If You Had Been Here
Some fragmented thoughts on sermonizing, Martha's bold accusations, tulips, and the ongoing toll of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Uganda
Monday, May 8
Grand Rapids, Mich.
I don’t usually write to you on Mondays, but I felt bad that I did not write to you last week. Some weeks, that annoying blinking cursor, cast in sharp relief against my too-blank screen, just taunts me. But just as with my childhood bullies, I can’t think of a good response until days later. Every time I sat down to write something, my mind would empty, and then I’d fall into an abyss of YouTube videos.
Anyway! I did manage to write a sermon last week.
I rarely share the texts of my sermons because I can get pretty dogmatic about preaching. When I preach, I never recycle a sermon, and I always write for that congregation—a particular group of people in a particular place in a particular week. When I preach at Crosspointe, I write from what I know of these lovely folks I’ve gotten to know over the past couple of years. Also, a sermon is not an essay or an inspirational talk or any other free-floating piece of “content” (how I hate what that word has come to mean). It’s rooted and grounded in Scripture, it belongs in the flow of worship—one movement in what ought to be a coherent whole—and ideally, it points onward to the sacrament of communion.
I believe all that strongly. And also, sometimes I just have to get over myself.
A couple of people asked me to share the text of this past Sunday’s sermon, so I thought some of you might like to read it too. I’ve edited it lightly, and there were some ad-libs here and there, so this isn’t exactly as preached. The texts for Sunday, Psalm 63:1-8 and John 11:17-27, were actually chosen and translated by the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, in her Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (Year A), which I commend to you. I hope you find something in these words that blesses you and meets you where you are too.
Psalm 63:1-8
God, my God, I see you, you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh hungers for you,
as in a dry and weary land without water.
So in the sanctuary have I beheld you,
seeing your power and glory.
Because your faithful love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
Therefore will I bless you by name as long as I live;
while I lift up my hands.
As with a rich feast my soul is satisfied,
and with singing lips my mouth will praise you
when I recall you upon my bed,
and in the watches of the night meditate on you—
for you have been my help—
nd in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.If You Had Been Here
A sermon preached at Crosspointe Church, Cary, N.C., on Sunday, May 7, 2023
We are in the midst of the Easter season, that 50-day stretch from Easter Sunday through Pentecost. And maybe this seems like a weird thing to say, given how just a few Sundays ago, some of us were right here singing, “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone.” But I wonder whether the Easter season might be the time of year when the Church is at greatest risk of toxic positivity.
I know it’s a threat all year round. We have all encountered those kind church folk who think they’re doing us a favor when they tell us that everything happens for a reason, that God has a plan, that all things work together for the good, when, much of the time, they are just keeping themselves comfortable by avoiding hard conversations and dodging pain.
I’m a big believer in hope; I wouldn’t be preaching to you if I weren’t. Yet there’s a significant difference between faithful hope and baseless optimism. And truly good news doesn’t dodge the hard stuff or the tough questions. But what do these old hymns mean for those of us who are still struggling to face tomorrow? What do these enduring ideas have to say to those of us for whom fear has not actually gone? What can we offer to those of us who are still wrestling with grief, still grappling with anger, still in the midst of something that feels less than holy and less than celebratory? Given that we’re in this resurrection season, do we just sit quietly and stifle our doubts for a little longer, or is there good news for us too?
Today’s Scripture passages, both the psalm and the gospel, which I am about to read, were chosen for this Sunday by the Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, a Hebrew Bible scholar at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas, and the author of A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church. Dr. Gafney gives us a gift in her choice of these texts, which together meet us in the midst of an unfinished story. The good news is that our God is a God who accompanies us through our unfinished story.
Listen for what God might have to say to God’s people today through the reading of this passage from the 11th chapter of the Gospel according to John:
John 11:17-27
When Jesus arrived, he found that for four days Lazarus had already been in the tomb. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. So, many of the Judeans had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she met him, however Mary remained at the house. Martha said to Jesus, "Rabbi, if you had been here, my brother would never have died. Yet even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even though they die, they will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Rabbi, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who comes into the world."
Imagine with me Martha—
Martha in the midst of mourning,
Martha struggling with her sadness at the loss of her brother,
Martha propelled by grief,
propelled to meet their friend Jesus before he had even arrived at their house,
propelled to confront him,
propelled to level some serious accusations.
Where were you when we needed you? she asks. Why weren’t you here?
Do you sense her profound sorrow? And pay attention to her boldness. She doesn’t hold back.
If you had been here, she says. If you had been here, this would never have happened. If you had been here, you could have done something. If you had been here, Lazarus would still be with us. If you had been here.
What bracing honesty! What daring! Martha has the audacity to blame Jesus for his absence.
If you had been here.
Her words echo those of the psalmist, who wonders about God’s absence.
“God, my God, I seek you,” the psalmist sings. Who needs to seek what already feels present? This is an accusation of absence. “My soul thirsts for you,” the psalmist cries out. “My flesh hungers for you, as in a dry and weary land without water.” This is a declaration of abandonment.
