Christ Breaks Through

Let us pray.

Lord God, remind us of the words of the psalmist that we always invoke the words of our mouth and the meditation in our hearts to be acceptable in your sight.

You who is our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Our gospel lesson this morning comes from the gospel of John the third chapter, verses 16 through 22.

Hear now God's word for you.

God so loved the world that God gave God's only son that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.

Indeed God did not send the sun into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Those who believe in him are not condemned but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only son of God.

And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and the people loved the darkness rather than light because their deeds were full of evil.

For all who do evil hate the light and those who do not come to the light so that their deeds may not be exposed.

But those who do what is true come to the light so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

The word of the Lord.

Well I'm going to tell you another story that comes from the world war two.

I should probably let my husband tell it because he'd do a much better job so I'll just I'll tell the shorter version that ends with a smile.

It was late 1944 or maybe the very earliest days of 1945 when you're nearly 100 some of those details get a little bit lost.

It was the 42nd Infantry Division of the US Army also called the Rainbow Division and they were in Belgium.

It was just before the Battle of the Bulge.

The soldiers slobbed their way through a very wet farmland.

It was like a marsh but with last year's corn stalks.

On one side of yesteryears cornfield was a town that the Germans had already taken over.

The Americans positioned on the other side of the field watched them kill a guy they'd just interrogated.

If our men continued through the cornfield they would be shot.

If they didn't they'd be captured and then probably shot.

Lying in wet ruts between rows of corn they had a decision to make.

Through the tension they heard and then saw a jeep coming through the field.

It was being driven by their regiment chaplain Father Disher.

Father Disher pulled his jeep ahead of the men.

It stopped. He stepped out.

The priest stood before the soldiers.

He must have been clearly visible to both sides of the war.

Now the men were scared and shocked.

What the heck?

Then Father Disher boomed.

Does anyone want to make their confession?

The way my World War II veteran father-in-law tells it,

first the Catholics raised their hands,

then the Protestants,

then the Jews.

All barriers between religions went away.

They were all scared to death.

Then one of the guys yelled back,

Get down you fool, you're going to get killed.

The men decided to forge ahead.

It's a story the soldiers told over and over again once the battle had been won.

All recalled with a warm laugh the most genuinely loving priest

standing firm in the cornfield amongst patriots who felt cared for, encouraged,

and for some higher reason, at least for the moment, safe.

Those who do what is true come to the light

so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

One gesture of love begets another and another

as Christ breaks through even the most horrifying circumstances.

Do you ever wonder if you're missing him through the darkness of life?

Do you ever wonder if you're missing him today?

If so, you're not alone.

The world has been searching for a savior since the beginning of time.

Sumerians with their goddess and anaconda,

Hindus with their Buddha,

Muslims with Mohammed,

and the followers of the way.

Joseph Campbell, a psychologist, mythologist,

who gained prominence decades ago with his book, A Hero with a Thousand Faces.

I don't think he had technology back then to worry about.

Next week I'll put tape.

Joseph Campbell argued that Jesus is just one of the many versions of a savior

who through different times and cultures makes his appearance in different forms

because the needs and effects of creation are multitudinous, complex,

and often of a mutually contradictory kind.

It's a good thing because the people of all time, just like us, need a savior.

We need a savior today in our midst who will remind us that we are never alone.

We need a table turner who will stand up to the bullies.

We need a peacemaker who will knock down every bomb.

We need a healer who will bind up all of the woundedness with surgical precision.

We need a friend.

We need a friend whose wide embrace leaves no one outside the circle of love that is of God.

We need a savior who never fails to break through all the pain and suffering of the world,

methodologically shifting the plates between us to set the world straight.

Yet the problem we get ourselves into when we start to require our particular savior

to satisfy a particular event or experience of life we call on him to solve

is that one day, one day that particular savior will fail us.

Maybe that's already happened for you.

Because there will be a time for each one of us when even our clearest understanding

of the savior we construct doesn't sear through the heaviness

over something we've left undone or maybe something we've done.

There will be a time for each one of us when even our strongest image

of a savior doesn't break through the pain of a too early loss of the love of your life.

There will be a day when a savior of our construct will not be able to adequately reveal

the meaning and significance of our triune God who smashes the boundaries of human and divine

and eternally brings the world to perfect peace.

So it's critical for you and I.

It's critical for Christians to hold our savior loosely

so we're not left with an inflexible idea of who Jesus is as our savior,

particularly in that eventual moment for each of us when even our most expansive image

of our magnificent God doesn't reverse something that's happened around or in or to us.

