Names That Free Us

Luke 8:26-39

June 23, 2013

As a parent, I have re-learned how important names are.  I see firsthand every day that there is something comforting or at least helpful in giving things names.  I see this because Lydia is always asking, “What’s your name?”  She asks it of stuff animals, toy dolls, me (apparently not satisfied with the names she already has for me).  And Lydia doesn’t stop with things that have eyes and ears; “What’s your name?” she says to cups, phones, pipe cleaners.  Each time I, the holder of the object, am to give it a name.  As you can imagine, over time my names have become less and less creative, degenerating to the point that the name of the cup is cuppity-cup.  Regardless, this naming seems important, and I imagine it’s because it allows us to know things better, feel more connected to them, and know how to relate to them. 

When Jesus first met the man with many demons, the author of Luke tells us that he commanded the spirits to come out of him.  Interestingly, they didn’t.  Not at first.  When Jesus commands the demons to come out of the man, they strike up a conversation, which I imagine Jesus met with either a sigh of exasperation or resignation.  “What have you to do with us?” they want to know.  “Don’t torment us,” they say.  They are not going to go easily into the night – or pigs as it were.  Their hold on this man was powerful…when commanded by Jesus the healer, the worker of miracles, they sit tight and strike up a conversation with him.

It’s at that point that Jesus asks the man his name:  “Legion,” he answers.  And the author explains to us what that name means:  many.  This man does not have just one demon, he has many.  And it wasn’t until the demons were given a name that they would leave the man. 

I would go out on a limb and say we all have demons of one sort or another; demons that occupy our lives, at times drive us crazy, make us do things we don’t want to, isolate us, imprison us in guilt and shame.  Hurtful things we have done that haunt us.  Truths about who we are that we would never share with another human being.  Illnesses that grip us and begin to become our entire identity.  Demons are everywhere – they are many.  Legion.

I wonder if giving voice to these things, if naming them out loud, might not reduce their power over us.  “Legion,” the man says.  Here they are – this is their name. Who knows what his demons were.  Maybe he was embarrassed about them, maybe they were secrets he kept from himself and others, maybe it was an outside force that had taken over his life.  They drove him from community and sent him to live among the dead.  But Jesus asked for the name, and when he gave it he was released from years of possession.

Some of the demons that occupy us are not under our control.  They are illnesses we can’t cure, grief we can’t excise, violence we can’t stop.  But some demons we have invited in, and they reside deep in our subconscious controlling us in ways we are hardly aware of.  If we do ever, in fleeting moments, become aware of them, we feel horrible about ourselves, become mired in guilt and shame, and without conscious thought we send them right back where they came from…hidden in our souls. 

I was talking to a friend this week who is working the Twelve Step program.  I never cease to be amazed at how much wisdom there is in those twelve steps.  She is working on steps 4 and 5, and as I talked to her I realized that steps 4 and 5 are about doing this very thing:  naming demons. 

Step four is to make a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”  And step five is “admit to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  The 12 steps tell us that we are not free until we can give voice to these things.  We are not well.  Without steps 4 and 5, we end up back at step one:  Powerless with no ability to manage our lives.  We end up possessed by the same old demons. 

Searching and fearless moral inventory.  Admitting things to others.  I don’t know about you, but that sounds daunting and even pretty scary.  In step 4, as my friend described it to me, you make an actual written list…a list of “moral defects,” and a list of wrongs you have committed. Here’s how it reads in the book used in the 12 step program:  “a list of personality defects, violations of moral principles, defects of character, maladjustments and dysfunctional behavior.”  Sounds fun.

Now, let me say here that this language comes from 1940 when the founders of AA wrote down the basis of the wisdom that infuses the 12 steps.  In much the same way as we sometimes struggle with the out-dated language of the bible, some of this language is out-dated, but the wisdom behind it remains.  Defects, dysfunctional – words I wouldn’t use today.  I would use something more akin to brokenness.  But the idea is the same – these are the things about ourselves that fester in us – that, unacknowledged, control us and possess us.

Imagine doing this:  Sitting down and writing out your flaws – your brokenness – and giving examples of them.  Then imagine sharing that list with someone.  It makes me a little queasy.  But my friend had made that list, and was sharing with me, another person, some of the things on that list that were most surprising to her, and caused her the most shame.  After we spoke, she told me, she was freer, lighter.  The demons didn’t feel so big once they were said out loud.  She knew more about them, she knew now how to relate to them.  And she knew she wasn’t judged.  I still loved her as much as I did before.  They had a name.  To name our demons and not be judged….to be understood…it is a freedom that’s hard to overrate. 

