With thanks to Mary Luti (www.sicutlocutusest.com) !!!
It was Frances Moore Lappe, a long-time fighter
against world hunger, who once quipped: “If you are working on a question that
can be solved in your lifetime, you may be wasting your life.” Think about it. For just a minute. “If you are working on a question that can be
solved in your lifetime, you may be wasting your life.” As passionate as you are; as bright and
capable as you are; as devoted as you are to making a difference in the
world—you will leave a good bit of work, a good bit of good, a good bit of life
undone.
Think about it.
If you’re a parent, you never really finish that job. Eventually your kids have to figure things
some things out on their own. And you
have to let them go. If you’re an artist,
a painter, a poet, these riddles only multiply and muses keep you up at
night. Restlessness is your occupation;
and you never, really, retire. And if
you’re an advocate for the hungry, well, you know how that goes. Because the big questions—capital Q
questions—can’t be solved in a lifetime.
The noble pursuits aren’t resolved in a generation or even two. Sometimes we get just a hint, a glimpse of
progress ahead. And sometimes, it seems,
our best efforts come to nothing at all.
That’s often how vocation works.
Oddly. The questions believers
ask can’t be solved in a lifetime.
So we meet Jesus this morning, setting his face toward
Jerusalem and grieving, weeping for all the work he will leave undone. Imagine that.
Jesus. Weeping for all the work
he will leave undone. “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem!” There’s something so sobering,
so wrenching and finally so very truthful about Jesus’ despair—can we call it
Jesus’ despair?—as he looks to the future and turns to Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” You see, for all our desire to preach good
things and happy days for those who believe; for all our longing to promise
abundant returns on every effort shaped by compassion and love; for all our
passion for justice and peace and the kingdom of God. For all that, we are confronted by the
realistic possibility that today’s rally for peace becomes tomorrow’s next war;
that for all our advocacy and good deeds, the poor we will always have with us,
haunting our self-serving politics; and that no matter how loudly we cry out
for gun control and safe schools, the NRA will ultimately prevail so we do
nothing at all to prevent the next Newtown or the next Columbine or the next Virginia
Tech.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” cries Jesus on the way,
“killer of the prophets, abuser of the messengers of God!” Do you hear his frustration this morning? Frustration, grief, even his powerlessness. This is not Jesus the Avenger, Jesus the
Superhero, Jesus the Blonde Buff Hollywood Hunk. This is Jesus the Broken, Jesus the
Crucified, even Jesus the Ineffective.
“How often I’ve longed to gather your children,” he weeps, “gather your
children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings.” This is Jesus weeping along the way, for all
the work he will never fully realize.
Our own John Thomas, former general minister of the United
Church, once offered that futility is the question hanging over every
thoughtful, honest disciple. Futility. Which gives us pause this week, as we
lovingly and diligently plan Compassionate Cafés on campus and Rallies Against
Gun Violence downtown. Futility is the
question hanging over every thoughtful, honest disciple. Jesus weeps on the way, “Jerusalem,
Jerusalem!”—grieving for all the work that will not get done, all the pain that
will remain untouched, all the broken pieces that will not be healed. “How often I’ve longed to gather your
children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings!” We’re just two weeks into Lent—and the gospel
questions whether we’ll ever get to Easter.
But here’s the thing about this Jesus—not the
Superhero Jesus, not the Avenger Jesus, but THIS Jesus. He’s about a project, says preacher Mary
Luti, “a project [that’s] bigger than his life.” He comes to know that his ministry is but a
mustard seed in the field, but a bit of yeast in a big bunch of dough—just a
small but lovely offering toward a holy, universal, far-reaching project of
peace and mercy and wholeness. Jesus comes
to know that he is but an instrument of that peace, a channel of that mercy, a
single provocateur of that wholeness. He’s
about a project that’s bigger than his life.
He is, I guess you’d have to say, working on a
question that cannot be solved in his lifetime.
And there’s no doubt that it breaks his heart. “How often I’ve longed to
gather your children like a hen!” Big
hearts break big. But Jesus does what
you and I must learn to do. He offers
his piercing grief, his incomplete life, even his powerlessness to the Heart
that will never stop loving, to the One Big Love that can never be shattered. And then he sets his face toward Jerusalem
and walks on: dancing with children in the streets, breaking bread in soup
kitchens along the way, and teaching peace on every corner. In a sense grief grounds his determination,
expands it. And Jesus walks on.
2.
So what about you and me? What does Jesus’ unfinished project mean for us? What does his big breaking heart do for us,
in this place, in our own generation?
Christian faith requires some struggle around just these kinds of
questions.
I have a hunch, friends, that you and I are devoted to
a sometimes successful savior who never really finishes the job. I have a hunch that you and I are disciples
of a big-hearted rabbi whose big heart isn’t enough to bring lasting peace to
his people and his city. It’s sounds
almost blasphemous this morning, and I’d be tossed out of a bunch of churches
for saying so, but I have a hunch that’s just the way it is. The powerlessness of Jesus is a strange
stumbling block for any who choose to take our story seriously. You just can’t step around it.
And the Jesus who steps out of the pages of the gospel
today invites you and me to follow—not that we’ll right the world with heroism,
but that we’ll love the world and bind up its wounds and make imperfect common
cause for justice. Day by day by
day. He calls us into his movement not that
we’ll fix the world with brilliant theologies, but that we’ll fix big feasts
for the hungry and throw doors open wide for the lonely and learn to pray with
him for our enemies. Our hearts will
break, and break big. We know they
will. But we too will offer our piercing
grief, our incomplete lives, even our powerlessness to the Heart that will
never stop loving, to the One Big Love that can never be shattered. And then we’ll set our souls toward Jerusalem
and walk on. Just like Jesus. We’ll walk on.
