The Compassion of Christ

Luke 7:11-17

11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother's only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, "Do not weep." 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, rise!" 15 The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has looked favorably on his people!" 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

Compassion, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is the “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Compassion, according to our Lord, is this—the ability to see and feel and understand another’s distress, compounded with the desire to do something to ease it. Compassion is this according to Christ, but it is so much more. When I sat down to read and contemplate our Gopsel story about the widow and her son from Luke this week, the 13th verse really jumped out at me: “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’” This story tells us so much about the compassion of Christ—the compassion that he shows to all of God’s children, especially the poorest among them, the compassion that Christ calls and demands us to live out for one another, the compassion that is defined by his life, by his grace, by his love.

This text, along with so many others from Luke’s Gospel, tells us about Jesus’ great compassion for the poorest among us. Just a chapter earlier in the gospel, Jesus has just called his disciples to come and follow him. The disciples and so many others are gathered around him—they have heard about him—about how he heals, about his great power. And, in his first of many incredible sermons, Jesus tells those who are gathered there how to treat each other, how to serve each other, how to live. I don’t think it’s any accident that his first words, his first instructions, are about how to see the poorest among them: “’Blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the kingdom of God.’” Blessed are the poor, not only the poor in spirit as depicted in Matthew’s version of this sermon, but simply the poor. Theirs indeed is the kingdom of God.

Jesus tells those gathered to have compassion for the poor, to love them, to help them, to serve them, and he illustrates that compassion as he comes to a nearby town. The text tells us that the disciples and a large crowd are following him, and as they all draw near to the city gates, there is a big stir. As they come to the gate, folks are approaching from the other side carrying the body of a man. The text tells us that the man is an only son, the only son of a woman who is a widow. From this we know that the woman is poor—if she is a widow, then her livelihood has passed away with her husband, that her husband had no brother for her to subsequently marry, that her only source of income, of life, of hope, has come through her only son. And now he is gone. Not only has this woman lost the only love left in her life, she has also lost her livelihood, her only way to live. She has lost everything and is penniless, hopeless, lifeless. This widow has indeed become the poorest of the poor in so many ways, both poor in spirit and poor in life.

As she follows the body of her only son through the city gate, Jesus sees her and immediately knows her story—that she has nothing, absolutely nothing left. The widow doesn’t have to say a word to express her deep grief. Jesus just knows. He is immediately overcome with compassion for her—“Do not weep,” he says, and then he touches the funeral bier and brings the widow’s son back to life, giving her new life in so many ways. I love that the text tells us that Jesus “gave him to his mother.” That is compassion at its best—the restoration of life, the salvation of livelihood, a son given back to a mother who is grieving the greatest loss she could ever have imagined. It’s the compassion that Christ gives.

The compassion Christ shows us in this text is also a call to all of us—to give as Christ gives, to love as Christ loves. Jesus not only sees and understands and feels the widow’s distress, but his understanding is also mixed with his desire to alleviate it for her. Christ shows such compassion this widow who is almost left with nothing. Through his compassion, he gives her life. His compassion is filled with empathy and action.

In the original Greek, the word for compassion used in the widow’s story is the same word that we hear in two subsequent stories from Luke’s gospel. This fact would not have been lost for early New Testament readers, and it’s so important for us to discover and hear today. In the story of the Good Samaritan found in the 10th chapter of Luke, we hear that a man is severely beaten and left for dead on the road. A priest sees what happens and passes him by without offering help; the same way for a Levite passing by. But a man from Samaria sees the other man lying in a ditch, is moved with pity, with compassion, and stops, picks him up, bandages his wounds, takes care of him and tends to his needs. Jesus reminds us that this Samaritan has such compassion and shows such mercy to the man left for dead. And then he tells us to go and do likewise.

Later on in the 15th chapter of Luke, we hear the tale of two brothers, one who tends to his father, works with him, honors and respects him; the other who basically tells his father that he would rather him be dead as he asks him early for his portion of the inheritance. When the money is given to him, he leaves his family and his home, spends the money quickly on dissolute living, and loses all of it—even getting to the point that he considers joining the pigs in eating their slop. That son knows that he has nothing, and he tries to return home to his family. His father could shun him, could disown him, has every right to never speak to him again, but he doesn’t. Instead, he sees his son coming from far away and drops everything to run to him and welcome him home with open arms. His father is filled with compassion, as the text tells us, and welcomes him home with the biggest party ever seen—reminding us to do the same for those who have sinned against us, hurt us deeply, even wished for us to be dead.

For the Jesus found in Luke’s gospel, compassion is the way of life—compassion in the sense of feeling and understanding suffering, and then doing everything possible to alleviate it. The compassion of Christ is empathy and action melded together—compassion is pointless without both. Compassion is sensing that someone is suffering gravely, that they are about to lose everything in their life, and then showing the greatest mercy of all. Compassion is bringing life back from death. Compassion is blessing the poor and giving them new life. Compassion is showing that mercy to those who are lying on the side of the road, picking them up and bandaging their wounds, taking care of them and giving them shelter. Compassion is healing what has been so deeply broken. Compassion is forgiving what was previously deemed unforgivable, running with open arms to embrace those who have sinned so deeply against us. This compassion is the compassion of Christ, the compassion we are called to give as Christ’s healers in the world.

