Sermon delivered by the Rev. Cristina Rathbone
Luke 13:31-35
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me,[a] ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when[b] you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Jerusalem! Jerusalem!
The image I posted at the head of Tuesday’s Child this past week was of a mother and her new born child in a maternity ward in Mariupol. The mother is standing in the middle of the ward, holding her brand new baby in her arms, and she is gazing down at the baby with such wonder and such love that she looks like any one of the Madonnas we prayed with earlier this winter, during our icon workshop. It was a beautiful photograph of a beautiful moment made even more powerful by the violence that surrounded it, and it spoke to me of hope, and of humanity, and of life. But the very next day, Wednesday, the press was full of the news that a maternity ward in Mariupol had been bombed by Russian troops. Three people died in the explosions, including a child, and 17 people were injured.
Was it the same hospital? I don’t know.
Were the mother and child present in the building when the bombs went off? I don’t know.
And am I any more able to make any more sense of the violence and the bloodshed and the ratcheting up of civilian targets and civilian fatalities than I was last week? For sure – no.
But on Friday evening I heard a man named Andree Zalinski who is the Greek Catholic Church’s Chief Army Chaplain in the Ukraine speak on the news. Used to working on the front lines with troops who are both outnumbered and outmanned, the priest had buried many people he knew and he looked worn and exhausted– but he also looked alive – I mean vibrantly and passionately and openly alive and when I saw him, I unwittingly put down the knife I was using to chop garlic and sat down to really listen – to really try at least to hear.
“War is chaos.” He said, but “It is also a dimension where human beings live, which means they have their dreams, for example when people get married on the battle field, they have their hopes for the future, they remain human.” And “The mission of a military chaplain is to preserve this humanity.” He said. “And this is not an abstract thing, it is realized in our capacity to choose good, in our capacity to seek truth, and in our human capacity to contemplate beauty – even in war. A person who was with me in one of the hottest spots in 2015 – I had baptized him years before – we used to stop every day to contemplate the sunset and the sunrise. Later on he became a hero of the Ukraine winning our country’s highest honor and — sad — he was killed last week…”
Fr Andree was asked then what he says to the families of the soldiers who have been killed, and he replied, gently but without pausing: hope. Hope that everything was not in vain, that freedom and dignity are not just words, that they are instead the cornerstones of our destiny.
“We will have scars, of course, and the scars will require time to heal because nothing heals itself, but the life of our friends are in our hands,” he said, raising his hands like this. “And so our scars will be in our hands as well. You can’t heal your own scars, but you can heal the scars of your neighbor and your neighbor can heal yours. Only humanity can afford this gift of healing somebody else’s wounds.” He said – and before I had the chance to digest the beauty and the grace of his words, the journalist concluded the story with these astonishing words:
Father Zalinsky says his task in the chaos of war is to ‘lean heaven towards the soldiers’ and to do that he has to help them maintain their humanity. But maintaining humanity also requires experiencing pain.”
I’m going to repeat that because I think it’s too much to take in with just one go round. Here it is:
“Father Zalinsky says his task in the chaos of war is to ‘lean heaven towards the soldiers’ and to do that he has to help them maintain their humanity. But maintaining humanity also requires experiencing pain.”
So… my question for you all this morning is this: Isn’t this just exactly what Jesus says he is going to do in the text we just heard today? He came to us, as one of us, in order not only to maintain, but also to restore our humanity, and to do that, he knew, he had to walk into the heart of our pain, and of our often brutal violence and submit to it all willingly through his own tortuous death on the cross. Jesus knew the truth of the violence and the horror that besets humankind, that’s the thing. He knew how it had taken over in the past, and he knew it would take over in the future, and he didn’t let that change the direction of his life, or of his work, or alter the path of his mission one bit.
Herod wants to kill him? Fine. Go tell that fox for me that I am going to continue doing what I have been doing, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, welcoming the outcast until the time is right for me to stop – which is to say until the time is right for me to walk into the very center of the violence and the lust for power and by so doing to render it powerless, once and for all, as I choose to heal my neighbors’ wounds by opening my arms and submitting to it.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” he grieves. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Mariupol, Mariupol! Homs, Homs! Kabul, Kabul! Baghdad Baghdad! Tegucigalpa, Tegucigalpa! The brutality of humankind’s violence to itself is as real today as it has ever been, and while it can feel like too much – like an endless drum-beat, an endless death-knell – at least this time we are awake to it.
What must we do, then, in light of the truth of the violence, and the truth of the death, and the truth of our fear and our powerlessness in the face of it? First, keep turning towards, keep leaning in, keep opening ourselves to what is happening to real people just like us today in the Ukraine, of course, and also in the Sudan and Ethiopia and Afghanistan and Syria and Honduras and Salvador. Lean in now, in prayer with others who are doing the same across the globe, and then, strengthened, lean in through whatever work it is God has given you to do that helps maintain people’s humanity. Open your eyes and see what is happening, far away and right next door; open your heart, feel the truth of the beauty and the pain, and then walk right in anyway – even if it feels hopeless — especially if it feels hopeless… Walk in and dare meet and by met by those who are carrying more than their fair share of injustice and oppression and violence and greed – all the while insisting on the hope of Fr. Zalinski, which is the hope of Jesus himself, that we are given what we need to bring healing to each other, that the path to that healing lies in our capacity to choose good, in our capacity to seek truth, and in our capacity to contemplate beauty – even in the heart of the horror, and that despite appearances to the contrary, everything is not in vain, that freedom and dignity are in fact not just words, but the cornerstones of our destiny…
So… Let us pray:
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through the life and the death of Jesus your son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the fear and the arrogance which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen