Backlash of Love

Psalm 124

This is a hard sermon to write. I'm tired. Not just the sleepy kind of tired at the end of a day, but my mind and body are weary. My body and my soul have been working together in crisis management mode for close to three months now. My body feels like it is working a little off kilter, like an engine that is out of tune. I am short tempered, even more so that usual. I have less patience with irrelevancies, and more and more things are falling under the umbrella of irrelevant. I haven't missed the newspaper. I have to fall back on my professionalism to make myself concerned about church paperwork.

I need a break, and there is not one coming. Because of the way I love, and what is happening to two of the people I love the most, there will be no retreat from what's coming, no running and hiding from the hurt that loving well can cause. My mind wants to rebel--to run away to some high mountain cabin, where there is no phone, no internet and a full refrigerator. There are plenty of warm blankets to sleep under, plenty of warm clothes to go walking through the woods in, and all of the videos and books are comedies.

But I can't go there. I won't go there. I want the evidence clear to the end for her and for him that God's love is paramount, that it is ever present, that there is truth in God. And for someone facing an illness, even a dire one, the concerns become very few--am I loved? Am I being taken care of? Are the people I love and feel responsible for going to be OK? I will do everything I can to make sure that she knows that to the very end.

Since Donna has been sick, Justice Sonja Sotomayor has been named, has been interviewed by Congress, and has been approved and seated on the Supreme Court. Michael Jackson died. People have started losing their minds in public life, even to the point of heckling the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress. I try to keep Donna up on these things, and she does watch TV, but none of it is sinking in. It just doesn't matter.

She wants to know what Joe is doing. She wants to know how his grades are going. She loves seeing pictures of our new chosen family niece, born in Boston three weeks ago. She could care less about Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina, but she'll tell you the baby's name is Yaela quick as lightning.

In the end, the final concern is love. They don't care where they will be buried, in the end. They may not even care about the pain they suffer. In the end, they want to know if their child will have every chance to grow into a fully realized, ethical and compassionate human being.

She is being attacked by an enemy that is swallowing her up whole. She is being swept away by a flood. Physically, it will win. There is no avoiding that truth. This is a particularly virulent and stark version of the monster. There will be a time, maybe even soon, when she will be no more. That is true of all of us, by the way. I've come to dislike the term terminal illness, as in, "oh, that's what she's got? So she's a terminal case, then." We're all terminal, and no one has ever given me the location of a line that separates the time frame between terminal and not terminal.

Physically, it will win. Emotionally, it has already lost. The presence of some diseased cells in Donna's brain has caused people to gather together, over 550 strong, to demonstrate their love for her, and her cup runneth over to such a degree that Joe and I are blessed by it, we who are not even sick. It was visible. These sick little cells have caused such a backlash of love that one can't help but marvel.

Blessed be to the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.

There's a quote by Irving Greenberg, a scholar, that goes like this;

"The Holocaust confronts us with unanswerable questions. But let us agree to one principle: no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."

It's a fair line to have hovering over your shoulder as you write, because it is a warning against traveling down a path that leads to separation and mistrust and ignorance--and from ignorance comes hate and fear.

But the line could be changed very easily to read:
"Cancer confronts us with unanswerable questions. But let us agree to one principle: no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of those who suffer it."

It would seem to be the height of foolishness, the unfortunate stretching of credibility, to claim what this Psalm claims, that God is with us and that we have been victorious. 12 million people died in the Holocaust. Since I have been here at the Center Moreland charge, a fair number of people whom I have helped to memorialize and funeralize have died of cancer. It has been called the plague of the 20th Century, and nothing in the 21st century has shown that it has slowed down.

But out of that, love has been very strongly in evidence. In every case, the wider community, even people who did not know those who died, could see very clearly that people cared, people loved and people supported both the one who was ill and their families. God's love was seen in each action, in each word, in each covered dish and donated check, no matter the amount. It was seen in the participation of people who may not have even known Aimee, but went to Nay Aug Park two weeks ago. It was seen by the need for folding chairs, and in the end a standing room only crowd, for Dave James' memorial service. It was seen in people who may have never met Donna, but came to eat chicken and biscuits.

God did not give Donna cancer. If there is a cause for it, it is much more likely to be some man-made substance or environmental source than God. God has, however, make considerable use of Donna's cancer. Through her being ill, people have changed their minds about each other as they come together to work. I am sure I am not alone in marveling in the outpouring of love and support from far and wide, and acquaintances and long ago friends who have come to mean a lot to me and to Joe in a short time.

