A Mother's Only Son

Luke 7:11-17

June 9, 2013

            Some of the most important lessons I learned in my Intro to Pastoral Care class in seminary could be summed up in one scene in the movie Steel Magnolias.  In the original movie, Sally Field plays M’Lynn the mother of Shelby.  Shelby is her only daughter and the movie begins with preparations for Shelby’s wedding.  Shelby is also a diabetic and has been diabetic since she was a child.  M’Lynn worries about her constantly because she realizes how fragile her body really can be – especially when Shelby makes the decision to have a baby.

            The pregnancy takes too much out of her.  Her kidneys fail, and M’Lynn donates one of her own kidneys to Shelby.  Eventually that kidney fails too and Shelby is put on life support.  The decision is made to stop the life support and Shelby dies.

            Her funeral is held in the same Presbyterian church in which she was married.  And after the graveside service, everyone begins to drift away from the grave.  Except M’Lynn.  She can’t leave.  She is joined by the other women, the other magnolias, who have surrounded her throughout the movie.  Truvy, Clairee, Ouiser and Annelle.  Over the course of the film Annelle becomes the stereotypical version of born again Christian.  She drops on her knees to pray every other second.  She considers other churches outside of her own to be suspect.  And in a moment of trying to comfort M’Lynn, she says, “We should all be rejoicing.  Shelby is with her king!”

            M’Lynn responds, “You go on ahead.  I’d rather have her here.” 

            Annelle saves this moment by explaining what she means by that.  And it’s beautiful and it allows M’Lynn to express this raging grief she has at her daughter’s death.  She goes from weeping to anger to denial to weeping once more.  There’s a wonderful moment of comic relief which makes them laugh.  Finally, there’s some semblance of acceptance. 

            But what Annelle said has stuck with me.  According to my Intro to Pastoral care class it is a classic example of what NOT to say.  Never tell someone who’s grieving anything along the lines of “this is God’s will.”  “Your loved one is in a better place.”  “God needed his special angel with him more than we needed this loved one with us.”  You get the idea.  Even if you believe all of it sincerely, even if they believe all of it sincerely, don’t say it!  Don’t impede their grief with bumbling attempts at comfort.

            If you knew nothing else of Jesus except this passage, you might think that he violates this primary rule.  He says exactly what shouldn’t be said to the widow who has lost her only son.  “Do not weep.”

            Imagine what this scene must have looked like.  Jesus and his disciples have just left Capernaum, where, as we read last week, Jesus had compassion for the slave of a Roman centurion.  In the process of this healing even Jesus is amazed at the faith shown by a so-called outsider.  Now Jesus and his disciples and the crowds who were following them have left Capernaum and travelled what some commentators believe was about 25 miles southwest to the town called Nain. 

            At that same time a funeral procession is leaving the town to bury the only son of a widow because according to law the dead could not be buried within the town’s borders.  So at this precise moment these two crowds meet, most likely at the gates of the town.  Jesus and the crowds with him are going to Nain.  The widow and the crowds of mourners surrounding her are leaving Nain to bury her son. 

            Jesus sees this crowd and he must have understood immediately how dire the situation really was.  There’s a reason why widows and orphans are given so much attention in both the Old and New Testaments.  They were the ones who were most marginalized in that culture.  To be a widow meant that you had lost the protection and status that came with your husband.  It would be up to your children, hopefully your sons, to care for you.  This woman had already lost the protection of her husband.  Now her only son was gone as well.  There was no one left to care for her.  Not only would she have been mourning her child, she was also in great danger economically and socially. 

            Jesus sees this.  He sees her.  He has compassion for her.  It is his compassion that moves him to walk over to her and tell her not to weep.  The Greek verb “to have compassion” is splagcnizomai.  This verb is used approximately ten times in the New Testament and it’s only found in the gospels.  It is what the father of the prodigal son feels when he sees his son from far off.  It is what the Samaritan feels when he sees the man beaten and left for dead by robbers.  The verb stems from the noun which means the bowels or the internal organs of one’s body.  That was considered the central part of the body and feelings were believed to come from there.  For me this gives the phrase “gut response” new meaning.

            Essentially Jesus has a gut response to this woman’s need, to her terrible circumstances, to her grief.  He feels compassion and without being asked he goes to her to help.  He touches the bier, which was like the stretcher the corpse would have been carried on, and everyone stops.  Think about how dramatic the silence that ensued would have been.  All of those people, all of the wailing and weeping that would have been an expected part of the funeral procession, all of it ceases.  Jesus says to the son, “Young man, I say to you, rise!”  The son sits up and begins to speak and Jesus gives him to his mother. 

