Sunday, July 22, 2018

Tragic Love

Sermon for July 22, 2018
Psalm 23; Mark 6:30-34,53-56

Hearing the Old Testament reading, the psalm, and the Gospel this morning, you may have noticed a theme – that God cares for us like a shepherd cares for his sheep.  For many of us, that notion of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is a stock image, almost religious clip-art.  Picture Jesus, and there’s a good chance you’ll see him with a little lamb on his shoulders, having searched for the lost one and brought it back to join the flock.  It’s warm and fuzzy and comforting … and it’s true.  Jesus does just that, going out to find us when we’ve stumbled away, sure we can stand up to the wolves and the bears on our own. 
In Vacation Bible School last week, I told that parable of the shepherd who leaves the flock to save the one who’s lost.  It’s a great illustration of the theme the kids learned all through the week:  that when we’re lonely, when we worry, when we struggle, when we make mistakes, when we’re powerless – Jesus rescues us.
I would tell you that’s a true statement.  And I said so to the kids during the Bible story on Monday.  And then … something happened. 
It happened a couple of hundred miles away, but it strikes home for many of us who grew up, or who now vacation, down in the Ozarks.  You’ve seen the news stories:  Two duck sightseeing boats went out onto Table Rock Lake on Thursday evening, despite severe thunderstorm warnings.  Of course, the point of the duck boats is that they drive you along the highways and then drive you out onto the lake – amphibious vehicles that, like their namesakes, are equally at home on the land and the water, rain or shine.  I remember the “Ride the Ducks” signs along the highway near Branson when I was a little boy.  The ducks have been there forever, taking countless people safely onto Table Rock Lake … until Thursday.  Two duck boats and their passengers went out on the water, though a storm was brewing.  One boat made it back to shore.  The other went down, killing 17 people and injuring others.
And yet, there we were in VBS that week, telling stories of the Good Shepherd who saves lost sheep from the wolves and the bears.  We confidently assured the kids, “When we’re powerless, Jesus rescues.” 
Psychologists call a situation like this “cognitive dissonance.”  Others of us might simply be wondering how churches can dare to make such a claim in a world where tragedy leads the news every blessed night.
Now, the secularists would have an easy explanation.  They’d say that, since there is no God who intervenes in the world, the notion of Jesus rescuing us is bunk from the start.  That’s one way to make sense of tragedy, intellectually at least.
On the other hand, people from the church side would offer a variety of responses.  There are Christians who would imply, at least, that some deficiency on the part of the people involved helped lead to the tragedy.  This is the same line of thinking that led televangelists, after Hurricane Katrina, to argue that New Orleans had it coming because of the supposed sinfulness of its culture.  It’s also the same line of thinking that leads people in hospital rooms, searching frantically for explanations in the face of awful news, to imply that if people had just prayed harder, their loved one might have fought harder against that cancer.  So far, I haven’t heard anyone implying that the 17 souls on that duck boat died as a consequence of God’s judgment or their inadequacy.  But I’ll bet you that kind of drivel is coming out of some pastor’s mouth somewhere this morning.
Others of us from the church side would take a different perspective.  Here’s how I see it, at least.
First and foremost, I would never pretend to tell you I know how God intersects with tragedy, suffering, and death.  That’s because, first and foremost, God is beyond our knowing; and anyone who tells you they’ve got the inside track is someone you probably shouldn’t trust with your favorite pen, much less with your soul.  But to me, understanding God’s place in tragedy involves three sometimes unsatisfying facets of God’s heart, and here they are: freedom, compassion, and redemption.  And all three of those realities are part of the ultimate truth about God’s nature, which is that God is Love.  God is Love.  And that’s true even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death – and even when that passage is long and brutal.