I love what this story tells us about the compassion of our Christ, and it does tell us so much. However, I have to confess that miracle stories, stories of resurrection like this, leave me feeling a bit hollow at times. I have to confess that these miracle stories sometimes prompt me to ask wonder why Christ doesn’t do the same thing for everyone who is about to walk into the face of tragedy, prompt me to wonder where God is in the midst of absolute chaos. After a natural tragedy, when some survivors profess their faith and say, “I’m just blessed that God saved me,” I always think to myself, “Well, what does that say to the families of those who lost their lives? Were those folks not blessed?” My students asked the question after the Haiti earthquake—“Seriously, could God have not stepped in on this one and stopped the earthquake from hitting the poorest country in the world? Have they not suffered enough?” And I know I have asked the question numerous times in the past 5 years: “Seriously God, just this one time, could you not have stepped in and stopped that train before Drew stepped in front of it?”

I wish I could tell you that I had the answer to those questions, but I don’t. Maybe the answers will come when we meet God face to face, when we are finally able to see God fully instead of dimly like we do now. But maybe this story reminds us that the compassion of Christ is something we will not ever be fully able to understand, that Christ’s compassion comes to us in big ways in small, in huge miracles and little every day ones, in ways we can sometimes understand and in others that will leave us wondering why. We see the compassion of Christ as he raises Lazarus from the dead, and we also see it as he welcomes the tax collector to a meal. We see the compassion of Christ as he brings the widow’s son back to life, and we also see it as he calls Martha away from her many tasks. We see the compassion of Christ as he brings Jairus’ daughter back to life, and we also see it as he stops the woman’s flow of blood after 12 years. Christ’s compassion comes to us in so many ways, ways big and small, ways ordinary and ways unbelievable.

The widow doesn’t ask for compassion and salvation, probably because she is too broken and overcome with grief to know how to ask--but Christ senses that she yearns for it from the very depth of her bones. She doesn’t say a word to him, but he says something to her as he brings her son back to life: “Do not weep.” We see the compassion of Christ here in such a miraculous way, but that shouldn’t keep us from seeing Christ’s compassion in small, every day ways, especially in those times when tragedies do take over our lives. Sometimes the compassion of our Lord is seen in overwhelming, miraculous ways, and sometimes it is seen through the small glimpses of grace where God brings good out of the sadness of tragedy. I love how one minister says it:

We cannot stop ourselves from praying for even the most impossible of miracles…we cling to a central message of the gospel: in Christ Jesus all things are possible. In reality our lives, like that of Jesus, are filled with messy unfinished edges, not the nice tidy ending that the widowed mother in our story experiences. We must come to recognize miracles that come in other less dazzling forms. Indeed, when we focus on only one vision of what is possible, we become blinded to the many moments in which God’s compassion reaches into our lives to hear, touch, and stand in the chaos of life, helping us find new meaning even in the greatest tragedy. (M. Jan Holton, Feasting On the Word, Year C, Volume 3)

I love that. When we only focus on what our ways or our hopes or our answers are, we lose sight of the small, everyday good, the small, everyday miracles that Christ brings to our lives. Christ so often shows compassion in ways that we would or could never begin to imagine or believe, bringing good into a world that often seems to chaotic and harsh and cruel. Christ’s compassion cannot and will not be defined by what we think it should be. Christ’s compassion comes to us before we ever know how to ask, comes to us in ways that we may never be able to wrap our minds around. Christ is able to look into the depths of our souls to know what we need before we ever know how to ask. That is the compassion that Christ

The Spirit Abides

The Spirit Abides

Acts 2:1-21

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power." 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." 14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. 18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. 19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. 20The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. 21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

It began as a festival for the Jewish folks from all over, one of several yearly days of obligation where Jewish people traveled many miles from their homes to celebrate their community, their beliefs, their faith. It was a festival of the harvest where they came together to laugh, to share meals with one another, to greet old friends and make news ones, to share languages and stories and experiences. It was a festival called Shavuot, which would eventually come to be known as Pentecost, a festival in which the first fruits where given to God as an act and celebration of thanksgiving for the giving of the Torah, the Ten Commandments, the law. They came from all over the place, the Medes and the folks from Mesopotamia, travelers from Egypt and parts of Libya, Cretans and Arabs and visitors from Rome. They came from all over and spoke in their native languages, shared their customs, spent time with each other.

There were hordes of worshipers and travelers all over the streets of Jerusalem, so many different people and groups clustered together on very full streets, so many folks who had come to celebrate on that festival day. The crowds were huge, but a group was missing from the celebration early that day, a small group who might have gone unnoticed had God not decided to be up to something that day.

