Sermon: May we not save ourselves from our own saving
Hey, I wanted to share my latest sermon with you. The art form of the sermon is designed to be heard, not read, so I encourage you to give it a listen. If you can’t, however, I included the manuscript below.
Luke 12:49-56
“I’ve come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything rightside up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I’ve come to disrupt and confront! From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be—
Three against two,
and two against three;
Father against son,
and son against father;
Mother against daughter,
and daughter against mother;
Mother-in-law against bride,
and bride against mother-in-law.”Then he turned to the crowd: “When you see clouds coming in from the west, you say, ‘Storm’s coming’—and you’re right. And when the wind comes out of the south, you say, ‘This’ll be a hot one’—and you’re right. Frauds! You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now.
——
Last Saturday evening - a week from yesterday - we had a little backyard gathering with some friends. During that party, we got a troubling text from Rory’s school…
A recent graduate had gone missing. Her story made its way to national news, so you probably know her name: Kiely Rodni. She had been admitted to UC Santa Cruz after graduating early at 16 years old. Apparently, the night before, she attended a party at the Prosser Reservoir campground, a famed local hangout. Sounds like what started as a smaller gathering had swelled into a rager. Around 300 kids showed up; some from as far as the bay area 3-4 hours away. Kiely texted her mom at 11:30 PM, saying she’d be home in 45 minutes. She reportedly said goodbye to her friend at 12:15 AM, who left with another friend. She was last seen around 1:30 AM. (These details may have changed since I checked them). And then she just… Vanished. The sun has risen 9 times over Prosser Reservoir since then and there’s still no trace of her. They can’t even find her car.
Our community has been in upheaval since. This hits super close to home. Rory says that she remembers seeing Kiely at school. She’s 8 years younger than Kiely, so they didn’t hang out, of course. But it’s a super small school that spans K-12th grade, so kids of all ages bump into each other frequently there.
Fliers are everywhere. We take Hwy 89 almost daily from our home in Loyalton to Truckee. It passes Prosser Campground, where Kiely was last seen. It’s an eerie feeling, for sure. Search and rescue has been combing the area since Monday or Tuesday. Helicopters scan the sky over Truckee. Traffic cameras are propped up at various stoplights looking for the now-famous license plate on her silver Honda CRV (BTW, I feel really bad for any poor soul who drives a silver Honda CRV - one of the most ubiquitous cars in our area; they’re EVERYWHERE those CRV’s).
We’re all trying to make sense of this thing. Our brains are ceaselessly trying to connect the dots, but can’t.
Yes, it’s amazing how quiet 300 teenagers can be when you want them to tell you more.
I feel awful for Rory… Again, this is super close to home for her.
“She’s probably okay, right, Dad?” Her brain, like ours, tries to solve this mystery and get to the happy ending ASAP.
All I can say is, “I sure hope so, kiddo.”
Alex and I have been consumed by it. As a parent, I can’t even imagine what Kiely’s parents are going through right now. The nights and the mornings when the house sits absent of Kiely have to be hell on earth.
It’s all-consuming. Since I started writing this sermon, I’ve checked Twitter and the local news a half a dozen times just to see if anything new has surfaced. It’s been like wearing an emotional lead blanket. Everything feels weighed down, and the white noise of distress has been inescapable. I’ve had a hard time sleeping. There’s been a base note of sorrow and despair humming in the background for over a week.
Honestly, I really wish I could just find a scapegoat. This is a collective urge. The pointer finger of blame looms large. If we could just find reasons WHY this happened (that, of course, don’t have to do with us), we can locate the problem OUT THERE and be free from it. Give us a bad guy/gal to blame. Or a broken home. It’d be easier if we could even blame Kiely. Maybe she stepped on a crack in the sidewalk that day that gave her bad luck. ANYTHING!
Because right now, without a scapegoat, the ominous finger of blame points directly at… Me. A parent… Raising a young girl. What could I be doing wrong as a parent that I might not even know about? In how many ways am I parenting that might lead to something like this happening? Am I preparing my daughter in the right ways to handle a tumultuous teenage life? I want to know the root of the problem so that I can just nip it in the bud and make sure this never happens in our family.
But here’s the problem with having a scapegoat… When I have someone/something ELSE to blame, it keeps my old/false self alive. It keeps my old ways and my old narrative in continuity. Which is exactly what my ego wants.
But God won’t have it. “Not so fast,” God says. Now is not the time to place blame. It behooves us not to spiritually bypass this thing. Something is happening here. As painful as it is, God is going to hold us down through it.
This is the tough question for me as a pastor in-training… Where is God in this? It’s the question that I really wish I had a spiffy answer for.
The first place I want to look is up. God, what are you doing up there?! If you know everything and you control everything, why would you let something like this happen? But, see… God hates it when we look for Her in the clouds. God can’t stand it when we relate to Him as a deity who lives aloof in the sky.
“Am I not a God near at hand and not a God far off?” God asks through Jeremiah.
