“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16: 25
What a week! Last weekend when we gathered to worship, Hurricane Harvey was pounding the eastern shore of Texas and we did not yet know the full implications of that terrible storm. And we still do not know that and won’t for years to come. Yesterday Texas officials reported that more than 185,000 homes were damaged and 9,000 destroyed as 42,000 people remain in shelters amid overflowing rivers and reservoirs. The latest count is that 47 people have died. The devastation is overwhelming. Just watching it on TV and electronic devices breaks our hearts and we can hardly imagine how terrible this is for those enduring it. “I just feel so sad and empty,” Larry Cade said as he and his wife Suzette saw their flooded home for the first time.
Sad and empty. This is why Jesus needed to go to Jerusalem, to suffer and die. This is why when Peter rebuked him saying, “God forbid it, Lord!” Jesus called him Satan. And Peter the Rock on which Jesus said, “I will build my Church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” crumbles into a stumbling block. This is always what happens when the Church denies the cross. Always. This is what happened in Nazi Germany, what happened in the Communist Soviet Union, what happened in the white churches of the segregated South, and God’s knows what happened and is still happening in the post-industrial North.
Peter meant well. In Jesus, the Messiah and Son of the Living God, he saw someone who could rally the people, overthrow the Roman occupiers and bring freedom, precious freedom, to the promised land. Peter’s not the only one who saw this – so did Herod. Why else would he murder all the children under two years old in and around Bethlehem unless one of those wee little babes was a threat to him? The religious leaders saw it too. They had carefully orchestrated a way to survive under Roman rule, compromise a bit here, gain a concession there, work it out, play the political games and they would be rewarded, with power and privilege. Even Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor, realized he needed to work with them and find a compromise. So, on a Friday morning, he offered them a choice – he would free either Jesus or Barabbas – and they chose Barabbas. By noon Jesus hung on a cross. By three he was dead. By six his body laid in a tomb. The only way for Jesus to be our Lord and Savior is to die. That’s it.
One of my favorite poets, Christian Wiman wrote, “I’m a Christian not because of the resurrection and not because I think Christianity contains more truth than other religions and not simply because it was the religion in which I was raised.” He says, “I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” God is with us, not beyond us, in suffering.” Wiman goes on, “Christ’s suffering shatters the iron walls around individual human suffering. Christ’s compassion makes extreme human compassion – to the point of death, even – possible. Human love can reach right into death, then, but not if it is merely human love.” (Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss,p.155)
We’ve seen that this week, haven’t we? We watched neighbors help neighbors, strangers who towed boats hundreds of miles to rescue strangers trapped by rising waters, donations flowing in from all over the country, relief work being done with compassion and care. Human love reaching right into death.
We see this every day. When wedding vows made in hope and innocence decades ago – for better for worst, in sickness and health – are not denied but courageously lived as spouses age, get sick, die. We see it when refugees and immigrants are welcomed instead of rejected, encouraged instead of persecuted and when the sick and suffering are embraced instead of casted off. We witness it when the addicted received rehab and their families, support. And we experience it when those who are different from us in race, class, religion, language, culture, gender, sexuality are embraced as brothers and sisters, blessed children of God. Then human love, but not merely human love, Jesus’ love, reaches right into death.
Jesus tells us this when he says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” At Bible Study on Wednesday the question was asked, “When did you take up a cross?” For some, the cross came to them in the form of cancer. One replied, “When I accepted that I had cancer for the second time and stopped asking, “Why me?” and started asking, “Why not me?” then I began living again.” I thought of all the times someone here at St. John’s told me, “You know pastor, when you asked me to be a Confirmation Guide, serve on Council, help with Vacation Bible School – and they go on to list any number of things all of which involved taking up a cross, I really wanted to say “no” but I couldn’t figure out how to tell you that, so I said yes and am so glad I did.” Jesus tells us this is what will happen, that those who want to save their lives, will lose them, and those who lose their lives for his sake, find them.
Hurricane Harvey got me thinking about Hurricane Agnes which stormed through Pennsylvania 45 years ago in June of 1972 and at the time was the costliest hurricane ever. Some of you remember it. That summer I was working at Tabor Home for Children in Doylestown as the recreation director. Tabor provided safe haven for children ages 5 through 18 who had been neglected and/or abused by their parents. They were placed there by a judge. Some returned home when things got better, many did not. All were deeply wounded, bearing crosses no child should ever have to bear. The Lutheran Deaconesses who ran Tabor and the rest of the staff did their best, but it never equaled a safe and healthy home.
In mid-July, Sister Gunnel Sterner, the director of Tabor, came to me and said, “Cindy, we should take the older kids to Wilkes Barre to help with the hurricane relief.” I have to admit that my first thought was “this is a crazy woman.” But she was my boss and I didn’t know how to say no to her, so together we made plans to take about 10 of the teenagers to Wilkes Barre where the Lutheran Churches had set up a disaster relief center. Once there we divided into teams and got to work mucking out basements of homes flooded by the rising Susquehanna River. It was a hot humid day and the work was hard. But the teenagers stuck with it, filling buckets with mud and debris without complaining. I remember Michael who at 17 was one of the older and stronger youth, carrying bucket after bucket up out of the basement around the house to a growing pile of refuse on the front sidewalk. The elderly couple whose home we were working on thanked us over and over. Something change that day. Teenagers whose lives had been so full of pain and lost, had taken up the cross, not one imposed upon them, but one they chose. And in the choosing, they were empowered. They found their lives. Not all of them, but enough for it to be contagious, to change them.
Almost 20 years later I was in a New Jersey Toys R Us with four-year old Jonathan and infant Todd, buying diapers and trying to get of there before Jonathan spotted a toy he wanted, when I heard my name being called, “Cindy, is that you?” I looked around and it was coming from a man who was in his mid-thirties. He could tell that I had no idea who he was, and so he introduced himself, “I’m Michael. I was at Tabor Home when you were there. I want you to know, Tabor saved my life.”
And it did. He was saved by the cross and raised by the resurrection. Human love, but not merely human love, by God’s love, embodied – in our Lord Jesus and in the body of Christ, the Church. Amen.
Pastor Cynthia Krommes
