A transfusion of love
There’s so much going on here today! #1. The Dwiggins/de Lima family from Holy Trinity– Kate and David, Marley, Henry and Alice are representing all of us this morning at a booth at Pride Fest here in Easton. They are handing out gender pronoun buttons, information about Holy Trinity, and invitations to a special worship service here at HTLC on July 9 celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. #2. Today we welcome Michaela de la Rosa – all the way from New Mexico to share stories of people escaping frightening situations in their home countries and trying to find a safe place to land here in our country. #3. We welcome back Doreen Rinas and Pastor David who accompanied Michaela and who will present to us a certificate naming Holy Trinity as a welcoming congregation to those seeking refuge and asylum. #4. And after worship we’ll enjoy a meal while we hear more about Border Servant Corps and ask questions and engage in conversations about our sisters and brothers across borders. There’s a lot going on here today!
And there’s a lot going on in today’s gospel lesson: First – Jesus calls Matthew to follow him. (“Get up from what you’re doing Matthew and follow me.” (Now, mind you as a tax collector it is highly likely that Matthew was despised – tax-collectors working on behalf of the emperor were notorious for cheating the people whose taxes they were supposed to collect.) Second – the religious folk – you know the good church folk – notice Jesus sitting with people like Matthew and other outcasts, (sinners – can you believe it) and those Pharisees are scratching their heads trying to figure out what in the world Jesus is up to. Third – out of the blue a leader of the synagogue pleads with Jesus for help, “My daughter has died.” Fourth – on the way to help, Jesus is interrupted by a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years, and, oh by the way, she is healed the instant she touches Jesus’ robe. Fifth – When Jesus arrives everyone is grieving over the dead girl, but Jesus says, “She isn’t dead, but only sleeping.” And the people laugh at Jesus. The people laugh at Jesus. And finally Jesus takes the girl by the hand and she gets up – very much alive!
There’s a whole lot going on here today involving a whole lot of people whose lives Jesus changes with a touch, a command, a hand, and Jesus doesn’t seem to care all that much about what categories these people fit into. When it comes to healing and loving and forgiving, Jesus doesn’t discriminate. It’s kind of like – whomever! Whatever! “Come to me!”
You are despised by most people. Doesn’t matter. I love you. You’re really, really poor and an addict and a prostitute. Doesn’t matter. I love you. You’ve lived with a chronic illness for years. Doesn’t matter. I love you. And I heal you. You all laugh at me. Doesn’t matter. I love you. YOU ARE DEAD. Doesn’t matter. I love you – wake up. You’re alive! The list goes on and on and its breath-taking what Jesus is up to. It’s seems so random that it’s almost reckless. It’s hard to wrap our imaginations around the absolute extravagance of Jesus’ love.
I wonder if that’s how we would describe our capacity for love, our capacity to build bridges, our capacity to welcome, our capacity to include. Is it indiscriminate? Is it extravagant? Is it random? Is it reckless? Is it all-encompassing? In other words, is our capacity to love like Jesus’ capacity to love? It knows no bounds.
I’d like to share a story about what Jesus’ enormous capacity is like. It’s written by a Lutheran Pastor named Heidi Neumark who serves Trinity Lutheran Church in Manhattan (and, by the way, just happened to preceded me at my very first call church in Hoboken, New Jersey. She tells this story.
I recently went into the hospital for a routine hip replacement. My left hip was replaced ten years ago, and now the right hip ached for its turn. The surgeon told me that techniques have improved in the past decade and I should expect a smooth and speedy recovery compared with the last time…As it turned out, the surgery was far from routine. The surgeon accidentally cut the femoral artery in my leg, which can cause a person to bleed out within a few minutes. Thankfully, the artery was repaired in time, and the surgery continued. I had two transfusions in the operating room, two more in recovery, and one after that. I now have matching titanium hips and I’m grateful to be alive. I’m grateful for all the strangers who donated the blood that saved my life.
