Text: II Kings 4: 1-7 and II Corinthians
4: 5-12
Every week we sit before six stunning stained
glass windows. On one side of us they tell the story of
Jesus the Christ, at his birth, in his lonely, agonizing
suffering and at his resurrection from death. They tell
on the other side of the sanctuary three instances of faith
lived in history. Two display moments from the time of the
American Revolution. The third, and the one in which I am
most interested today, commemorates the reunion of the two
separated Presbyterian churches in Morristown. It was designed
to remember a high point of reconciliation and, therefore,
hope in our church life. But in offering that remembrance
it also reveals something else. It tells us that things
... lives ... churches ... families ... people can break.
We are breakable. We are fragile. We are
not as strong as we may appear. We can be emptied of hope
and separated from one another and from all that seems good.
We can be separated from life and from those we love in
life. We can be separated even from God.
It is an underlying theme, too, in the two
Scripture readings for this morning. A widow still grieving,
still holding to sorrow and despair, comes to the prophet
Elisha. She doesn't know what to do to get through life
and to provide a life for her children. She cannot see how
to keep her family from falling further apart with her children
sold into slavery in order to pay the creditor. On this
Memorial Sunday there are many who remember and still there
are many who know what she means. Everything can seem emptied
and hopeless in those times. Looking into such loss can
rip apart everything that holds life together. With our
very fragile lives, our lives are broken.
In II Corinthians Paul talks about people
who also are living in the midst of grief and sorrow. "Afflicted,
perplexed, persecuted, struck down, given up to death" are
the words that describe the people he knows, including himself.
He says that we have this treasure in earthen potware. We
hold the gifts of faith and life again in fragile vessels
and such vessels when put under such pressure could break
or, again as Paul says, be crushed.
But the miracle to which he points is that
none of that has happened. They are afflicted but not crushed.
They are perplexed but not sent into despair. They are persecuted
but not forsaken. They are struck down but not destroyed.
They do know and carry death in their bodies, but life remains
secure. It is a word of hope that that is so, that it can
be so, that it will be so. But when you are living in the
moment of affliction, when you are perplexed and confused,
when you are persecuted and struck down, it is hard to see.
"We are always being given up to death," writes Paul. When
being given up to death and when death defines every moment,
it is hard to believe that life will ever be possible, let
alone good again. Do I speak for anybody else here today?
It has happened to me and it may have happened
to you that when something tragic, something horrific, something
life changing has occurred, you simply cannot understand
how everyone and everything can go on unchanged. Don't they
know what just has happened? Why are people still walking
down the street and going to work and laughing and joking
and talking as though nothing were different. Nothing else
seems real or true except the horrors you have felt.
I believe that the words that Paul writes
also can seem that way. They just do not seem true or real
or possible. They seem a distant and foreign reality, and
only the vaguest of possibilities. That may be where you
are living today. You may be so overwhelmed by what has
happened to you that all the words about life and goodness
and hope, about Christ's abiding life, about being never
crushed, and not forsaken or destroyed, just do not seem
right at all. It isn't that you want your life to be that
way. You just do not know how to make it work any other
way. You don't know how to move out and away from the affliction,
the confusion, and the death so that you find again life,
life for you, life for you with God. Again, am I speaking
for anybody else here today?
It is the challenge of the rest of this
sermon to do that. It is the challenge to find some ways
that can build a bridge between where you are now and where
you would pray to be in a tomorrow that you hope comes very
soon. It is the challenge to discover how you can make those
words become more than only words, how you can make them
be a living reality in you, how you can make them the truth
of your life.
To do that I suggest we return to the one
life of that widow who experienced that kind of movement
for herself. What did she do? How did it happen for her?
And could it happen for you, for us? "Go outside," says
the prophet, Elisha, "borrow vessels from all your neighbors,
empty vessels and not just a few." It is the first thing
for you to do. Go outside. Go outside yourself and ask.
Go and ask someone to help you. Go and ask another to do
what you cannot do for yourself. Tell one or some or many,
as Elisha said, "not just a few," about your need. The people
who have the best chance for healing and hope and life are
the ones who ask, who say what they need, who express what
emptiness is found in their lives.
Trust someone at work. Risk saying something
to one who lives near you. Reach out to someone who sits
with you now. I think you already know whom you could ask,
whom you will ask. Ask for their time. Ask for time to tell
your story. Ask for the story of their lives. Ask for prayers
for yours.
I want to say a word to those of you who
may be asked. Don't worry too much what you will say. Remember
the neighbors of the woman gave empty vessels. They must
have thought they were doing not next to nothing, but nothing
at all. It can seem that way when we are asked to help.
But the truth is that our own emptiness, too, can be the
vessel that fills and heals and does help. The word of hope,
the hand that kindly and caringly holds another, moments
spent listening carefully without judgment or solutions,
even a tear that falls down your cheek also can bring exactly
what is needed.
"Borrow vessels and then go in and start
pouring into all these vessels. When each is full, set it
aside." The woman did everything she was told. She expected
the empty vessels would be filled. She expected and then
acted with a belief that it would be as she had been told.
It is a fairly simple thing that happened: she expected
that God would act.
The greatest problem in our moving from
hurt to wholeness, from sorrow to hope, from living desperately
to living triumphantly with death, is the failure to expect
that God is doing anything for us and in us at all.
Those who do not expect God to act will
never see what God is doing all the time. Those who do not
expect that God's love in Christ can belong to them again
will not find love filling them. Those who do not expect
that Christ's presence can soothe their troubled nights
will not experience the peace. Those who do not expect that
Christ's life can turn death into hope and joy will not
know the triumph.
But, listen, I have seen it with my own
eyes. I have heard their voices. I have witnessed the power
of their faith. Those who do expect that God in some way,
at some time, at just the right time will act are given
the gift to see and feel and understand. They are able to
see that God is doing always. They begin to feel the stirrings
in their hearts. And they understand that what is does not
need to go on.
I do not want you to think that I think
having such an expectation is an easy thing. It is not.
It requires courage and strength and more energy than one
can ever imagine. So, it is not easy, but it is essential.
It is the final, essential thing. For it is then that the
empty vessels are filled and life begins to return again.
O God, let us hear your word as more
than words. Let us receive your word as the way to life,
the way to find what we have lost, to recover what we have
missed, to press on when we have languished too long. In
any sorrow, in all grief, with all who are afflicted and
perplexed and living with death's grip, let the vessels
of our lives be filled with the love and life of Jesus Christ.
Amen. Ó
