We have finally completed our quick
sojourn through John and Jesus’ teaching that the signs so valued by the Jewish
people pointed to Him. For those
travelling these last few weeks: Jesus has one-upped Moses by feeding the 5000
men besides women and children with no intercession and with plenty of
leftovers; Jesus has walked on water, again signifying His control, not just
over nature, but chaos; Jesus has taken upon Himself the so-called ego eimi, the Great “I AM” that spoke to
Moses out of the Burning Bush; Jesus has declared Himself the Living Bread that
has come down from heaven; Jesus has prophesied His death; and all this, and a
bit more, take place under the theme of Passover. Truly, these were significant times in the
lives of the disciples and Apostles!
This all, of course, followed those signs of power which had attracted
them in the first place. Perhaps they
had seen Jesus cast out demons. Maybe
they had seen Jesus enable a cripple to walk, a blind person see, someone with
a fever restored, talk about someone unseen sitting under a tree, or any other
of the countless signs that convinced them He was Messiah. Some, as Jesus has
criticized in our readings these last few weeks, followed him simply for His
ability to meet their material needs.
All, though, had been attracted by something they saw or heard in Jesus.
Until now. . .
As I warned last week and we now read
today, Jesus’ teaching is incredibly hard.
Those who eat My flesh and drink
My blood abide in Me, and I in them. Just
as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats
me will live because of Me. This is the
bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors at, and
they died. But the one who eats this
bread will live forever. Imagine
yourself in that audience hearing this teaching. Imagine yourself in this audience, having
been drawn to Jesus by some sign or signs that convinced you that He had been
sent by God, was possibly the Messiah, and hearing this teaching. Wait,
I’m supposed to be a cannibal? I have to
eat His flesh and drink His blood? His
flesh and His blood are better than the manna in the wilderness? That came from God. How can this be? And why is God performing these signs through
this nut? John tells us that the
disciples complained about the teaching and how hard it was.
Jesus, of course, does not back down from
His teaching. In fact, He pushes it,
according to most commentators, telling them His teaching is of the spirit and
not the flesh. I like to think, rather, He
is planting a seed in the minds of those who fall away at this time. He plainly tells them that He will be
ascending to the Father. Imagine struggling
with this teaching, falling away, hearing of His death, hearing rumors of His
Resurrection, and then hearing about the Ascension. Might this prophesy be enough to get you to
reconsider your decision to fall away?
Think about it. He reminds the
people that unless the Father grants it, they cannot come to Him. He has already reminded them and us that the
Father is dragging them into the boat like a fisher is hauling on a net. The implication is that the fish will
continue to try and struggle out of the net and swim their own way. He has used an image that most in this port
town can grasp. But they are descended
from Abraham and Sarah. They already
belong to God, in their minds, just because of their birth. Yet here is this prophet like Elijah teaching
something else entirely.
The truth, brothers and sisters, is that
neither you nor I truly need to place ourselves in the story to understand the decision
by the disciples to fall away. All of us
have felt that temptation to fall away like the disciples of old. When we are truly honest with ourselves, we
know Jesus is true. Was God not hauling
on the nets, how easy would it be for us to swim away! The world teaches all kinds of false
gospels. At times, their message is like
a siren’s song of old. Who wants to pick
up a cross and follow Jesus when we can have it our way? Who wants to labor endlessly, serving as
Christ’s hands and feet in a broken world, when we know we deserve a break
today? For heaven’s sake, all of us
gathered here this morning are Americans, I believe. Jesus is teaching us that service to Him is
perfect freedom. We know that’s a lie, don’t we.
And then this presumptive idea that He has about being the King? Come on.
Democracy is the real path to liberty and freedom. Our candidates for president are proof of
that. Why are you all laughing?
Seriously.
Who hear has not been tempted by the idols of the age. Ever give up the worship of God who saved you
and offered you life eternal for a football game? I see the squirms here in SEC country. Ever decide to skip the worship of God who
offers you rest renewal because your bed seemed to be calling your name on a
foggy, dark morning? Ever decide to
choose the embrace of a lover, not your husband and wife, over the embrace from
the hard wood of the Cross? Ever decide
to hedge your bets and place your hope in the money you make, your own
strength, your own intelligence, your own will, and not trust God
entirely? Of course you have. Of course we all have.
