mary

“…but the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t know it. Supposing that he was among their band of travelers, they journeyed on for a full day while looking for him among their family and friends. When they didn’t find Jesus, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple.” – Luke 2:43b-46

About a year ago I had a ‘moment of panic.’ I had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, I was working with two families experiencing loss, and the Senior Pastor at my church was about to leave on vacation for a month. When I got to Christmas Eve at my church in Pontiac and as I shook hands and greeted people I began to feel overwhelmed. What was truly overwhelming was the way in which person-after-person cocked their heads to say, “are you okay?”

Each thing on its own would have been fine, but this perfect storm hit that night. During that service as I sat up front, when my responsibilities were concluded and my mind drifted a bit, it all washed over me. I knew I was going to fall apart right in front of the entire church. I didn’t. I made it to the back steps of the church instead of greeting people and I fell completely apart crying. I sobbed, alone, in the dark for the longest time. I collapsed in a ‘moment of panic.’

Have you ever had a moment of panic? It is different for everyone, but I suspect most of us have felt a moment like that. It could be a missing child, a confrontation, a call from a creditor when you have no money to pay, legal trouble, abuse, job loss, divorce… I don’t know what you have experienced (or maybe you are experiencing), but I suspect this is a pretty universal feeling.

In the scripture above, Mary must have found herself in a moment of panic. I can almost see it and hear it: She is in the midst of a loud parade heading home. There she stands with voices, laughter, and rejoicing as her community heads home from the festival. Can you imagine how the world must have become muted and far-off when she had her moment of panic? Can you imagine how her stomach must have twisted and fallen when she realized her son was not in this large parade of safety and happiness?

In a moment of panic: Mary & Joseph must have been frantic and must have hurried back to Jerusalem. They found the boy, feeling at home, in the temple challenging others and being challenged, himself. Yet, the story doesn’t end when the young Jesus is found. The story is about more than a young boy being physically found by his parents.

This story is about a messiah who took Mary and Joseph’s moment of panic and turned it into something else. They worried for their little boy’s well-being, but the Christ child saw it differently: He asks, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” They had a moment of panic, but young Jesus turned it into a moment of clarity.

I wonder, though, it you’ll allow me to go off-point for a moment. I want to talk about where this all happened. It’s the end of a festival. When Mary & Joseph return the temple must have been nearly empty compared to a day earlier. For us, on the week after Christmas it isn’t much different: Christmas eve and Christmas Day have come and gone; Warm feelings were felt as we sang ‘silent night’ on xmas eve; and then everyone returns home. The temple…the church…is empty.

The good news is that our God can take a quiet temple and turn it into a place of growth and faith. For us, today, this text reminds us that when we face a moment of panic, pain, grief, trouble, strife…when the world becomes muted and joy seems distant…we are to face that panic and return to the temple.

We are to return to our community of faith and when we come to the otherside of our trouble, Christ may just help us see the world differently. Our panic and trouble can become a growing faith: through scripture, challenging questions, the people around us, and, of course, God’s Holy Spirit.

Christ takes our human worries and pain and asks us to look at the world from another perspective. We are shaken by our pain & worry, but God helps us to see more clearly.

For me on that Christmas Eve that filled me with so much anxiety? I don’t know if I made it about Christ the way I should have. I don’t know what I did right or what I did wrong. And am sure that my life is no more valuable than others who didn’t survive when confronted by illness.

But I know with certainty that I grew and, as I look back, I see that others grew out of my ‘moment of panic’. I also know that my community of faith and my God: loved me, challenged me, prayed with me, and, ultimately, changed me.

I do know that on the other side of my own “moment of panic” I see the world differently and, I hope that, I love more fully. Oh, I’m not perfect – not even close. I’m not even sure if I’m better than I was. God doesn’t promise that, but in my moment of panic and struggle: God & my community helped me through that terrible time. They helped me to look back with clarity and insight.

When you find yourself struggling, I want you to know that church should be a place to struggle. When you feel lost or broken, I want you to know that you can be found. When the world has taken something from you, or you feel loss: know that you can gain something from a community of people who live out their faith and, of course, from your God.