But we can do this, because we have a God that does not desire to judge us, but desires to love us, defects and all.  Jesus asks for the name – he invites the truth telling.  And his response is not judgment, it is to free the man from that which binds him. 

Without this inventory – this searching and fearless inventory, open and as honest as it can be – the things we don’t name will wreck havoc on our lives.  They will make us crazy as we try to deny them.  They will create distance between us and others as we try to hide them, putting up walls around us so people can’t see.  They will imprison us in guilt and shame as we let them lie unnamed in our deepest selves. 

I have actually watched a number of people struggle through these steps.  I have tried such things myself.  It is hard.  Either it’s just too painful – too much to admit to ourselves and certainly someone else – and so denial reigns supreme and we refuse to give our demons names, or we can’t do it without beating ourselves up and allowing guilt and shame to take us down.  This balance is SO hard to strike. 

But if we do, I think we will experience freedom.  The demons we have invited in no longer get to hide out in the shadows of our souls – they are exposed in the light for what they are – simple human brokenness.  And even the demons we can’t control, we can’t fix are important to name.  When we put them out there, share them with select others, they have less power over us.  I am addicted.  I have bi-polar.  I am mired in grief.  To say these to another lightens the load and demystifies their power.

Someone sent me a pod cast this week of the NPR show, “On Being.”  The guest was a poet named Marie Howe.  At the end of the show she shared a poem that I found powerful and very much related to naming our demons.  It’s called Mary Magdalene and the Seven Devils.    Mary Magdalene has gone down in history as a prostitute, but in Luke the only time she is mentioned is when he tells us she was one of the disciples following Jesus, and that she had been cured of seven demons.

What I like about this poem is that it poignantly names demons – some we will relate to, some we won’t, and some are just common to the universal human condition.  She names them so honestly and I think without judgment.  The demons are a mix of things she can control and things she can’t.  And in this naming there is a struggle about whether, if they are named, others will understand – a struggle with which I am familiar.  As an answer to this question, she chooses vulnerability.  She writes a poem for all to see.  She chooses to risk saying the hard things and in doing so, she invites us to do the same.

I want to read the poem.  There’s a copy on the table outside the sanctuary if you want a copy when you leave.

MAGDALENE–THE SEVEN DEVILS

“Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” —Luke 8:2.

The first was that I was very busy.
The second — I was different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that.

The third — I worried.
The fourth – envy, disguised as compassion.
The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,
The aphid disgusted me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The mosquito too – its face. And the ant – its bifurcated body.

Ok the first was that I was so busy.
The second that I might make the wrong choice,
because I had decided to take that plane that day,
that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early
and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.
The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street
the house would blow up.
The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer of skin
lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth — if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I touched the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.

The seventh — I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that was alive and I couldn’t stand it,

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word – cheesecloth –
to breathe through that would trap it — whatever was inside everyone else that
entered me when I breathed in

No. That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy. I had no time. How had this happened? How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it – distinct, separate from me in a bowl or on a plate.

Ok. The first was that I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.
And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was
love?

Someone using you as a co-ordinate to situate himself on earth.

The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong
to anyone.

Historians would assume my sin was sexual.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked when she was dying.
The sound she made — the gurgling sound — so loud we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn’t stop hearing it–years later –
grocery shopping, crossing the street –

No, not the sound – it was her body’s hunger
finally evident.–what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,
the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath —that was the first devil. It was always with me.
And that I didn’t think you— if I told you – would understand any of this -

Naming truth – honestly without fear – is what frees us.  Some are truths not of our own making, yet possess us in ways that feel demonic.  Some are truths about things we have done, ways we live that cause us guilt and shame…certainly two of the worst demons there are. 

What this story in Luke tells us is that the God of grace asks for these names, and then rather than judge, removes their power.  God reduces the hold they have on our lives – the power they exert over what we do and who we are. 

The twelfth step is the step Jesus encourages the man to take in the end.  Step 12 says “having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to [others], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”  In the end, Jesus gives the man an instruction:  Go and tell everyone what God has done for you. 

Tell others that God meets us, sometimes in the guise of another, and loves us no matter what truths we hold.  Then God, through unconditional Grace, invites us to be free of the demons – from the guilt and shame – from fear of judgment.  Can we name our demons?  Can we be that vulnerable?  Can we offer a place where others can name theirs?  Can we provide a safe enough space for others to be that vulnerable?  Can we be the ones who do understand?  Try it.  It’s freeing.  It frees you, it frees others, and allows us all to continue to take steps on the journey of faith.  Amen.