The disciples and the smallish band of Christians, about 120 of them as the first chapter of Acts tells us, had gathered back together in their familiar upper room, still amazed and confused and bewildered from all that had taken place on Easter, just 50 days earlier. They had cast lots to decide on Matthias as the next disciple, and they were still gathered in that room trying to decide what to do next. Those 120 had been so scared for so long now, scared that their following of Christ might mean hard times or even death for them. They WERE dead, for all intents and purposes—leaderless, hopeless, visionless. They had locked themselves up, scared to death, scared OF death, not knowing what to do next. Those 120 were rudderless, and they could have stayed locked up forever in their hearts and in their room forever, not knowing what to do. They could have stayed to themselves, only spreading the news of Christ to their descendants, to the people who looked like them and shared the same language and belonged to them. They could have stayed lost. They could have safely started a small church without pushing themselves to share the Good News with new people, without the discomfort of venturing into an unknown and scary world.

But they didn’t, because something happened, something incredible and unbelievable—God had other plans for them, and sent the Spirit to do something amazing in and through and for them that day. The Spirit came in and moved among them, the Spirit that they were able to feel as the windows and doors blew open, as a mighty wind rushed through them and rattled their bones. That Spirit sat upon them, lit up like fire, resting on them, inspiring them and giving them new ability to speak and listen and understand.

The Spirit breathed through them, helping them to understand new languages, inspiring them to reach out to new people. The Spirit essentially set them on fire—in a good way—and rested upon them, giving them hope and inspiration, breathing new life into them. Inspired by the new life of the Spirit, the disciples and the other followers opened their doors, left what had kept them locked up; the came out into the crowd of festival goers. The Spirit came into their lives and lived in them, abided with them, transformed them so that they could go and transform others.

It wasn’t easy at first, as the story tells us—they were accused of being drunk and crazy and not knowing what they were talking about. So Peter helped them by preaching and sharing the news, and they all followed suit. They were drunk—drunk with the power of the Spirit, and they shared as much as they could. They shared the story of Christ and a church was born because of the rebirth they received from the Spirit. The Spirit moved in that place, on that day, moved among them so that they all understood each other, all saw each other with new eyes, all understood that they Spirit of the Lord had indeed come upon them. All of those who were gathered were transformed and made new.

The Spirit moved and breathed through the crowded streets that day, doing something new, giving birth to a new church. And the church was baptized, brought to new life, ordained and made ready for service. The initial 120 had no choice now but to go further out and share the story of Christ. Their upper room may have fit 120 of them snuggly, but there surely wasn’t room for 3,000 of them or even more. They had no choice but to go out into the world and stay there, abide there, to be engaged in the world, to be a part of its festivals, to help a church be born anew. The church was indeed born and baptized that day. The Spirit abided.

A few summers ago now, I sat at a coffee shop in Tuscaloosa with my friend James, the Presbyterian campus minister at Alabama. After a very happy and successful mission trip to Orlando to glean orange groves with our students that Spring break before, we sat down to dream about an international mission trip for our groups—Honduras? Mexico? Nicaragua? The Dominican Republic? We both remembered friends who had told us about a trip they had taken to Haiti, one that fundamentally transformed their lives. We had never even done an international mission trip, and surely had never taken one to the poorest country in the hemisphere. But there was something about Haiti that moved us, made us think, spoke to us that day. I don’t really know how to explain what happened except to say that it was a Spirit thing—a Holy Spirit blowing our doors open and moving through our room and transforming us kind of thing. The Spirit moved among us, abided with us to move us beyond our comfort zone of a safe national mission trip—moved us to open our doors and our hearts to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God was asking us to do something risky, to fly into a third world country, to abide with folks who were born 100s of steps behind everyone else in the world, born into a country with terrible history, abusive government, the worst poverty in the world. The Spirit abided with us, blowing through us to leave our upper rooms and go out into the streets that were truly overcrowded and overrun with people, in every sense of the term.

The Spirit moved, prompted us to open our lives, open our doors, open our hearts., As our plane landed on the runway in Port-au-Prince, we all looked at each other, scared to death about leaving our comfortable lives, frightened of what we would see, the things we would experience, so apprehensive about how our lives would be permanently changed in the weeks and years to come. I probably don’t need to tell you that it was the most amazing week of my life, of our lives. There were so many Pentecost moments during our time there, so many moments where we felt the Spirit move and breath and work through us—felt it abide in us.

We listened to incredible stories of faith, faith held and deepened even in the midst of a horrific earthquake that shook the lives of the Haitian folks and changed them forever. We3 sang songs and listened to drums. We picked up and carried and fed and danced with children suffering from mental and physical challenges to hard for us ever to imagine. We cut nails and put lotion on legs and shaved the faces of teenagers dying from AIDS and yellow fever. We held babies who were probably going to die from diseases that could be healed with very simple antibiotics here in the States. We did all of that, sharing the Spirit and the message of Christ that abides deep within us.

But what was amazing was how our new Haitian friends took us in, shared the story of Christ, shared the power of the Spirit with us. How their faith transformed and deepened our own. How there were the face, the hands and feet of Christ for us. We were changed, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in ways we could never have imagined—in ways that are still changing us today.