You see, I see Jesus giving himself—every bit of himself—to a project bigger than his life. And this is what we do in our work around the Charter for Compassion. This is what we do in our work around ending gun violence and making our neighborhoods safer for kids. This is what we do organizing for peace with justice in the Middle East and better resources for the poor and comprehensive human rights for LGBT friends.
You see, I see Jesus giving himself—every bit of himself—to a project bigger than his life. And this is what we do in our work around the Charter for Compassion. This is what we do in our work around ending gun violence and making our neighborhoods safer for kids. This is what we do organizing for peace with justice in the Middle East and better resources for the poor and comprehensive human rights for LGBT friends.
We too give ourselves to projects that are bigger than
our lives. And we draw energy and strength
from the mercy that shines in us and survives beyond us. The grace of God that goes to the grave with
Jesus (and with us) and rises again and again to inspire generation after
generation of saints, dreamers and lovers of life. Futility may be—as John Thomas says—the
question hanging over every thoughtful, honest disciple. But hope is the revolutionary answer of the
divine—hope that looks like college students cooking dinner for homeless folks
on a Sunday night; hope that looks like a tattooed hulk of an inmate at the
county jail teaching another inmate to pray; hope that looks like Newtown
parents testifying before the Connecticut legislature, insisting the time has
finally come to protect kids from machine guns and automatic weapons.
3.
3.
Speaking of hope, this week PBS ran a series of
FRONTLINE reports on the aftermath of that school shooting in Connecticut last
December. And one of those reports
looked at ways schools can protect students and teachers, and identify crises before
they erupt in violence.
FRONTLINE told the story of a high school in Salt Lake
City where a teenage girl talked about a friend of hers, a boy she hung out
with, but who (over time) had become more agitated, more isolated and more
obsessed with violence. She talked about
some of the experiences she and he had shared in common: that both had been
smart and overweight, that both had been ostracized by popular kids and bullied
by tough guys at school.
But she came to face a troubling choice when her friend
began talking about killing people and setting off bombs at school. She could choose to do nothing and risk
watching friends and teachers suffer, or she could speak up and risk betraying
a friend who’d trusted her. Now it
sounds obvious in some ways—from a distance.
But for anyone of us, and especially for a teenager on the edge of
things, it’s a terrible choice to have to make.
And here’s where this FRONTLINE piece really moved
me. Here’s where hope comes in. This particular high school in Salt Lake had
a peace officer, a community police officer who spent all his time there and
made it his business to feel at home in the school. The officer ate with kids in the cafeteria,
learned their names and family stories, and made himself available to them in
every possible way. And when that
teenager girl in the FRONTLINE story faced her terrible choice—she had a hunch
she could trust him. So she did. And she told him the whole story.
And because she did, because he was a compassionate
person and a trusted one, because he’d taken time to know these kids and
respect their edges and difficulties, because of all that, the crisis came to
the attention of the right folks—teachers and police and parents. And officers did indeed find a whole trove of
weapons and bomb materials hidden in the boy’s possession; and they were able
to prevent another school catastrophe, with horrific losses and unimaginable
grief and beautiful lives cut short.
Jesus faces futility and marches on. His limitations are real, and they provoke in
him both sadness and courage. And so it
is, my friends, with us. Our
powerlessness is tragic in a certain way—but it also draws us together, invites
solidarity and compassion, and offers new possibilities for collaboration. We cannot and will not meet the challenges of
our time alone. But hand in hand, heart
to heart, bridging our many differences, we will do our part. We will imagine new futures. We will build more compassionate communities.
Now I hope many of you will join us for Tuesday’s
Rally Against Gun Violence. And—when the
time comes later this spring—I hope you’ll spread the word about the gun
amnesty program we’re organizing so folks can turn in all the weapons they no
longer want around. But there’s another
piece of this prevention puzzle: and it has to do with communication and trust,
with curiosity and staying involved in the lives of our children and
teens. It has to do with giving
ourselves to projects that are bigger than our lives. And it has to do with caring about big
questions—the kind of questions we will never finally solve and never fully
answer.
Like that peace officer in Salt Lake, we’ve got to pay
attention—not just to our own kids, but to their friends and their friends’
friends. We’ve got to pay attention to
kids getting bullied around the schoolyard, and others getting bullied on
social media. And we’ve got to risk
asking questions and risk speaking up when something goes wrong, when a young
life jumps the rails.
We know that big hearts break big. We know that, like Jesus, we’ll come face to
face with futility, more often than we wish.
And we know we’ll have to weep over all the Jerusalems in our lives, all
the crises we couldn’t fix, all the broken lives we couldn’t heal. There will be more unimaginable violence in
our future. And it will surely devastate
us. But like Jesus, we will set our
faces toward the Jerusalem just the same.
Like Jesus, we will offer our piercing grief to the Heart that never
stops loving, to the One Big Love that can never be shattered.
We are bound to one another now in humility. We are devoted to one another now in
vulnerability. And we are determined to
make the world a better one for our children and their children and all the
children after that. Like Jesus, we
march on. For Jerusalem’s children are
counting on us.
Amen. Let
it be so.
