Burden of Love

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Good morning everyone. Gosh, I don't know about you all and I find myself seeing you all a little bit more after working with Justin for the last six months but I feel like I have the right to do that. I don't know about you all but I woke up this morning to a house full of grandkids and kids watching the USA-Canada hockey game but I am told that's all I can say because apparently they're some in the crowd who will be going home to finish the game so [zips mouth closed] is the word for today.

But I'm Debbie, I'm one of the pastors here at The Table. It's good to be together as we start out our Lenten series and Maggie Keller stole my jokes at the front of my message because I'm gonna say it anyway! And here's what I was gonna say that we usually kick off Lent with an Ash Wednesday service that we had to cancel because of the weather and I'll tell you if you could get a little glimpse into our lives Justin and I were on the phone that afternoon wrestling with do we cancel do we not do we cancel do we not when we made calls to people we wanted to make sure that everybody stayed safe and here's the joke part we made that call and it was devastating to our team so devastating that the text that went around after the call were texts like and I quote, “Stay safe sinners!,” “I'll be I'll be reflecting on my mortality as the snow falls, “Good thing we're canceling Ash Wednesday because we would have had to have called it Crash Wednesday,” and Justin retitling his message that evening as “Keep your Ashes at Home.” But Maggie did tie it up with the statement, “We are the funniest people we know.” It tells you a little bit about the life on the Table team.

But we are starting Lent, the 40 days that lead up to Easter, that mirror the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. And during Lent we ask God to show us the world as it is and in the words of Kate Bowler someone that I love and admire as an author and a professor, a theologian: Lent is a time when we all get a minute to tell the truth that life is beautiful and life is hard and that's for everyone.

And in this season we really asked the same question every year: who is it exactly that we're following? Should we put our trust and our hope in Jesus? And what was it that Jesus came to expose about the world to us all? And what are the promises that he's made? And this is an important part: and what's the cost because there's the cost and following Jesus.

And sometimes these questions feel more timely and even a little bit more urgent and I think we are in one of those moments in our history where it feels really urgent. So we take the next 40 days with a little more intentionality and we repent that kind of walking back toward God, we seek clarity, we take stock of our lives. We reconsider where the world is at. We reconnect with the Jesus of this story: his self-giving, his suffering, his death, his resurrection. We look at who is Jesus and what we know from the Gospels is that Jesus was someone who led in a way by us stirring it up turning things upside down as he journeyed to Jerusalem.

Our commitment as a community has always been to practice the ways of Jesus, to follow Jesus's lead to walk together proclaiming and aspiring to live out God's values. Values that I would say in this moment this climate of our country even our larger Christian culture those godly values that are antithetical right now to the increasingly-familiar politics of cruelty and injustice, greed, intimidation. The things that we're seeing right in front of us somewhere and all that's going on. We're missing that simple but apparently hard to do message of loving God and loving our neighbor.

But this Lenten series we are calling The Path to Palm Sunday, I want to tell you a little bit about that, because it's been in the works since last fall. Justin and I were at a meeting of sorts, kind of a half-day conference with hundreds of clergy across the state. We were invited to be part of something that they're calling The Path to Palm Sunday movement. A gathering all of us who are followers of Christ, gathering us to stand in solidarity around the same things that Christ stood for: feeding the hungry, healing the sick, welcoming the stranger. So this path we're on through this Lenten season is going to culminate on Palm Sunday and with people not only across this state, our Christian brothers and sisters across the country will be gathering that afternoon at our state capitol. You'll hear more about that in the weeks to come.

But we begin Lent by calling attention to where the season will conclude and that's Jesus's triumphal entry. We know the big story right this the crowds that are shouting and singing blessed be the king then in that story we know that same crowd moves to shouting crucify him and then eventually Jesus is nailed to a cross crying out and breathing his last breath.