As I was considering a number of
illustrations that tied in these last few weeks’ of Jesus’ teaching that He is
the focus of history and salvation and the reality of the hardness of His
teaching, that we must be baptized into His death and raised into His
Resurrection to be His, I was engaging in a number of conversations in my
office. Several people shared with me
they wished they were like me and did not struggle with their faith. After some snorts and laughter, I shared some
of my personal struggles. In fact, I let
them in on a little secret: most of us in collars have the exact same struggles. Many of us try hard to hide them, but all of
us live in the hardness of these teachings of Jesus, whether we are good clergy
or bad clergy. Those in our care and
cures expect us to be beyond those struggles, and that is part of the reason
why a clergy’s failure creates such headlines.
But, imagine yourself praying for healing and, instead, find yourself
celebrating a Eucharist at a funeral.
Imagine serving as a mediator between two Christians who, time and time
again, put ego over love, and so are never reconciled to one another. Imagine standing in the presence of true evil
with the impotence that comes from knowing your efforts are like a grain of
sand on the beach or a drop of water in the ocean. Imagine holding a hand to someone in need of
rescue and them refusing to take it.
Look around you for a moment.
Imagine trying hard to pastor this herd of cats. We are laughing now. But my guess is that you each can think of
times when you were an unruly bunch and truly tested the faith of your pastor.
As I was sharing stories this week along
these lines, too many people in my office said they wished there was a way I
could share the stories with everyone.
In fact, I laughed out loud the fourth or fifth one because I knew the
readings and I understood what they were saying. I tend to shy away from personal stories in
sermons because the focus should always be on Jesus. I do not want you placing your trust in me; I
desperately want you placing your trust in Him.
I promise you I will fail you. He
promises that He will not. Only one of
us has been raised from the dead and ascended to the Father. I hope to join Him one day in the future, but
I will only do so because He made it possible.
But I also understand the idea of sharing with you some of those things
that inform my faith. Sharing my hurts
and my fears can sometimes cause people to open up truly about their hurts,
their scars, and where they struggle, thereby making me a better pastor to you.
The story that resonated most with those
in the office this week was from my seminary days. Some of you may have heard it from Clayton
and Theresa while they were there. This
might startle you to hear this, but Karen and I only planned on having four
kids when we got married. When Robbie
was born we really thought we were done.
All jokes about someone needing to explain to us how this happens aside,
we understood and took measures to see that it did not happen again.
It was the practice of my seminary to
place students in small groups that met each week. The idea was that there would be a mix of
first-years, second-years, and third-years that would serve as an
accountability group, and later in life, as friends. During our time there, four of the wives of
those in the group became pregnant. In
fact, that year I think we had something like fourteen pregnancies. It was enough that the single ladies were
forced to start drinking bottled water only.
Hey, we thought it was funny at the time, too.
In any event, our group had two families
that were dealing with first babies and two families that were dealing with
fifth babies. Scott & Sarah and
Bryan & Lisa were going through all the worries of having a first child. Paul & Kristti and Karen & I were
going through the “what in the world is God thinking” of having a fifth. I cannot begin to describe to you the wild
swings in conversations in our group meetings.
You will likely meet Bryan in a few weeks, so you will better understand
our interactions. But we were all over
the place about babies and
struggling with this prospect of serving God in ordained life. It was terrifying, but a good
terrifying. It was exciting. It was full of promise.
Then Scott came to the group one day to
share with us that their baby, Josiah, had been diagnosed with
anencephaly. In case you are not
familiar with the condition, all or part of the baby’s brain is outside the
skull. The medical advice was to
terminate the pregnancy. Many of you
work in health care, so you understand the diagnosis and the reasons for the
recommendation. Scott & Sarah
discerned that they were to see the pregnancy through. God willing, Josiah would be miraculously
healed. If not, then Josiah would be
born and live as long as God gave him life.
They were trusting that God would redeem their situation and their son.
You can well imagine the effect on my
group. Paul & Kristti and Karen
& I found ourselves in the midst of what mental health professionals call
survivors’ guilt. Bryan & Lisa went
from the normal “first pregnancy worries” to their own version of survivors’
guilt and these new additional worries.
Scott & Sarah also had what most of us would think of as a normal
reaction. I won’t share specifics, but
you can well imagine the different emotions at play in our group. Fear, hurt, anger, self-blame, impotence,
worry – you name it, we went through it.
And truly, we were probably not as aware of the struggles with those in
our group who were not yet married as we should have been. It was only some time later that I realized their
difficulty. How does one celebrate and
mourn appropriately within the same group?
Josiah was born and lived a few
minutes. He was, of course, baptized
immediately. Scott & Sarah held
their precious son as he passed from this life into glory.