            The crowds who witness this understandably respond with amazement, fear, awe and, as one commentator put it, almost like a Greek chorus they praise and glorify God, saying “A great prophet has risen among us!”  “God has looked favorably on his people.”

            Jesus says something that in pastoral care parlance should have been the wrong thing.  But he followed it with a miracle, a resurrection.  Out of his compassion for the widow new life is found in the midst of death and despair. 

            A story that I often tell about the power of compassion is this.  When I was first living and working in Richmond, a young man I went to high school with committed suicide.  He was two years behind me in school, but we were in Varsity Choir together and he was one of the sweetest, dearest guys I knew.  We all became very close when we put on the musical South Pacific, and I just adored him.  Everyone did.  He was much loved, popular, a good student, the student body president his senior year.  I could go on and on. 

            My senior year the choir took a big trip to Orlando, Florida for a choir competition.  At one point in the trip, I was experiencing challenges with some of my girlfriends.  I was standing in a hallway, on the outside of this group of girls, probably looking desolate.  My friend saw this and in his own moment of compassion came over and talked to me.  He listened to me.  It was what I needed most at that moment.  His compassion made a difference for me at that moment.  My great regret is that I couldn’t offer him that same compassion before he made the decision to end his life.

            When he died, my mother called me at work.  She was worried about me hearing this news at home, alone.  At least at my office there would be other people around.  When I got off the phone with my mother, I was beside myself with grief.  I was very involved with the Presbyterian congregation I’d joined, so I called the church office hoping to talk to one of the ministers.  The associate pastor that I knew the best was out of town, but the senior pastor took my call.  This was a rapidly growing, busy church.  Yet he dropped everything and met me at a local restaurant, bought me coffee and let me grieve.  This pastor’s compassion not only made a difference for me in that heartbreaking moment, it opened me to the possibility of my own call to ministry.

            I don’t need to tell anyone here that our call as disciples, as followers of Jesus is to show compassion for others as he showed compassion.  I think for most of us that is a given.  But our challenge comes in that when Jesus showed compassion, there were results.  People were healed.  The dead were resurrected.  Our compassion can’t accomplish what Jesus’ did.  Children die and are not given back to their mothers and their fathers.  People, who we think have everything, feel so much despair that they decide the only way out is to take their own life.  Our loved ones and our friends fall ill and we can’t give them health.  But even if we can’t do what Jesus did, our compassion for others is perhaps the most life giving, most necessary and most essential part of our humanity.  Showing compassion may not change someone’s circumstances, but it might give them hope.  Offering compassion to someone else might give them a reason to get up in the morning, or the belief that new life is possible even in death.  

            Showing compassion, even in a small way, even when we falter with what to say or do, can make all the difference.  When has it made a difference for you?   What difference have you made for others?  Let all God’s children say, “Amen.”

Thanks to WorkingPreacher.org and The Journey With Jesus website for the scholarly contribution to this sermon.

A Surprising Faith

Luke 7:1-10

June 2, 2013

One of my family's favorite movies is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."  It's about a Greek-American woman who defies the traditions of her Greek-American family by falling in love with and marrying a man who is not Greek.  Cultures clash, as you might expect.  The constant refrain from her father, who is the most upset about her marriage, is the word exenno.  After the initial meeting with the groom's parents, which was definitely a clash of cultures, the bride's father complains to her mother about how they were nice to the other family but there was no response.  Exenno!   His daughter is marrying an exenno.  The groom's whole family is exenno.  

I watched this movie several times before I finally thought to ask my sister, who speaks Greek, what exenno means.  It means stranger.  Tulla, the bride, was marrying a stranger and marrying into a family of strangers.  In this circumstance I don't think Tulla's father used the word stranger merely to reflect the fact that they didn't know the groom's family.  They weren't strangers simply because they hadn't yet met.  They were exenno, stranger, because they weren't Greek, they weren't like them.  They didn't have the same traditions, the same religion and beliefs. the same anything.  The groom and his family were the others.  They were strangers.  Exenno.

To the casual observer the Roman centurion in the gospel lesson surely would have fit the definition of exenno, stranger.  He was Roman.  He was a person of authority in the Roman army.  The Romans were the occupying force that held the people of Israel politically and culturally hostage.  This man was the oppressor.  

