"Abandoned, But Not Forgotten"
The importance of community
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 5, 2009 (Palm Sunday)
Text: Matthew 26-30-50
I once asked a chaplain under whom I was studying at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax what the most difficult thing was for a hospital chaplain to do. I thought I would prepare myself for the worst. How do you inform someone that their beloved has died? There was something more she said, and over all the years something she had done over and over again. She said it was to be in a room late at night with a solitary patient, and you know that the patient is suffering and ill, and to realize that you are the last visitor of the day, and to turn the light off and leave the room with the person all alone. She said, “I never ever get over that moment - the profound sense of loneliness for the patient and for the chaplain.”
Dag Hammarskjold, the great leader of the United Nations, said, “Pray that loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for and great enough to die for.” You see, Hammarskjold had picked up on a great truth that loneliness, feeling abandoned or suffering, can either make a person stronger or weaker. It can either give them a sense of resolve that leads to something that they legitimately live for, or else it can crush them and bring them to their knees. Loneliness does both things.
I thought about that when people receive bad news, because often when they receive bad news they feel that pang of loneliness no matter what is taking place or who is around them, as many in our country and our continent are right now. People are receiving news that their jobs are no longer there for them, and it is a very lonely experience to have to tell your loved ones and friends that you are no longer employed.
More and more parents are being given the news that their children are autistic, and they have the loneliness of knowing they have a life of challenges ahead of them. Or people find their job had not panned out as they had thought and the promotion that they had expected is not forthcoming, and now they have to live with the disappointment, the loneliness of not being able to achieve what they wanted to achieve. Or when you attend the funeral of someone you really loved, only to walk away and leave them, being alone yourself, and leaving that person alone with God.
Getting bad news and seeing difficult things can be very lonely. No, I am not suggesting that everybody today is getting bad news or feeling such loneliness, but I would suggest that you know someone who is, or that you will, or you have experienced this. Loneliness can shake a person to the core. How people respond to that loneliness is really one of the great challenges of being a human being. Brian Stiller in his wonderful little book, When Life Hurts, tells a story that reveals in so many ways how you can overcome the dangers of loneliness and climb above those challenges. It is a sad story about a man called Jimmy Lee Casey, a young man who grew up in Oklahoma in a very religious family. His mother used to take him to Sunday school, but his father was flawed in that he was an atheist who hated black people. Jimmy Lee would go to church with his mother, then come home and be told off by his father. You see, at church, they sang the song, Jesus Loves the Little Children:
Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
All are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
He would come home singing this song, and his father would say, “Don't you ever sing that song in this home again, because we don't believe that in this home.” So, Jimmy Lee grew up having a bias toward people of colour. One day, to his great dismay, he saw his father pick up a gun and shoot himself. This great role model in his life died. Here he was, a young boy, 11 years old, left with only a mother. Who knew what the future would bring? Feeling lonely and isolated that his father had left him, he hung on his every word. Not long afterward, he was recruited by the Ku Klux Klan. With them, he found his sense of God, a sense of camaraderie, and the hatred that his father had, and they all moulded into one. Jimmy Lee grew up, and he became a strong advocate of the Klan. So much so, that they saw in him a leader and named him the Grand Dragon of the south western part of the United States of America. He still wouldn't go to church, and he still didn't like black people. But there were other organizations that were starting to move in on the Ku Klux Klan - neo-fascists, skinheads and other racist organizations - and a power struggle broke out. Jimmy Lee Casey, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan got injured, many members of the Klan got shot, and all of a sudden they had to scatter to the four winds. He sat in his room that night alone wondering where his sense of community had gone and why this organization that had given him structure in his father's absence had now evaporated.
Jimmy Lee was wondering whether he should take his own life. Then he picked up a Bible that his mother had given him as a young boy. He started to read the story of The Prodigal Son, and how one of the sons was able to come home. Jimmy Lee thought, “This isn't my home with the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe I should go to the home that my mother had.” So, Jimmy Lee decided to go to church, and over time, Jimmy Lee became a Christian.
What still haunted him was the fact that years before he had been in a debate on the radio with a black minister from the NAACP named Reverend Watts. Jimmy Lee had dismissed Reverend Watts, and at the end of the broadcast, Reverend Watts said, “Would you do something for me, Jimmy Lee? Can you hold my child, my little daughter, my baby, in your hands while I tie my laces?” He handed this baby to Jimmy Lee, who was left holding this black child, and he hated her. He was told to hate this black child, and he resented her. Now that he had become a Christian, he thought back to that moment with that child, but then just dismissed it.
However, word had got out that Jimmy Lee had become a Christian, and who was the first to phone him and to ask him to speak at his church, but Reverend Watt. Reverend Watt said, “Jimmy Lee, I would like you to preach in my church.” So, Jimmy Lee went up to the pulpit, and in front of an entirely black congregation, he gave the message of how Christ had changed his life. At the end of the service, during which Jimmy Lee had been able to reach out to these people, a teenage girl ran down the aisle and hugged him. Reverend Watt looked on and smiled as Jimmy Lee looked at him as if to say, “Who is she?” Reverend Watt said, “That is my daughter, who you held in your hands in the radio station all those years ago.”
Jimmy Lee said he had finally found what he was looking for. All his life he had looked for someone to replace his father, someone to give him advice and guidance. He had looked for a community, where all he had before was loneliness. Here, in that black church, he found what he was looking for. It is amazing, isn't it, that when you are most lonely, when you are at your most vulnerable, you can also be at your strongest and receive what you need.
Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, was saying exactly the same thing through his own experience. According to Matthew, there is this incredible moment when he is about to be betrayed, in which Peter says he's not going to deny him. But Jesus is abandoned; he is left all alone. So much so, says Matthew, that his soul was crying out. When he wanted the disciples to be there for him, they weren't; they abandoned him. All he wanted was just one hour with them, but they wouldn't be there for him. Even Peter and the sons of Zebedee weren't there for him. Three times he cried out; three times he prayed to his father - he knew that was all he had now - “Father, take this cup of suffering.” This is the same cup that I referred to last Sunday, and we share in the Communion this morning. It is a cup of liberation and salvation, but also a cup of suffering. Jesus said, “Take this cup of suffering from me, but not what I want, Lord, but what you will.”
Three times he is abandoned. Three times he asks for the disciples; three times they are not there. So much for saying they will never abandon him or deny him! They leave him when he needed them the most. But, who was there for him in the garden? Who gave him the strength to carry on? His father!
I read a wonderful story about an NFL running back for the Buffalo Bills named Thurman Thomas. He was one of the greatest running backs, but one day in 1994 he hit his lowest moment. Thomas had been in four Super Bowls in a row, and had lost every single one of them. Poor Buffalo! He said, “This is no good! I am at my lowest, my weakest.” Why? Because in the fourth game he had fumbled the ball three times and it had cost his team the game.
Sitting on the bench during the festivities and the awards being given to the eventual victors, the Dallas Cowboys, Thomas was feeling dejected, alone and sad, when all of a sudden, Emmitt Smith, the running back for the Dallas Cowboys, came up to him with a baby in his arms. The little girl was his goddaughter, and he carried her up to Thomas, who was thinking, “Yeah, right! Smith is now going to rub it in that we lost.“ Smith held up his goddaughter and said to her, “I'd like you to meet Thurman Thomas, the greatest running back in the world.” Thomas said that this meant more to him than all the Super Bowls that you could ever win. The one who he respected the most acknowledged what he had done. For Thurman Thomas that day, it was all he needed.
When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples had left him all alone. At his lowest, loneliest moment, Jesus needed the affirmation of Almighty God, and he received it and kept going. But the other thing Jesus needed, besides the affirmation of the presence of God the Father, was community. The Garden of Gethsemane is a story of a breakdown of community. Community is a sense of the embodiment of faith with others, and a living way to express the faith with others. But, did he receive it? No. Were they there for him to represent the Church? Was Peter, of all people, there? No. They abandoned him.
It is speculated as to why. Many scholars have suggested that with the arrival of the Messiah the feeling was that Israel itself would suffer before the Messiah would come - it would be the nation that would suffer. You can see this in the Dead Sea scrolls, or the Qumran literature. In 4Q 285, there is a fragment that makes it abundantly clear that the people of Israel would suffer before the Messiah would come, but they had no conception that the Messiah would suffer. So, the disciples who were with Jesus just could not believe that the Messiah would suffer. There were Hosannas on Palm Sunday, the King was coming and great things were going to take place. Surely it couldn't be the Messiah who would suffer! They probably thought, “Just leave him alone. Let him get on with whatever he is going to pray. We'll just snooze right now. It doesn't really matter.”
Throughout the ages, the Church has done that so many times to people who have been lonely and in need, thinking they would be all right when in fact they needed the power of community; they needed the strength of someone being there. Even Jesus, the Son of God, needed a community of believers. But the Church did not rise up at that moment to be the Church. It left him alone. There is a great lesson here for all of us in terms of dealing with people who are in need. There is a time when they need the Church to be there for them, just as Jesus needed the disciples to be there for him.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting at the dining room table at my brother-in-law's house. My brother-in-law is a geophysicist. He had students around him and they were talking physics - advanced physics - and I as a theologian knew nothing. I hadn't a clue what they were talking about. Any physics I remembered had long disappeared from what Poirot called his “little grey cells.” Long gone! But then, one of the students asked him about the difference between a spotlight and a laser beam. All of a sudden, my ears perked up.
Now, don't take this as gospel, for I might have heard it incorrectly, but the conversation went something like this. The difference between a spotlight and a laser is as follows: A laser is made up of medium of excited molecules that have windows at each end, and these excited molecules break up after a while. When they break up, they produce protons, so they bounce between molecules, and produce more protons. As they keep on bouncing and producing protons, they are going in the same direction; they are united and keep multiplying. They are powerful. In a normal light, these are disparate; they are not going in the same form. They are not united, but rather fragmented. That is why a spotlight produces nowhere near the heat or energy of a laser. The laser is powerful because the protons are together, bouncing off each other, excited and creating power together. The theologian was thinking, and the theologian said, “Just like the Church!”
When there is no community, there is no unity and there is no power. When we are in disparate ways, there is just very dull light. Jesus knew that in Gethsemane. He wanted the disciples to be there with him, united with him, praying with him at the moment before he faced his greatest trial. But it didn't happen! Why? It was because they were interested in themselves and not in the kingdom. However, after his death and resurrection, what happens? The disciples come together. They are united by the power of the Spirit.
The Church that was fragmented in Gethsemane was born at Pentecost, but it had to go through Christ's death and resurrection for that birth to occur. In other words, at that moment when Jesus was at his most lonely, at his most vulnerable, he had to keep going for the sake of the Church and for the mission of God in the world, for you and for me. Even in his loneliness, despite a lack of community, he had to give of himself for the sake of a community that would eventually follow.
So we look back on Gethsemane and we say, “Lord, thank you. Thank you that you were willing to give of yourself in that garden and on the day that followed. Thank you that you found fellowship with your Father, which strengthened you in your time of need. Thank you that you prayed, 'Not my will but your will be done.'” Jesus did that, and we have community, and for the lonely and the broken-hearted, here we are. Amen.