That time was full of Pentecost moments. As the week went on, we did begin to understand each other’s languages—we began to learn Creole words we had never heard, and their knowledge of English was expanded. But those weren’t the languages that mattered during that Pentecost time. From moment one, we all shared the languages of touch, of song, of dance, of music, of Scripture, of faith. The Spirit came and blew through our lives, transformed us to the core of our being, set us on fire to share the love of Christ, to deepen our faith in so many ways. I can’t speak for everyone else on the trip (actually, I probably can), but I can say for myself that I realized how locked up I had been—I had been locked in my own upper room because of my pride, because of my calendar, because of my work, because of my fear of seeing the world as it truly is and having my life and my ways questioned. But the Spirit moved and transformed and gave us new life. The Spirit abided with us and challenged us and gave us resurrection.

Friends, the great news for us to hear today is that the same Spirit is moving through this place, challenging us, setting us on fire, getting us ready. We have to ask ourselves what is keeping us locked up in our rooms—is it our busy schedules which leave little time for true worship? Our fear of opening our lives to folks who are different from us, have different customs, worship differently, speaking different languages? Our pride of perfection that keeps us from really showing our families and friends that we are broken and imperfect? Our fear of opening ourselves to new possibilities, so that we might remain immune from the pain that might accompany them? Our fear of sharing our lives and being judged and challenging the only ways we have ever known? Or is it something else? The great news is that our locked windows and doors, our locked hearts and lives, are no challenge for God’s Spirit. The Spirit breaks in. The Spirit challenges. It prods. It moves. It breathes through us. The Spirit abides. And thanks be to God for that.

“By This Everyone Will Know”

John 13:31-35

31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' 34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." 

When I sat down Monday morning to plan worship and read over this week’s lectionary Scriptures, I was surprised to see this passage since we had just meditated on it a few weeks ago on Maundy Thursday as we gathered together to celebrate Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, the passage from where the “Maundy” in Maundy Thursday comes—the commandment, the mandate from Christ for us to love each other just as we have been so greatly loved by him.

I think it was so important for the disciples gathered in the upper room that last night before Jesus’ death to be commanded to love. They had been following Jesus for so long now, getting used to that life and those ways, but they were about to walk into something new, a post-crucifixion world that would look different and sound different and feel different. Jesus had been with them, teaching them, showing them, explaining to them how to love as he met with people—as he healed them and fed them, as he welcomed them and named them, as he invited them and forgave them. Jesus told them that he would only be with them a little longer, and then he would be gone—that all of this would then be their deal. They had been taught, and now it was their turn to go on without him, their turn to go out into the world and show the love of their Lord.

In our NRSV version of this passage, Jesus says to them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our NRSV translates the Greek so well in many circumstances, but in this one, it’s a bit lacking. It says that we “should” go out and love one another, “should” kind of sounding like a suggestion. But the Greek for that word suggests something much deeper, saying that Jesus has loved us in order that we go out and love one another. This translation is much clearer—it is not a suggestion, but a mandate. I have loved you in order that you will go out and love one another.

This is not a new commandment for the disciples, for all of us. The commandment is there from the very beginnings of Scripture. In the 19^th chapter of Leviticus, we are told by the Lord that “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The commandment to love resounds throughout our Biblical story, but it takes on a new meaning when Jesus says it as his life is drawing to a close. The newness in this mandate to love can be found in the reason why we are called to love: that God loved us so much that a Son was given—given to live for us, given to die for us, given to rise for us. The newness in this mandate comes with the new life found on the empty cross and in the empty tomb, comes with the new life of resurrection.

I think it’s so important for us to read and hear this mandate anew this day, this commandment to the disciples to go out and love, to read it in concert with the commandment at the empty tomb for the disciples to go out and tell the good news of resurrection. It’s so important for us to read and hear these commandments together because you can’t have one without the other. It’s not enough to simply to go out and speak the good news of resurrection—what good is it going to do if we go out and speak the words but do absolutely nothing to back them up? We are not called to simply share the good news of resurrection, but called to live the good news, to show and share the good news, to embody it in such a way that everything we do shows the good news of life, of resurrection, of love. We are called to let that good news take root in us, so that it emanates from the very core of our being, so that it lives through us. Called to embody it in every action so that everyone will know we are disciples of our resurrected Christ before a word is ever on our tongue.

There was a very sweet, gentle, kind man who was a member of my former church, and I did his memorial service after he died from a short but very valiant battle with pancreatic cancer. Bill was a true disciple in every sense of the word—he welcomed folks, invited them to his table and made meals for them, healed them as he listened to them and prayed for them, as he never met a stranger. He was a disciple who embodied this kind of love —evident as a co-worker spoke at his service. She said, “Bill never flat out told me that he was a Christian, but I just knew it by the way he treated folks in our office. He was pretty high up and didn’t need to do anything he did, but he took the time to stop by our desks every day, to ask us how we were, to ask about our families, to tell us that he would pray for us when times were rough. He asked us to lunch when we didn’t have any other invitations. He treated us with gentleness and grace and forgiveness. It wasn’t always easy, and I’m sure he was tired at times, but that never stopped him. He loved us deeply because he had been so deeply loved.” Wow. His words and actions as a disciple were entwined—he embodied the love of Christ, lived it to the very core of his being. By that, everyone knew that he was a disciple. It was amazing to hear that story, and I thought to myself, “How different would our world be if we all embodied that forgiveness and grace, that acceptance and kindness and love?”