Then came the wonderful task for our group
to plan and participate in a funeral for an infant. Seminary is supposed to prepare us for clergy
life, but this is one of those lessons with which I could have gone without, or
so I thought. People around here comment
that George’s funeral was a real blessing, that I handled some difficulties
with grace and resolve. Much of my
sensitivity to the emotions and interpersonal play at wakes and funerals come
from that year in seminary. You see,
Karen & I, and later Paul & Kristti, had no problems. Sure, Karen and Kristti went through the hard
work of labor, but our babies live. You
know one as David.
To Sarah’s enormous credit, she made sure
Karen was coming to the service with David.
She had heard through the grapevine that Karen was likely to skip the
service. Bringing a newborn to the
funeral of another newborn just seemed . . . wrong. But it was that very wrongness that gave
Sarah some hope. She needed to be
reminded that this horrible tragedy was not what God had intended. She wanted Karen to come to remind her of
God’s life-giving promises. Karen
went. And even among future leaders of
our church, she heard the questions, she heard the judgment. Don’t
you think this inappropriate? What will
Sarah think if your baby cries? You
should have stayed away. Aren’t you rubbing it in her face? In the weeks and months ahead, we were
fortunate to address the pastoral skills of some of those present, some gently. But it has served a reminder to me that
things are not always as they seem to people.
In that way, you have already been blessed by what I learned in that
terrible tragedy.
You’d think, of course, that such was
enough for one group of future clergy to suffer. You would be wrong.
Right around Bryan’s graduation, Lisa went
into labor. I have to confess that, as a
group, we could not wait to see Bryan as a dad.
You will see him and learn a bit of what had us looking forward to it in
laughter. Wait, they poop! Wait, they
don’t bounce? Our only sorrow was
that we were not going to get to watch Bryan learn to be a dad. That promised to be an adventure! Unfortunately, we lived another tragedy.
When Bryan called with the news that
Samuel had died, I was so pissed . . . at him.
I was absolutely convinced at first it was some sick joke whose humor
completely escaped me. When I finally
understood his seriousness, I was crushed.
Like my group mates, I was just chuckling at the idea of Bryan being a
dad. I was looking forward to the calls
and e-mails of “how do you handle this?”
To learn that Samuel had died for no apparent reason made no sense. I called others in the group to help get the
word out among the seminary and headed to the hospital. I can see to this day the horror in his
eyes. I knew his history and how he had
cheated death. I don’t think we did
anything but cry for the first few minutes.
People speak of groaning in the Holy Spirit when there seems to be no
words. I suppose we were at that
point. At some point, I learned Lisa was
alive. Naturally, I wanted to know what
had happened. Babies just don’t die at
birth in America. In third-world
countries, but not here.
Over the next few months or years, their
OB send the records to a number of hospitals for M & M, I guess you doctors
and nurses call it. It makes sense that
you want to catch your mistakes. I have
no idea how many experts looked at Samuel’s case, but no one was ever able to
give a diagnosis. It just happens.
Again my group found ourselves immersed in
the planning and participation in another infant funeral. Thankfully, from our experience before, we
knew better what to expect of those in attendance and from ourselves. But none of us could believe we were
there. Again. We who were supposed to be the future priests
in Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we who had been set aside
by God, were burying a second infant in a semester! We had to hear the same words as those
disciples so long ago. Eat My flesh and drink My blood and
live! HAH! Hard words, indeed. I daresay most of us struggled with this for
some time. I always felt a bit sorry for
the members of the next class to matriculate who were dropped into our group. We were supposed to be talking about the
difficulties balancing seminary with family life, of leading unruly vestries,
of dealing with spiritual matriarchs and patriarchs of our future
congregations, of dealing with clergy killers, and they walked in to our
group. No, in many ways, we were and are
just like you and just like Peter. Only
He has the words of eternal life? To
whom else could or can we go?
I am told by some among you that I speak
convincingly of God’s redemptive power and plan. I should.
We lived it. Yes, I can speak to
you more specifically about my faith journey with God, but it is nowhere as
impressive to me as to what He did within our group. If God can redeem the senseless death of
newborns, and the grief of their parents, what can He not redeem?
Know first of all that both of those
couples now have children. Both have
healthy, beautiful, strong children who know and love God with all their
strength, with all their little minds, and with all their little hearts. Cynics among us might say that is only
biology. Given the high number of
couples who divorce after the death of a child, I would tend to disagree that
it is only biology at play. But I do
recognize that God could give them a ton of children, and still there would be
the tragedies of Josiah and Samuel deaths.
No, God does far more than replace things and people that are lost. He does far more than we can ask or imagine.
