God's Empathy over Human Torture: Resurrection

Back This is a sermon about compassion, which I believe is at the core of the resurrection as it is at the core of the incarnation. First a story, based on a true story, then our scriptures.



There's a man lying in bed. He is so depressed he can not get up. He does not go to church. He has not sung in years. He probably never did dance. He watches a lot of TV. Imagine the Jack Nicholson character in As Good As It Gets, and then take away the social skills. One neighbor cares. That neighbor is a church member. That neighbor knows a little bit about depression. That neighbor has invited that man to church for months, without a positive response. That neighbor bangs on the door and enters the apartment. That pushy, worried Christian neighbor brings food. That neighbor checks the medicine to make sure suicide is not being committed. And that Christian neighbor goes and tells his pastor. And the pastor decides to pay a visit.



Now this is Easter time, one of the few times of the year when we un-repress our most hidden desire-which is for miracles. Sometimes it seems that four fifths of maturity is disappointment. Well, I want to beef up that other fifth. Let's get your hopes up. Here comes the minister, and let's imagine him praying very sincerely that he can help God reach this man-who has not exactly invited him to visit. And so he comes into the apartment the Christian neighbor.



Perhaps we remember back to our Christian Street Magic and the basic strength of prayer. The neighbor introduces, they do a prayer, read scripture-no response to any of this-so thinking that they are double-teaming the man in the bed, the neighbor leaves. The minister now feels he's got to get creative here. Reads more scripture, about Jesus healings, even an exorcism or two. The depression is so thick he's not sure he's getting through. More prayer. Finally, he is about to give up. The man is not moving, not responding. What can he do?



The minister tells the man to move over and lies down on top of the sheets with him. Says nothing. And lays there. He is actually a little angry at the man in the bed, but he says nothing. Perhaps he is absorbing some of the man's negativity. Half an hour passes, silently. The minister is stubborn. The depressed man has not had another human being this close to him in years. The presence is powerful.



Finally the man does get out of bed. Still not that responsive, still needs medication, but it is the beginning of his recovery. Not a big resurrection story, but it is a little one, based in compassion. The minister has taken his place. And that is miracle enough-if we have eyes to see.



Well before that last third of the Gospels that is the passion story, of which Barbara read the conclusion, the deposition of Jesus body before the story of the Empty Tomb, there is a place where Jesus is asked to perform a miracle. And he refuses to do a miracle for show. Those who ask are named as Pharisees, possibly some friends of Jesus despite their disagreements. Jesus refuses to put on a show, but offers instead what he calls the "sign of Jonah." Now Jesus was a prophet, like Jonah was a prophet, and we think of the miracle of Jonah as Jesus emerging from the belly of the great fish-- a whale of a miracle-but that does not seem to have been what Jesus really meant.



Once Jonah had been spat up by the great fish, he accepted his prophetic task with a vengeance, and wanted to denounce Nineveh (which is today's Mosul, in Iraq). And he really wanted to see that city destroyed by God's judgment. But instead God tells Jonah, you know, my reluctant prophet, the people are obeying my word. They are repenting. Jonah doesn't want to hear it (these are pagans after all), but God is showing compassion and people are saved. That is the sign of Jonah-God's objective in saving Jonah himself as well. And it was probably a frustrating story for Pharisees or anybody to hear who wanted God's judgment to be unleashed.



So we have the core lesson from Jesus, God's compassion is bigger than God's judgment.



But if God is so compassionate, why are there not more resurrections? In this life, as we know it, there are so many natural tragedies and natural evils, and I don't mean the media craziness of the Terri Schiavo case that many of us who have had older relatives die may understand. I am talking about human evils also, the horrifying reality of torture like Jesus suffered, practiced everywhere and in some dark corners of our empire under every president, even by our own people. Jesus took our place, not just in the bed of a sick man, but on the rack of the torturers.



To me this is the biggest reason to doubt the resurrection, and in fact all miracles that might show God's presence. Why isn't there justice and peace and even the general resurrection that is pictured in Ezekiel 37, when the dry bones rise up? This was a model of resurrection that some Jews in Jesus' time held, when they expected that Jesus would be the first born of the dead, that he was the first fruits of this mystical harvest by which all the dead would be raised at the end of the age. This is not a judging end of the world, but it would be a transformation of the world into something more of God's kingdom.



I don't want to say that Jesus had no judgment side. Think of the cleansing of the Temple, when Jesus drove out the money-changers. I'm not as sure now that that episode took place the day after Palm Sunday (the Gospel of John puts the story near the beginning of Jesus' ministry and has Jesus going to Jerusalem at least 3 times in his life). What if Jesus had gone to Jerusalem before that Passover of the Passion and had seen that bustling market in the outer courtyard, and had been outraged at the exploitation of human beings-poor pilgrims-near the very symbolic center of Israel. The story tells us that he saw the situation and came back the next day with a whole bunch of people, so his action was pre-meditated: a symbolic, angry but non-violent demonstration.



This would have made him a marked man among the Roman establishment as well as among the collaborating Jewish leadership. (It would have symbolized, as Albert Nolan says in Jesus Before Christianity, Jesus' focus on Jews exploiting each other-the need to focus on Judaism's heart before fighting for any external rebellion that would end in tragedy). This would help account for the way Jesus' final trip into Jerusalem is so clearly a time of a "showdown," with both Jews and Romans in the swat team that arrests him in the Garden of Gethsemane.



But the resurrection says that God brings good out of that evil day that begins in the night of the arrest. To me the story of Jesus calls forth empathy, not just for him, but for all suffering, especially those who suffer as consequence of trying to change the world. That work of God is not over. I have several files like this one of clippings-I am a newspaper addict-clippings that describe people who give their lives for others. Some of these are obituaries that lift up the world-changing actions in the person's life. Others are simply news of prophets from all over the world and all walks of life-people who felt God's call to stop evil as much as they could. These are the Acts of the Apostles continuing.



I believe this rise of compassion is part of the resurrection experience. Certainly for these many Christians it is. A Catholic priest in the Philippines, Niall O'Brien, writes of caring for the victims of torture, by both the Marcos regime and the rebels. For him there is "a mystery of the evil that good people do." Only a few monsters start out to do evil. But the miracle is that good comes out of evil. The same force that propelled Jesus propels these Christian prophets even in the face of torture and prison.

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