And it's important to the story because we cannot separate the triumphal entry from the cross. And if we take Lent seriously—if we really understand what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah—and if we really understand what triumph in God's kingdom really looks like, we might just hesitate a little bit before laying down that cloak before waving that palm branch. Because when we really understand where the parade's going we know that it's going to cost us something. We know it's going to make us uncomfortable as Jesus approaches the city he stages a procession a public display a public display that questions the power of privilege. A public display that questions the usual symbols used a public display that embraces a very different kind of power and make no mistake that Jesus's message is both public and it's provocative. And his followers understand the risk here because the original Palm Sunday was a celebration of both joy and peril.

We're in Luke 19:29-44:

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

“Blessed is the king
    who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
    and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” our text today is set on a road not just any road but a path set at the end of a very long journey.

That was from Luke 19, starting back in Luke chapter 9, Jesus has been setting his face forward preparing for Jerusalem. And for 10 chapters, what we saw was Jesus teaching and preaching and healing and provoking the powers and on the road he tells stories that only Luke reports: the story of the Good Samaritan, where mercy crosses boundaries; the story of the prodigal son, where love runs to the one who has squandered it all. The road Jesus and his followers have been in on has been a classroom, it's been a route where grace takes on flesh, and now the road they're on leads to Jerusalem.

In a sort of interesting unusual decision, Jesus sends two disciples to go get a colt to borrow. One significant because it's not a war horse, which is would be a symbol of power and domination, but a borrowed animal with cloaks thrown over it. And we see ordinary people lining the road, ordinary people that are praising God blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven can you sort of picture it and feel it as I was looking over this text this week I was thinking of those moments whether it's been some of the recent rallies where people are gathered around something that gives them hope that gets our adrenaline going.

I was thinking back on some of the parades that I've been a part of and for my generation like I loved a good parade who loves a parade here come on I love a good parade and some of you know this story, and I always feel like poor Kellers and Bergquists, they've heard these stories a hundred times. But when I was in high school many a year ago I was part of a marching band that represented the state of Wisconsin in the bicentennial parade. And I will say that while I wasn't musically inclined I did play a good pair of pom-poms as we marched down the roads of the streets of Washington DC. But I remember the joy, I remember the adrenaline, and the excitement as we were part of the parade as we sat on the sidelines and watched the rest of the parade it was in many ways a holy moment it was electric.

But this is a different parade this has people lining the roads that have been waiting hundreds of years for the anointed one for God to come again for the Messiah to come and save them to lift them out of the oppression that they had lived in for so many years and I imagine that the thoughts and the hopes were around finally is this it maybe the oppression will lift. Now it's important to note that Luke's version is a little bit different than the other gospel versions: he talks about laying down a cloak but he doesn't mention any kind of palm or branch. He talks about the crowd and that they're praising God but he doesn't mention any hosannas.

And he's also the only gospel writer that talks about Jesus looking over the city and weeping klaio (κλαίω). Klaio is the Greek word that Luke uses in his gospel message meaning weeping lamenting mourning the kind of crying that seizes you the kind of crying that you can't contain and Jesus sees and loves his people his desire is for peace and he also sees what's coming. He looks out and he weeps so I think it's both a triumphal entry as well as a tearful one he says if you had only known the things that make for peace there it is pieces right in front of them Jesus's heart is breaking because he sees us he knows our humanity.

And this isn't just about Jerusalem it's about the condition of the human heart, it's about our blindness to the things that are right in front of us: our temptation to choose power over love, to choose control over compassion, to choose security over solidarity. Jesus sees the city and he sees us, he sees our divisions and our inequities, he sees the injustice, he sees our fears, and it struck me over and over again this week that you know this story that's over 2,000 years old feels really relevant relevant right now. I was struck by the experiences we are all having right now in this country in our world in the city, the divisions, the inequities, the fears. Those things seem to have grown exponentially especially in the last couple months, as we lived in fear for our neighbors as we've witnessed some of the things that are coming from the violence, some of the oppression. When we're wondering what's happened to the things we thought that we valued, not just as a country but as the big-C church: dignity, humanity, compassion, equity, freedom, safety.

