The God Who Weeps
David Orendorff · Luke 13:31-35 · March 4, 2007
Terri Stewart sent me an email yesterday. She wrote, “I heard a story on NPR this morning that went something like this…
A father was talking to his 4-year-old daughter about who Martin Luther King, Jr., is. He explained, “Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to teach us to love each other no matter what color we are.” His daughter said “Just like Jesus?” The dad said, “I supposehe wanted us to love each other as we would want to be loved.” The little girl thought for another minute and then asked, “Did they kill him, too?
This is why God weeps, because God loves us, comes to us in prophets and is killed. I believe the fundamental lesson of Lent, this season of suffering and death, is that God loves us enough to come again and again knowing that he will die. And because we are afraid and don’t trust the love of God, again and again we kill the very prophets sent to set us free.
When I say God loves “us,” I don’t mean just the “us” that are members here, or present here, or even regular attendees. And I don’t mean just the “us” who are rich, healthy, young, smart and nice. I don’t mean the “us” that are sort of pinkish-hued, or Methodist-inclined, or even Christian- preferred. “Us” is all of us, the whole of us, each of us. “Us” includes every child dreamed, conceived, born, living, and ready to die. Every one of them!
And “us” is more than homo sapiens. “Us” is Sara my dog. “Us” is the fish in the river and the eagle in the air. “Us” is the amoeba in Echo Lake and in your blood stream. “Us” is raspberries, tomatoes and sweet corn. “Us” is the virus that makes a nose drip and the streptococcus that makes pneumonia, the villains and the enemy. “Us” includes everything that lives in any way.
And still “us” is bigger than all living things. “Us”, as every skier knows, is the snow that falls in March. “Us” is El Nino, thunderstorms and gentle rains. “Us” is the sunrise and the sunset. “Us” is the soil and the stone. “Us” is the stream, river and ocean. “Us” is the stars from which we are born and to which we return. “Us” is creation. God loves this creation. God loves us. God loves you. We are saved by a love which transcends all things and is personal in and to all things.
All creation is made of love and made to love. How could a God who loves us create anything else? As the book of Genesis says, “God created us in God’s own image. Male and female God created us in God’s own image.” 1 Genesis 1:27 We are made to love. When we are our best selves is when we love God, love all of us and love ourselves. But we don’t believe it and the prophets die.
Jesus models who we are in his love. In Luke 2 Jesus announces his purpose in life, his God-given ministry, in the words of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has chosen me to preach good news to the poor; and the Lord has sent me to heal the broken hearted, and to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind; to strengthen with forgiveness those who are bruised; and to preach the year of God's compassion for all. 2Luke 4:18-19
This preaching and being good news is the love of God in action. It is a remarkable outpouring of compassion for the whole of us that marks the meaning of Jesus’ ministry. And for those of us who choose to be Christian, that is, choose to see in Jesus’ life our life and our purpose, the Spirit of the Lord descends upon us and we preach and become good news for “us”.
Sadly, tragically, we don’t believe we are loved by the divine, and in our fear we do not love as we have been loved. A story of a Rabbi and his wife sums it up this way:
Once upon the Great Shabbat (that is: the Sabbath before Passover) the rabbi of Roptchitz came home from the house of prayer with weary steps. "What made you so tired?" asked his wife. "It was the sermon," he replied, "I had to speak of the poor and their many needs for the coming Passover. Unleavened bread and wine and everything else is terribly high this year."
"And what did you accomplish with your sermon?" his wife asked.
"Half of what is needed," he answered. "You see, the poor are now ready to take. As for the other half, whether the rich are ready to give - I don't know about that yet." 3Imaging the Word, An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Volume 1, edited by Kenneth T. Lawrence, Jan Cather Weaver and Roger Wedell (United Church Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1994) 157
It is my experience that we are like the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem:
There was a little girl who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid. 4 www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/ index_poet_L.html#Longfellow
There is probably also some such rhyme about a little boy. I don’t know it, but there has to be one.