Forgiven, Freed, and Made Whole

Luke 7:36-8:3

June 16, 2013

 

I went on a retreat in early May as part of my continuing education.  At the retreat were seven pastors and a leader.  One day we were getting ready to start one of our sessions and one person wasn’t there yet.  She came in about 5 minutes late, and when she came in she was very apologetic.  “I’m so sorry.  I really apologize.”  We all did what you all would do…we chuckled and said, “you’re forgiven.”  We chuckled because of course she was forgiven…It went without saying. 

But then, she went on to explain herself, and say that she knows starting on time is important.  The leader interrupted and said, “the correct response is, ‘thank you.’”  We all laughed, because we have all been there.  We do something that annoys or affects others, and we feel bad so we apologize.  If they say, “no problem,” or “you’re forgiven,” we go on to explain…because in truth, we don’t think it’s true.  We don’t believe it when we are told we’re forgiven.  We still feel bad, embarrassed.  We still think others are judging us, even if it’s about trivial things. 

While I was watching this unfold, I thought about our prayer of confession.  I’m not saying our prayer of confession is equivalent to admitting you are late.  It’s not trivial; we have confessed our willingness to go to war, our participation in systems that degrade and kill, our unwillingness to see our neighbors in need.  And when we say “you are forgiven,” it is not usually in the tone we used that day at the retreat.  But it made me wonder, do we really believe it?  When we say together, “In Christ we are forgiven, freed and made whole,” do we believe it?  Do we even know what it means?

At first reading of our passage it’s easy to think the woman comes in weeping because she is contrite.  She is embarrassed for all her sins and desires to be forgiven by Jesus.  But when we read to the end, I don’t think that’s the case.  I don’t think these are tears of contrition, I think they are tears of gratitude and joy.  I think these are the actions of someone who knows what it means to be forgiven, freed, and made whole. 

It’s always a little awkward to preach a sermon that turns on a verb tense, but here goes:  When Jesus explains to Simon the Pharisee what is going on with the woman, he says “her sins have been forgiven.” Notice he doesn’t say “her sins are forgiven,” present tense, or even “your sins will be forgiven,” future tense.  The verb here in Greek is in the perfect, indicative tense:  which means something that has happened in the past and continues to be true. 

There is no indication that this woman confessed her sins.  There is no indication that she changed her ways.  There is no indication that something was required for her sins to be forgiven.  They simply have been forgiven…in the past and ongoing.  I don’t think this verb tense is insignificant – in fact I think it carried all the significance in the world. 

It was already true, it had been true all along.  And I think she believed it.  I think something in how Jesus interacted with her made her realize what it meant to be forgiven and made whole – “saved,” as the text says.  She believed it and no longer felt the need to see herself as a sinner, to apologize for who she was and what she had done, to feel bad and guilty.   And she certainly said “thank you” with everything she had!  Because that’s the spontaneous response when you believe such good news…gratitude. 

In our prayer of confession, the way we do it in worship, we can too easily convince ourselves that we come unforgiven and then, only after we confess can we be forgiven.  I worry that this might make us question our forgiveness – in the same way my friend did at the retreat.  She came knowing we already knew she was late…the sin had been committed, and now she needed forgiveness from us.  If we decided to be annoyed or upset, she wouldn’t feel forgiven.  And while her offense was trivial, the chance that someone might be annoyed was fair to middling.  So, unless she was sure no one was upset, she wasn’t going to feel forgiven.  Hence the gravelling, self deprecation…these are things we know to do to secure people’s forgiveness.  And we assume we need to do these things to secure God’s.

We come to worship knowing we have sinned.  We come knowing what we say in the prayer of confession is true.  At times we have done, or at least been complicit in, the things we admit.  And so, we come in need of forgiveness, right?  And there’s a sense in which we need to gravel, self deprecate, indicate remorse, feel shame in order to earn forgiveness.  After all, we only do the assurance of pardon after the confession.  Because we have set up our worship the way we have, we can miss what it really means to be forgiven, freed and made whole.  If we knew, I think our Gloria would be louder. 

To be forgiven, freed, and made whole means we have been forgiven…before the confession.  We make the confession as forgiven people.  Not because we have done nothing wrong, and being forgiven does not mean we just go on doing what we’ve always done; but because it’s not the confession that secures the forgiveness. 

