The Living Waters October 18, 1998

The Living Waters

A Sermon for St. Luke's Day
Johanna Morrigan
Ecclesiasticus 38:1-4, 6-10, 12-14
Psalm 147
Luke 4:14-21

Jesus Loves You!
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Children's Sermon: (Children gather around).
God really likes it when we remember how important it is to love each other. Who are some of the people that love you? (parents, aunts and uncles, sibs, friends, teachers, etc.)
Who are some of the people you love?
Who else loves you? Jesus loves you doesn't he?
He is like a super wonderful big brother who loves us, and protects us, and who makes us feel lots better when we have a hurt or when we are feeling sad.
There is a song about that. Does anyone know what it is? "Jesus Loves Me" Let's all sing that song - do you think it would be o.k. if we let the grown ups sing too?
          Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so;
          Little ones to Him belong; We are weak, but He is strong.
          Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!
          Yes, Jesus loves me: The Bible tells me so.

Adult (sic) Sermon:
"Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so." Remember those words? most of us sang them as children.. Jesus loves me ......
Remember? It was so clear then - lisping those beautiful words. Jesus loves me! And we knew it - the Bible said so, our parents said so, our Sunday School teacher said so, everyone said so - he loved us! And today when we hear a small child singing those same words, we smile and know that yes, indeed, Jesus loves that child. Our hearts grow warm and we feel that assurance, once again, that Jesus is love. We have no doubt that Jesus loves that child, and every child on the face of the earth.
But what about us? - we are all grown up now, we aren't children anymore. In the tangle of our busy lives, in the midst of conflicts and anger, sorrow and grief, confusion and doubt, fear and loss ....

When we have just been through a bitter divorce, and have lost custody of our child for no other reason than the mere fact that we are gay; or that we are lesbian; or that we are bi-sexual; or that we are transgendered.
when we watch a beloved elder suffering from incurable illness,
when the first services to be cut in our recent budget cutting frenzy are inevitably the services on the Indian reservations .....
Where is that warm reassurance that Jesus loves us at times like these?

When the roof begins to leak and there is no money to fix it
When we are laid off and those with less seniority are not.
When Jacob Wetterling and countless other children disappear and are never heard from again.
When we are told that AIDS is God's judgement on homosexuals
When a drunk driver extinguishes the life of our child, our best friend, our life partner......
When we answer an early morning phone call to be told that our child has been the victim of a brutal hate crime - as the parents of Matthew Shepard were told one morning this past week..
Matthew Shepard was a young college student in Wyoming. He was 21 years old. He was a Christian. He was an Episcopalian, and Matthew Shepard was gay. He was pistol whipped, tied to a fence post, lit on fire, and left to die - because he was gay. On Monday morning, Oct. 12, 1998, Matthew Shepard's parents were told that their son had died that morning - because he was gay.
Where is Jesus' love at times like these?
Where is our childlike innocence that knows Jesus still loves us?
Like Job, we rail at God - at the injustice, at the unfairness, at the senselessness of it all. And all too often, we are urged to embrace those so-called comforting words -" it was God's will," it was meant to be. It is not ours to question God's plan. - Or we are blamed for our own tragedies and misfortune ... We must have done something wrong, something to offend God. It is God's punishment. It is God's will.
And we wonder at this God......this is God's will?.........this is God's justice? And we harden our hearts against such a God. Or we harden our hearts against ourselves - believing that we have indeed offended God, that we are lost, that we are not good enough, that we must be unworthy of God's redeeming grace, and it is God's will .............
NO, IT IS NOT GOD'S WILL!
The psalmist reminds us that God will never forsake us.. In Ps. 27, he writes "Though my father and mother forsake me, God will receive me.".... He says, "I still believe firmly that I shall see God's goodness in the land of the living...." and He implores us to "Wait for God. Be strong and take heart and wait for God."
Humph. Easy enough for the psalmist to say. He isn't trying to figure out how to make ends meet in a world that seems to be more interested in box office receipts than in feeding hungry children.... He isn't trying to make sense of a world that kills our children because of whom they love...
Horrible and evil things do happen in this world. Every day in my office I listen to stories of horror and anguish. Stories that reveal the depths of evil that we human beings are capable of perpetrating on our sisters and our brothers, and our children.
My caseload is made up mostly of people who have been so wounded that most of my colleagues won't work with them. They say that It is too depressing,... too futile,... too hopeless. So I get the leftovers and the rejects. I am often asked how I can work with these people ... it must be so discouraging and depressing. How can I possibly stand it?
And I am always a little puzzled when I am asked these questions - because I receive so many gifts while accompanying these folks on their journeys of healing - I am repeatedly blessed with the awesome opportunity to witness healing.....the incredible capacity of human beings to survive the unsurvivable; to heal from the unhealable. I get to see Jesus' healing love first hand.
Our psalmist for this evening's reading tells us The Lord heals the broken hearted, And binds up their wounds... The Lord lifts up the down trodden... I get to watch that happen every day!
In our Gospel reading, Jesus reads from Isaiah, and tells us that in him the scripture is fulfilled: that the Lord has anointed him to bring good news to the poor He has sent Jesus to proclaim release of the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free I get to witness the fulfillment of that scripture every day!
Not many people are that blessed, and I thank God for this amazing gift - and I try to remember to ask God to keep me out of God's way so that God can do God's work of healing. I have the remarkable privilege of watching the miracle of Jesus' love healing broken hearts, wounded spirits, and terrified souls - just as he did 2000 years ago.
Mother Theresa challenged us all to find Jesus in each of God's children - to recognize him in each of his many disguises. Jesus lives within each and every one of us. His love does not fade and weaken as we grow older.....,it is our vision that fades and weakens as we become lost in the mazes of conflict and anger, sorrow and grief, confusion and doubt, fear and loss .. and we forget... We forget to look for him, we forget to listen for him...
We forget that "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so".....we forget that his love is infinite and that he loves each one of us unconditionally. We forget, as Betsy TenBoom speaks out of the hell of a Nazi concentration camp, that "There is no pit so deep that God's love isn't deeper."
We have put away childish things and taken on the mantle of adult responsibility - and in doing so, we have forgotten that we are still children - God's little children and that Jesus loves us.
Please join me in singing:
          Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so;
          Little ones to Him belong; We are weak, but he is strong.
          Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me!
          Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.
We are all his little ones. We are all his children. Jesus loves you!
AMEN.

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