“I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Frederick Buechner speaks about this kind of love, this embodied love, as he says:

To lose yourself in another’s arms, or in another’s company, or in suffering for all [of those] who suffer, including the ones who inflict suffering upon you—to lose yourself in such ways is to find yourself. Its what it’s all about. Its what love is…in the Christian sense, love is not primarily an emotion, but an act of will. When Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, he is not telling us to love them in the sense of responding to them with a cozy emotional feeling…on the contrary, he is telling us to love our neighbors in the sense of being willing to work for their well-being even if it means sacrificing our own well-being to that end, even if it means sometimes just leaving them alone. Thus in Jesus’ terms, we can love our neighbors without necessarily liking them. In fact liking them may stand in the way of loving them by making us overprotective sentimentalists instead of reasonably honest friends.

Buecher reminds us that love is not often comfortable, not often cozy, not often easy. While love may be all of those things at times, there are so many others when love is hard work, hard stuff, self-sacrificing gut-wrenching stuff. There are so many times when loving means looking into the face of an enemy and realizing, proclaiming even, that they are also a child of God. So many times when love means sitting at table with someone that we don’t want to accept. So many times when we feast at the table with folks who don’t look like us or act like us, folks who don’t worship the same way we do or don’t worship at all, folks who weren’t born in the same place as us and don’t speak the same language, folks who live and love differently than we do. Isn’t that, after all, what the cross is all about? About hard work? About self-sacrifice? About acceptance of those whom we deem unjust but whom God deems just? About the forgiveness and grace and abundance that comes with love? About loving others—even when we don’t necessarily like them—but because we have first been loved so greatly by God?

I read an amazing letter this week, one that must have been hard and horrible to write, to even imagine. This letter speaks about the kind of resurrection forgiveness and love that our risen Christ mandates us to live, to embody. It was written by a Jesuit priest to the surviving brother responsible for last week’s awful bombings. Here is some of what was written in the letter:

Dear Dzhokhar,

You don’t know me, but you tried to kill my family. You couldn't have known, but my brother ran…in the marathon and trained for months. My sister-in-law was an amazing and supportive wife as she always is and was ready to run the last 5 miles with him. Your bomb was at the finish line that they were trying to cross.

My mother, father and sister were waiting for them at the finish line. You didn't know it, but my mother thinks that she saw you down there. My sister is only three years younger than you, and you set off a bomb in front of her.

You don't know me, but you tried to kill some friends of mine. One of my best…friends was working in the store in front of which you or your brother laid down a bomb. That bomb exploded, and gave her the worst day of her life. I was a high school teacher, your bomb wounded one of my most promising students with shrapnel.

Dear Dzhokhar…you killed a child who was a part of the community who made me the man I am today…You tried to drive a city which gave me courage in the face of cancer into complete and utter fear…Dear Dzhokhar, for all of this, I can't hate you... Today I thought about the fact that you are only 19 ... you are just a kid. You must have been so afraid. You were a victim like so many are victims. You were brought something you shouldn't have been brought into because you likely didn't and couldn't know any better.

I am glad that you are going to prison, and I hope that you will have many long years there in supermax in Colorado. I hope that no one I love will ever be threatened by you again, but I can't hate you. I can't hate you because whatever you brought into Boston was enough hate for a good long while, I won't and can't hate any more. I can't hate you because I remember being 19, I thought many things were a good idea which weren't. I never would have went where you were with that, but I was certainly not an adult at 19.

I can't hate you because, even though you did unspeakable things ... somehow you are still my brother and your death can never be my gain.

I can't hate you, and not just because I am a Catholic, and a Christian, and because in a couple of months I will be a priest, I am a human and I simply can't hate you.

Dear Dzhokhar, I still have hope for you.

The rest of your life will be in prison. I have seen men change their lives there. I hope that you won't be executed, because I know that we can hold you, safely, for the rest of your life.

I can't say what your story might be there but I know that I, as a Christian, and you, as a Muslim, believe God to be merciful... so I can't help but have hope for you...

Dear Dzhokhar, I will pray for you. Next year, when my friend and my brother cross that finish line on Boylston, your brother's cause will have lost for good, but I will pray that you will know, somehow still, the love that my brother, sister-in-law, mother, father, sister, friends, and students all have given me.

Dear Dzhokhar, I will pray for you that you will come to know that PEACE and LOVE are the only ways in which world will ever be changed.

Dear Dzhokhar, I don't and can't hate you. I am glad you are in custody, but you are just a kid, and you are lost. I will love and pray for you, because somehow your sin was turned for good, and my community and the people I love will only be stronger in the end.

Dear Dzhokhar, Godspeed.

Wow. I pray that you will come to know that peace and love are the only ways the world will ever be changed. I will love you and pray for you that your sin will be turned into good. What amazing words of grace and forgiveness and peace. What amazing words of love. That, friends, is how we celebrate that we are people of the Christ’s resurrection—by accepting, by hoping, by loving. That is how we celebrate and live as Easter people. That is how we flourish with love, how we embody love, how we let love root deeply into our souls, all because we are Easter people. “I have loved you,” Christ says, “in order that you also love one another.” This is not always a love that is easy or comfortable or comforting, but it is a love that we are commanded, mandated to live. It is a love that is first given to us on the cross, a love that comes with the miracle of the resurrection, a love that is so essential to us that it becomes part of who we are—a love that emanates from every fiber of our being. It is a love that will be one of the only things that ever changes the world. It is a love by which everyone will know we are disciples. It is a love that passes all understanding because it comes from God. And thanks to be God for that. Amen.

