Jesus Wept

Directly across the street from the site of the Murrah Building Memorial Plaza in Oklahoma City stands a larger than life-sized statue of Jesus, his face in his hands, weeping. It is a touching sight, made even more poignant by the fact that Jesus stands facing away from the site, as if he cannot bear to look at it - at least, not yet.



I think of that when I hear the dispute raging over the plans to build a Islamic center two blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. Both sites are tragic. They are hallowed sites, made so by the loss of life, sacrificed in the name of extremist ideologies. Whether the god be Allah or political fervor, these acts are somehow linked to religious belief and have left a bitterness that is likely to hang on for no one can say how long.



In Oklahoma the pain was easier to bear for it was commonly assumed the perpetrator was a lone maniac; he did not represent a religious group or nation. The Twin Towers tragedy will forever be linked to Islamic extremists compounding the bitterness. Never mind that true Islam teaches peace, the terrorists have indelibly stained the image of Islam itself. Now we must struggle with our repugnance over their acts as well as our far from clear picture of their religion. The struggle is compounded by people confusing the name of our new president with Islamic culture, and tarring him with a guilt he did not earn or deserve.



I am proud to be an American, proud to revere and enjoy our government and its laws which protect the religious freedom of all individuals. I am shaken when those freedoms are threatened, no matter what the reason. I am also deeply touched by the pain that lives on in the hearts and minds of people directly touched by the tragedy of 9/11. But I think we must be very careful not to confuse the insane acts of a handful of terrorists with the beliefs and culture of the Islamic people as a whole.



I can remember breaking a dish because it had “made in Germany” stamped on its back. We were children in grade school. We knew nothing of Germany or Japan, we only knew our countries were at war, and it was a show of patriotism to destroy a product that “belonged to the enemy.” Childish? Yes, but understandable. We heard our parents talk. We saw the posters on the walls. We lived under the strictures of rationing. We could name the boys who had left our community, some never to return. We saw and wept over, the gold stars that hung in the windows of our friends and neighbors.



Now a patriotism that must break a dish because it came from a certain foreign country strikes us as foolish. Perhaps the present controversy over building a cultural center meant to educate and inform people about the true meaning of Islam and to honor the believers in Allah who died in the 9/11 catastrophe will also one day disappear. Meanwhile, I still see that statue of Jesus in Oklahoma City, weeping, his face turned away from a sight too painful even for him to see. And I think, “He is facing the other way, but he’s nonetheless there. He has turned his back, but not out of anger or disgust. He is hiding his tears.” We too must weep - for the living and the dead. But God help us, let us not also shake our fist!

Serious Christianity based on Psalm 139, Luke 14:25-33

I saw a woman crossing the street this week. She carried a white cane. She walked briskly as if she could see where she was going. Then she reached the curb and it was clear she could not see. Once on the sidewalk again, she stayed close to the wall of the storefront, her cane reaching ahead of her to give her warning of unseen obstacles. She walked so confidently! That surprised me. Blind people aren’t supposed to have confidence.



Then as I reflected on that thought, I remembered something I’d been told many years ago. “If you are in a strange town, one you’ve never been in before, and you are trying to find your way, the best person to ask for directions is a blind person. They know better than anyone else. They have to. They have counted the steps, memorized the obstacles, know each step up, each dip down. Their life depends on knowing.”



I thought of that as I reflected on Jesus’ teaching about the cost of discipleship. His words sound harsh, unreasonable, impossible to accept and follow. If we take them seriously, we must ask - as his disciples once asked - “Lord, if this is true, who can ever be saved?” Here Jesus tells us we must give up everything. Our family, our homes, our very lives, all must go. And beyond that, once we have let everything go, we must take up a cross and follow Jesus. Too much, we cry out, way too much. Who can ever do all this?



Jesus does not consider that question. He leaves that to us, and wisely so. In another place he speaks of the narrow path that few may follow. The parable of the sower and the seeds is really about the same thing. There are many kinds of soils, but only a few seeds find their way to fertile ground. And when the disciples suggest they want to do what is right so they may win a place in the Kingdom of God, Jesus puts the bar so high they conclude it is impossible. No one can get it. Jesus agrees saying, “with human beings it is impossible, but all things are possible with your father in heaven.”



I would be a wiser man than I am to be able to say I know for certain what Jesus is trying to say here. It is a mystery. As the Psalmist put it long before Jesus was born, “ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high , I cannot attain unto it.” But this much has dawned on me. Whatever else Jesus is trying to make us see, our faith is a serious business. Like that woman counting her steps so she may find her way, we must pay attention. We must be alert. We must be noticing people, always on the look-out for telling clues to help us find our way.