So, first, about freedom.  To me, living in the world seems to tell us pretty clearly that God allows bad things to happen, and Thursday’s tragedy is just one more example.  People have several drinks and then get behind the wheel.  People flick lit cigarettes into tinder-dry forests.  People go out onto a lake when the weather forecast makes it pretty clear they should just refund everybody’s ticket and send them home.  It’s tempting to look to God and ask, “Why did you let that happen, if you love us so much?”  And I imagine God – like a mother trying to explain why she didn’t stop her daughter from dating that worthless boyfriend – I imagine God saying something like this:  “A puppet can’t love its puppeteer.  I have made you in my image, gifted you with minds to think and hearts to love – and love is my bottom line.  But you must be free in order to love, or else it’s just manipulation.  So,” God might say, “to make you free enough to love, I’ve made you free enough to suffer.  If I turn off the car when the driver is drunk, or stop the boat about to venture into the storm, then you are not free.  And if you are not free, love disappears.”
So, the first facet of the Shepherd’s heart is freedom.  The second, I think, is compassion.  Remember what that word means, when you break it down: To practice compassion is to suffer with someone.  One of our most basic and craziest claims as Christians points to this part of God’s heart.  We believe that the creator and sovereign of the universe chose to enter into human life – being born in poverty, crying in the dirty straw, disobeying his parents, earning a living with his hands, being homeless, pouring out his healing heart (as we heard in today’s Gospel reading) when he badly needed rest instead, watching his friends desert him, being tortured by an oppressive government, and dying in a horrifying public execution.  When tragedy happens, the Shepherd’s heart breaks, with the force that comes only for people who’ve been there themselves.  God was there with those people on the duck boat as it sank.  God was there comforting those who died.  God was there strengthening those who survived.  God was there with the first responders and nurses and doctors and chaplains, treating the injured and comforting the families of the dead.  That kind of compassion is palpably healing – and if you’ve been there, you know it’s true.  I will never forget the presence of God I knew one afternoon, 17 years ago, waiting in a hospital consultation room as Ann was having emergency heart surgery.  I knew that God was “there,” in the abstract.  But my healing started when one of my best friends showed up, and hugged me, and wouldn’t let go.
So, that second facet of the Shepherd’s heart is compassion.  The last one, it seems to me, is redemption.  All that suffering Jesus endured was not suffering for its own sake.  It was suffering that led to victory over sin and death, suffering that opened the door to the fullness of life in God’s presence for each one of us.  Easter morning is the last act in passion week for a reason: because death is not the end.  Like spring buds at winter’s end, resurrection comes – and deep in our bones, we know it.  In Branson, the day after those people drowned, folks from the city and other vacationers started bringing flowers to the Ride the Ducks office, leaving them on the windshields of
cars whose owners weren’t coming back.  Before long, the flowers were overflowing.  Others gathered to pray, an act of remembrance not just for lives lost now but for lives continuing forever.  It’s an expression of solidarity – and that’s great on its own.  But it’s also a reminder that the God who comes to us always does so with new life in hand, transforming tragedy into love.  In God’s promise of life made new, suffering is turned inside out.  The journey through the valley of the shadow of death comes to its end at the table God has prepared specifically for you, the banquet of eternal life that begins even right now, at this Table, as goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives and we dwell in the house of the Lord – now and forever.
          So, at the end of even this week – in the cognitive dissonance of senseless tragedy alongside faith in a God we claim rescues us – I can still say, “Yes, it’s true.”  We don’t get to order up the details of our rescue.  Salvation doesn’t come from the a la carte menu.  In that hospital consultation room 17 years ago, after I’d watched Ann’s blood pressure plummet, the news just as easily could have come back differently.  And you know – we would have been OK.  Eventually, we would have been OK.  For I was borne up by the arms of the Shepherd, who came into that room with me and would not let go.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