And then Pastor Neumark shares some remarkable insight. …I think of my five blood transfusions and the strangers who donated the blood I received. Maybe I received blood from someone who sports a bright red MAGA hat. Maybe I received blood from someone who rejected their transgender child. Maybe I received blood from someone seeking to ban drag queens and books on Black history. Maybe I received blood from an enemy to all I hold dear, and their blood saved my life.
When you give blood, you can’t choose for your blood to go only to someone who shares your political views or your theological views. You can’t say that you want your blood to go only to a person of your race or ethnicity. You just give the blood and it goes where needed. And likewise, when you receive blood, you can’t pick and choose. I wasn’t even conscious for most of it, having no choice in anything that was happening around me or to me. What does this mean?
She muses, “You just give the blood and it goes where needed.” Now replace the word blood with love and you get, you get, what Jesus is up to today – and what we’re up to today. “You just give the love and it goes where it is needed.” “You just give the love and it goes where it is needed.” And she wrote this, “When you give blood you can’t choose for your blood to go only to someone who shares your political views…” And what’s Jesus up to? What is Jesus revealing today? “When you give love you can’t choose for your love to go only to someone who shares your political views. You can’t say that you want your love to go only to a person or your race or ethnicity. You just give love and it goes where it is needed!
Now I want to shift gears for a moment to another illustration of extravagant love. I’d like to draw your attention to the haunting and stunning painting by Marc Chagall that is included I your worship bulletin as a separate sheet. The painting is called the Exodus – based on the Israelites flight out of Egypt. Notice first that Chagall chooses Jesus, rather than Moses, to preside over the exodus, the escape, and second that Chagall inverts the traditional orientation of the scene so that we, the viewers of the painting, are not running with the people of Israel towards the Red Sea, but rather we are looking directly at them – from the perspective of the Red Sea. In other words, we are the sea and the people fleeing Egypt are running directly toward us.
Towards us! It’s happening now as well. The people who are fleeing oppression, poverty, terrorism, war, gangs, hunger in their own countries are running directly at us. We are the sea. To many we, the United States of America, are the promised land and will we, the people part, will we set aside our differences, will we work together to find a way to be practice radical hospitality and let these frightened, endangered people pass onto dry land, pass onto this dry land of safety and liberty. Will we welcome those running towards us, or will our waters of rejection overwhelm them and drown them?
Now, notice a couple of particular things about the painting (there’s so many fascinating stories in this painting – too many to mention here)). A Reverend Zac Koons, Rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Austin, Texas writes this about Chagall’s painting. You will notice in the painting that “Christ is on the cross, but upon closer examination, his arms appear not so much nailed down as open for embrace. Stretching out our arms to mirror his – to receive him – is the entire point. When we welcome the world’s refugees with open arms, we begin to look more and more like Christ, such that one day it will be like looking into a mirror.
We become, in short, what we worship: our Lord Jesus Christ, who stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace.”
There’s so much going on here today. Jesus is up to so much extravagant love today. That love is pulsating through the veins of this church into the community – a blood transfusion of love. And it comes right back to us – love pulsating through the veins of this community into the church. Amen
A footnote. This is an email the church received just yesterday from a couple who parked their RV overnight in our parking lot as part of the Harvest Host program that we belong to – a program that allows RV’s to stay overnights in parking lots all over the country. This note is from a couple who’ve been on the road in their RV for 8 years: Kathy writes,
Most welcoming stay ever! We happen to be a same sex couple traveling through New England. Chose this Harvest Host because it was on our route. Did NOT expect it to be such a welcoming inclusive church. After meeting some parishioners working in the fellowship hall after we arrived on Saturday, we decided we would attend Sunday morning service. We didn’t feel pressured to do so, we simply felt so comfortable there that we wanted to go. God Bless this congregation! We felt your love for all God’s children.
We felt your love for all God’s people. Amen.
Sources: The Christian Century Issue from June 29, 2022
Issue from June 5, 2023