"Do You Love Me?

John 21:1-19

After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. 2 Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. 3 Simon Peter said to them, "I am going fishing." They said to him, "We will go with you." They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. 4 Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. 5 Jesus said to them, "Children, you have no fish, have you?" They answered him, "No." 6 He said to them, "Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some." So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. 7 That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. 8 But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off. 9 When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. 10 Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish that you have just caught." 11 So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, "Who are you?" because they knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. 15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my lambs." 16 A second time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him the third time, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, "Follow me." 

I was on vacation over that awful weekend last December, that terrible Sunday that followed the terrible Friday of Newtown, that terrible Sunday following some of the worst news that we could ever imagine—that 20 sweet 5 & 6 year olds had lost their lives because of violence, because of illness, because of sin, lives lost because of the awful brokenness of our world. It was weird being gone from this place that Sunday because you are my faith community, and just like the rest of you, I needed to wrapped in the loving arms of this place, of these people. But I have to admit that I was also glad I wasn’t here, glad that I didn’t have to preach, glad that I didn’t have to find light in the midst of such darkness, glad that I didn’t have to proclaim good news in the midst of such awful news. Although I know that the Spirit can do amazing things, I don’t know if I could have wrapped my head around the awful brutality of Newtown to even be able to get any words out to you.

And I have to admit that I find myself in much the same place today. We all find ourselves in the same place—a world that seems so dark, a world where the brokenness of such senseless violence seems to have taken over again, a world where unexplainable things happen and people senselessly mourn once again. A world in which, as one of you so simply said on Facebook this week: “I’m tired of having to try to explain violence to my children.”

From the violence and craziness and fear in Boston to the explosions that took the lives of dozens of folks, and the livelihoods of so many more in Texas, from the scare of letters laced with poison sent to our leaders, to the renewed anguish and anger of Newtown parents so evident this week, to the senseless pain that has surely gone on in families and communities that have gone unnoticed, there sure seems to be a lot of darkness in our world. Overwhelming darkness. I have loved the sentiments I have seen so much on Facebook this week that no darkness can overcome the light, but sometimes that darkness does seem like it’s taking over. Sometimes it is simply too hard to imagine that there is light, to see it, to feel it warm us up.

And like many preachers who have gone on before me, I have found myself tempted over the last few days to try and give answers to you about why this darkness and suffering happens, solutions and explanations that might make us all feel better and happier and lighter. None of us wants to feel this way, feel the darkness of no answers and no reasons, but we do. There are times like these when it simply feels like the darkness is here to stay. Theologian and writer Frederick Buechner shed some light on this for me in a video I saw this week. He said:

I used to think that, as a minister…you’re supposed to know the answers. That you go into somebody who’s having a troubled time and you tell them something that’s going to make them feel better or give them something to hold onto. I’ve decided since that that’s the least of what you do. You go and simply are with them. I feel that I am the one who must bring healing, hope, and explanation, but I’m not. That’s God’s business.

Wow. Very helpful words for this preacher! It is God’s business. It is God’s business, and we are all here together—asking, praying, searching, yearning for some light in the darkness. I’m so glad, so thankful, that we have Scripture, Scripture that is our witness to the work of God in the world, that points us to who God is and what God does and how God loves and responds in our world. And I’m so glad that Scripture, from it’s very beginning, describes a world of deep darkness, a world that is illuminated by the glorious light of creation. Scripture testifies and celebrates our God who turns darkness into light.

Friends, even though we feel very dark and very sad this day after this horrific week, the Good News is that we are an Easter people, people who are called to live in the light of Christ. I don’t think it’s an accident that each of our 4 Gospels testifies to the women who went to the tomb on that resurrection day, and that they found the empty tomb just as the sun was beginning to rise. These women and the disciples and all of the other followers had been living in deep darkness, after being witnesses to such horrific violence, after seeing their friend, their relative, their teacher die. They had been living in the darkness and overwhelming depression of grief, not sure if they would ever be able to feel the light again. But then they went to that tomb just as the sun was beginning to rise. They heard the best news imaginable, saw it with their own eyes. They lived through the darkest night imaginable, and that darkness was turned into light for them on that resurrection day.

And I love that Jesus appeared to them again that day on the beach, as John tells us. I’m not quite sure why he decided to show up again—maybe he remembered how tough a time the disciples had had truly believing what he had told them about how he was going to die. Maybe he felt that they needed to see him one more time just to make sure it was all real, that the resurrection had really happened, that the hope and light of resurrection was true and real and believable. I love that he came again at daybreak, as our story tells us, just as the fishermen disciples were setting out to make their catch for the day, just as the fish were beginning to jump and bite, just as the sun was beginning to rise in the sky. Jesus sat with them on the beach to have breakfast, giving them bread and fish once again just as he had with 5,000 others many weeks before, feeding them and making all things new.