The early Christians lived with the expectation Jesus was coming back in triumphant glory and their suffering would be replaced with eternal bliss. They walked the dusty roads of the Roman Empire with one eye on the lookout for Jesus to come towards them. However, that belief was short-lived. Before the first century was out, they had accepted the fact that Jesus was not coming back any time soon, at least not as they had expected. Now 2000 years later there is no consensus of opinion just what that “return” will be like.



I take a more dynamic view of that “coming”. I see the Kingdom coming in a gradual unfolding, and Jesus’ presence in the Holy Spirit as the leaven in us as we strive to make that Kingdom a reality. But in order for that to happen, we must be willing to surrender self, surrender ego, surrender anything that attaches us to this world, so that God has space in us and in our society to do his work. Such a belief is difficult to maintain and carry out. We are challenged to give up the usual things we consider important - family ties for one, all our resources for another - while at the same time living very firmly in this world. There are towers to be built and wars to be fought. Jesus is not a hermit who turns his back on the world and retreats into a haze of contemplation. A balance has to be struck between this world and the Kingdom of God, and one way of achieving that balance is to treat them both as one.



In that case, I see our task as taking our life here seriously. With respect. Reverence. Awe. The Psalmist says to God, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”. I take it he means there is much more to my life than I know, that I shall ever know. And I must treat it with care. To do any the less is to forfeit our inheritance, if you will. The artist has a gift for creating music, but it is a gift that cannot be realized without practice. The athlete may be a star contender, but he must work at it, hone his skills, study his moves, be constantly examining what he is doing to achieve greater and greater levels of competence. Jesus points us at this truth and reminds us, “the possibility is in you, you must give yourself to it completely.” To me, that is what he means when he urges us to count the cost.



If that is true for the gifted and talented, it is just as true for the rest of us in the arena of human life. In Zen Buddhism, one practices how to prepare and serve a cup of tea impeccably. Does the tea taste better that way? Or is it a matter of honing one’s self to a high point of attention, of focused purpose, or total respect for one’s self and one’s task? I shall never be a house painter. I haven’t the eye for it, or the intention, either one. I have watched my father lying on his back painting the inside of a cupboard in a space no one but he would ever see. But still it must be done. I watched my uncle disassemble an antique clock, reverently placing each part, large and small, in specific order. He respected the integrity of the clock and served it, even as he expected it to serve him in the end.



Less than that kind of total commitment will accomplish nothing. The cost is total in our lives as well. Discipleship on Sundays and Wednesday, while we reserve the other five days of the week to our other plans, will achieve scant returns. Will God love us any the less? Of course not. Will we be relegated to the tourist class section of paradise? I’ve never heard of any such arrangement. But how we rob ourselves of glory, when we give only a little.



I remember Dr. Lake. She was my professor and did so much for me in my study of the Bible. I had produced a very poor piece of work on a project she assigned us. I knew it was poor work and she did too. She gave me a passing grade, but she also gave me a look I shall never forget. “You are capable of so much more” that exasperated look said, “I just wish I knew how to get you to do it!” I left her office hating her because she made me see how I had wasted her time and mine. I also hated her because she saw possibility in me I was not willing to see. Don’t expect so much of me, I wanted to cry out. If you do, I might have to start expecting it of myself, and such responsibility frightens me. But that look stayed with me, I see it still today. And I no longer hate her. What I once took as an accusation of my failure, I came to recognize as an affirmation of love.



It was the look Jesus was giving those who aspired to being his disciples. And it came with a price and a challenge. Be serious. And be ready. Your faith will ask far more of you thank you can yet imagine. I remember Gert who was a very rich but also a very sick alcoholic. At the point of death, she experienced conversion. She was so astounded at what had happened she gave her entire life over to spreading the word of the goodness of God and what God is ready to do for us, if we will but accept the gift. She traveled all over the country, all over the world, telling her story. She was a woman of wealth who gave it all away in a trust fund she could not touch or control. She was hampered by paralyzing stage fright, and gave that to God too as she spoke to audience everywhere. She said one day she was so tired from all her speaking engagements and travels she said to God, “Can I have a night off? I’m worn out.” God’s answer? “No, Gert, you got started late and you still have a lot of work to do. Get going.”



I don’t expect us all to hear such a challenge, but I do think Jesus was alerting us of one thing: take your life seriously. Respect it. As the Psalmist reminds us, we are the product of God’s handiwork, and we have so much more to us than we will ever know.



