7/8/2018 0 Comments I Feel Sorry for JesusA sermon preached on July 8, 2018
on the Sterling, MA Town Common by Rev. Robin Bartlett POEM "I Feel Sorry for Jesus" by Naomi Shihab Nye People won’t leave Him alone. I know He said, wherever two or more are gathered in my name… But I bet some days He regrets it. Cozily they tell you what he wants and doesn’t want as if they just got an e-mail. Remember “Telephone,” that pass-it-on game where the message changed dramatically by the time it rounded the circle? Well. People blame terrible pieties on Jesus. They want to be his special pet. Jesus deserves better. I think He’s been exhausted for a very long time. He went into the desert, friends. He didn’t go into the pomp. He didn’t go into the golden chandeliers and say, the truth tastes better here. See? I’m talking like I know. It’s dangerous talking for Jesus. You get carried away almost immediately. I stood in the spot where He was born. I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die. Every twist of the Via Dolorosa was written on my skin. And that makes me feel like being silent for Him, you know? A secret pouch of listening. You won’t hear me mention this again. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. I’ve made a living trying to answer that question out loud so others can hear. It’s dangerous talking for Jesus. You and I both know that there is too much noise right now. Too much talking and not enough listening. Too much posturing; too much declarative pomposity, not enough curious not-knowing. People have so much toxic certainty about issues that are far too complex for anyone to have any certainty at all about. And we all have just so much to say. The lack of collective humility takes my breath away. There is so little silence. Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” And people are all too quick with an answer. “You are a permissible friend, a judge-y foe. You are a liberal. You are a conservative. You are not real; you are a fairy sky God. You’d vote for the person I voted for. You love America the most of all the countries. You’d judge this war just. You wouldn’t want gay people to have cake. You’d approve of this immigration policy. You hate the people I hate. You love the people I love.” Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” And people fill a vacuum with words. They say so many things that we wish they wouldn’t say in answer to that question. And yet, it matters how we answer that question. It matters what we tell the children. Who do you say Jesus is? ...............................................(pause for answers)......................................................... "Who do you say that I am?" I’ve preached this text several times with answers to that question that point back to Love. Who do you say that I am? I try to answer that question every day of my life. But the part of the Gospel that stood out to me this week as I meditated on the text was not the question, and not the answer, but the silence that followed.: Jesus asks the question. Who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answers him the “right” way: “you are the Messiah, Son of the Living God.” Jesus says, “Yes! Now build my church.” 'cause he knows Peter gets it, you know? And then he says something curious: he sternly warns the disciples not to tell anyone. Who do you say that I am? Maybe sometimes the correct answer to Jesus’ question is silence. “It’s dangerous talking for Jesus,” our poet says. “You get carried away almost immediately.” I stood in the spot where He was born. I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die. Every twist of the Via Dolorosa was written on my skin. And that makes me feel like being silent for Him, you know? A secret pouch of listening. The Via dolorosa is the path that Jesus walked to his death in Jerusalem, bloodied and beaten, carrying a heavy cross. Via dolorosa means way of grief, way of sorrow, way of suffering, the painful way. You and I may never have traveled to Jerusalem, but we have walked the way of sorrow if we have known suffering. The way of sorrow is written on our skin. It makes me feel like being silent for Jesus. It makes me feel like being silent for all of us. At the end of the via dolorosa, Jesus stood before Pilate. Who do you say that you are? Pilate demanded at his trial. Jesus himself didn’t answer that question. Frederich Buechner, in his book Telling the Truth, writes: A particular truth can be stated in words – that life is better than death and love than hate, that there is a god or not, that light travels faster than sound and cancer can sometimes be cured if you discover it in time. But truth itself is another matter, the truth that Pilate asked for, tired and bored and depressed by his long day. Truth itself cannot be stated. Truth simply is… And in answer to Pilate’s question, Jesus keeps silent, even with his hands tied behind him manages somehow to hold silence out like a terrible gift. We, all of us, are Pilate in our asking after truth, and when we come to church to ask it, the preacher would do well to answer us also with silence, because the truth and the Gospel are one, and before the Gospel is a word it too like truth is silence – not an ordinary silence, silence as nothing to hear, but silence