Shared Sadness, Shared Grace

In a metal pail in my parents’ garage, there is an unusual assortment of baseballs. Some of them came home with us from Little League practice fields, some from spring training games in Arizona, a few just sort of turned up mysteriously like spare change in your sock drawer. Truth be told, I don’t know that we ever actually bought a baseball my entire time growing up.

There was one ball in particular that sat at the bottom of the pail, one we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw in the garbage but that never got played with. It had been a favorite of ours for a while, right at the top of the pile, until the ill-fated day we’d left it lying in the grass after a game. With us inside, none the wiser, the family dog got a hold of it, and by the time we found the ball a few days later, the damage was done.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the inside of a baseball before, but now I have, because half the cover of that ball was torn off. Beneath was a layer of tightly wound wool yarn, and beneath that the cork core. Everything inside I’d never seen, never wondered about, never particularly wanted to see was suddenly exposed. On the sides where the cover remained stubbornly on, you could see where the red cross-stitching was unraveling, could pull on the end of that red string and watch the cover peel off the rest of the ball. It was literally coming apart at the seams.

After this week, I know how it feels.

On Tuesday, I was sitting at the local Firestone waiting on an oil change and a new tire, and as I waited, I watched the mother of Alton Sterling’s son Cameron speak to reporters about Mr. Sterling’s death at the hands of a Baton Rouge policeman. I watched as Cameron, 15 years old, already taller than his mother, broke down sobbing, collapsing into the arms of a family member and crying out repeatedly, “I want my daddy.” That was Tuesday.

Wednesday morning I was home, looking over my notes for that night’s Bible study, when I saw the news on Twitter about Philando Castile’s shooting at the hands of a Falcon Heights policeman. In horror, I watched the video his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, had livestreamed on Facebook as the love of her life lay dying next to her. As I watched, I wondered what this second shooting of a black man at the hands of white officers would mean for race relations and our public discourse. That was Wednesday.

I spent most of Thursday in the Labor and Delivery waiting room at Baylor Scott and White with Ty and Hannah’s family waiting for baby Ellesyn to be born. With little to do in the 10 hours I was there, I was on my phone a lot, and so I spent quite a bit of time reading about those two shootings. I learned the details, I read the op-eds and thinkpieces, and I saw on social media the grief and the outrage and the fear from my friends, especially my black friends—that after Michael Brown, after Tamir Rice, after Walter Scott, after Eric Garner, after Freddie Gray, after so many other black men’s names and faces you and I don’t know, that there were now two more, and with them a resigned understanding that there would be even more soon enough.

And then, only about 30 minutes before I met the precious new addition to our Shiloh family, the news started pouring in about Dallas. A lone sniper, we learned, had gone to an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest hoping to kill cops, particularly white cops, and he had the plan, the training, the gun, and the ammunition to do just that. By the time I crawled into bed at midnight, we knew there were at least 3 police officers dead, a number that would eventually rise to 5, with 7 other officers and 2 civilians also shot. That was Thursday.

So in the wake of all of that, I spent most of Friday trying to figure out what to say to y’all this morning. I knew I needed to say something, that I couldn’t just pretend this week was any other week. I started and restarted this sermon about twenty times, and nothing sounded quite right. Sometimes even the preacher doesn’t have words.

On Friday I didn’t have the composure of Diamond Reynolds, or the resolve of Dallas Police Chief David Brown. I felt a lot more like 15-year old Cameron Sterling, weeping before the eyes of the nation. I felt that way because lately, our nation feels like it’s all coming apart at the seams.

I’m tired of people getting shot, whether in elementary schools or gay nightclubs or in front of gas stations or on the streets of downtown Dallas. I’m tired of having to parse whether Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter or All Lives Matter. I’m tired of watching national tragedies become political arguments while the bodies are still warm. I’m tired of seeing the flag fly half-mast. I’m just…tired. Tired and heartbroken.

So in my grief and my exhaustion, I turn to the God who gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. I remember that the tomb is empty, that the sting of death is a precursor to the victory of resurrection. I look with hope to the day when He will wipe away every tear, when death will be no more, when mourning and crying and pain will be no more. And as the whole creation groans even while we ourselves groan, awaiting that final redemption, I find my comfort—and I pray you find yours—in the God who so loved this world that he sent his only Son to die for it.

But this morning, I stand before you to say that my comfort is not enough. Your comfort is not enough. In a society that feels like it’s coming apart at the seams, an ‘every man for himself’ mentality is not enough for those in the body of Christ. Our nation is suffering, and the church’s response cannot just be to lick its own wounds.