Yet from the very beginning of the passage we hear things about the centurion that conflict with our idea of oppressor.  He does not ask for healing for himself.  He asks for a slave, whom he valued highly.  I would guess that in that time a slave's life would not be of high value to anyone by virtue of his or her status as slave.  Yet the centurion cares enough about the slave to ask for healing.  He does not come to Jesus himself, but sends Jewish elders to speak to Jesus for him.  

What do they say?  They tell Jesus that this man is worthy of Jesus' attention.  Even though the centurion, by definition, is part of the oppressing, occupying force in their land, he is kind and sympathetic to the Jewish people.  He loves them.  It was he who built their synagogue.  

Jesus doesn't question the elders about the man at all.  He hears of a need and he responds.  But before he can reach the centurion's home, friends of the man intercept Jesus once again.  They bring a message from the man that Jesus doesn't even need to darken the door for the slave to be healed.  The centurion knows that he is not worthy of Jesus being in his house.  But the centurion recognizes authority when he sees it.   He too is a man of authority.  He only has to speak a word and his will will be done.  He knows Jesus has authority, not in directing people to do what he wants, but the authority over life and death.  All Jesus has to do is speak a word and his slave will be healed.  

The best part and the most curious part of this passage for me is that Jesus is surprised by this.  The text says that when Jesus heard this he was amazed.  He turns to the folks around him and proclaims that even in Israel, he's never seen this much faith.  The one we might consider exenno has a strong and surprising faith.  

I've learned something about myself in the last few weeks.  Too often I see people as exenno, stranger.  I don't think I do this consciously.  But more often than not that's the particular lens through which I see the world.  But sitting in storm shelters with people tends to change that lens.  

Not only seeing the devastation from the storms on television but seeing it up close, meeting people who have been directly affected by them, makes one realize that no matter what these folks believe or don't believe, no matter what might keep us apart under "normal" circumstances, they are our neighbors.  They're our family.  We're theirs.

One afternoon last week I rode around with the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance representative embedded in the Red Cross.  The rep is also a Presbyterian pastor.  We were making connections at different places where people in the Hispanic community might go seeking assistance.  He, on behalf of the Red Cross, wanted to make sure that everyone receives help, no matter what their circumstances might be.  I realized once again that other people aren't exenno.  They aren't strangers.  They're sisters and their brothers.  They're neighbors.  They are people in need and our call is to do everything we can to help meet that need.  

A friend and colleague wrote about this passage that Jesus didn't see worldly circumstances or labels or categories.  He saw need, and he replaced that need with healing and wholeness.  The Roman centurion was not exenno to Jesus.  The slave was not exenno.  They were children of God in need.  That's all that mattered.

The needs of our neighbors in our state are overwhelming and they are ongoing.  If more storms hit this week as they are predicting, more need may arise.  Everyone here and around the country have stepped up to meet these needs.  But as I've said far too many times these last months, it can't be only in times of crisis and disaster that we remember that we are family, not exenno.  I know I have to work and work hard to lose the lens of exenno.  I don't want to see people as strangers at any time, state of emergency or not.  And I want to lose my surprise that faith can come from unlikely people in unexpected places.  

I met  two women last week who'd lost their home in Bethel Acres.  All they had, literally, were the clothes on their backs.  The first thing they said to me was how grateful they were for the help they'd received and they couldn't wait to be able to pay it forward.  That surprised me, but why?  Because before the storms I would have thought of them as exenno?  Why should I be surprised that I see faith in unexpected places?

The faith of the centurion probably surprised Jesus and I imagine it surprised a lot of the people who were with him that day.  But we have story after story of God using unlikely people to do God's work in the world.  Whatever they may believe or not, they are not exenno.  And who knows, maybe they've seen us as exenno as well, unlikely and unexpected neighbors.  Let's work to make sure that none of us are exenno.  Let's work and work hard to remember that we are family.  Let all of God's children say, "Amen."

Hope

Romans 5:1-5

May 26, 2013/Trinity Sunday

            The Ethics course that I taught at the Community College in Iowa was considered a survey course.  What that meant was that I taught a whole variety of ethical theories and perspectives so the students would come out of the course with a broad view of ethics and ethical understandings. 