The War of Incivility and the Better Angels of Our Nature

Sermon for Independence Day (transferred)
July 1, 2018
Matthew 5:43-48; Hebrews 11:8-16


Sometimes, you hear people saying we’re living in America’s most divisive moment right now.  I’m certainly not happy with the way we’re talking to each other, but I don’t think today quite measures up to 1856.  In that year, the issue of the day was something literally very close to home for us here in Kansas City.
On the floor of the United States Senate, Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts and a
Rep. Preston Brooks caning Sen. Charles Sumner, 1856
leader of the abolition wing of the new Republican Party, rose to speak about the admission of Kansas to the Union and whether Kansas should be slave or free.  Arguing against his colleague, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, who was present in the room, Sumner charged Butler with having taken a metaphorical mistress, and I quote: “a mistress . . . who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; [a mistress,] though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight.  I mean,” said Sumner, “the harlot, Slavery.”1  And we think today’s rhetoric is divisive.
But with Sumner’s speech, the dysfunctional drama had only just begun.  Congressman Preston Brooks, fellow South Carolinian and friend of Senator Butler, came into the Senate chamber at the end of business that day.  He walked up to Sumner, still sitting at his Senate desk, and Brooks began beating him over the head with his metal-topped cane.  Brooks beat him until Sumner bled profusely and had to be carried out.  His assault complete, Brooks himself simply walked calmly out of the Senate chamber.  Both men became celebrities and heroes to people on their respective sides.  Appallingly, a censure resolution against Brooks failed, and he won re-election.  Brooks died soon thereafter, at 37 years of age,2 but the stage for Civil War was being set.
Onto that stage came Abraham Lincoln, a minority president whose election in 1860 triggered the secession of the Southern states, seven of which had already left before Lincoln took office.  As Lincoln came to Washington in early 1861 for his inauguration, he understood his work as being even greater than George Washington’s – not the work of creating, but the work of reconciling, his nation.  He was tasked with holding together the fabric the founders had stitched, even as it was actively rending.  Most of Lincoln’s inaugural address was an argument for calm deliberation rather than hasty action, appealing to the small remaining center and arguing for legislation to “adjust … all our present difficulty.”3 
But for his ending, Lincoln offered hope for reconciliation even in the face of secession.  He tried to remind the 30,000 people gathered there4 how much greater were the forces unifying them than dividing them.  He said, “We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”5  Of course, Lincoln’s beautiful call fell on the deaf ears of both sides; and five weeks later, South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter.
Today, we’re not waging the Civil War.  Instead, we’re waging the War of Incivility.  Last week, a Democratic member of Congress called on people to harass cabinet members in public establishments and tell them they aren’t welcome.  A restaurant owner in Virginia told an administration official she wasn’t welcome to dine there.6  A billboard recently went up on a Texas highway telling liberals to leave the state.7  Really?  That’s what we’ve come to?
So, what do we hear from our Lord and Savior about all this, as we celebrate our nation’s birthday?  Let’s look at the Gospel reading for the feast of Independence Day.  This passage comes in the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, part of a string of teachings where Jesus is redefining “what everybody knows” about how they’re supposed to live faithfully.  Over and over, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said…,” and then he redefines the conventional wisdom on topics like violence, adultery, divorce, swearing oaths, and retribution.  Then, at the end of this section, Jesus takes the furthest step – redefining the conventional wisdom about how we’re supposed to treat our enemies.  
So, what would that conventional wisdom have been?  Probably not so different from our own.  Even Scripture can take us down the wrong path: Psalm 139 says, “O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me….  Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?    I hate them with a perfect hatred, I count them my enemies.” (139:19,21-22)  That may be Scripture, but it’s probably not great material for the next Youth Group t-shirt.  So, Jesus teaches, you’ve heard that this was said.  But I say to you, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). 
Pesky Savior.  That’s not what we wanted to hear.  Righteous indignation is so much more satisfying.
But wait – this teaching gets even harder when you dig into Jesus words.  First of all, love in this sense isn’t some warm and fuzzy feeling; love is action.  It’s about how we treat one another, regardless of how we feel.  And that’s not all.  Here’s our lesson in Greek for the day.  There are three different Greek words in the New Testament translated in English as “love.”  One of them is stergo.  It means to have a benevolent interest in someone, to wish someone well.  That’s not the word for love Jesus uses here.  The second is phileo, which means to like someone a lot, to consider someone a friend, a brother, a sister.  That’s not the word for love that Jesus uses here.  The third is agapao, whose noun form is agapĂ©.  This is God’s love for us, the love Jesus shows in giving himself for us, the love of foot-washing and healing and sacrifice.  And yes, this is the word for love that Jesus uses here. 
