TRINITY SERMONS

Trinity Presbyterian Church

2200 North Bell Avenue # Denton, Texas 76209

Rev. Craig Hunter

April 19, 2009

Choosing Life

Scriptures: Acts 4:32-35; John 20:19-31

I didn't write this sermon. No, I don't mean I downloaded it off the internet or got it from some other source. What I mean is, this sermon sort of wrote itself. You see, it came from a conversation I had this week. Indeed, this sermon is largely a re-creation of that conversation. Not in any verbatim sense, but most of this sermon follows the general outline of my conversation.

Most of my conversations are generally not sermon-like, but this conversation was an exception. I actually found myself talking theologically and thinking of Biblical passages in the middle of the conversation -- who'd a thunk it! I share it with you both because it has been on my heart this week, and more importantly, because I think it is an exercise in theological interpretation.

What happened was this -- I got a call from Mark in the middle of this past week. Mark is an old college friend I haven't heard from in a while. We quickly picked up where we had left off, and before too long, our conversation progressed into deeper waters, we were up to our chins in the affairs of the heart.

The issue that was on Mark's mind and heart concerned his relationships with his father and his two siblings. Mark's relationship with his siblings is sorely damaged, as is the relationship between his father and his siblings. The current cause of contention in his family, as in so many families with aging parents, has to do with responsibilities regarding the care of his father and with financial affairs regarding the estate. Where should the aging father be, how should his care be funded, etc. These issues are faced by many, and answers often aren't easy to find, even in families characterized by more healthy relationships. As they have been engaged in these issues for the last several years, the family members have been inflicting pain on each other, so that at this point, there is so much pain among them, they have a hard time seeing straight.

Knowing Mark and his story the way I do, I believe the causes of the family conflict go back, way back, indeed, to his childhood. From what Mark has shared with me, I believe that during most of his childhood, his father had intimacy issues, it was difficult for his father to be intimate with his children. This left all of the siblings hungering for a love and affirmation that they desperately wanted but so rarely received. I believe that same hunger for love is still at the root of the conflict, although of course it is never discussed.

As the result of an event in Mark's teenage years, Mark's relationship with his father changed, his father opened up to him, and they have been fairly close ever since. I think this was resented by Mark's siblings, who continued to feel shut out. Over the years, they responded to these feelings by attacking Mark, and Mark sometimes responded in a similar fashion.

All of which is to say, I think there is a connection between the fact that Mark is alienated from his siblings and close with his father and the fact that Mark's father is not close with Mark's siblings. There is, in other words, a family system of interaction at work. In addition to avoiding intimacy with his other two children, Mark's father also avoids conflict. So the end result is a situation in which Mark's father uses Mark to fight his battles for him, Mark is rewarded by a sense of intimacy with his father, and the siblings respond to feeling shut out by renewing their attacks on Mark. Extend the trajectory of this conflict over years, and you can imagine how much pain and resentment has built up.

Mark's story calls to mind many of the stories of Genesis, with its tales of sibling rivalry between Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers. In particular, I am reminded of the latter, of the tale of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph's father Jacob lavishes an attention on him that understandably alienates them, contributing to their decision to sell Joseph into slavery. A similar family dynamic is at work.

There is something about these stories that resonates deeply with us. They speak about our hunger for love in some of the deepest relationships we have. Indeed, we know our siblings for longer than anyone else, and our family relationships have a profound impact on who we become. Beyond our parents and our siblings, perhaps only our spouses have the opportunity to hurt us more.

I shared with Mark my perspective on his family system and on his position in it. Our conversation then continued as Mark shared with me some of his recent interactions with his siblings, and his thoughts on what he might do next. At some point, I asked him, "What is it that you want to accomplish?" He gave a few answers that weren't really answers, so I continued to press the question home. Finally he said, "I don't want to be in pain from these relationships any more. I don't want my siblings to have the power to hurt me."

Shortly thereafter, I said something to this effect, "If you don't want to be in pain from these relationships any more, then you have a choice. In your desire to not let them have the power to hurt you anymore, it sounds to me like you are choosing to kill yourself."

I don't think he expected to hear that, but I went on: "I don't mean that you are literally committing suicide. But the way not to feel pain anymore is not to care. If you choose this path, you start by pretending and acting as if you don't care about your siblings, you ignore them and minimize all contact with them, and then, probably, over the course of months or years, you really will care less. You may never fully succeed in destroying your connection with them, but I am confident that if you persist in this path, you will find at least partial success. Their ability to hurt you will diminish.

I say that you are killing yourself, however, because to destroy that relationship is to destroy a part of yourself. It is to make yourself numb in the areas that cause you pain. That is a symbolic but yet very real way of killing parts of your spirit. Your foot hurts, so out of a desire not to have it hurt anymore, you cut it off. Then the same thing with your hand, then an eye, then who knows what else. After a while, you don't even need pain's prompting to kill off a part of yourself, the mere fear of pain suffices. Is that twinge in my finger the beginning of something worse, could that relationship be heading south, well why wait, cut it off now, end it, strike preemptively. And the sad thing is, we all do this. We all walk around with wounded and mutilated spirits, and many of the wounds are self-inflicted, we have chosen the path of numbness to pain.