We are included in God’s realm – in the community of those feasting at God’s banquet – as we are.  It makes no sense to us, but when we realize we are a part of God’s world, we can be sinners and forgiven at the same time.  “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ” we’re told in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  There was nothing that separated the woman from Jesus – not her status as a sinner in other people’s eyes, not her status as a female, as an outsider.  It was clear that being forgiven meant complete union with Jesus…intimate, beautiful, powerful union.

In Jesus’ day, sin primarily had to do with being included in the community or not.  When you did something wrong, you were excluded from community.  Inclusion was determined by a list of rules you had to follow.  Sinners were not invited to the banquet table.  Sinners were not able to participate in the Jewish community as equals.  They were shunned. 

Sin and forgiveness are not just between individuals and God – remember, this whole scene unfolds in front of Simon and the other Pharisees.  Jesus tells the parable for their sake, he explains her forgiveness for their sake.  He is telling them she’s in; she’s always been in, because being in God’s community is not dependent on a list of moral regulations.  In the parable, Jesus shows Simon and the others that if people who were sinners were not allowed at the table…no one would be there. 

When confession seems like a prerequisite to forgiveness, we perpetuate the idea Simon has…until you confess your wrongs and fix them you are not welcome in the community.  Confession, the way we do it, also has the unintended effect of reminding us that we will always fall short of the ideal, and so we can never actually be forgiven – believe we are forgiven, because the second we are declared forgiven, we tell ourselves we’re in need again. 

That’s why this week we assured ourselves of being freed and made whole at beginning and end of confession.  We are forgiven going in, nothing changes, and we’re reminded that we have been forgiven the whole time…because it is in Christ, not confession, we are forgiven, freed, and made whole; and we are in Christ; in the community of God, from the day we are baptized by the waters of the womb.  And probably the best response to this as we worship every Sunday is, “thank you…I accept.”  A loud and powerful “Gloria!”

So if our prayer of confession runs the risk of undermining our understanding of forgiveness, why do we do it?  Many churches don’t for this very reason.  Aren’t we just perpetuating this notion that graveling, self flagellation, humiliation are a necessary part of the Christian faith?  Maybe – maybe we need to change how we think about it and do it.  But I think there is value to confession.  It is what was needed from Simon and the Pharisees in response to the assurance of forgiveness.  Confession.

The woman’s forgiveness in Christ was not all she needed.  She needed the religious community to reflect God’s forgiveness as well.  Confession is about naming that the world, our communities, do not reflect the forgiveness/wholeness/inclusion we find in God.

At the end, Jesus turns and addresses the woman directly.  He tells her her sins are forgiven.  Because of this, we might be tempted to think she needs this assurance of forgiveness.  But, his words are unnecessary as far as she as an individual is concerned.  She has already been forgiven.  Jesus just made that clear.  Others, however, are having difficulty comprehending her new state and Simon might continue to regard her as ‘a woman known in the city as a sinner;’ exclude her from the community.  She does not need forgiveness from God, but she does need recognition of her new life and forgiveness among God’s people. 

But as much as we might need confession, it needs to be surrounded by the assurance that like the women, like Simon, like everyone, we have been forgiven.  In the past and ongoing…we have been forgiven. 

Friends believe the good news…in Christ we are forgiven freed and made whole.  Amen.

Life and Death

Luke 7:11-17

June 9, 2013

This passage could not be more clear:  We are talking about life and death.  Whatever we might believe about the miracle and its scientific possibility, the passage is talking about a foundational issue:  How do we give life in the face of death?

First we have to recognize that there are two deaths here in this passage.  One is obvious: the son of the widow has died.  He is on a funeral bier – a platform for a coffin – headed out to be buried.  In the words of the coroner in munchkin land after Dorothy’s house lands on the wicked witch of the east, the widow’s son is not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

But that is not the only death here.  In Jesus’ day, when a woman had no husband and no son, she had no place in the economic system.  She was, in short, destitute.  There is a reason that the widow is listed alongside the orphan and oppressed over and over in the Hebrew bible as those most deserving of the care of the community: They are vulnerable.  Without the community’s care, they have no way of making a living, getting food, securing shelter.  In other words, they have little chance at survival.  With the death of her son comes the death of a life of security and care.  She becomes, as they say, the walking dead.

In this passage, it is the widow who is at the center – it is her death that Jesus is most concerned with.  He doesn’t bring the son back to life because the son has died – he brings the son back to life because that’s the only way to restore life to the widow. 