that makes itself heard, if you listen to it the way Pilate listens to the silence of the man with the split lip. We’d do better listening more in silence—the kind of silence that makes itself heard. This week on the 5th of July, I got a phone call early in the morning from our beloved Judy Conway. I could barely make out what she was saying to me through her sobs. Her 16 month old baby granddaughter, our Becky’s daughter, our Charlotte, was rushed to the hospital early that morning, unresponsive. She had gone limp, had labored breathing and was paralyzed from the neck down, and no one knew why. (The family still sits vigil by her hospital bed as we speak, she was diagnosed with swelling of the spinal chord and brain, and she continues to make small improvements with steroids.) When I talked to her, Judy was speeding home from her vacation in New York to go to UMass University Hospital. Judy said she and Jim drove like bats out of hell in utter silence, held out like a terrible gift. She used that time to pray. I was in New Hampshire at the time, and told her I would be at the hospital as soon as I could get there. Those of you who are parents probably know what its like to parent young children under stress. I drove all three kids by myself in the car for three hours, mostly in silence, keeping vigil in my head for that baby girl, as if my mind could cure her if I was quiet enough. Meanwhile, my youngest is yelling, “Mommy! She won’t stop touching me!” My oldest is belting Broadway tunes. And I was growing more and more angry that their lives were going on as if there wasn’t tragedy in the world—a completely unfair maternal reaction, of course, so I stayed quiet, turning down the radio as I drove. My response to the chaos in my car was silence, held out like a terrible gift. I prayed, too. But if I’m being honest, half of my prayers were for myself, to show up the “right” way. Like so many similar via dolorosas I have traveled, I rehearsed over and over again what I might say, and pray. I practiced what words I might use on behalf of Jesus in the hospital. I feared my insufficient offering; my utter helplessness. And I remembered my chaplain supervisor’s words to me years ago when I was absolutely panicking about going to the Pediatric ICU because I was a young mother and I thought I couldn’t possibly “handle it.” “This isn’t about you. That’s not your child in the hospital bed, Robin.” she said. “It could be someday, but it isn’t today. So with all due respect, suck it up and go.” When I finally arrived at the UMass PICU, I still didn’t know what to say. But I did know what to do. I held Judy’s hand. I gave hugs to the family. I listened. When it was time to pray over Charlotte—attached to a ventilator and sleeping peacefully— I stroked her warm forehead. We sang “You are my sunshine” and I prayed, “God, sometimes there are no words.” I was silent for a long time before finding something else to say. So much of life is just about showing up; it’s not about knowing what to say. After I left the hospital, I drove in silence to visit with Rollie, who had just lost his wife of 58 years, Mary Ann. Again, I prayed: “What will I say? What does one say to someone who is grieving the death of the only life and love he has known for 58 years?” I imagine the stream of mourners from First Church driving to the funeral home to hug Rollie, to look him in the eye. Praying the same thing: “What do I say when I see him?” The words ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ seem so insufficient because they are. We didn’t know what to say, but we did know what to do. We showed up. Rollie was so appreciative. It meant so much. You showed up. So much of life is just about showing up; it’s not about knowing what to say. Because so much gospel truth simply can’t be spoken. But it can always be enacted. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Jesus says at the communion meal. “Go and do likewise” Jesus says of the Good Samaritan. Do this. Go and do. Saint Francis said: “Go and preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” There are lots of scholarly reasons I have been given in New Testament classes about why Jesus is always telling people not to tell anyone about who he is, based on the communities these texts were written for. But today I want to imagine this: Jesus telling us with silence that it is better to live the Gospel than it is to try and speak for him. As if we can have any idea about what he would say about gay people eating cake, or capitalism, or a natural disaster. Maybe Jesus wants us to just shut up about who he is so that we can listen more. Maybe Jesus wants us to show up more on the via dolorosa, and say a whole lot less. See? I’m talking like I know. Once people start talking like they know, think hard. Stop, be silent, and listen. Who do you say that I am? Jesus asks. Answer that question with a silence that makes itself heard. Answer that question with your actions, not just your words. Answer that question with presence. Answer that question with humility. Answer that question with service. Answer that question with Love. Amen.
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AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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