Death to Life, Tragedy to Hope A Sermon

Death to Life, Tragedy to Hope
1 Kings 17:8-24/ Galatians 1:11-24/ Luke 7:11-17
2nd Sunday after Pentecost/ Year C/ June 6, 2010

“If it weren’t for the miracles in the Bible, I could take it all much more seriously.” I have heard this view expressed in a wide variety of forms over the years.
“if it weren’t for the miracles in the Bible, I couldn’t possibly take what it says seriously.” I have heard this view expressed in a wide variety of forms over the years; many times within the same congregation as the first.
The biblical miracles are in place not so much to confound nature and reason, although they do that quite regularly, but t make the case for the credibility of God in the Hebrew scriptures, and to confirm the presence of God in the person of Jesus in the New Testament. Their real purpose is to affirm the truth of the proposition that Jesus has within himself and at his command the power of God. Miracles are meant to get our attention. They are the spice of the Gospel’s mutton, as Peter Gomes has written.
But miracles have long posed a problem for us today; a problem that was never imagined by those faithful writers of the sacred texts. Rather than telling us more about Jesus and confirming in our minds and hearts who he is, the miracle have for many gotten in the way of belief, and whatever credibility we no long hold, now attaches itself to Jesus and making it difficult to believe, to trust. So now for many, a faith that was meant to be advanced by means of the miracles to the Way, the Truth and the life, has now become a barrier. We now have the task of solving the how or ignoring them all together. And when we speak of miracles as mysteries that for many seems to be a cop out, a problem in search of a solution.
The miracle of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels can make a life of faith very difficult for the average Christian. And, who among us, in times of tragedy, pain and loss long for Jesus or God to show compassion and provide the grand miracle that will set thing right, take away our hurt, our despair. We cling to the vision that miracles should be like the ones in the Bible, but the problem is that when we think this way we risk missing the smaller miracle moments in which God’s compassion can enter into our upside-down world, touch our most pain filled places and restore our shattered hearts.
In both of our stories today, that is exactly what happens. With Elijah healing comes to a woman who looses everything with the death of her only son. And with Jesus, imagine the scene. Jesus is walking toward the town gate, with his entourage only steps behind. Perhaps he can hear the weeping long before he can see the funeral procession. There is no mistaking the sheer primal sound emanating from the woman’s voice, a mother who has lost her son. It makes little difference that the child is grown, the grief and the pain is there. It is deep, heart wrenching, soul shattering. And like Elijah, Jesus is moved to compassion. “Do not weep!” he says. Unlike the characters in other miracle stories, no one comes to Jesus begging for help. Perhaps they know it is too late to do anything. Jesus reaches out and touches the bier and life races back in and grabs hold of the stone cold body that lies upon it. “Rise Up!” he says to the young man. Then we are simply told that he gave him to his mother. Like Elijah and the widow of Zarapheth, this understated gesture restores the shattered world of the woman. Her life is made whole again. Out of death comes life. Out of tragedy comes hope. And those who witness these events are stunned beyond belief. They are afraid. That is the human response when the supernatural happens; stunned silence and fear. It rocks our sensibilities and our world.
Who among us has not prayed for a miracle at some point in our lives? Who has not called out in challenge to all things faithful that a compassionate God would make us suffer so? In these moments, miracles seem to be a sign that God is working to set things right in a world gone very wrong. Illness, death, financial ruin, loss of job, chronic pain, divorce, depression, addiction, injured and disabled children, violence, war, abuse terror and mass trauma, the list is long of those circumstances of life that seem to dismantle our assumptions about our world and how it should be.
Ronnie Janoff-Bulmann, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts proposes a way of understanding why we human creatures are so upended when tragedy strikes.
She says: : We live with certain core assumptions about the world, this is and the world is benevolent (bad things will not happen) and meaningful (events of the world should make sense) and that the self is worthy ( events in the world correlate to the good or bad that we bring into the world.” At first glance, we would agree. We are smart enough to know that the world is not fair and that sometimes tragedy follows no line of reasoning. Yet in that moment when our world comes crashing down around us, very often our first question is “How could this happen?” “What did I do to deserve this?” These questions belie the truth of Janof-Bulman’s thesis.
As people of faith we go one step further, and ask “where is God in the chaos that threatens us. Underlying these questions are the questions that rock us to the core. What would it mean if we no longer lived in a trustworthy world? What would it mean if events in our lives were random, without meaning? If we assume a correlation between good behavior and good outcome, what doe it mean that we have no control over the events of our lives?
When all attempts to make right sense of the senseless prove futile, we turn to God to find meaning. Miracles are the first signs we look for; proof that God’s compassion will bring our world back into alignment.
Amazingly like the widowed mothers in our stories, sometimes we get the grand miracle we pray for. The father or husband whose heart stops on the table or on the way to the hospital is brought back from the edge of death. The mother of two young children beats the odds and survives the cancer that all the doctors said was hopeless. Or the out of work person, finds the perfect job they have prayed for and searched for so long. But more often than not, in spite of doing everything right and praying every night and every day for every good thing, the sixteen year old who just got her license is killed by a drunk driver on her way to school. The perfect marriage ends in divorce and sadness and animosity. The cure we prayed for doesn’t come and death ensues. Where then is God and God’s compassion? God is there in the midst of the chaos, the pain, the suffering, the loss, the hurt. WE cling to the central message of the Gospel, that in “Christ Jesus all this are possible. Yes our lives, like Jesus’ life, is filled with those messy unfinished edges, not the nice tidy endings that the two widows experienced in our stories. But miracles to occur, even in the most mundane of places. They may not be dazzling or spectacular. When we focus on only one vision of what is possible, we become blinded to the many moments in which God’s compassion reaches into our lives to hear, touch, and stand in the chaos of life, helping us to find new meaning even in the greatest tragedy. Jesus hears the cries in the deepest crevices of our hearts, and touches the deepest places of our pain just as he stepped into the place of death that day on the road out of Nain. Jesus, and through him God, is present in the chaos of our unpredictable, overturned, and shattered world, bringing meaning from meaninglessness and hope out of tragedy. We are the voiceless widows. We are the silenced orphans. We are the homeless strangers. We are the aliens in a foreign land. We are the poor wayfaring strangers of this world. But even in the midst of our pain, our suffering and even our death, God covers us with life, calls us forth to serve, feeds us on the bread and wine of life, and fills us with hope. God’s promise is sure. Jesus is the proof.