Sometimes we are very good. Sometimes we are mediocre. Sometimes we are horrid. I have just the prayer for us. Someone laid it on my desk. I don’t know who. It goes this way:
Dear God,
So far today, God, I've done all right. I haven’t gossiped, haven’t lost my temper, haven’t been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or over indulgent. I'm very thankful for that.
But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed. From then on, I’m going to need a lot more help.
It is an honest prayer. God is ready to give that help, even if it means death. God is no fool in love. God knows how we are, who we are, what we do, and chooses to love us still. Though we fail, God loves us!
During Lent Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for what will be the last time. The intense passion and broad inclusiveness of his message will not be well received;he knows that. And he suspects that he will die. He tells his disciples so, and we know it is true.
Turning toward Jerusalem, Jesus remembers how often the Holy City has been the place in which the love of God has been rejected and says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, murderers of prophets and stoner of those who are sent to her! How many times I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not!” It is a cry of grief for a lost promise.
The name Jerusalem literally means “to be founded upon peace, upon shalom.” But as you well know, the city of Jerusalem has not been a “shalom zone” for a very much of its history. It is not that most of the people there are bad. Having spent nearly a week and a half in Jerusalem, I have the impression that the vast majority of people…Jews, Islamic, Christian…want their city to be founded on shalom. On my first trip to Jerusalem the guide was Christian. On my second trip, he was Islam. Though they were of different faiths, both guides loved their city, loved their families, were proud of their history and wanted peace.
Yet there is no peace in the city of shalom. And though God’s heart is wounded, God, in steadfast love, does not desert Jerusalem. God, in amazing grace, calls Jerusalem home. When the children run dangerous streets oblivious to the traffic of violence, God calls them under her wings, there to rest safely from all danger. And though, like so many children, they will not come, God calls still, spreading her wings wider, ready to give her life that the smallest chick might rest in peace.
Jesus makes his last pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He walks into the traffic of politics and war to find the children and bring them safely home. In but a few days God will have yet another prophet and child for whom to weep.
Why did Jesus die? Jesus dies because there were some children (and are some children) who are so afraid, so without faith in the infinite love of God, that violence and not compassion is their language. Jesus is not the first prophet of servant love to be murdered, nor was he the last.
Gandhi was killed because of fear-driven failure to love. God did not sit on a throne of judgment and point to Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “Let that one be shot dead.” But a poor man, a white man, a man like the men Martin Luther King, Jr. came to love, was afraid and so failed to love, and his failure turned to bitterness, and his bitterness to death.
Because we are afraid, which is a failure of faith in God’s love, we do not love as we have been loved, and so we wound each other, and we are wounded by each other. Because we are afraid and do not love as we have been loved, we murder each other and we are murdered.
Jesus is murdered because of failed love. Gandhi dies. Martin Luther King, Jr. dies. Steven Biko of the South African liberation movement dies. Sojourner Truth, a labor leader, in the mining camps of the West, dies. Five Maryknoll sisters in El Salvador die. Thousands, mostly poor and whose names we don’t know, die in Rwanda, in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Philippines, in Woodinville, because there is a failure to love as we have been loved.
And still, knowing this truth, feeling this truth, weeping for this truth, God loves us, all of us; still opens wings of safety and mercy to us; reaches to us with compassion for every wound and every death; calls to us with gifts, with words, with talents, with those who love us, with bread, wine, water and air. In our poverty we are made wealthy. In our grief, our hearts our bound up and held together by a strength that comes from where we do not know. Even while in prison we are set free. Even while we break God’s heart, God is forgiving us, our spouse is forgiving us, our children are forgiving us, and our coworkers are forgiving us.
That God loves us is amazing grace. Lent challenges us to not only take on ourselves a companion suffering with Jesus as we face our need to be forgiven, but also to pay careful attention to not only how well we are loved but also to how well we love.
God loves us, all of us. Is it not time for our world, and us, to end the fear and the violence that murders the prophets of Jerusalem? Is it not time to accept fully that God loves us? And is it not time for us to serve in love as we have been served in love? May we make God weep no more!
Shalom and Amen.