The blind woman I saw this week reminds me not only do we have resources inside us we must honor and nurture, it really is a matter of life and death. To walk blind without attention being paid is unthinkable. Her very life depends on her keeping track, alert, counting, making sure she knows her path and is faithfully following it. In the life of faith, we must do the same. Without such single-mindedness, we become but aimless wanderers on a vast, unbroken plain, helpless beneath an empty, uncaring sky.



Count the cost Jesus said, pay attention, be serious. That’s the challenge of the gospel. And guess what. Gert was not the only one who got started late - We ALL got started late. God help us to get going. Amen.

Famous Last Words based on Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Many people are interested in the last words of a person who is dying. I believe it was W.C. Fields who said “I’d rather be in Philadelphia!” and the French satirist and philosopher Voltaire, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan, supposedly replied, “This is no time to make new enemies”. One friend fondly remembers the passing of a beloved pastor who, just before he died, sat up in his bed, a look of amazement and wonder on his face, and said “I didn’t know it would be so beautiful!”



Our passage this morning is not a death-bed utterance, but it has that quality of finality, of urgency, the intensity of the speaker who desperately wants his or her listeners to get the message. Forget all the rest, but don’t forget this. This is what I need for you to remember. This is important.



The gospel of Matthew tells us Jesus’ final words, before his ascension into heaven were, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” The gospel of John reports Jesus’ final words to his disciples when he appears to them by the sea of Galilee. He tells Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep” and “follow me”. Paul’s likely last greeting, written to the young Christians in Philippi, is a word of joy and thanksgiving and a brief prayer of benediction, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”



The author of Hebrews writes, “Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters.” Somehow these final words, for me, are connected with each other and establish the distinctive mark of a Christian. A promise of the abiding presence of Christ in us. An exhortation that we follow or stay close to Jesus. These are our final “orders” if you will, and in doing them, we will nourish all those we meet. The author of Hebrews sums it all up with the single word, “love”.



We are used to talking about love. It is the banner word of our society. Well, maybe I should say, in the 60's it was the motto of the hour. Remember the old slogan, “Make love, not war?” It sounded nice. For those of us who still had fresh memories of the Second World War and were living under the threat of a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb, we longed for some better truth than a frantic search for wealth. Love was the key. I still enjoy the romantic ditty we used to sing. Remember it? “Nature Boy”, and we couldn’t hear it often enough. I would not be surprised to hear it still being sung today. Its lyrics tells it all:



There was a boy,

a very strange enchanted boy,

they say he wandered very far,

very far, over land and sea.

A little child, and sad of eye

but very wise was he.



And then one day

one happy day he passed my way

and as we talked of many things

fools and kings,

this he said to me,

“the greatest thing, you’ll ever learn

is just to love,

and be loved in return.”



Come down to more modern times and you’ll hear Andrew Lloyd Webber assure us “Love changes everything” and we were eager to believe it. Or, as my daughter reminds me, perhaps the more plaintiff lyrics of Don Henley in his song - Heart of the Matter, which speak just as poignantly about the centrality of the need for love:



These times are so uncertain

There's a yearning undefined

And people filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness

How can love survive in such a graceless age?

The trust and self assurance that lead to happiness

Are the very things we kill, I guess

Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms

And the work I put between us doesn't keep me warm





Time passes, fashion changes, old truths become yesterday’s cliches, and while we haven’t exactly “given up” on love, we’ve learned there’s more to it than mere words. As a minister, who is called upon to perform marriages, and later to offer counseling for the disillusioned pair who can no longer do the hard work of love, I am saddened by how often the word is shunned, or discounted. It is as if, once people get close to one another, they discover closeness requires intimacy, a stripping away of our protective masks, and risks exposure, disgust, humiliation. The poet may believe it is “better to have loved, and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Today’s generation seems more inclined to get its love vicariously through movies and TV where it looks nice in others but is too hard for us. Odd, isn’t it, that we should continue to praise the ideal of love while personally denying its possibility at all.



Keep on loving one another, the author of Hebrews says. Of course, we shrug. Easy for you to say. You knew Jesus. It was all still real for you. It’s a different world now. Aside from the fact it’s quite unlikely that the author did know Jesus, is our world so different? Oh, I know we are much more sophisticated - although I wonder if we are as intellectually astute as were the Greeks. We are more mobile. Although, I read recently Americans are moving less now than they did in the 18th and 19th centuries, or even the first half of the 20th. Alright, but we have better technology, we have - as the slogan goes - better living through chemistry. Of course, with our chemistry we also have pollution. Our technology may have tied us closer together through our Twitterings and our Facebooks, but the downside to that is how impersonal we have become. Deprive us of our cell phones and our laptop computers and we are at a loss knowing how to interact with another human being.



