The Love We Resist

Scripture Lessons: Genesis 15: 1-15 and Luke 13: 31-35 Sermon Title: The Love We Resist Preached on March 17, 2019 On April 28th, more than nine years ago, my life changed forever when I held our oldest daughter Lily for the first time. I looked at her, so perfectly tiny and helpless and suddenly came to the realization that I could become one of those people who puts their kid on a leash. You know who I’m talking about? Now the people who put their dog in a stroller? I still don’t get that, but I had also judged those parents who put their kids on leashes until I held that baby girl and understood. Becoming a parent changes you. It just does. There’s a new TV show called Workin’ Moms about mothers who also work fulltime. The main characters are always conflicted about whether they should be staying home with their children instead of going back to work. It’s a show that’s very easy for many modern parents to relate to, but my favorite scene is when a mother is jogging through the woods with her infant son in a stroller. You can imagine. It’s as though she’s running on one of the Kennesaw Mountain Trails, and she comes face to face what many of us who run on those trails fear most, if irrationally. She’s running through the woods and comes upon the Kodiak Bear who’d recently escaped from the zoo. She was running, thinking about work, she had her headphones in her ears, so she didn’t notice the bear until she was right up on it. The bear had been eating garbage and he reared up on his back legs and roared at this mother, who took her stand between her baby and the bear to roar even louder right back. The bear knew not to mess with this lady, and turned around. It was incredible, but such is love. That’s what love looks like. Parents want to protect their children. If they made baby Björn baby carriers big enough to hold a 7 and a 9-year-old I’d have our girls strapped to my chest right now. Once they have cell phones, I’ll have those things tapped in a second. They better lock their diaries. I’m not kidding. Only, I’ve heard that that’s not what a parent is supposed to do. You have to give a child a little bit of space and freedom, but still in this father’s heart is the desire to protect his children from the world. I want to protect them from what’s out there, especially the parts that they are determined not to talk with me about. Jesus said it like this: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings like a mother hen, but you were not willing.” Unlike Abraham in our First Scripture Lesson, who feels darkness descend at the thought of his descendants suffering, Jesus knows that he could help his people through all their hardship, “but they were not willing,” he said. This morning Jesus is talking about that very real feeling of watching the ones who we love resist accepting the help that they need. He’s talking about resisting the urge to scoop a child up, even if she’s 20, to protect her from the whole wide world. He’s holding back, knowing that there is no need for a child to keep secrets or face daemons alone, if only they would ask for help. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings like a mother hen, but you were not willing.” And why not? You wouldn’t ask that if you could remember what it was like to be a teenager. Sometimes parents are the last to know. On April 20, 1999, Sue Klebold’s son Dylan and his friend Eric killed 13, wounded more than 20, before taking their own lives in a murder suicide. Dylan’s mother, Sue, gave a speech a couple years ago, trying to explain what it feels like to have raised a child who would do such a thing, to now feel like the paramount example of failed parenting, to constantly apologize for the pain that her son caused, and to still love him despite what he did. She said that so often people will ask her, “how could you not have known,” and every time it feels like a punch to the gut, because it was only after her son’s death that she learned about his pain, hatred, and depression. She knew neither that he had been buying guns or had been bullied. He had never told her about his hurt over not feeling accepted, nor his determination to have vengeance on those who had the acceptance that he wanted. She had to learn about her son as the nation was learning about him, for there were all these secrets that he kept from her. In the dark days that followed her son’s death, she reached the conclusion, that “if love were enough to stop someone who is suicidal [from hurting themselves or other people], suicides would hardly happen.” For love is there, but when someone is unwilling to talk or ask for help, love is not always enough. Having heard what Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, I say that finding what or who is to blame for the rash of pointless violence that continues in our nation and our world is difficult. Obviously, the violence is inexcusable, but what the church must also be prepared to fight are the secrets and the shame. The Lord calls us out of our hidden lives, to stand before him in truth and to take shelter under his wings, while the message we learned this week that some parents send to their children is that who they truly are must be covered up by fake college applications and photoshopped athletic histories. The Roman Catholic Church is in trouble today too, not just for atrocities committed against children, but that the atrocities were covered up and the victims told to be quiet. Can you imagine? Can you imagine encouraging silence, when we are already so good at hiding who we really are. I heard a friend say, “I have come to the conclusion that buying craft supplies and actually using them are two separate hobbies.” That’s the case with a lot of us. We hide our reality behind our aspirations and we just put a fresh coat of paint on our pain. We cover up our broken hearts with our church clothes, because even we Christians must be reminded that we are safe in his arms and protected under his wings, no matter what we’ve done or where we’ve been. It’s hard to accept, but we must accept it, and we must be bold to trust His love enough to reveal our brokenness or we’ll never heal. I remember so well a couple sent to see a marriage counselor against their will. “We don’t need marriage counseling,” the husband said in the first session, and so the counselor responded, “then you may as well go, because if you aren’t willing than I can’t help you.” “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings like a mother hen, but you were not willing!” I wonder if that sounds like your mother. In some ways it sounds like mine, very much like mine. I remembered this past week how years ago she wanted to protect me from cigarettes, and not only was she on my case, but I am confident that she enlisted the help of my doctor who told me during an appointment when I was 13 or 14 years old that my asthma was so bad that if I ever so much as tried a puff of a cigarette I might just die there on the spot. Regardless of whether or not that was true, I don’t know because I’m still too scared to try. That’s not entirely true, but she was successful overall. I never really smoked, just chewed tobacco. But the moment of parenting that I’ll always remember best was when I failed Spanish. It’s true. I did. That’s what happens if you never study or pay attention in class. My parents would ask me how Spanish was going. I’d tell them it was going fine, but then the report card came home, and the cat was out of the bag. A real live F. I would have hidden it under the bed if I could have. I would have gladly accepted my parents offers to fake my transcripts had they offered. Unfortunately, they saw it and weren’t about to cover it up, so I started packing my bags for military school. That’s not what happened. They were angry, but once the dust cleared my mother went to a drawer in the china cabinet and she brought out one of her old report cards. “Read it,” she said. Her grades were lower than I expected, plus there was a note from the teacher. I don’t remember it exactly, but it said something like, “Cathy never stops talking. She is a nuisance in class and it’s no wonder her grades need such improvement.” I couldn’t believe it. I looked at my mother, who, after reading this note and seeing those grades, looked a little bit different. It’s like I’d never noticed before that she was a real person. And I think about this experience now. How important it was for me to know that she needs a savior too. A friend back in Tennessee once brought home a report card with three F’s and a D in History. His father shook it in his face and said, “What do you have to say for yourself?” My friend responded, “Looks like I need to stop spending all my time focused on History.” Or maybe we all need to focus a little more on history. Maybe we all need to do a better job of remembering that we were all once wretched, once lost, once blind. That we were all once young, angry, and foolish. For it is not by pretending that we were ever perfect that we will encourage anyone to make their way under the wings of his mercy. We can only show them the way, by turning towards him ourselves. Repent and be forgiven. Leave behind what weighs you down and confines you to the shadow. Speak and be heard. Listen and be saved. Be gathered under the mighty wings of mercy, for His is a wonderous love that none of us deserve but that all of us need. Amen.