this hurtful thing of Kennedy’s death around for almost fifty years. He felt that he somehow should have been able to stop the bullets that killed Kennedy.
But God’s unfailing providence led Juan at last to go visit Kennedy’s grave, standing there in the only suit he had ever owned, bought just for this occasion as a sign of respect, to ask Kennedy’s forgiveness for not stopping the bullets.
And as he stood there in front of that grave, his heart and hands outstretched, he described how he felt his life coming back and once more being set in order.
“I felt good again”, Juan said, “– a little bit like that first day that I met him. I felt important. I felt American. And I felt good.”
God, your never failing providence sets in order all things in heaven and on earth.
So put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things. Put away, we pray, the hardness that lurks in our hearts. Amen.