Not too long after Josiah’s death, Scott
& Sarah were recruited to join an anencephaly support group for those in
the Pittsburgh area. I won’t bore you
with the details or struggles, but you each understand well the concept of the
Wounded Healer. Both were able to share
in the pain and suffering of such loss and
be used by God to speak His healing promise and His offer of forgiveness into
the lives of those in the group with them.
I never saw any of Scott’s conversations, but I heard about a few of
them before we graduated. The impact of
those conversations was typical. Some
heard the redemptive message and fought all the harder against the net,
refusing to believe that God was somehow not cruel or uncaring—their circumstances
defined their relationship to Him; some heard the message and allowed
themselves to be pulled into the boat!
It is a cross that neither of them would ever have chosen to bear, but,
like Peter, recognized that only the Lord offers such hope and such power in
the face of seemingly certain death.
The beginning of the redemption of
Samuel’s death was a bit more improbable.
We might understand a couple’s willingness to put themselves out there
in the face of tragedy, but Samuel’s had too big a coincidence and too big an
impact. After our service at the
seminary, Bryan & Lisa headed back to their sending parish in CT to inter
Samuel’s ashes. As you can imagine,
their home parish was crushed for them.
They wanted to have a service there to provide some closure for the
parish.
There was a site in those days—remember,
this was the dark ages of the internet—called Mystery Worshipper. The idea was that a team went out to various
churches and evaluates the worship to help people choose a church that fits
their worship style. It seemed to me to
be well done. Roman Catholics went to
Roman Catholic churches; Presbies to Presbyterian churches, Episcopalians to
Episcopal churches, and so on. The idea
for us would be that, if we were travelling in NYC and wanted to find a high
church or low church, a church with hymnal music or a church with contemporary
music, we could read their evaluation and choose.
Wouldn’t you know it but that the mystery
worship team showed up at that parish the day Samuel’s ashes were
interred? Talk about a
God-incident! Everyone was at
church. Everyone there was in the same
place—struggling with the senseless death of an infant of a couple they loved,
of a couple upon whom they had discerned God’s call. The first image of the service recounted by
the evaluators was Bryan carrying the Pascal Candle and reciting those
wonderful words of introduction. I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the
Lord. Whoever has faith in Me shall have
life, even though he die. And everyone
who has life, and has committed himself to Me in faith, shall not die for
ever. Imagine stumbling into that
scene where a father of a newborn proclaims those words! Kinda sets the tone, don’t you think? I think Paul Rodgers preached on the secret
things of God, that we cannot know for certain why this happened or how God
would be glorified in such a seemingly senseless death. But that He would, because He had
promised. And in the end, all we can
really do is trust His promises. Bookend
that sermon and the Eucharist with a congregation singing Jesus loves me this I know as the little urn was carried out, and
you can see how the service made a bit of an impression on the team. The team admitted at the time it had been,
perhaps, one of the singularly most powerful services they had ever attended in
a church. All the cares of the world had
been given to God because, in the end, only He could truly manage them.
There are countless little stories of
redemption that spring out of these tragedies.
Over the years ahead that we journey together, you might hear a number
of them. You will, of course, be
witnesses to three important ones that are near and dear to my heart. Those of you who have dropped by the office
since the arrival of Karen and the kids have remarked about the energy and
excitement of a certain three children that hover around the office pestering
Miss Tina. Not a few of you have
wondered at our craziness at having seven children in this day and age. Now you understand us a bit better. Like you, we often wonder what He is
thinking. But we also know, know that
life is a precious gift to be treasured and offered back to Him. And so we have raised our kids to remember
that and to share in the joy that, in the end, they truly belong to Him, as do
each one of us gathered here.
Brothers and sisters, His teaching is
hard. It is never an easy thing to be
taught our limits, our weakness, or our need.
And the world has such easier sounding messages and enticement that we
wish, just wish, were true. But, as
Peter reminded us this morning, only Jesus offers the words of eternal
life. Only Jesus offers the means by
forgiveness. That you might know His
words were true and worthy of belief, God raised Him that Easter morning so
long ago and made it possible for us to share in that glory some day in our
future. Will you keep fighting His net
and trying desperately to swim out into the dark and cold and deep, or will you
commit yourself to doing all that you can to walk with Him, trusting in His
teaching, His love, and His promises, that you will live for ever, basking in
and sharing in His glory? Like those who
stood among the shores on in the synagogue in Capernaum, He offers us far more
than meets the eye. It is not at all
easy, but then nothing worthwhile ever is.
Peace,
Brian†
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