            One of the perspectives that we touched on, briefly, was Stoicism.  It was taught alongside Aristotelian ethics and Hedonism.  There was an analogy about Stoicism that I made my students learn each semester.  It was that of a dog tied behind a moving cart.  The Stoics worldview was that the universe was the moving cart and humanity the dog.  If the dog resisted the moving cart, or struggled or balked or tried to stay still, the dog would suffer.  If the dog chewed at the rope or tried to go a different way, the dog would suffer.  But if the dog trusted that the cart was moving in the direction it was supposed to and just followed along, then it would be all right.  The cart might take the dog through times of suffering, but resisting the cart made the suffering far worse.  The Stoics believed that following behind the cart without resistance was the best way to, if not avoid, than at least minimize suffering. 

            It's a great analogy.  Unless you're actually in the midst of suffering, then I'm not sure it works so well.  I don't think I would make a good stoic.  I would be the dog who not only resists the rope and the cart but would have to be dragged behind it.  Because let's face it, suffering stinks.  It has been horrendous this past week seeing the suffering in our community and in the community of Moore. 

While it has been heartbreaking watching all of this unfold on television, I can only imagine how awful it has been for those who are on the ground in the midst of it.  Suffering stinks.  It's terrible.  I don't believe that any of us want to suffer, any more than I believe God causes it.  Suffering stinks.

            Paul would have been well acquainted with the Stoics point of view.  You don't expect too much because that might produce hope and "hope disappoints."  You just follow along behind the cart and try not to resist the rope.  But Paul seemed to see suffering differently.  I don't think that he was trying to promote suffering, as this passage has sometimes been interpreted.  When Paul writes about boasting in suffering, I'm not convinced that he meant that as a call to seek out suffering solely for the purpose of building endurance to grow character to embrace hope.  I think, instead, that Paul realized that we are not alone in our suffering.  God is there with us.  As Dr. David Lose wrote this week in his Working Preacher column, Paul's particular lens for seeing the world and seeing suffering in it was shaped by the cross. 

            The real human being, Jesus of Nazareth, suffered.  The divine being, Jesus the Christ, suffered.  When we suffer we are not alone.  God is with us.  God is in the midst of it.  God is made visible in all of the hands and all of the faces that reach out to help after disasters like the ones Oklahomans have suffered this week.  God is in the midst of the quieter suffering that people endure as well.  God is with us in the daily trials and tribulations that we all endure.  God is in the midst of it.

            The difficulty comes in the midst of it.  It seems to me that when we're in the midst of suffering, recognizing God is the hardest thing to do.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if the people who lost loved ones this past week are struggling to see God in all of this.  If I were one of them, I would be.  So it's up to the rest of us to continue to show them that God is with them through our love for them.  It's up to the rest of us to be the hands of God for them.           
            Today is Trinity Sunday.  If Pentecost is one of my favorite Sundays of the year, then Trinity Sunday is my least favorite.  It's not that I don't appreciate the Trinity; it's that it's not an easily or satisfactorily explainable doctrine.  As I may have said to you all before my dear and wonderful Church History professor, Rebecca Weaver, told us never to fall back on the words, "it's a mystery" when it came to the Trinity.  There are ways to talk about it, ways to make it meaningful if not completely understood.  

            If there is anything that I grasp about the Trinity it is this.  The Trinity is God in relationship. The nature of God is relationship, and that relationship models for us what it means to be in relationship, in community.  I think it is in times like these when we fully reflect that model of relationship.  We reach out, we care, we help, we comfort, we work to restore and rebuild.  I've seen that kind of relationship, that kind of community, at work this past week.  And I know that it will continue in the weeks and months ahead. 

            All of this great, but it doesn't change or minimize the reality that suffering stinks.  And we are in a time where there is great suffering.  Even if the tornadoes hadn't happened, there would still be great suffering all around us; suffering of poverty and abuse and broken relationship.  Suffering stinks.  And we desperately need a word of hope.

            Yet when the present is this difficult, trying to hope for the future seems almost impossible.  So I think that sometimes the way we find hope in the present is by remembering the past.  I told you once that I trust God in memory.  I look back over my life and I see how God has worked.  I didn't always recognize God's presence at the time, but looking back I realize how fully God was with me.  So I trust that memory and I trust that God is with me now, even if I can't see or feel God's presence in the moment.  Perhaps that is how hope works.  We hope for the future because we recognize that God was with us in the past. 