I imagine that was the same thing that the crowd was experiencing in that parade. So what we know is that the road we're not on is not theoretical, it's a reality, a reality lined with anxiety and uncertainty. Here's what I think is the most important thing about our story today: is while all that's true, Jesus doesn't look away from the road. Hh stays on the path, he looks and he weeps.

And I think at the end of the day that that's the burden of love. and haven't we all experienced the burden of love whether it's with our loved ones or our communities or with our community or with this world it's a burden we carry because the burden of love is not light, love sees and love feels and love does not turn away. And that's why Jesus weeps he weeps because he loves.

Kate Bowler writes this: “Jesus wept. God in human form cries with us and for us, but Jesus didn't just say I feel your pain he walked right toward it to a cross of humiliation and apparent defeat.” He knows, he knows the burden of love. it calls us to see it, calls us to weep, to walk the path with Jesus. And here's the thing friends, we know what's on the road ahead. We know where the road goes and there's pain and suffering on the road. There's pain and suffering in our stories. There's pain and suffering in our community, there's pain and suffering in our world. We stay on the path.

CS Lewis once said, “There is nothing we can do with suffering but suffer it.” In all the years that I led grief groups and you've heard me say this before and I'll say it again: That's life, that's grief. And it's that you can't go around it you can't go over it you can't go under it but you have to go through it. And that's what we do in this world is we stand with those who suffer. There isn't any shortcut.

In this story there's no shortcuts in our own story politically and historically. This moment was explosive, when crowds hail someone as king during Passover, let's just say that Rome is going to be taking notice. Pontius Pilate enters Jerusalem at one end of the city and he enters it with war horses and all sorts of majesty, signs of dominance. Soldiers who are reminding people that they're in charge. And on the other side in comes Jesus on a borrowed colt.

Two parades, two kingdoms, two visions, two very different visions, and then the Pharisees say, “Teacher teacher tell them, order the disciples to stop.” And you hear the fear don't you? in their words. They're thinking about what is Rome gonna do when they see this, when they find out about it. And doesn't that fear feel familiar? Because so often in our culture today there is this sense of “Wow, keep your heads down, don't stir the pot, don't provoke the system.” Because we're living in this era where fear is real, where consequences are real. We've witnessed it, but we also witnessed been witnesses to what happens when we don't stand up, when we don't stir the pot, when we don't step in and try to change the system. We've witnessed what power unleashed looks like, and guess what? It doesn't line up with Jesus's kingdom vision. Jesus answers the Pharisees and he says, “If they these were silent the stones would shout out.”

And this is a hope that is too deep to contain, because drop triumph in God's kingdom looks different than domination. You know what triumph in God's kingdom looks like? It looks like good news for the poor, and sight to the blind, and freeing the captives. That's what power is in God's reign. And yet there's a danger in that kind of hope, not because it carries weapons but because it refuses to believe that empire wins. So it takes courage to step up and stand with, and to fight a system that doesn't support the flourishing of all of God's people.

This tearful entry into Lent means that we must see and name the reality of our lives and our world and what we can't do is rush into Easter and sanitize the story. Because the reason the story matters is because of the hard parts. And so the question we ask as we enter the season of Lent is what breaks your heart? Are they dreams that didn't come true, or fear for our families, or for the safety of our communities, or for the suffering of other human beings? Because what we know is we've all had our hearts broken, we've all wept. And the question isn't whether or not we will have heartbreak in our lives the question is will we let it open us to a bigger love, to God's love, or will we let it harden us?

Because the burden of love means that we refuse to look away. We can't look away. Jesus didn't avoid the city, he didn't bypass the tension, he didn't turn around when the road grew too hard and dangerous. He paused. He paused and he looked and he saw and he wept and then he kept right on walking down that path. So where are we all on that path? Are we in the parade? Are we shouting? Are we singing praises? Or are we on the sidelines? afraid? unsure? where do we step in? are we already anxious about the ask on us in this season? do we know where the parade is going? where the road is leading us to?