When we look to God as a grand puppet master in the sky, God hates it so much that She puts on a really terrifying mask to scare us away from looking there. It shakes me to the core thinking of a sky-God who would let something like this happen. This is because God refuses to be seen in heaven. We can’t see Him there.
The way that we Christians hold it is that God only wants to be seen and revealed through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
What happens when we look at Jesus in today’s passage? Well, if you’re anything like me, your skin might crawl when you read what he has to say. “Father against son and son against father. Mother against daughter and daughter against mother. Mother-in-law against bride and bride against mother-in-law.” Really, Jesus? Wait, I thought you were the nice, wise hippy guy who really likes the Beatles! You’re going a little agro here, Jesus!
Yeah, he is.
The gospel is super agro.
Jesus warns us that his Word will disrupt and confront. It will turn family and friends against each other. The Word of the gospel pulls zero punches. It exposes really awful situations in their true awfulness. Jesus does not duck reality, nor does he leave any stone unturned. His Word smashes rock to expose impurities before melting them away in the fire. Jesus loves doing this. It’s what got him killed. We couldn’t handle his truth.
Disruption, confrontation, and exposure. I see this everywhere in my local Truckee community right now. Shocking facts about what went on that night are surfacing, some likely false. A rager of 300 kids, many of who were underage. That’s a lot of parents looking the other way. Reports are coming out about “sketchy older guys” showing up with even more drugs than the ones that were already there. The rock has been smashed to bits and all the impurities are being exposed.
The Word of God is active like the yeast in the very midst of life itself. We can’t escape it. Jesus reveals how God’s creative Word works: it breaks things open, exposes them, kills them, and brings them to new life. It’s an eternal pattern that’s called death and resurrection, and it’s pretty much the most inconvenient thing ever.
God exposes not to contaminate but to purify. God exposes not to blame or judge but to redeem and cleanse.
It’s not mere improvement that God is after; it’s death and resurrection.
Right now, our community is going through a death, even if Kiely makes it back home safe and sound. A lot about our privileged affluent teenage culture is being exposed. A lot about how we relate with our kids - and how kids relate with each other - is being revealed. And more and more will be exposed the more details come out. A big part of us is dying right now. And Jesus won’t shrug any of it off. He won’t let us spiritually bypass any of it.
When I was doing my CPE training as a hospital chaplain last summer, one of the mock scenarios I had was with an older gentleman who had been a long-time hospital chaplain. In the mock scenario, he acted like he was dying with terminal cancer. When he told me his diagnosis and that he was only expected to live another month or so, I aptly jumped to the bright side. “Well, at least you have good family support.” “At least the doctors are managing your pain.” At least, at least, at least.
We went through the drill and awaited his feedback. He gave it to me straight-up. As jarring as it was, it was one of the biggest gifts of my pastoral ministry so far…
He said, “You totally left me there, Jonas.”
The expression across my face said, “Whuh?”
“You left me alone in my pain,” he said. “I needed you to enter into my pain and sit next to me there.”
I’ll never forget this. He continued, “This is what Jesus does and it’s what he has called you to do. Don’t worry, just trust him. He’ll be next to you, too, as you go there with others.”
This is what Jesus does. He won’t let us bypass anything. He doesn’t let us skirt death. Right now, we are going through a death. Even if Kiely comes home safe, which we will pray ceaselessly for - Kiely’s family is going through a death - and it’s horrible. It’s literally the worst. No matter how cleansing or purifying it is, it just sucks.
It’s too early to talk resurrection. We’re still walking our proverbial road to Emmaus. Though Jesus is walking alongside of us, we won’t be able to recognize his resurrected body just yet. It’s not until we look back in hindsight that we’ll realize… Ohhhhh… It was him! It was him the whole time. Look what he revealed to us. Look at the work he did.
It’s how Yahweh/Jesus works. We can only see God’s backside. We can only see God’s work in hindsight. This being said, I can see glimpses of it now. I can see glimpses of God’s hands and feet and eyes through the hands, feet, and eyes of a multitude of search and rescue workers. I see it in the hands, feet, eyes, and hearts of determined volunteers taking to the area via dirt bike, on foot, boat, and however else they can comb the land for traces of Kiely’s disappearance. I see it through worried moms and dads hanging fliers on every door and bulletin board they can. I can hear its murmuring through the many conversations across dinner tables between parents and their children about this.
I see the nail marks of God’s feet and hands in the tears of Kiely’s mom as she pleads for her daughter’s return. “Oh God, oh God… Why have you forsaken me.”
This is what God calls to Godself from the cross. It is the last groan of death before the resurrection.
I do hope justice is served if there is foul play, of course. I do believe that prayer changes things - and we will continue praying that Kiely returns safely. But I pray we won’t cheapen this by merely scapegoating or placing blame on another. In other words, I hope we won’t save ourselves from our own saving. If we can hold fast and allow ourselves to go through this death without bailing… I know that new life awaits us on the other side. Maybe there, we can love each other and care for each other more deeply. In this resurrection hope, we will be made whole again.