Sermon
“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”1
Aptly named, “Preaching and Trauma,” the conference I recently attended online began with naming the victims of the shooting in Buffalo, NY just the day before. Just a few days after the end of the conference here we are reading the names of 19 elementary school students and two of their teachers.
“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”
During this conference one of the speakers, Otis Moss III the senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, used this prayer as a rallying cry. Opening our broken hearts was a theme used by several of the speakers who, after the shooting in Buffalo, changed their announced presentation topics to meet the moment.
It really feels like we in America, including you and me, need to change something to meet this moment. Are not our hearts broken by the things that break the heart of God?
Today's text reminds us of the hopes that Jesus has for us. It reminds us of the power of our testimony, of our witness. In Chapters 14-16 Jesus is talking to his disciples. In Chapter 17, Jesus switches to prayer. First Jesus prays for himself, then the disciples, and then for the disciples yet-to-be. That's us. You and I are part of “those who will believe in me through their word;” through the words of the disciples there with Jesus at the time. In today's text we get to eavesdrop on Christ praying for us.
Jesus prays that we may believe. The belief Jesus talks about here isn't a cognitive belief that we have after making an intellectual decision. Believing, according to the gospel of John means living a life that shows others what we believe. We know for ourselves that when we say anything about our faith, our words are open for interpretation, based on the experiences of those we are with. People will evaluate what we do more than what we say. The best way we show others what we believe is by what we do. In an opinion in the New York Times responding to the report of the Southern Baptist Church's sexual abuse scandal, columnist David Brooks asks, “Don't our beliefs matter?” He writes, “The fact is, moral behavior doesn't start with having the right beliefs. Moral behavior starts with an act — the act of seeing the full humanity of other people. Moral behavior is not about having the right intellectual concepts in your head. It's about seeing other people with the eyes of the heart, seeing them in their full experience, suffering with their full suffering, walking with them on their path. Morality starts with the quality of attention we cast upon another.”
We have heard the cry too many times, “don't send your thoughts and prayers” make a change. Vote differently. Change laws. Witness to the pain and the injustice. By marching, by writing letters, making calls, rallying, making phone calls. And yet, Diana Butler Bass reminds us that thoughts and prayers aren't nothing. She writes this week, “Thoughts and prayers can really mean something — if those thoughts and prayers reveal the extent of evil and break our hearts with the love and sorrow of God. In lament and litany, we can discover we have the power to act” So yes, we witness to the pain and injustice also by praying.
Jesus also prays for us that we will have the same relationship with God as Jesus has. This relationship is about love; self-giving love. The love that compels us to give of ourselves. This love will be visible in our actions. This love will make us one. Jesus prays for a oneness for his us. “So that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” The oneness Jesus prays for for us is “not found in human maneuvering but in the oneness of God.” “Jesus prays that that those who are friends with God would understand that everyone — and everything — belongs to each other.”
What are we being called to in this text then? We are reminded that Jesus prayed specifically for us, the one's who have come to believe through the words and actions of his disciples, as clumsy and broken as they were. We are called to witness to, testify to, what that belief in Christ means to us by being one. Jesus prayed that we would share hearts full of self-giving love just as God gave us Jesus. We are to called to live lives that show how the love of God is known in us, how the love of God is drawn out of us and shown to others.
What will we change in order to meet the moment at such a time as this? Maybe nothing. Maybe more of the good work we already do. Or maybe something God has yet to put into our hearts. I would like to play a short three minute audio clip now. During this time I invite us to reflect, pray, listen or rest as you feel the need. While the world may make us feel cynical about prayers, we know that it isn't nothing. Writer Debie Thomas says that she prays for several reasons, but that this text for today reminds her that she prays because Jesus did. She writes, “With words, without words, through laughter, through tears, in hope, and in despair, prayer holds open the possibility that I am not alone, and that this broken, aching world isn't alone, either.”
Cremaine Booker, Hymn to the Eternal Flame by Stephen Paulus
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1 Founder of World Vision, a global Christian organization working to end poverty and it's systemic supports, Bob Pierce, wrote this prayer while visiting suffering children in Vietnam. (From their Mission Statement: World Vision is an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice, and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.)