Maybe this breakfast, a breaking of the fast, happened at daybreak to signify a new beginning, the new beginning of hope and joy and new life and resurrection that Jesus brings. Maybe this breakfast reminded them on the shore, and all of us, that sharing food is what makes us human, what makes us community. Maybe this breakfast reminded them, and all of us, that just when things are the darkest, there is always the light of morning, the light of new beginning. “Come,” Christ said to them, “and have breakfast.” Maybe this breakfast invitation reminded them, and all of us, that eating is necessary for life—for new life—and so is Christ himself.

I think it’s tempting for us to stop at this part of the story—this morning breakfast scene. It’s tempting for us to sit and bask in the light, to lay back with full stomachs and rest a bit believing that full stomachs and bright sunshine are all that we need. Tempting for us to bask and rest a bit and ignore the world going on around us. But we can’t.

Just as Jesus asked Simon Peter the question, he asks all of us the same thing: “Do you love me?”

“Of course we do, Lord.”

“No,” Jesus says, “I mean it. Do you love me?”

“Yes, of course we do!”

And then again, a third time: “DO YOU LOVE ME?”

“YES!” is our response.

“OK, then,” Jesus says. “Then go out. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my lambs. Go. Make sure everyone has their most basic needs met. Act. Feed. Love. Be my hands and feet in the world. Follow me.”
Jesus Christ brings the light of resurrection to give us new life, forgiveness, hope, love. He rises from the grave and invites us to breakfast—he fills us. But he doesn’t stop there. It’s not enough to simply come out of the darkness and then bask in the light that Christ brings. Christ calls us to go out into the world, our world that is so obviously hurting from violence and misunderstanding and sin and brokenness. That is a hard road for us all, but we are called to walk out in the darkness of grief and uncertainty, of violence and hatred, of sin—called to feed the lambs and tend the sheep, called to carry Christ’s light and the Good News of the empty tomb into that broken and fearful world.

I would like to end by sharing a prayer from one of my favorite books—it’s a book of prayers by Ted Loder called Guerillas of Grace. Let us pray together:

Sometimes, Lord,
it just seems to be too much:
too much violence, too much fear;
too much of demands and problems;
too much of broken dreams and broken lives;
too much of war and slums and dying;
too much of greed and squishy fatness
and the sounds of people
devouring each other
and the earth;
too much of state routines and quarrels,
unpaid bills and dead ends;
too much of words lobbed in to explode
and leaving shredded hearts and lacerated souls;
too much of turned-away backs and yellow silence,
red rage and the bitter taste of ashes in my mouth.
Sometimes the very air seems scorched
by threats and rejection and decay
until there is nothing
but to inhale pain
and exhale confusion.
Too much of darkness, Lord,
too much of cruelty
and selfishness
and indifference ...
Too much, Lord,
too much,
too bloody,
bruising,
brain-washing much.

Or is it too little,
too little of compassion,
too little of courage,
of daring,
of persistence,
of sacrifice;
too little of music
and laughter
and celebration?

O God,
make of us some nourishment
for these starved times,
some food
for our brothers and sisters
who are hungry for gladness and hope,
that, being bread for them,
we may also be fed
and be full.

"A Resurrection Tale"

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in, they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. 10 Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. 11 But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. 12 But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Luke 24:1-12

“A Resurrection Tale”

“It seemed to them an idle tale.” You know, I’ve read this story hundreds of times, but these words really jumped out at me this week. It must have seemed an idle tale. I, we, can only begin to imagine how idle, how unreal, it must have sounded when Mary Magdalene and Joanna and the other Mary shared the news of the empty tomb. These women were standing before the disciples, women who had seen their friend, their leader, their love die before their very eyes, women who had heard the sounds of the hammer hitting the nails, women who had seen Jesus’ head fall as he breathed his last, women who had wept and mourned bitterly. These women were swallowed up in grief, and the disciples could barely hold their heads up above the water over what they had just experienced 3 days earlier. So much going on, so much that they all experienced, so this news of an empty tomb must have sounded unreal, false—it must have sounded like an empty hope entombed with grief, must have sounded unbelievable.

To all of them gathered there that day, this tale must have sounded like an idle one. And in so many ways, it seems an idle tale to those of us who are gathered here today—so hard to believe, so hard to take in, so hard to understand how the linen cloths could be the only thing left in the tomb. Just as those gathered there over 2000 years ago had experienced such horror and terror and grief, we experience much the same thing today. We live in a world that struggles with so much—with the ravages of war, with the horrors of poverty and hunger, with the long term effects of racism and sexism, with folks who are left in shambles after a loved one is gone from their lives, with deep divides over how we treat each other in our political lives, with the effects of natural disaster, with long held divisions over how we believe in and proclaim God. In so many ways, it is natural for this tale of resurrection, of hope, of grace, of overwhelming and unconditional love, to seem unbelievable. To seem impossible. To seem untrue. To seem idle.