Because we do have something that they didn't know two thousand years ago when they were on the sidelines of this parade. We do know that the cross isn't the end of the story. The same Jesus who sat on that colt will walk out of the tomb. So what do you see when you enter this Lenten season? What breaks your heart? Are you willing? Do you have the courage to let the weight of that love to feel it? to do something with it? This Lenten in this season we are living in a world of great distress that is a reality but here's the other reality friends God calls us to join him on the path a path full of promises, a path full of perils, but the one who carries the burden of love will also carry us. Because while it takes courage, while it takes conviction, while it takes love, we don't do it on our own.

I wanted to close with a book I've read from time to time her name was Kara Tippetts, she wrote this book, And It Was Beautiful she also wrote a book called The Longest Goodbye. She was 38 years old when she died of cancer and left four children on their own. It's a book that has deep meaning to me, it was one of my sister's favorite books before she died of cancer. But there's a quote in this book that I go back to, I bet once a month I go back to it. And I think it's relevant to the message today and here's what she says:

“Into this beautiful messy, the baby was born. Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us the comfort that incarnate Christ offers me today is his knowing it's his presence he faced utter rejection, pain, deception and death that I could never fathom. And he did it all for you and for me and for us. And I don't think that means our lives necessarily look better but I do believe that our lives matter yours, mine and all of us.”

The stones may cry out but we don't have to leave the singing to the stones. We can walk that road, grief-stricken and clear eyed and stubbornly hopeful. Because we will take that path together, all the way to Easter Sunday. Let me pray: Holy and gracious God we start this season in the midst of a lot of heart in our lives and our world and what I love about this community Lord what I'm thankful for is it's a community that's already on the path and while sometimes we stumble off the path you always pull us back on so in this season when we turn back to you when we look for clarity when we examine our lives and our world God call us to a love that burdens us call us to stay on that path call us to stand up and stand with our neighbors give us the strength, the courage, the love that you call us to God we thank you we thank you for the life you lived here on earth we thank you for your life, your ministry, your death and your resurrection we thank you for the hope that we have in you Jesus we pray it all in your name, Amen.

Marta: I'm curious now that we have some of the younger members of our congregation how many people here have seen Daniel Tiger or Mr. Rogers. So I'm a nanny Monday through Thursday for a three year old and a seven month old and I'm very tired of our go to kids playlist I can't do it anymore so I threw on the classic Mr. Rogers driving home from preschool pickup. Everybody's mad and in this moment of quiet I am stopped by these lyrics from Mr. Rogers and it says:

When your heart can sing another's gladness, then your heart is full of love
When your heart can cry another's sadness, then your heart is full of love
Love is fragile as your tears and love is stronger than your fears
When your heart has room for everybody then your heart is full of love

And that's what we do here, that's what we do in all of our practice of church and especially at this moment of communion: we make room to have our hearts grow, to celebrate with people, to have it break with people, and to move into action to loving our neighbors. So these are the Corcoran sisters and they're going to help me hold up the elements that we do every week. We remember the night that Jesus was betrayed and he took bread and he held it up for all his friends, he took, oh wait that's not bread, that's bread, there we go, and he held it for his friends and he broke it in half can you rip it in half? And he said this is my body broken for you whenever you eat this remember me.

And the same way he held up the cup for everyone to see and he said inside this cup is my blood and whenever you drink this remember me and so we come together and we share gluten free bread and grape juice from the cup every week as a chance to open up our hearts and to make room for love for everyone I love quoting our friend Soren Manning that no animal is too small in our congregation. But there's room for everybody big and small put together and broken we're all on this journey together.

So if you are here for the first time we do communion through intinctions so if you are sitting in front of the line marking the halfway point you'll come through this way, receive the elements, go back to your seat if you're behind the line, same come this way to the back walk this way to your seat we offer prayer in the back of the sanctuary every week if you want a moment just to have someone pray with you to share what's going on in your life and step in that we are so excited to do that with you and help you carry that whatever you're carrying this week.

So if you are able will you please stand with me and pray the prayer that Jesus taught us. [Lord’s Prayer]