What happened to you?

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller + Second Sunday in Lent + February 25, 2024

What do you do with your pain? A good question for Lent. There’s too much of it. Everywhere. Like the world is living in perpetual Lent. Unimaginable suffering in Gaza. Continued shock and grief in Israel. Unending war in Ukraine. Not to mention the everyday pain of living. The losses that seem to pile up. The anxiety and depression that permeate so many lives today.

I’m not sure Jesus’ words today help. “If you follow me, you will lose your life in order to find it. My path of suffering is yours as well. Take up your cross and follow me.”

Maybe that’s not what you thought you signed up for at your baptism, or confirmation, or every Easter Vigil when you renew your baptismal vows.

What could it possibly mean to take up our cross? Do we choose suffering? Do we find something to bring us down? Do we punish ourselves? Do we accept the abuse or shame brought upon us by others? Surely that is not what Jesus meant.

We’ve each got our own stuff to deal with it. And sometimes it feels like we don’t have the capacity to be there for the pain of others.

In a large city like Chicago, we are always passing people. In lines. In queues. On sidewalks. In stores. On the bus. On the el. Even on the way to communion.

Much of the time there is not eye contact. To look deeply at someone may freak them out. Or be misinterpreted as flirtation. But don’ t you wonder sometimes what everyone is carrying in their hearts? What stories? What pain and suffering? What trauma their bodies may be holding?

What we do with our pain?

When discussing the pain of the past months for both Jews and Palestinians, Rabbi Sharon Brous tells of an ancient practice at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. We were there last September and I can still see the site.

Imagine hundreds of thousands of people there on pilgrimage. They would ascend the steps and go through an arched entryway. It was a kind of procession. Then they would turn to the right and encircle the perimeter of the courtyard. After making the circle, they would exit the same place they came in.

Except. Except the instructions were different for the brokenhearted. They would walk up the steps, go through the archway, and then turn to the left. And every person coming from the right would have to stop, look into the other’s eyes ask the simple question, “what happened to you?”

And the person would say, “I’m brokenhearted. My loved one just died. I have a terrible sickness. I lost my baby.” And the people walking from right to left would have to stop and offer a blessing. “May the Holy One comfort you. You are not alone.”1

Perhaps that is one thing it means to follow Jesus and take up our cross. To stand in the center of the world’s pain. To recognize Christ crucified in all those suffering today. And then to pour our energy into bringing healing and justice—reparations—to those who have been harmed.

As Black History Month comes to a close, imagine another kind of procession—the nonviolent civil rights marches of the 1960s. As Barbara Holmes, an African American contemplative writer, states, these marches brought black presence into public spaces. She writes, “the end result was that a purportedly Christian nation was forced to view its black citizens as a prototype of the suffering God, absorbing violence into their own bodies without retaliation. By contrast, stalwarts of the old order found themselves before God and their own reflective interiority with fire hoses, whips, and ropes in their hands.”2

What do you do with your pain? It’s too much to bear alone.

Rabbi Brous says it simply: you show up. Don’t just go home and isolate. Walk toward those who will hold you tenderly. Find a community. Or we might add: find a church, find a congregation.

The ancient procession at the Temple Mount—and marches for justice today— remind us what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you may be walking with those whose hearts are broken. Those who are anguished. Those who are grieving. Those who are houseless.

Next year it may be me. Next year it may be you. So even on good days—even on days when you can breathe—show up then, too. As the rabbi continues, “because the very fact of seeing those who are walking against the current, people who can barely hold on, and asking, with an open heart, ‘Tell me about your sorrow,’ may be the deepest affirmation of our humanity, even in terribly inhumane times.”3

We may not be able to take away one another’s pain. But we can create a safe place, a community where vulnerability is treasured. For there we find a God who suffers with us. Christ who is present most profoundly in the pain the world.

We gather as a community each Lord’s Day to find hope for our broken lives, our broken world.

And there is hope in our readings today. We hear of a child born to an old couple past the age of childbearing. Paul writes of faith that allows us to believe the unbelievable. And as we bow toward the cross and trace it on our bodies, we trust that suffering, death, and resurrection are the path to the realm of God, the very path to transformation.

“Open to the mystery”, we say in this church. Like Peter in the gospel, all none of this makes sense to our rational mind. But we trust a deeper way of knowing.

At this table, the wounded Christ comes among us. Looking into your eyes and asking, “what happened to you?” Then he shares his broken body for your healing. He tenderly holds your shaking hands. He calms your troubled heart. And assures you that you are not alone.

The Holy One is with you, we say as a blessing to another. God will comfort you. This community is with you. Together, we take up the cross and follow.

1 Sharon Brous, “Always train yourself to show up.” New York Times, 19 January 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/religion-ancient-text-judaism.html

2 Barbara Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices for the Black Church, p. 117

3 Brous, “Always train yourself.”