But we have to believe, don’t we? We have to go into the tomb with the women and see the linen cloths left behind. We have to believe that Christ is not there because he has been resurrected. We have to believe this for our stories, for our lives to be real. We have to believe that this is not an idle tale but instead a resurrection one. I have read it put this way:

…if this was an idle tale, then we must acknowledge that we live in a world where love is sentimental and powerless. If the tale is idle and Jesus is not raised from the dead, then we live in a world where there is no power stronger than the sin that kills us…if the womens’ story is just an idle tale, then there is no power that can break those bonds, and we may as well be wound round with our own gravecloths (Karen Pidcock-Lester).

I love that. If this tale of resurrection is not true in our lives, then we might as well be dead in the tomb with Christ. We might as well not live in our world, not thrive in our world, not act in our world, not love in our world.

 If this is an idle tale, then we have nothing to say to our neighbors in Newtown who are mourning the unexplainable loss of such sweet and innocent life. If this is an idle tale, then we have nothing to say to the folks in our community who are longing for the human right of having a roof over their heads. If this is an idle tale, then we have nothing to say to our service men and women who have been away from their families for many weeks and months over the past 10 years. If this is an idle tale, then we have nothing to say to our friends and mission partners in Mexico and Haiti. If this is an idle tale, we have nothing to say to the members of our church family who are sick and shut-in and hurting and sad and hurting. If this is an idle tale, we have nothing to say to the children in our midst to whom we have made baptismal vows and promises.

But, friends, the great news of this Easter day, of this day of resurrection, is that we do have something to say, something to believe, something to proclaim and celebrate—that life triumphs over death, that this is no unbelievable, idle tale. This is a very alive, very true, very real tale of resurrection. Jesus Christ has come back to life for all of us—to proclaim recreation, to proclaim new life, to proclaim hope, to proclaim the overwhelming power of love found in resurrection.

This resurrection tale is very true for a couple in our own midst who have been praying and hoping and discerning and waiting for the past 6 hard years to adopt a child, a couple who will be the most delightful and fun and loving parents. The tale is being lived out in their lives in the form of an acquaintance of theirs who went to China several weeks ago, to a random and unnamed orphanage, not knowing whose child was there waiting to be held. As she and her mom played with the kids, her mom heard a worker say: “This is the Tamblyn baby.” In disbelief and wonder, she proclaimed, “As in John Tamblyn from Alabama, my former teacher?” How amazing is that? This young woman traveled all the way around the world, where she held her teacher’s daughter, the daughter who will be here in May. That is a tale of resurrection.

This resurrection tale is very true for a dear friend of ours, a friend who experienced the awful and tragic loss of her husband 5 years ago, just 3 weeks after they were married. She experienced such death and loss and confusion and tragedy, but she is now married with a beautiful, sweet, funny, loving little boy and a second little one on the way. What new life in the midst of death. That is a tale of resurrection.

This resurrection tale is very true for two little girls in Colorado, whose grandmother took her life last month after experiencing such loss and sadness and tragedy. This grandmother went to the post office quite often before her life came to an end and was so lovely to one of the workers there that she befriended. That postal worker asked a church member of ours for the address of those sweet grandchildren this week so that she could send those two little girls an Easter gift and tell them the story about how lovely their grandmother was to her. That is a tale of resurrection.

This resurrection tale is very true for two of our students who lost their dear father last year after a valiant battle with cancer. Their world was rocked and changed forever, but even in the midst of their mourning, they are still here with us working with our youth, going on mission trips, playing basketball, going to the beach with their friends, giggling and telling stories and laughing their hearty laughs. And they are about to graduate and go to work and graduate school—with their very proud dad beaming down to them. That is a tale of resurrection.

This resurrection tale is very true for the new friends we met in Haiti, whose orphanage crumbled to the ground around them a little over three years ago, crumbled as they stood and watched their home fall apart. This is their fourth Easter day since that awful January day, and they have a new home, one that is secure and built deep into the ground, one that is very colorful and welcoming and warm, one that is painted brightly with butterflies adorning the side to remind them of the power of resurrection. A tale of resurrection, indeed.

We have a choice. We can sit and stare at each other idly in disbelief, letting ourselves believe that the world is too scary, that miracles don’t happen in our midst, believing that it is easier to stay locked up in our rooms, to stay enclosed in our tombs, than to open the doors and believe in the power of resurrection. We can indeed believe that this tale is an idle one. Or we can listen to what the women of our lives tell us and go with Peter to the empty tomb. We can go to find that the linen cloths are the only thing left behind, and we can believe in the miracle of resurrection, in the miracle of recreation, in the miracle of new life. We can believe and celebrate and proclaim that this tale is a tale of resurrection.

When we choose to believe that this is a tale of resurrection, we can see all of the bright colors in our midst with new eyes, especially the liturgical white color of holiness. We can laugh with our children today, our children who are so hyper and happy and excited, laugh at their squeals of delight. We can come to the table as we are invited and celebrate that it is indeed set for us all. We can delight in the new life that comes with Spring. We can smell the lilies in our midst that remind us of God’s glorious act of creation. We can see the cross before us with new eyes and minds and hearts, ready to celebrate and proclaim that we have seen a miracle, a tale of resurrection. And because we have been amazed at all that has happened, we can leave this place and go out into the world, serving and loving as people of the resurrection. Thanks be to God.