But do you see how, in both instances, these accusations, these statements of blame, are also confessions of faith? Because both Martha and the psalmist have high expectations. Both Martha and the psalmist believe that the Holy One should show up. Both Martha and the psalmist hope in something, in someone, beyond themselves—someone who has made promises, someone who has superhuman power, someone who has been there before.
In both instances, the memory of what has been done before, the recollection of who God has been before, brings them back to steadiness.
“When I recall you, when I meditate on you, I sing for joy,” the psalmist says. “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”
“Yes, Rabbi, I believe,” Martha says. “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who comes into the world.”
These confessions of faith, these reiterations of belief, aren’t based on anything that God does in that instance. They are recollections. They are remembrances. They are meditations. They are memories.
Martha travels along the same trajectory that the psalmist does: an expression of grief, an accusation of absence, a crying out to God, a summoning of memory, a stirring of hope.
Let me emphasize that, both with Martha and with the psalmist, we meet them partway through their stories, in the midst of their human messiness, in the thicket of lived experience where there is no resolution, where there is no clear answer, where there is no neat conclusion or tidy ending.
And maybe that’s why I find Martha’s confession of faith especially moving, because remember, in this extract that we have, Lazarus has not yet been raised from the dead, though we, the lucky readers, know that he will be. In this snippet of story, all we have is Martha’s sorrow and her outcry and her remarkable confession of faith. And I’m especially struck by how that confession of faith ends: “You,” she says, “are the one who comes into the world.”
The one who comes into the world.
The one who comes into our midst.
The one who comes into our grief.
The one who comes into our suffering, into our sorrow, into our reality, into our wrestling with death, into our paroxysms of anger, into our accusations and our cries and our limited understandings.
The one who comes into the world.
This, dear ones, is a confession of faith in the God of the unfinished story. Martha models for us what it means to live in the tension of the already and the not yet. Martha embodies bracing candor and holy honesty. Martha gives us a picture of sacred audacity and stunning hope.
Show up, God, she says. Show up.
You have been my friend before, she says. Be my friend now.
Give me some good news, she says. I need some good news.
Let me be so bold as to make the claim that you would not be here if you had not already sensed something of the good news. You would not be here if you did not have some seed of hope. And yet I suspect you are not here without your own questions, your own doubts, your own anxieties, your own fears.
I think you are here because you, in your life, have experienced some Lazarus moments; you have had to say goodbye unexpectedly to something or someone you love, you have had to walk through a season of grief, you have had to struggle with some problem that feels beyond you, and you have had to wrestle with the reality of what it means to be painfully human.
You are also here because you want the good news to be as good as it is promised to be. You have to believe that there is something beyond this visible reality. You have to hold onto the possibility that what you can sense isn’t all there is. You have to keep walking toward a light that might glimmer sometimes but still seems all too faint. You are here because you want to see and to feel and to know, in your very marrow, that the One who comes into the world has come into the world to be with you and for you and alongside you. You are here because you cling to hope.
Or maybe you’re here because someone else made you be here, but that is faith and commitment too.
The one who comes into the world.
The one who comes into our midst.
The one who comes into our grief.
The one who comes into our suffering, into our sorrow, into our reality, into our wrestling with death, into our paroxysms of anger, into our accusations and our cries and our limited understandings.
The one who comes into the world.
Do you believe, as Martha did, that the one who comes into the world has come into the world for the sake of love?
Do you believe, as Martha did, that the one who comes into the world has come into the world for the cause of life?
Do you believe, as Martha did, that the one who comes into the world has come into the world because he cares for you and cherishes you and mourns with you and feels with you and laments with you and sings with you and celebrates with you and delights in you and treasures you?
There are days—maybe it’s fairer to say ”moments“—when I believe as Martha did. And then there are other days—many days, I have to be honest, when I want to believe more than I actually believe. On those days, I might find myself shouting at God—shouting inside my heart, really, because as a well-trained Chinese kid, I learned mostly to keep my emotions sub-surface—and saying, “If you had been here. If only you had been here.” Or I might find myself wandering from God, saying much the same thing:
If only you had been here, I wouldn’t have been so lonely.
If only you had been here, it might have seemed okay.
If only you had been here, it would not have hurt so much.
But maybe God was there all along, just not in the form or the shape I was able to feel or sense at the time. Maybe God was there in the presence of the friend who sat with me in silence, not trying to fix anything. Maybe God was there in the words of a pastor who preached a sermon about love that pierced through all the things I’d heard about damnation and hate. Maybe God was there in the ruffled petals of the tulip that endured the cold of winter only to burst forth in the warmth of springtime and in the shared laughter after the funeral that awkwardly broke the tears.
Maybe God was there, urging me to believe just a bit more than I did the moment before. When I ponder those maybe moments, I find myself pulled back toward the good news, because I still need good news—and I’m pretty sure others do too.
There are days when the world screams in agony: If only you had been here.