            Think back over your own life.  Think back to the times when you've suffered, hurt, when you felt lost or alone.  Can you see now that God was with you?  Can you see how even in suffering some good came from it?  I will never proclaim that God causes suffering, but looking back I can see how diligently God worked to pull good out of suffering. 

            Writer, pastor, preacher Frederick Buechner wrote these words about hope in a sermon entitled, A Room Called Remember. 

"Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future. There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us as the strength beyond our strength, the wisdom beyond our wisdom, as whatever it is in our hearts--whether we believe in God or not--that keeps us human enough at least to get by despite everything in our lives that tends to wither the heart and make us less than human."

            "Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future." 

            Paul saw human suffering through the lens of Christ on the cross.  God suffered and God suffered profoundly.  This does not diminish our suffering, but provides us with the assurance that even as we suffer God is with us.  Even as we suffer, we trust that something more, something beyond our present reality, beyond our understanding is coming from our suffering.  Suffering produces endurance.  Endurance produces character.  Character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.  Remember, as best as we can, that God is with us and let us hope.  The past, present and future are God’s and so are we.  Let all God's children say, "Amen."

The Hardest Thing

            I saw an ad recently about a new reality television show featuring bad moms.  Besides my ongoing bemusement as to why we need yet one more vapid, insipid and just plain stupid reality show, I also question why we’ve now turned to bad mothering as a source of entertainment.  I tried to forget about this show as soon as I saw the ad, but a quote from one of the moms stuck with me.  She said, “The hardest thing about being a mom is keeping another human being alive.” 

            Damn straight, sister.

            I suspect that this mom’s sentiments are based on a different reality than mine, but her words lived with me this past Monday.  The night before, a tornado struck the northern part of Shawnee, Oklahoma, our home.  Early Sunday evening, as the skies turned threatening, I did what most other people were doing.  I watched the local weather to keep track of the storm that was coming so I could make sure we stayed safe.  I also have a weather channel app on my IPad and my IPhone, again so we can remain safe.  My first instinct when a storm is approaching is to stay put.  We were all home.  We don’t have a storm cellar or a basement where we live, but I figured we would go into our bathroom and wait in the tub if we had to.  As we were doing just that, I got a text from a friend asking me where we were taking shelter.  When I told her the bathtub, she suggested we go to a tornado shelter in town.  We ran for the car and started to make our way to the one where she and her family were staying. 

            The skies were getting darker.  The winds were getting fiercer, and I realized about half a minute into the drive to that particular shelter that we were heading right toward the storm.  When I saw that a fire station was serving as a shelter, I pulled the most audacious U-turn of my driving career, parked the car and we ran.  The hardest part about being a mom is keeping another human being alive. 

            While I stayed relatively calm and cool during our time in the shelter, once it was all over and we could go home, I sat in the car and shook.  I’d gotten really lucky.  I’d kept my kids, these human beings, alive, but what if ? 

            Then Monday came.  As we were still processing what had happened in Shawnee and the damage sustained and souls lost north and west of the main part of town, the skies darkened again.  Once more I turned on local television and saw, live, the EF5 tornado that developed and laid waste to Moore, a bustling town just south of Oklahoma City and west of Shawnee. 

            As the storm dissipated, the first pictures of the devastation in Moore were horrifying.  They didn’t get better.  At Plaza Towers Elementary School, the school where seven children died, reporters on the ground told of frantic, hysterical parents being held back from the rubble so the first responders could do their work.  All any of us who were watching could do was pray and cry and pray some more.  I understood that the hardest job of a mom or a dad or anyone who loves another human being isn’t just keeping that human being alive, it’s realizing that no matter what we do to protect the ones we love sometimes there are forces beyond our control.  Sometimes we can’t keep the ones we love the most safe, well, and too often tragically, alive.  But what parent standing outside of that demolished school wouldn’t have willingly traded places with their child? 

            I think that’s the great beauty and the great cost of love.  When we love someone, we’d rather have something happen to us than to them.  It doesn’t matter the configuration of love – parent for a child, child for a parent, spouse for spouse, teacher for student, neighbor for neighbor – when you love someone, you’d willingly take their place.  The hardest thing about loving is that sometimes you can’t. 

            To the people in our community and in our state who have lost so much in these terrible storms, we can't take your place in your suffering.  But we can walk right beside you.  We can and will love you.  We will do everything in our power to meet your need and your heartache with love, in words and in deeds.