My findings from a 2018 Pew Charitable Trust survey bring some comfort

in this very real and concerning conversation.

They found that most American people still do believe in God.

There is some comfort there, right?

Most people do believe in God.

Now, we might not agree on the look or the sound or the trinitarian identity of God,

but most people in America do believe.

At least we have that as a starting point.

But the next part is what is a little more difficult to swallow

if you think about our place as a church in this conversation.

While the Pew research found that most people do believe in that there is a God,

what's up in the air is whether God cares.

I think this makes sense to us, right, amidst our confusion about our triune God

who is both an imminent reality addressing the demands of the day

and a transcendent reality that's to carry us into the next life

as we occasionally wonder why he seems to come in and out of our lives,

when he chooses, without predictability or reason.

With our human imaginations of what sort of God would be in light

of so many hyperbolic experiences of injustices,

with self-reported God-fearing people promoting concepts and conversations

that rain darkness on some of the most vulnerable people in the world,

it's no wonder why at times we too, as members of Christ's church, might begin to wonder

if there is a God, does God even care?

The beauty communicated through our Trinitarian God is that God loves the world so much

that God emptied God's self into the form of his unique son named Jesus,

whom he sent to save the world.

As Scripture continues, whoever plainly lives by this truth

shows the world that ours is a God who cares.

In other words, as the church, we are charged to show God cares,

to show the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ

to the unjustly regarded in these tumultuous times,

to represent the light to a dark and hurting world,

to be living witnesses of love and light to countless men, women, and children

who are being oppressed to the border of despair,

to be unapologetically Christian, claiming the love of Jesus Christ

that reigns in our hearts and pronounces the world good,

proclaiming this one to everyone we meet through our words and our works,

including a pan of lasagna to a family that's just experienced a surgery that day,

proclaiming this love through our prayers that God so loved the world

that God handed over a part of God's self to enter the human race

and save us from darkness.

Yes, God so loved all the world that God sent a unique healer into our midst

to show us a better way of life that we all need today.

Christa Tippett's On Being Project aired a new episode a couple of days ago.

The topic of the episode was love, politics, and violence.

They were channeling the work of the 20th century philosopher Hannah Arendt.

This is a bit of her bio.

Arendt was a German Jew who fled Nazi Germany and died in the United States

after writing such epic pieces as The Human Condition.

Well after the formal presentation on being, if you will,

a member of the studio audience for this episode,

a poet laureate named Manuel Iris, had the opportunity to offer this.

He said,

One thing that I believe separates Arendt from other philosophers of her time

is that we can read her with the possibility of hope at the end.

She's not focused on death as the main philosophical center of gravity,

but nativity and with this, beginnings all the time.

The possibility of beginning is important, he said.

And he continued, I think that poetry has showed us since its beginning,

which is the beginning of humanity,

that we are only inventing new ways to utter what was eternal already.

He added, and this is key,

thinking that poetry is only the fuel or that love is only the fuel

to make the infrastructure is a sore mistake.

Love is the brick of that bridge.

Iron, art is the iron of that bridge.

And it's not only where we go to rest, it is our tool.

Half of the work is care, but care is love in action.

Care is how love looks when it acts through the body of someone

into the body of another somebody.

Care is love in action.

Care is what love looks like when it acts through the body of somebody

into the body of another somebody.

Indeed, those who do what is true come to light

so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

Taken together, this signals to me one of the most pressing ideas of all for us today.

That is for each one of us to rise above our puzzlements, suspicions,

or need for a particular savior to break through this world on demand

and let the love of Christ break into the world through the care of the church members like you and me.

That is our calling as a church to break through the world, showing the love of Christ,

glorifying God. That's our privilege today.

Not to try to take the place of a savior or to be the hero of the story,

because God's already done that through the work of Jesus Christ,

but to give glory to our triune God all our days in the name of Jesus.

It's this tangible love of God shown through the care of Christ's body,

the church, that encourages humanity when the journey becomes too hollow or too sad,

too dark, too dangerous.

It's the love of God shown through the care from Christ's body, the church,

that holds us up when the road to injustice and righteousness and peace seems far too controversial.

And it's the love of God shown through the care of Christ's body,

the church, that carries us just where we need to go when we ourselves are confused about right priorities

or faithful beliefs or even our own destiny as joint heirs of the kingdom of God.

Indeed, there is only one God.

There is a triune God who cares in the most tangible, warm loaf of banana bread kind of way,

or justice march if that's more to your liking, as a member of Christ's church.

During the season of Pentecost, may Jesus break through your spirit

so that we all as members of Christ's body embody love in action for all the world to see.

To God be the glory. Amen.