This passage is about all of the walking dead…all of those in our midst most in need of care, security; all of those who are crushed in the current economic system by the current rules.  This passage is about how Jesus responds to the destitute and brings new life to their death-filled days.

Now, I know preachers are supposed to talk in threes…I should now give you a list of three things Jesus did to bring life back to the widow.  I tried…I failed.  I have four.  I see four things Jesus did that led to life for the walking dead.

First he had compassion.  The author writes, “As Jesus approached the city and saw the widow, he had compassion.”  It was the first thing he did.  Or maybe more accurately, it was the first thing that happened to him.

Second, he stopped:  He was headed to the city of Nain, but when he felt the compassion, he stopped.  In fact, he went right up to the head of the procession and with a touch of his hand to the coffin, everyone stood still. 

Then he spoke words of life:  To the dead man he says, “I say to you, rise!”

Finally he gave the new life to the widow.  Namely, he gave her back her son, her source of security and care.

If we want to bring life in the midst of death, we need to understand each of these, and why they are necessary for giving life to the walking dead.

Compassion:  This is a powerful word in this text.  Splagchnizomai.  It is not just a feeling – it’s guttural.  This is sick to your stomach, racing heart, fall to your knees in the face of suffering.  Jesus saw what was happening, and it struck him deeply.  He knew what it meant…what it meant to have your son die if you were a widow:  And he was moved to his core.  He was stricken.

It is this yearning that is required for new life to emerge.  If we want to bring life from death, we can’t just act out of our head – we can’t just see what’s wrong and think our way into making it right.  That co-feeling, splagchnizomai; that is what puts us in the best place to know what would alleviate the suffering…what will stop the weeping.  Our thinking is always limited – it is almost always bound by our own prejudices and biases.  If we can’t feel for the other deep in our souls, we may try to help, try to bring life, but often all we do is delay the funeral procession for a little while.

But compassion is not enough.  Moved by his compassion, Jesus stopped…he made everything stop.  This was crucial, of course.  We can be moved by compassion, and still keep walking right past the procession of death.  Jesus was headed to Nain – that was his goal – but that became unimportant as soon as he saw the woman and had compassion for her.  He stopped to address her, her situation, and to respond as lovingly as he knew how.  Stopping – giving up a goal, a plan, giving over to the moment, pausing to address someone’s pain – is the only way we can bring life out of death.  Otherwise, we just let death march on.

When Jesus stops everyone in their tracks, he speaks, and they are words of life.  There is power in words – a lot of power in words.  Words frame everything.  “Rise!” he says.  It is the word of resurrection – the same word used when Jesus was raised from the dead.  Rise is the most significant word of life in our tradition.

I read a story this week about a member of the Israeli parliament.  He is an orthodox Jew and is deeply concerned with divisions that are arising between orthodox Jews in Israel with differing ideas about what is best for the Jewish people.  These divisions are not trivial.  In fact at times there has been violence.  The member of parliament was in such a situation shortly after he emigrated from the United States.  Some orthodox Jews were staging a protest about some actions of the Israeli government.  One of them hurled a stone that hit the member of parliament in the forehead.

This man was compassionate.  He yearned deeply to heal the violence.  But what struck me most was that the thing he used to remind himself every day of what he was working for was the stone that hit him.  He placed it on his desk and looked at it every day.  The stone that hit him – the sign of violence, not life.  The stone is the word that guides him and his decisions.  And it’s the tomb, not resurrection.  He is well meaning, he has compassion, he is trying to do something about it, but if he always starts with the stone – the word of death and violence – he may never get to life.  Jesus speaks a word of life – Rise!

But words are not the end.  Jesus still had one more thing to do.  He gave the new life found in resurrection to the widow – to the one who needed it most:  the walking dead.  The resurrection wasn’t complete when the son rose to life.  It wasn’t about the son…it was about the most vulnerable ones; it was about figuring out what causes vulnerability and suffering, and finding a way to reverse those causes.  Jesus understood the system, he knew the causes of death, metaphorical death, and he knew that the word of life was for the widow…he gave the risen son back to the widow and she could once again live.

Now, if we are, in any sense, to model this giving of life – this way that Jesus shows us of bringing life to the walking dead – I think we have to first be honest and acknowledge that it’s not easy.  I mean, of course Jesus did all this.  He’s Jesus.  For us, each of these things can be hard…really hard.