I reminded Mark of the story of Annakin Skywalker from the Star Wars movies. Hurt by the death of his family members, he vows that we will never let anyone hurt him like that again. What begins as a choice for numbness and protection from pain, what proceeds through a killing of much of his own spirit, ends for him in his transformation into Darth Vader, now become a killer and inflicter of pain on others.

While I don't think we or Mark are in any imminent danger of becoming more Darth Vaders, we, too choose the path of death that our text from Deuteronomy speaks about this morning. Verse 15 reads, "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish, you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess."

I know we don't think of ourselves as committing suicide, we don't think of ourselves as choosing the path of death, but we do. In ways little and small. We choose the dark side, we choose to numb ourselves to pain, and that, my friends, is a small spiritual death, it is a choice of hell. It is choosing to worship another god, a god that promises relief and escape. We worship that god, we choose hell more often than we know. I bet you can think of an example in your own life. You close yourself off to hope, to change, to healing, you sacrifice a bit of your soul to make the pain go away.

I told Mark that if I would pray for him, regardless. But if he chose to numb himself to the pain, then I could not and would not support him. I cannot support him in a decision to choose the way of death, I can't help him kill himself, even just a small bit of himself.

I think he was a bit surprised and disappointed. I think he partially wanted me to see him as he often sees himself -- as the victim, as the good guy, as the righteous one. As if he wanted validation for all that he has done for the sake of his relationships with his siblings, as if his perceived suffering at their hands over the course of many years had earned him holy points.

But I said I didn't care about that, not really. As empathetic as I try to be regarding his pain, that's not at the center of the issue. No, as the issue is which path will he take. Which path do we take? Because, as the Deuteronomy text makes clear, there is another choice, there is another path. The path of life, the path of worship of the living God, the God incarnate in Jesus Christ. Jesus wasn't concerned with being right, he wasn't concerned with ending his own pain or numbing himself to it.

No, the path of life that is the way of Christ is the path of healing a relationship. It is the path of forgiveness. The question is, What can I do to bring healing to this relationship? In choosing between life and death, we are choosing between ending the relationship and working to heal it. Some days we choose one, others days we choose the other. But it is a choice, even if it is one we often make subconsciously.

In a world that is geared toward the path of death, a world that is geared towards looking out for number one, protecting oneself, a world dominated by fear of pain, choosing the path of reconciliation goes against the grain. Choosing the path of reconciliation means opening oneself up to more pain. That may not be fair, it may not feel good, but that's the way it is, that's the way of the cross. Because, as I told Mark, if you really want to start to bring healing to this relationship, your siblings have to believe that you have at least begun to feel their pain. It doesn't mean that you justify everything they have done, but it does mean that you are engaging in a creative imagining, you are opening up within yourself space for a future relationship that has not entirely been determined by the past. That is, in a sense, what forgiveness is. It is a dream of a different future, a dream that we live into over time, until it becomes a reality. It is God's dream, incarnate in Christ, a dream that in Christ has already been and that in Christ will be again.

If you reject the path of death, if you reject numbness and killing, if you choose the path of reconciliation, then one's pain and suffering is transformed, it becomes a means of bringing healing to the relationship. Then the question becomes, where can I find the strength to endure the suffering that is necessary to bring healing to this relationship?

That, it seems to me, is a question for all of us, as individuals and as communities. Indeed, it is one of the most central and pressing questions of our day. Where do we find the strength to endure the suffering that is necessary to bring healing to our relationships?

As I said to Mark, I think there are two answers to that question, by no means mutually exclusive. First and foremost, that strength comes from God. I would argue that the strength to endure suffering for the sake of healing is who the Holy Spirit is and what she is about. One of the long established ways in which we are strengthened by the Holy Spirit is through prayer. In prayer, we are reminded of who we are and who God is. Prayer is paradoxically both a humbling and an empowering experience. I don't pretend to understand how it works, but I do believe that God uses prayer to change people, to change relationships. In addition to telling Mark that I would pray for him and his siblings, I suggested to him that he himself should pray for his siblings and his relationship with them.

Secondly, I told Mark, the other source of strength is community. It would be more accurate to say that this too is the Holy Spirit, but working indirectly with and through other people. We find the strength to endure suffering in the knowledge that we are not alone, in the community of others to share our burdens and our pain. Such communities certainly exist outside the church, but the church certainly has a special such role to play. If you need strength to heal a relationship, why not ask someone from church for support? That is part of why we are here, after all.

I hope and pray that Mark will not give up on his relationships with his siblings, that he will choose life. Regardless, that choice confronts us as well, in different relationships on different days in different ways. God's promise to us, the promise of the resurrection we celebrate this season, is that by choosing the way of life, by choosing to work towards healing our relationships, God will bless us and heal us.