Grace to you and peace, from God, and from our Risen Savior who is Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Did you catch the Blue Angels fly-over this week?
I just happened to turn on the tv and saw nurses, doctors, technicians, caregivers and staffers standing outside healing centers with their masks on, looking up. I heard the broadcaster saying, “they’re circling the lakefront, and are headed to the Northwest… flying over Logan Square….”
So I ran outside! I called out to other neighbors and asked “Did I miss them?”
“No!” they shouted, “they’re coming back around!”
I sat for a moment, looking up at the empty sky, where I’ve waited every other year for them to scream over in the Air and Water Show. Another neighbor came out, surprised when I said I was hoping to catch the Blue Angels. “Isn’t it a little early for that?” she said. “Don’t they usually come later? “
Time is a little blurry for most of us right now.
My husband came running up the stairs, and just then, there they were. It was a literal flash of glory. Close enough to see the colors, the insignia, the wing and contrails, and then they were gone.
I was surprised at the tears suddenly hot and stinging. Fred said, “I know. For me it was when I saw all our healers coming out, looking up, blinking into the sun over their masks.”
You may have had some of those moments too… at odd times…a kind of grief over the strangeness and the unknown of both present and future. Jesus’ ascension into heaven celebrated on the 40th day of Easter, this Thursday and for us next Sunday, always get me a little teary this way too.
The disciples, who’d been through it all….the ministry, the healing miracles, the terrifying pain of crucifixion, the empty tomb; the Risen Christ walking thru walls, showing them the wounds and scars, are now standing, gazing into heaven, as Jesus’ feet disappear into the cloud. The glory and mystery of the meaning of resurrection, new life, the enormity of it all, suddenly hitting them.
And in that split second of Jesus’ last footfall on earth, the disciples experience the utter bereftness of a “motherless child.” A child without the comfort of a caring adult, parent, grandparent, guardian. The sudden rush of tears and all that feels lost about the fullness of their physical life together. Their eyes well, even as they check themselves, look around and realize they still have each other. Their community.
Jesus says: I will not leave you, orphaned.
In other years I’ve reached too early to relief, the reassurance it’s going to be all right. And It is. Gonna be all right. Jesus is coming to us. It’s easter after all. The month of May! Joy and life and spring! Weeping if not rain, be gone!
But on what, day 60 of stay at home? After another tough week of disheartening, then see-sawing news about how long this virus might be with us, amid some reopening, spring weather, and a lot of happy talk that doesn’t seem to match up… the part that leaps out at me this year is the orphaned part: That Jesus knows, and names, the grief and loss we’ll experience on the way.
This “farewell discourse”- Jesus’ words to his disciples, words he knows they will need to store away for their future – comes long before they get to the mountaintop of his ascension glory. Jesus tells them this BEFORE Palm Sunday, BEFORE the last time they’re together physically as Jesus’ followers for a meal, before the terror of the cross, before the raw surreal days of incomprehension, an empty tomb, and conflicting news reports about where Jesus body even actually is. Jesus tells them this, before, in their disorientation, they run into a stranger with whom they lament the dashing of their hopes, plans, expectations, on the Emmaus road.
Before. When you got to walk on the road next to a stranger, and talk without a mask, or just get up and come to church, and Jesus breaks the bread.
Jesus looks today with compassion on the disciples uneasy about his talk of suffering and sacrifice for love of neighbor and the sake of gospel truth; appalled at the cross Jesus holds up before them, unable to fathom what changes it might mean, or bear this grief in advance.
Probably, like most of us, there are first reactions, and a time we come to grips, and not in a straight line, either.Jesus, human like us, knows and understands we can only bear what we can bear. That when we’re held, when we are able, when it’s safe for us and our psyches, there comes a time we can acknowledge our losses, fears, and wounds. Jesus, as God, also knows there’s a life ahead, holds us, and tells us: Because I live, you will live also.
Jesus us tells us this ahead, because he knows we’re going to come to a point where like the disciples we may feel lost. Where life and discipleship isn’t the same as it was.
We never have to go looking for the cross and its pain and suffering. It comes as part of our human existence that Jesus, human like us, knows but can’t shield us from, but also God like God, knows the way and invites us to follow him through, toward healing, life for us, and for our vulnerable neighbor.
We’re going to go through fire and water. Heavy burdens may be laid on our backs. Even as we remain beloved of God, and the Body of Christ.
We may or may not be feeling that heaviness right now, or be too harried to absorb or bear it. We may find ourselves more like vaguely irritated, ready to be over it, or feeling life is fine, or would be if everyone would just get back to normal.
But Jesus knows that if not this minute, sometime, they – we – are going to feel it.
So it’s for that moment, Jesus wants us to know that he knows what it feels to have no comfort, grieving our lost sense of self among others, a sense of time, sense of safety, and the familiar rhythms.
Because Jesus knows there is this life ahead, Jesus stores up for us healing reassurance and restorative promise. We can name the “this” that we lament, because Jesus holds us in the words: because I live, you will live also.
The risen Jesus stands before us with wounds. We’ll have them too. We won’t come out of any of this unscathed, exactly. But God will raise us up, and raise this congregation up, to new life, nevertheless.
Millenia before Jesus tells us this, our psalmist reaches out from the tradition of Jesus and our ancestors of old, with the truth of human suffering and the experience of God’s help:
“Come and listen, all you who believe, and I will tell you what God has done for me. I called out to God with my mouth in my suffering, AND I praised God with my tongue. God has heard me, attended to the sound of my prayer, and has not withheld unfailing love from me. God has brought us out of this time to a place of refreshment, and we are able to enter God’s house for worship. Blessed be God!”
Today in our service for healing we follow a well-worn path of the faithful; this dynamic of both letting ourselves feel deep need, and raising ourselves and one another up with the reminders and remembrance of God’s mercy in the past. Our trust in God’s healing mercy and resurrection bring us to the future God holds for us and assures us with.
Jesus promises a comforter in the coming Spirit of life. Not illusory hopes, but the spirit of truth. We grasp it now and lean hard into the future, and let it uphold us while we’re in the weary days, when we can’t always tell whether it’s 6 pm and night is still coming, or 6 am when God’s new day is dawning.
Jesus speaks to us in a “future present” voice: We ARE comforted. We ARE not left orphaned.
We make our laments, we receive healing, we end in praise and glory.
The Rev. Dr. Kim L. Beckmann
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Evanston
Service of Lament and Healing for Easter 6
May 17, 2020