There is a pain, a shared sadness, that we as the church can and must speak to; there is suffering that we can and must minister to. It is our responsibility as followers of Jesus Christ. Listen to these words from 2 Corinthians 1:3-5: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.”

You and I are blessed today, because as believers we have a place where we can come in the affliction of our shared sadness and be consoled. We can pray to the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, believing He hears us and that He cares. We can gather as a church family and grieve with one another, we can pray and fast and lament together. And no one has to tell us to do that; I don’t have to remind you to bear one another’s burdens—it is in our bones that the church is a family that shares sadness together and then responds to that sadness by sharing grace together.

But there are many grieving today, in the black community and the police community and the American community at large, who do not know the peace that we seek together this morning. They wonder why the world is like this, they wonder if there is any hope, and they have no answer. They may offer up a prayer, hoping but not quite believing that someone hears it. They weep bitterly today just as we do, but they do so without a brother or sister to hold them.

And for too long, we in the church have responded to their pain with a lazy, manipulative proposition: any time you want to try things our way, the doors are open. We’ll be in here, sitting in our pews, singing our songs, worshiping our God, and you’re welcome to sit at the back and figure it out at your leisure. Just don’t expect us to change for you.

Church, the Holy Spirit convicts me today and tells me that’s just not going to cut it anymore. Our world is too pained and too painful for the church of Jesus Christ to adopt the mentality of a social club. We have to do more, we have to think deeper, we have to love better. No longer can we be defined strictly by what happens inside these walls; if our goal is to be like Christ, then we must be defined by what we do outside of them.

‘Sharing the gospel’ can no longer just be evangelical code for recruiting new members; it can no longer just be something we do when membership is dropping and giving is down. The gospel can no longer be just a three-point canned speech; its power can no longer be something we condense into a cheap pamphlet. It has to be our very way of life, our mission, when we are together and when we are apart. We have to go places where we are uncomfortable, talk to people who make us uncomfortable, forgive behavior that make us uncomfortable—because following Jesus means abandoning what’s best for you for the sake of someone else.

It is time, long past time, for believers to extend grace beyond our familiar circle of acquaintances. It is time, long past time, for us to look beyond ourselves, beyond our own families, beyond our own friends, beyond those who look like us and talk like us and act like us and believe like us, to the Other. It is time, long past time, for our love to be as unconditional as our Lord’s—for us to be just as shaken when a black father dies as when a white father dies, just as horrified when a victim is named Trayvon as when he is named Patrick. It is time, long past time, for us to hug the black protester and then hug the white cop just as tight, because both are made in God’s image, both are worthy of love, and both are hurting.

You can believe Alton Sterling’s and Philando Castile’s deaths were senseless and believe the deaths of Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarippa, Michael Krol, Lorne Ahrens, and Michael Smith (the five officers killed in Dallas) were senseless. In fact, you should. All of them died too young, all of them left grieving families behind, all of their deaths were tragic. It is time, long past time, for the church to stop looking to politicians and pundits and talk radio for our cues on what is right and who is right. Our citizenship is in heaven; let’s take our cues from there.

Let’s leave this sanctuary today consoled in our affliction by the Father of mercies, and having been comforted, let’s take that consolation to others who are afflicted. Let’s step outside our usual circle and stand beside the communities that are hurting—not so we can command them, not even so we can convert them, but so we can console them in Jesus’ name. Let our response to violence and injustice not be pointed fingers or raised voices, but healing hands and open hearts.

I am tired and I know you are too—tired of the division, tired of the anger, tired of the bloodshed—but I also know our exhaustion pales in comparison to what some are feeling today. So let us worship in spirit and in truth, let us gather strength from our God and from one another, and then let us go to work renewed. The work of consolation cannot stop here in this sanctuary; it must be something we carry with us to the brokenhearted. It must be something we bring to black lives, something we bring to blue lives, something we bring to poor lives, something we bring to imprisoned lives, something we bring to divorced lives, something we bring to hurting, broken, desperate lives.

Because in the face of despair, people from every walk of life—those we know well and those we need to know better—need to see and hear that God offers hope. Amid all the bad news, people need to see and hear the good news. In the wake of too many senseless deaths, people need to know that there was one death, a death on a cross, that was just as unjust, just as tragic, but that from its apparent senselessness came salvation. People need to know that death is not the end, that in Christ there is resurrection. As the song says, people need the Lord—and we are called to be his witnesses. So may we not just come to church, but go and be the church, sharing sadness and sharing grace not only with one another, but with all who weep. Amen.