In your moments of panic and trouble. Go with haste to your true home. Find a church that cares and allows you room to struggle and grow. I know you would enjoy mine…

image found at: http://poeticmindstate.com/tag/poems/

Rev. Mike Rayson, a United Methodist pastor here in Illinois is giving this homily today at Westminster Abbey in London as a guest preacher. He has agreed to share his message here as part of my guest blog series on Resurrection and New Life! (Thanks Mike!) You can find out more about Mike, his wife, and their ministry by clicking here: http://stpaulumcbrighton.blogspot.com/

A Good Friday Homily by Rev. Mike Rayson

Grace and peace from the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, our Bishop Gregory Palmer, and from the good people of St Paul’s congregation in Brighton Illinois, where I am currently appointed to serve together with my wife, the Reverend Amy Rayson, and our children Laura and Oliver.

Since Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, it has become for us the bearer of good news and of bad. Serving a vibrant and growing congregation means that the phone in my home rings several times each day. A church member who wants a friendly chat… A troubled soul seeking guidance… A local needing assistance with food… and sometimes news of illness, hospital admission, and even death.

It was the ringing of a phone one Monday morning in May 2007 that brought such news to my family. I’m sorry… your son, 11 year old Samuel, has been tragically killed. It was the beginning of a lifelong journey of pain for me, a truly Psalm 23 experience of moving through the valley of the shadow of death.

They say a clergyperson shouldn’t officiate at the funeral of a family member… but for me, as Sam’s dad, I knew I must. He was my son, and as I had served him in his life, so to I would serve him in his death.

The most harrowing and traumatic moment of my whole life happened that day. Not when I gave the eulogy… led the gathered faithful in prayer… or read from Matthew’s gospel of the one sheep who wandered away… but when I, as pastor and as daddy placed my hands upon the body of my child and recited the words…

Almighty God, into your hands we commend your son, my son, Samuel Thomas William Rayson. Born March 28th 1996 in Port Lincoln South Australia, died May 14th 2007 in Geneseo, Illinois. This body we commit to the flames. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

Nothing ever prepares a parent to bear the death of their child. We use the word widow for one who loses a partner… orphan for those who have lost their parents… yet our English language does not provide a word for a parent who must live and grieve for their child.

Nothing could have prepared Mary, the Mother of Jesus, for this. No broad shouldered support she received from the disciple John at the foot of the cross could have made the events of that terrible day in Jerusalem any easier to bear, as she watched her son put to death at the hands of a blind regime who wanted to hold fast to their religious power and authority.

In the heat of the afternoon on a hill of shame, a mother watched. Whilst the world cursed and crucified the babe she had nursed at her breast, a mother grieved. As the boy who had played at the feet of his mom was tortured and terrorized, scorned and shamed, despised and denied – the light that shone in a mothers proud eyes was extinguished, leaving in its place a wounded and suffering woman.

In the death of Christ, God Almighty embraced everything Mary experienced – the worst that we could ever experience; throwing his arms around our lost-ness, our shame, our sin, our alienation, and our pain… all the while whispering a simple word…

No… No… NO…

For this son of man, sent by God, truly God, came to seek and to save the lost, to embrace the darkness with the light of life… to redeem the tears of a woman whose heart had shattered at the vision of her son’s death. ‘No’ cried God – this was not how it was meant to be for her, or for us.

In the words of theologian Dr. C Baxter Kruger, “there on the cross, he penetrated the last stronghold of darkness. There he walked into the utter depths of our alienation. There the intolerable No!, shouted by God the Father at the Fall of Adam, found its true fulfillment in Jesus’ Yes! “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit,” as he took his final step into Adam’s disaster. Jesus died–and the Fall of Adam died with him”.

As a Dad, grieving for a little boy, my tears have truly fallen… leaning on the arms of her son’s beloved disciple, the tears of Mary, the mother of God must have fallen… and I know your tears too have fallen in the presence of death as you have encountered it.

For it is the thief says Jesus, who comes only to steal and kill and destroy;yet it is in the cross, underscored by what C.S Lewis’ referred to as ‘the deeper magic’, that Jesus has gathered back the tears the thief has stolen from us, and proclaimed that we are made for something beyond than the cold hands of death. Something more than mere extinction or annihilation. Something above the hands of time. We are made for life and life more abundantly.

And so it is we wait… silently, painfully, expectantly… for that Sunday bloom of sheer grace and liberating life to rain again upon our broken and weary souls. For as sure as the sun will rise on the dawn of tomorrow and as certain as the daffodils bloom each February and March, so death will NOT have the last word.

Not for Mary, not for me, and most assuredly not for anyone who trusts in the one who died for us all.

Carnes Family Web

Moments of Panic

Resurrection & New Life: A Good Friday Homily