Reconciling the Unreconcilable

The Rev. Amy Hodges Morehous
August 12, 2012
Proper 14
Church of the Ascension

When my sister and I were little, we had a bit of a case of hero worship for
our uncle, my father's youngest brother. My mother is an only child, and
my other uncle had died, so he was our only uncle on either side. He was
always really great with technology and electronics. He brought us the first
VCR we'd ever seen and loaned it to us for the afternoon. It looked amazing on our 12" television set. 

We thought he was kind of like a wizard - poof!- you never knew when he would pop up with something cool and interesting. He had a great laugh, and would be thrilled with our interest in whatever he was trying to explain to us.

But the visits grew fewer, and his behavior grew stranger. We visited him
in the hospital one weekend, and he looked terrible. I found out when I
got older that he had "borrowed" a motorcycle, and had an accident
at a busy intersection. He stopped visiting our house regularly, but things
suddenly began disappearing when we weren't home. Small things. Cash.
My sister's piggy bank. Then bigger things. We didn't enough money to 

replace the things that were gone. Sometimes things would mysteriously

reappear. Sometimes they wouldn't.

Then came the stints in prison. Driving while intoxicated. Possession of
a controlled substance. Theft. Driving on a suspended license. He would
attend court ordered rehab, and be sober for a period of time. We would
hear from him sometimes, then. He would call to see how we were doing,
tell us where he was. His laugh would still be the same. But those times
would never last, and he would once again be on a cycle of arrests and
imprisonments and release, and we usually had no idea where he was.
For twenty years, my sister and I lived in fear that we would
get the call that he had caused a fatal accident. But that call never came.

Last summer, the call I got instead was from one of my cousins. My uncle
was fatally ill - Hepatitis C and cirrhosis. He didn't have long to live, and
he no longer even recognized anyone - not even his only brother. My first
feeling was shock, and then briefly, relief. Our worst fear hadn't come true.
He hadn't ever injured anyone. Then I felt immediately guilty, for feeling
that way.

He lived only a few weeks longer. Despite the anger I felt with him, and with the choices that he had made, I still cried when the call came that he had died. I cried because, in my heart of hearts, I hoped that he would make different choices. That those choices would stick. That he would become the person God meant him to be, the person I remembered as a child. That he would be reconciled with what remained of his family, with the people he had wounded. As long as he was alive, I could hang on to the possibility of reconciliation, no matter how small.

David's son Absalom had an even more horrible past. Absalom's brother,
Amnon, assaulted their sister, Tamar. Their father David did nothing to
bring justice in the midst of tragedy. Overcome with his anger, Absalom
bided his time, and let his anger fester into hate. One night, he got Amnon
drunk, and then had his servants murder him. His revenge was complete.

For his crime, Absalom is cast out for years from David's kingdom. David
allows him back, but for more long years, David will not receive him in
court, or even speak to him. Fed up, Absalom appears before his father,
and demands to either be recognized, or killed. Father and son reconcile,
briefly, but Absalom's heart is still false. Absalom wins over some of
David's soldiers, and the hearts of the people of Israel. He withdraws from
the city, then proclaims himself ruler, and David flees Jerusalem in fear of
his life. Absalom returns as the conqueror, and takes over the city, and all
his father's wives, demonstrating his power before the people.

Yet still, even with all that Absalom has done - murder, subterfuge,
insurrection - before the final battle, David pleads with his remaining loyal
soldiers to be lenient with Absalom. His love and hope lead David, the
warrior, to ask for a near impossibility. Let the betrayer live, because he is
my son.

David grief at Absalom's death is not only that of a parent losing a child.
His grief is at the end of possibility for relationship and reconciliation with
someone he had hurt, who had also hurt him. As long as they both lived,
there was always hope, no matter how slim, that the relationship could be
mended. With Absalom's death, there can be no reconciliation, no healing
of the deep wounds between them.

I'm assuming that most of you have not had a child nearly overthrow your
kingdom. (Unless, perhaps, you have a two-year-old.) Most of us can't find 

common ground there. But I'll bet most of you have your own uncle, 

or friend, or cousin, or sibling or a child with whom you are estranged. 

I told you the story of my uncle not because it’s unique, but because it is the  story of millions of people. If you see parts of yourself in that story, I hope you know that who you are now isn’t who you must always be. If you see  a person you love in that story, I hope that you have the chance to speak in this life, that you have a chance to begin to bind up the wounds that have grown between you.