As for the age of the Romans and the early Christians, while they had none of these advantages and disadvantages, yet they had to cope with persecution from the Roman Empire AND from their own Jewish families. They were outcasts from both. Their’s was a time that demanded conformity just as ours does, and when they sought to follow the teachings of a Jewish rabbi who had been executed in the most cruel and indecent way, they weren’t simply misunderstood, or thought of as lunatics, they were seen as dangerous rebels, enemies of the state, disrupters of the status quo who threatened the political establishment by creating unrest. The religious community of the Jews were equally aghast at this stark heresy that threatened the very foundation of Judaism. The new Christians must have found the commandment to love one another as difficult to live and do then as we find it today.



Love requires connectedness. Love recognizes both our isolation as unique human beings and our reliance on relationships in order to be complete. Americans historically have prized the rugged individualist. A Davy Crockett or a Daniel Boone is a true American hero, and the Robber Barons like Carnegie, or Gould or Vanderbilt or Rockefeller were our icons of success. Horatio Alger set the pattern for us and we rejoice when we see someone scale the heights from obscure poverty to fame and fortune. What we don’t see is how none of these heroes were finally truly independent. They all relied on help from someone or some group who gave them the vision, the courage, the strength they needed to succeed.



We are incomplete as isolated individuals. We need one another. Our vary ability to speak is dependent upon interaction with other human beings. Our ability to discern values comes from that same interaction. The myth of a Tarzan or a Mowgli, raised with animals in the wilderness, is just that, a myth. The command that we love one another is just as important for our own well-being as it is for those around us. Those who cannot love are to be pitied most deeply, for they are robbed an essential requirement of being human.



When Paul was summing up his anthem of praise to the concept of love, in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, he says quite simply, “when all else fails, love still stands”. It is love, more than anything else, that provides the pattern for what we call the “image of God”. Our ability to love, to interact with others, to relate to others at the deeper levels of our beings, is what not only makes us fully human, but what makes us most nearly like God. We show our kinship to God when we love one another.



So it strikes me as vitally important, essential, that we be continually reminded of the centrality of love as the essence of our humanity. If we would be truly human and truly alive, we must truly love. Such a love is not a bit of romantic fluff, it is the essence of our beings.



Keep on loving each other, it’s the only thing that really matters. Do that, and you will know God, and in knowing God, you will finally know yourself. Amen.

Famous Last Words based on Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Many people are interested in the last words of a person who is dying. I believe it was W.C. Fields who said “I’d rather be in Philadelphia!” and the French satirist and philosopher Voltaire, when a priest urged him to renounce Satan, supposedly replied, “This is no time to make new enemies”. One friend fondly remembers the passing of a beloved pastor who, just before he died, sat up in his bed, a look of amazement and wonder on his face, and said “I didn’t know it would be so beautiful!”



Our passage this morning is not a death-bed utterance, but it has that quality of finality, of urgency, the intensity of the speaker who desperately wants his or her listeners to get the message. Forget all the rest, but don’t forget this. This is what I need for you to remember. This is important.



The gospel of Matthew tells us Jesus’ final words, before his ascension into heaven were, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” The gospel of John reports Jesus’ final words to his disciples when he appears to them by the sea of Galilee. He tells Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep” and “follow me”. Paul’s likely last greeting, written to the young Christians in Philippi, is a word of joy and thanksgiving and a brief prayer of benediction, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.”



The author of Hebrews writes, “Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters.” Somehow these final words, for me, are connected with each other and establish the distinctive mark of a Christian. A promise of the abiding presence of Christ in us. An exhortation that we follow or stay close to Jesus. These are our final “orders” if you will, and in doing them, we will nourish all those we meet. The author of Hebrews sums it all up with the single word, “love”.



We are used to talking about love. It is the banner word of our society. Well, maybe I should say, in the 60's it was the motto of the hour. Remember the old slogan, “Make love, not war?” It sounded nice. For those of us who still had fresh memories of the Second World War and were living under the threat of a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb, we longed for some better truth than a frantic search for wealth. Love was the key. I still enjoy the romantic ditty we used to sing. Remember it? “Nature Boy”, and we couldn’t hear it often enough. I would not be surprised to hear it still being sung today. Its lyrics tells it all:



There was a boy,

a very strange enchanted boy,

they say he wandered very far,

very far, over land and sea.

A little child, and sad of eye

but very wise was he.