When we read about a massacre at a mall or another school shooting, another hate crime or another assault on beautiful humanity, ongoing war on an international scale or the grievous acts of domestic violence that happen behind closed doors, of course we say: If only you had been here.
Maybe God was there, in the steady labors of doctors and nurses working to save lives or in the self-sacrifice of a security guard. Maybe God was there in the bystander who said, “Wait!” or in the embrace of the ally who says, “You’re not alone.” Maybe God is there in the spirit of those who insist there is another way, those who move for justice, those who summon us to a way of peace and possibility and healing, those who testify in big ways and small, in public proclamation and private acts, to the promise of love.
We still need good news. With all the world’s sorrows, I still need—we still need—to believe that Jesus is who he says he is and that the good news is still as good as it claims to be.
The good news, dear ones, is that our God is a God who accompanies us through our unfinished story—our deeply human story, a story that is pockmarked with grief and scarred by sorrow, a story that is marked by death but also moving toward resurrection, a story that is fall and winter but also spring and summer, a story that contains so many questions and doubts but is also graced by solace and companionship.
The good news, dear ones, is that our God is a God who accompanies us through our unfinished story—our thirsty story and our hungry story, a story that calls us to remember the ways in which God has showed up before and that urges us to hope that God will fulfill God’s promise to show up again.
The good news, dear ones, is that our God is a God who accompanies us through our unfinished story—and in a few moments, we will come again to the Table that this God has set before us, a meal of spiritual sustenance that meets us wherever we are. You are invited to come and to drink and to eat and to taste—taste possibility and taste promise and taste healing and taste hope.
When we come to the Table, we meet once again the one who comes into the world.
The one who comes into our midst.
The one who comes into our grief.
The one who comes into our suffering, into our sorrow, into our reality, into our wrestling with death, into our paroxysms of anger, into our accusations and our cries and our limited understandings.
The one who comes into the world.
The one who comes into the world is here for me and is here for you and is here for all. So let us cry out, and let us be bold in our accusations, and let us sing, and let us lean into the wildest of divine promises, because the one who comes into the world has thrown open his arms in the widest embrace, and in that divine hug, you will find your truest home and your deepest hope.
In the name of the One who was and is and is to come, amen and amen and amen.
What I’m Growing: The tulips in the yard are still showing off. It’s funny: I forgot what bulbs I bought! So each one that pops out of the ground unfurls a surprise. I was so thankful for these tulips last week. Every time we took Fozzie out, which is about eight or nine times a day, I was reminded that they need the cold and dark of winter. When it seems as if nothing is happening, they are actually taking the nutrients they have and transforming them into the glucose that they will need to flourish and flower when the warmth and sunshine return in the spring.
In our yard, I’ve already planted spinach, lettuce, and broccoli; I have never successfully grown broccoli, but I keep trying. Next weekend, the community garden will open, and I’ll begin preparing our plots for the growing season.
One more update from Uganda: Last Tuesday, the Ugandan Parliament passed a revised, ever-so-slightly softened version of the anti-LGBTQ+ law. Citizens will no longer be required to report any suspicion of same-sex activity, only those involving minors and “vulnerable persons.” But the sweeping bill still includes a host of harsh punishments, ranging from fines to the death penalty. Those who “knowingly allow their premises to be used for acts of homosexuality” still face seven years in prison; that could include, say, the parents of a queer person who lives at home or a landlord who rents to a gay couple.
Three hundred and seventy one members of Parliament voted for the bill. Just one, Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, a Roman Catholic lawyer, voted against it.
The debate over the legislation has put Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community in an uncomfortable spotlight. Yesterday, I learned that a transgender woman I interviewed in 2015 had managed to flee the country. My friend Clare Byarugaba also reported that Arthur, a queer son of one PFLAG-Uganda parent, had been attacked in the street. “He received treatment so he is better,” Clare said. “But he is very scared.” The attack “has worried the parents even more. But they are surviving.”
Amidst all that, “I am so grateful for your readers’ generosity,” Clare wrote. Last week, I transferred $2,575 to her. She has already allocated the funds to cover the costs of security as well as to defray the medical bills both of Arthur and of one PFLAG-Uganda mother who has been dealing with stress-related health problems in the wake of the law’s proposal and passage.
If you are the praying kind, please continue to remember Clare, Arthur, the PFLAG-Uganda moms, and Uganda’s entire LGBTQ+ community in your prayers.
Finally, a programming note: On Sunday, May 21, I will be speaking and preaching at the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C. (“Not that kind of Baptist,” they always say.) During the adult-education hour at 9:30 a.m., I think we’ll be talking about things that I always like to talk about, including compost and worms and gardening. Then, at 11 a.m., I’ll be preaching during Sunday worship. I don’t know what the sermon will be about yet; I’m not that kind of overachieving preacher who has a sermon written so far in advance. That would be weird.
What’s on your hearts and minds this week?
As ever, I’m so grateful that we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.
Much love,
Jeff
I need this sermon every day. Thank you so much for sharing. I think God is in many places we would not think to look.
The sermon I always seem to need to hear over and over. Thank you for writing it and for sharing this with us.