It's a paradox, but cancer has caused an increase of love in our lives.

2if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us,
4then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us;
5then over us would have gone the raging waters.
6Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth.
8Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

It's Who You're For

Mark 9: 30-37

It has been a long day. The casting out of demons is hard work, the press of crowds makes it hotter, and Galilee isn't exactly Northeastern PA in the almost-fall.

Jesus had something to say to the disciples, and he wanted the time to be able to teach it properly, so he wanted to keep it secret that they were back in Galilee. He was teaching them that Jesus was not like any other prophet. He had not come to lead Israel to freedom from the Roman occupation; he had come to lead humanity to freedom from everything. But it's a hard task to try to open the minds of people who have been born and raised to understand one thing, and then be taught that what they know is too small for God.

So he tells them, as an opening that the Son of Man is going to be killed by human hands, but that death will not take him; he will return in three days. The Disciples have no clue what he is talking about, their minds are still in the places where they were raised--here is a prophet, he may be the one we've all been waiting for, and isn't going to be great when he pulls it off, and we've been with him the whole time? This if all the prestige! Think of all the honor! Think of the better life we will have when we are helping to rule Israel!

Of course, when such thoughts occupy someone's mind, they are not alone, because also accompanying that thought is this--how much power and prestige will I have? I should have more than that guy; I'm closer to the man, after all. Hm. He's a little closer than I am, Jesus talks to him more, so maybe I should make better friends with him. Be of help, you know what I mean.

Now, as a storyteller, I can't imagine that they are having this argument with Jesus right there in the midst of them, so he must be some distance ahead, far enough that the Disciples are comfortable with the discussion they are having about just who will have the most power next to Jesus in the coming kingdom.

But he knows. Just like little kids who don't know how far their voice carries, Jesus can hear them. He knows, but says nothing, but he starts to think.

At the house they are staying in, he gathers the twelve around, and asks them what they talked about when he was out in front of them. Well, they're busted, and don't say anything. Jesus doesn't try to embarrass anyone, but instead he catches the eye of one of the little ragamuffin kids, one of the sort that are always hanging around Jesus, and brings her into the center of them. It's hard to think of a human being that is farther from what these disciples value than this child, because there is nothing this child can give do or be that can add to their power and prestige.

And then Jesus says; "whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." He hugs the child warmly, the child smiles and laughs, and Jesus lets go and the child runs off, her day made. "Whoever welcomes one little kid like this, all dirty and with no value in our society, whoever decides to serve ones as worthless as that little one, serves me. And the one who serves me like this serves not me but the one who sent me."

I have no illusions about this idea. In our world, taking the side of the poor, of the bullied, of the distrusted and "sinful" among us doesn't make us popular with our fellow Christians. We surround ourselves with all of the language of Christianity, listen to all the proper opinions and take all the stands that our upbringing and our families have given us, and expect that it will put us in good stead with Jesus. And then Jesus puts a situation or a person in our midst who challenges all of that, and makes clear that his preference is not that you shun them, but that you choose them over everything you've ever been taught, and it's hard.

It is hard, but it is clear. There are people there are situations in this world that need love, that need defending. People who are killed for who they are, for what they believe. Jesus is telling us here that our place as followers of him is standing with them, standing in front of them, standing between them and their attackers, even to the point of the ruination of all the ambitions we hold for success, prestige and comfort in this world.

Sometimes that even means standing as a believer, a follower of Jesus, against those who use the language of our faith to maintain their own prestige and lifestyle. Sometimes that means standing as an American against those who use the language of patriotism to defend their own privilege.

It doesn't require angry words. It doesn't require political maneuvering. All it requires is simply standing with someone. All it takes is a quiet word of correction or rebuke with someone who has said something mean or hard.

Jesus is our model here. In our story today, he has just finished telling them that he is about to die. Lose his life, and in an ugly, public way. And these doofus disciples behind him are counting all the chickens they're going to have when Jesus becomes King. Does he turn around and blow up at them? No. Does he have the right to? I think so. But he doesn't. He waits for the "teachable moment". He speaks softly. He illustrates his point in love. He doesn't embarrass anyone by calling them out individually. And still one of those twelve eventually get angry enough with his teaching, angry enough with who Jesus chooses to stand with, that he eventually runs to the authorities and betrays Jesus.

One does not accrue power by standing with the weak and the bullied, the demonized and the misunderstood. If those are your goals, being a follower of Jesus is not the way to get there. But if you want to be Christlike, if you want to be like Christ in this world, if you want to witness to his love and grace, then it's clear--it's not who you are against.

It's who you're for.