|
 |
Sermon for October 18, 2009
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: Isaiah 53: 4-12; Psalm 91: 9-16; Hebrews 5: 1-10; Mark 10:35-45
Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from Christ Jesus whose serving love will carry us through the sadness.
On Friday, Clark and I went to see the movie, “Where the Wild Things Are.” It was a favorite book of mine as a child. Like the best of children’s stories, they have just as much to say to us adults as they do to the children for whom they were written. The boy Max, angry and sad and wild, dressed in a wolf suit, runs away and meets the wild things on their island. The wild things are beautiful, large creatures who surround Max and tower above him. In order to prevent them from eating him, he makes up stories about all of his great powers. They want to make him king, especially after hearing him say how he made Viking heads explode. However, they are concerned with more, as one of the large wild things with a tiny hopeful voice says, “But will you keep the sadness away?” The young Max, in his wolf suit thinks and then says, “Yes. I have a sadness shield.”
At this moment, already caught up in the movie, my heart jumped. I, too, wish that someone could keep the sadness away. I wish for it for myself in these days as I feel the grief and sadness of our coming closing of St. Peter’s and the changing of our relationships with one another. But more, I wish if for this community, for each one of you whom I have grown to love over these years. I wish that I had a sadness shield, to protect us from these hard realities we are facing, to save us from the difficulties of leaving this place and doing the hard work of becoming a part of a new community. I wish that I could make it easy and the road smooth. I wish that I could keep the sadness away. I wish that I could storm around in a wolf suit and growl away all the hard stuff, or that I had a sadness shield.
Max, the king in his wolf suit with the wild things, couldn’t keep the sadness away, and I won’t be able to either. I can’t pretend to have a sadness shield or the right words to say that will make this any easier. There is nothing that will keep the sadness away. But, dear ones, we can know and trust that the sadness will not win, that the wild things will not eat us, and that God will carry us through the sadness into life.
This sadness is not something for us to avoid. While the realities of this congregation closing, and all the hard experiences that creep into our lives are not something we would choose, the hard and difficult stuff in our lives, I am certain, is not caused by God. However, the sadness, the grief of it all, is something for us to pay attention to, to live into and to claim. And God will speak to us through the sadness, but we can’t avoid it, and trying to only hurts us more in the end. We all try to, of course, by protecting ourselves with whatever we decide will shield us from pain, whether it be great stuff or big houses or distancing ourselves from people, or seeking power and prestige and influence, but none of those things are shields from sorrow. They only shield us from the one thing that can give us the courage we need to live with sorrow. They keep us from the one thing that will make sure that the sadness doesn’t overtake us - love, and particularly the love of God known in Jesus.
In our first reading, we hear from the prophet Isaiah who speaks to the exiled people of Israel. They have been driven from their homes, their families scattered and lost, their temple destroyed and sold off into slavery. They are a people left to their sadness. In those days, when each culture had their own god or gods, the fate of the people showed the strength of their deity. If a people were strong and conquered, it proved that their god was strong. If the people lost in battle, it demonstrated their god had rejected and abandoned them.
Isaiah, however, proclaims to the people of Israel and says to them that even though they suffer, even in the midst of the pain of exile, God has not abandoned them. God is not weak and absent. God has not rejected them. God has not punished them. Isaiah says to the people that God is with them in their suffering and will bring them through it, will prosper them, will carry them into light and life. God does not keep the sadness away, but is there with a powerful presence to give God’s people courage, faithfulness and hope.
In Jesus, we experience God’s promise to be with us. God did not abandon us to our own ways, to the sadness and loneliness we know, but rather, as the writer of Hebrews says, that Jesus, in the days of his flesh, his humanness,“offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to the One who is able to save him from death.” Jesus, in his humanity has come into our world, to keep us from being destroyed by that sadness and all we do to shield ourselves from it. Jesus came to to save us from the power of death.
James and John came to Jesus and asked if they could sit at his right and and his left - in his glory. They tried to overlook the cross and passion, all the hard stuff that he had been talking with them about, and just wanted the good stuff. They wanted to avoid the sadness with all of Jesus’ power and glory and happiness that comes with him. Jesus listens to them, but reminds them that it is not his to grant. Jesus goes on to tell his disciples that his way is not one of power and glory, of easy roads and perfect happiness, but one of service and self-giving, for he says to them, “The son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus does not come on a strong white horse with shields to save us from all that we fear, from all that brings sadness into our lives. Instead Jesus came to serve, to bring life and hope and strength and courage in the midst of it. Jesus came to give his life on the cross, to suffer and weep with us. Jesus came and on the cross gathered up all our sadness and suffering, and in his dying and rising shatters the power of that sadness and brings us to newness and life. Jesus doesn’t come to keep the sadness away, but so that we will not be alone in it, so that it will not paralyze us, so that it will not keep us from loving and serving, so that it will not kill us. Instead, Jesus comes so that we might weep and cry, so that we will serve even when it doesn’t prosper us, so that we might love even when it means losing, that we might open our hearts yet one more time to see what new life he might bring to us.
There is, unfortunately no sadness shield. For us who grieve the closing of this congregation, who grieve those loved ones who have died, who grieve a job or a place or a relationship which has been lost, who just plain feel lost in the world. Jesus is right there with us, with loud cries and tears and strength. Jesus is right in the midst of all we feel, and is there to hold us up, to give us strength, to serve us and encourage us when we are weary, to help us to continue to love and to dare to keep loving, to keep risking, to keep investing ourselves in God’s people and God’s world, even when it will be hard and complicated and full of wild things.
We, are not alone in our sadness. And our sadness is not the end of the story. There may be no way to keep the sadness away, but I promise you that the sadness will not always stay, nor will God allow that sadness to keep you from living and loving.
Jesus has come not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Jesus has come to liberate us from our quest for glory and shields and power. Jesus has come to save us from sorrow which seems to drown us. Jesus has come to serve us that we might be servants, even as we weep and grieve. Jesus has come to lead us through our sadness into new life, new relationships, new beginnings. Jesus has come so that while sadness may come it will not be the end, but joy will indeed follow. Jesus has come, in bread and in wine, present with us to nourish and sustain us on this journey. Jesus has come, broken and shed, to give us strength and courage and hope to face the hard days ahead. Jesus has come - with the strength and power of God’s resurrection love - to carry us through the sadness into newness of life.
Thanks be to God.
Amen
|