First there’s compassion:  Now, I’ve come to believe that we can’t stop compassion from happening.  It’s not something we do.  We are made in the image of the God of compassion – we’re hard wired.  I think it happens to us; happens to our body.  But what we can do is put it away as quickly as our minds can make that happen.  We push it down, make the feelings go away, move to our heads.  We distract ourselves, move on, think about what’s for dinner.  And we do this because compassion is an intense feeling – sometimes too intense.  It grips you…it claims you.  If you stay with it, it demands you do something.  And sometimes that’s just too much to handle.

But even if we try to stay with the compassion, it’s still hard to stop; to stop our lives enough that the procession of death does not just pass us by. When faced with suffering, stopping to help interrupts our whole life, and that interruption is just not feasible.

We had a guest in our Friday lectionary bible study.  Jim Fyfe’s son, John, was here from Chicago, and he gave me permission to share with you what he shared with us.  We were talking about this passage – about compassion – and he described what it’s like to walk to work in downtown Chicago every day.  He talked about passing countless people on the street asking for money – many of whom he knew were in desperate need of help.  But he knows he can’t stop every time. 

His heart breaks, he wants to help, but how do you stop every time and make it to work in the morning?  How do you stop at every person, every day, and keep your life going.  You don’t.  You can’t.  John’s heart, it’s clear, is enormous.  You could see that in how much it all bothered him.  He does try to help as much as he can.  But how do you stop every time you feel compassion?  You have to make decisions, and those decisions are extremely difficult and fraught with complicated trade-offs.

But, even when I am able to stay with compassion, and even when I stop long enough to act, words of death come so much more easily to me than words of life.  I think that has something to do with the fact that words of death don’t require imagination.  When I see people suffer, I am good at saying why…all the reasons and people and systems that have created the suffering in the first place.  They become the focus of my passion:  Dismantle, subvert, judge, shame.  I know how to speak words of death.  I know how to hold on to symbols that fuel my rage and passion.  I know how to take a stone, set it on my desk, and fight to end an injustice using symbols and words of division. 

It’s harder to find the word of life.  It’s not that critique doesn’t have its place.  It’s not that naming what is isn’t an appropriate first step.  But often we stop there.  We let that dictate what we do.  When we see something that pains us, we want to blame someone because then we think we know what or who to fix.  We want to find a way to stop it, no matter what that way is.  Our means to end the suffering themselves bring suffering to others.  We are outraged at senseless deaths and slaughters, and so we kill.  We are angry about how policies demean the poor, and so we shout at politicians and demean those with whom we disagree. 

It’s hard to know what the right path to healing is – to new life.  But if we start with words of death, I think we’re less likely to move in the life giving direction.

Finally, even if we have compassion, stop, find words of life to speak into death, actually giving life is hard.  It’s hard because – well because we can’t raise people from the dead.  We can’t fix systems in a single miracle.  We can ache for people deep in our souls, but not have any clue how to fix it.  If tens of thousands are being slaughtered, and the answer isn’t to fight back with violence, what is the answer?  What act would bring life in the midst of death? 

It’s hard.  Each step is hard.  But we do have a model – we do have Jesus.  And I think the best place to start is where the crowds started that day – they watched Jesus.  They saw what he did.  They witnessed new life for the widow, and they believed it was possible.  They saw that when we have compassion, stop to respond, speak words of life, and give over that life to those most in need, miracles occur.  Just believing it’s possible makes new life itself contagious.  They glorified God – they gave thanks for this incredible possibility.  And then they told everyone around them about it.  They spoke the word of life far and wide – till all of Judea and the surrounding country knew of it.

It seems insignificant at first…to just believe it is possible and spread the word.  But when you do, you start to see it around you.  You see someone like John  Fyfe who struggles with what to do with his compassion, and then you hear that he goes on mission trips regularly, building schools and homes for people.  Raising things up, not tearing people down.  He speaks about these things not in anger or self righteousness, but earnestly and with care.  And it struck me – it struck me as a model.  It’s hope and imagination, not just pain and suffering. 

When we hear things like this, when we believe it’s possible, we ourselves become viable agents of this new life.  Not perfectly, not every time, but more and more often as we see how new life works. 

The walking dead are among us.  We know this.  Compassion comes to us whether we want it to or not.  What we do with this is up to us.  And if we’ve seen it – if we’ve heard tell, we have what we need to stop, speak life, and give it to those most in need.  I know this, because I’ve seen it in you – not perfectly, not every time – but I’ve seen it…and it inspires me.  And I’m willing to spread that news far and wide.  Amen.