You may tell me that some hurts are too large, that some wounds too deep
to heal. Believe me, I understand. For me, too, that work of reconciliation
is still in progress. The last gift I was asked to give to my uncle was to
officiate at his funeral service. In my homily, I said, "Part of grieving the loss of someone is letting go of things that will not be reconciled, at least not on this earth. Sometimes there are things that go unsaid in families, and in friendships. Sometimes there are griefs that are too large, and relationships that cannot be mended. Opening our hands, and letting those things go is hard. But I believe in a God who is a great healer. I think that even as we speak, God is working in this world and the next, to heal what is wounded, to bind up what is broken, and to reconcile that which is unreconcilable."

The good news we are about here is just that - reconciliation. Transformation. 

While the story of David and Absalom may seem dark and hopeless, what I hope you'll see in that story is just that. Hope. Not fruitless hope, but the hope of a father for a child. Not earthly hope in things that can be finite, but in God's holy hope for reconciliation and relationship. The same hope that our loving God holds for each of us, no matter what we may have done to separate ourselves, no matter the wounds we have caused one another, no matter what we have done to grieve the Holy Spirit. Just as David asks for another chance for his son, I believe God does the same for all those who are separated from each other, from God. Just as David hopes for a reunion, so God holds out hope for each of us when we wound, when we rebel, when we wander.

And we live in a world sorely in need of that reconciliation. Each day,
we find new and more inventive ways to divide ourselves from each other.

That hurts you.  It hurts me. After all, we are members of one another. "Be
kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you." Kind. That's not something we think of often, anymore, is it? It seems somehow quaint, like a relic from our grandparents' time. Kind. Is that something we teach anymore? Is that something our children learn from us, every day? Do we show that we value that in one other? Rabbi and scholar Abraham Heschel once wrote, "When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people." An old Rabbi, advocating kindness. That sounds so idyllic, and peaceful, and unrealistic. What could he know about divisions, or anger or hatred?

Rabbi Heschel was intimately acquainted with hate. His mother was
murdered by the Nazis, and two of his sisters died in concentration camps.
But he advocated kindness and nonviolence as a force for change. This
Polish rabbi marched in Selma, Alabama, with Martin Luther King, Jr. He
worked for change, for reconciliation, for healing and wholeness.

We can disagree without anger, without hate.  We can believe that we are meant to work for change, to work for the kingdom of God here in this world, and still do it with kindness, and respect in the face of our differences. We can speak the truth in love, or we can speak it in bitterness, and hate. "It is, as Nelson Mandela has said, never seeing an enemy, but always a future friend … and not only treating the person as you would a friend but in such a way as looks forward to that friendship blossoming. If the goal is transformation and changing hearts, and if we believe we are in the right, our goal is not to defeat the other but to move their hearts." (*Kinman) In Christ, we know that the most powerful force in the universe for  change is not hatred or division, but sacrificial love.

"If we are not just to follow Christ but to trust in Christ fully, the goal of every encounter with someone who disagrees with us," with someone who has wounded us - "our goal must be together to strive for what is ... beyond us. To have all of our hearts transformed by God’s love so that together we are shaped into the image of Christ." (*Kinman)

Despite the wounds, despite the disappointments, despite the separations,
we can be bold enough to be part of the healing and reconciliation to which
we are called. We can do that by fully saying "yes" to what Christ asks of
us. The passage from Ephesians shows us what our lives might look like if
we really lived into that "yes, Lord, I believe." We're not going to get it right all the time. We're human. But we worship a God of second and third and twenty-third chances.

Because we are so human, we live in relationship with one another. In
being part of one another, we make ourselves vulnerable to hurt. We hurt
ourselves, we hurt each other. Sometimes those wounds are too much for
us to overcome on our own. But the good news is that we aren’t on our
own. No matter what depths surround us now, or in the future, no matter
the divisions and the wounds, God will hear us when we call.  

Jesus doesn't offer the Bread of Life to us only once. He offers it over 

and over and over and over. As many times as it takes us to get it. God 

doesn't give up on the hope of transformation for the people of the world. 

Even when we are estranged one from another, one person from one person,  or a whole nation from another nation, God’s holy hope is for reconciliation and justice.  God hopes so much for our healing and restoration to wholeness that God sent the Son, sent the Bread of Life to live a human life among us, so that his sacrificial, boundless love would be the ultimate gift of reconciliation for us all. God sends the Holy Spirit to be among us, to be within us, so that we will have hearts that yearn to be transformed, one with God and one other.

We are the beloved children of God. We bring our brokennesses, our
separations, and our human hearts to this table of God, to share the
living bread set before us. In that sharing, we offer up our very selves to be
transformed, to be healed and made whole. May we yearn always to live into that hopeful love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, in offering and sacrifice.

Amen.

(*The Very Rev. Mike Kinman is the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, MO, and quite a transformational preacher himself.)