It hardly seems fair.  I mean, on our own, maybe we could get to the point of treating our enemies with benevolent interest – and honestly, in our national discourse, that would be a huge improvement.  But agapĂ©?  How do we do that? 
Well, we do it the hard way because that’s the only way.  We do it by being present with our enemy, relating to our enemy, knowing our enemy – not through someone else’s talking points but over a beer.  And then, we’re supposed to go even one step further, Jesus says.  Once we know our enemy, we pray for him.  And mean it.   
Now, I doubt that many of us here would consider someone else in this church an enemy.  But I’ll tell you: If you take it seriously, church life is pretty darned good training for the self-giving love Jesus is talking about here – especially when we do it intentionally.  Last Sunday, we began a discussion of Scripture, interpretation, and immigration, and there were a couple of moments when things got a little heated.  One person said one thing, and another person heard something slightly different, and some anger rose.  For those of us who don’t love conflict, those moments can make us stop short.  But we can’t let them make us stop talking.  So, we picked up the conversation again this Sunday.  People there certainly disagreed with each other, but I believe in our ability, led by the Holy Spirit, to disagree without dividing.  In fact, I believe in our ability, led by the Holy Spirit, to disagree and begin healing.  And that’s the work of reconciliation.  That’s the work of the better angels of our nature.
And I think we’re called to move that work forward.  So, this conversation about Scripture, interpretation, and immigration won’t be our last gathering like this.  I think we need something regularly, maybe monthly, where we can practice reconciliation by loving one another even as we disagree.  It’s a chance for us to build our muscles as reconcilers, and it’s a chance to offer a haven of sanity and blessing in a divided culture.  It’s a chance to let our better angels rise. 
What’s most important about this call we’ve heard is that neither Lincoln nor Jesus was talking just to the “good” people or the “important” people.  They were both talking to us all.  Lincoln may not have been a Christian exactly, but he understood the mystery that sin dwells alongside the beauty of being made in God’s image.  Lincoln knew we all wallow in depths of darkness, and we soar to heights of light.  He was calling on the better angels within each of us, and within the character of our nation.  He was calling on the senator from Massachusetts and the congressman from South Carolina; the small farmer in New York and the slave-holder in Missouri; the ironworker in Pennsylvania and the blacksmith in Mississippi.
Today, the same truth holds.  It’s not just the leaders of our political parties who’ve got to figure out how to listen to each other, in order to lift our nation out of the muck and into functional governance.  It’s us.  We’ve got to turn off the cable news and choose not to react to the daily outrages of social media.  We’ve got to love each other enough to speak with each other, and listen to each other, and pray with each other, and pray for each other – and mean it.  As it is for individuals, so it is for nations:  When we love, we thrive.  When we disdain, we suffer.  When we reject, we wither.  “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” as both Jesus (Mark 3:25) and Lincoln8 said.
“Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”  Living that way is how we’ll find what we seek, our “better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).  It’s the holy choice to which the better angels of our nature still guide us.  So, as we head back out into our divided land, back out into our nation of indignation, ask yourself:  How can I change the conventional wisdom?  Whose voice do I need to hear?  For whom do I need to pray?  What enemy is Jesus calling me to love? 

1.       United States Senate.  “The Caning of Charles Sumner.”  Available at: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm.  Accessed June 29, 2018.
2.       United States Senate, “Caning.”
3.       Lincoln, Abraham.  “First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Washington, D.C..”  Available at: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm.  Accessed June 29, 2018.
4.       Kaplan, Fred.  Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer.  New York: HarperCollins, 2008.  325.
5.       Lincoln, “First Inaugural.”
6.       Gomez, Luis.  Zero tolerance? Maxine Waters says Trump cabinet ‘not welcome anymore, anywhere,’ sparking backlash.”  San Diego Union Tribune, June 25, 2018.  Available at: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-democrats-republicans-balk-at-maxine-waters-remarks-about-trump-supporters-20180625-htmlstory.html.  Accessed June 29, 2018.
7.       Shannon, Joel.  “Texas billboard that tells ‘liberals’ to keep driving will come down.”  USA Today, June 20, 2018.  Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/06/20/texas-billboard-tells-liberals-keep-driving/716756002/.  Accessed June 29, 2018.
8.       Lincoln, Abraham.  “House Divided Speech, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858.”  Available at: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/house.htm.  Accessed June 29, 2018.