And then one day

one happy day he passed my way

and as we talked of many things

fools and kings,

this he said to me,

“the greatest thing, you’ll ever learn

is just to love,

and be loved in return.”



Come down to more modern times and you’ll hear Andrew Lloyd Webber assure us “Love changes everything” and we were eager to believe it. Or, as my daughter reminds me, perhaps the more plaintiff lyrics of Don Henley in his song - Heart of the Matter, which speak just as poignantly about the centrality of the need for love:



These times are so uncertain

There's a yearning undefined

And people filled with rage

We all need a little tenderness

How can love survive in such a graceless age?

The trust and self assurance that lead to happiness

Are the very things we kill, I guess

Pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms

And the work I put between us doesn't keep me warm





Time passes, fashion changes, old truths become yesterday’s cliches, and while we haven’t exactly “given up” on love, we’ve learned there’s more to it than mere words. As a minister, who is called upon to perform marriages, and later to offer counseling for the disillusioned pair who can no longer do the hard work of love, I am saddened by how often the word is shunned, or discounted. It is as if, once people get close to one another, they discover closeness requires intimacy, a stripping away of our protective masks, and risks exposure, disgust, humiliation. The poet may believe it is “better to have loved, and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Today’s generation seems more inclined to get its love vicariously through movies and TV where it looks nice in others but is too hard for us. Odd, isn’t it, that we should continue to praise the ideal of love while personally denying its possibility at all.



Keep on loving one another, the author of Hebrews says. Of course, we shrug. Easy for you to say. You knew Jesus. It was all still real for you. It’s a different world now. Aside from the fact it’s quite unlikely that the author did know Jesus, is our world so different? Oh, I know we are much more sophisticated - although I wonder if we are as intellectually astute as were the Greeks. We are more mobile. Although, I read recently Americans are moving less now than they did in the 18th and 19th centuries, or even the first half of the 20th. Alright, but we have better technology, we have - as the slogan goes - better living through chemistry. Of course, with our chemistry we also have pollution. Our technology may have tied us closer together through our Twitterings and our Facebooks, but the downside to that is how impersonal we have become. Deprive us of our cell phones and our laptop computers and we are at a loss knowing how to interact with another human being.



As for the age of the Romans and the early Christians, while they had none of these advantages and disadvantages, yet they had to cope with persecution from the Roman Empire AND from their own Jewish families. They were outcasts from both. Their’s was a time that demanded conformity just as ours does, and when they sought to follow the teachings of a Jewish rabbi who had been executed in the most cruel and indecent way, they weren’t simply misunderstood, or thought of as lunatics, they were seen as dangerous rebels, enemies of the state, disrupters of the status quo who threatened the political establishment by creating unrest. The religious community of the Jews were equally aghast at this stark heresy that threatened the very foundation of Judaism. The new Christians must have found the commandment to love one another as difficult to live and do then as we find it today.



Love requires connectedness. Love recognizes both our isolation as unique human beings and our reliance on relationships in order to be complete. Americans historically have prized the rugged individualist. A Davy Crockett or a Daniel Boone is a true American hero, and the Robber Barons like Carnegie, or Gould or Vanderbilt or Rockefeller were our icons of success. Horatio Alger set the pattern for us and we rejoice when we see someone scale the heights from obscure poverty to fame and fortune. What we don’t see is how none of these heroes were finally truly independent. They all relied on help from someone or some group who gave them the vision, the courage, the strength they needed to succeed.



We are incomplete as isolated individuals. We need one another. Our vary ability to speak is dependent upon interaction with other human beings. Our ability to discern values comes from that same interaction. The myth of a Tarzan or a Mowgli, raised with animals in the wilderness, is just that, a myth. The command that we love one another is just as important for our own well-being as it is for those around us. Those who cannot love are to be pitied most deeply, for they are robbed an essential requirement of being human.



When Paul was summing up his anthem of praise to the concept of love, in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, he says quite simply, “when all else fails, love still stands”. It is love, more than anything else, that provides the pattern for what we call the “image of God”. Our ability to love, to interact with others, to relate to others at the deeper levels of our beings, is what not only makes us fully human, but what makes us most nearly like God. We show our kinship to God when we love one another.



So it strikes me as vitally important, essential, that we be continually reminded of the centrality of love as the essence of our humanity. If we would be truly human and truly alive, we must truly love. Such a love is not a bit of romantic fluff, it is the essence of our beings.



Keep on loving each other, it’s the only thing that really matters. Do that, and you will know God, and in knowing God, you will finally know yourself. Amen.



Dr. George Miller