Jesus came with all the potential power that He wanted. He used it to heal the sick, raise the dead, touch the untouchable and heal the souls of the broken.  In fact, it’s not even the miracles that are amazing … what’s amazing is who he performed the miracles for.  The outcast.  The hated.  The enemy.

Yet, He was outcast, beaten, spit on, possibly raped (if was acceptable for soldiers to rape criminals) and eventually killed at the request of those he loved.  He could of … maybe even should have … destroyed His enemies … He had the power to, but He didn’t.

Sin, revenge, egotism is cyclic … but so is love. With one act of grace (“Father, forgive them”), a new narrative has been born … again and again.

That narrative was reborn at the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground.

The deceased Boston Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was accepted by Peter Stefan, owner of the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors.  Stefan, who is seemingly putting his respect for the dead over and above his business’ prosperity, has been quoted as saying that everyone deserves a dignified burial, no matter the circumstances of their death.

As one may expect, Stefan’s funeral home has received numerous protests; and rightfully so.  The body his funeral home is housing is the deceased remains of a terrorist.  A terrorist whose actions injured 264 people and killed four; one of whom was a police officer, and the other a young child.  Not only did he accomplish this bombing, but he planned much more violence and destruction that one can only speculate he would have accomplish had he the chance to do so.

He was our enemy.  He killed an American child.  A beautiful son of our country.

An enemy whose body has been rejected by all the local cemeteries.  A body that has no place to rest.  And for good reason.  Could you imagine the grave desecration that would occur?  Could you imagine the curse that will reside over the cemetery that accepts a terrorist?

From a capital standpoint, it wouldn’t make sense for the cemetery to accept his body and lose future customers.  Who wants to be buried near a terrorist?

From a safety standpoint, it doesn’t make sense.  Cemeteries are already subject to vandalism and desecration, what more could happen if a terrorists body was interred in a place accustom to abuses?  Would the cemetery need to install security cameras?  People would vandalize his grave in the name of America.

Out of respect for those already buried and the families that buried them, a cemetery has reason to reject one Tamerlan Tsarnaev.  How can families feel good about the cemetery where their relatives reside when they are residing near a terrorist?

He was our enemy and must remain our outsider.  “Ship him back to where he came from!!!”, said some.  “Cremate his ass!” said others.  Perhaps the request to bury him in an unmarked grave was the most levelheaded suggestion; but, so far, no cemeteries have offered an unmarked grave for the terrorist.

And then on Tuesday morning, this piece of news comes out.  Paul Keane, the owner of a plot in the Mt. Carmel Burying Ground (and Yale Divinity graduate) wrote this on his blog:

I am willing to donate a burial plot next to my mother in Mt. Carmel Burying Ground to the Tsarnaev family if they cannot obtain a plot. The only condition is that I do it in memory of my mother who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for twenty years and taught me to “love thine enemy.”

I own the plot.  No one can refuse me access.

This is the cemetery lot that Paul is offering

So far, the response to Paul has varied between praise and protest.  And so it was 2,000 years ago.  Grace is always scandalous; but it’s also cyclic.

(NOTE: As of Wednesday morning, it’s still unclear whether or not the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors has accepted Paul Keane’s offer.  There is, however, an updated offer on Keane’s blog. )

Since I posted it, over 2,000,000 people have viewed it.

Many have asked, “Where is this gravestone located?”  ”Who is the gravestone for?”  And various other questions.

Here’s Matthew Stanford Robison’s “Find a Grave” page that will answer most of your questions:

Birth:	Sep. 23, 1988
Death:	Feb. 21, 1999
This unique monument shows the young boy jumping upward, out of his wheelchair. Confined to the chair most of his young life, he is now free of earthly burdens. “And then it shall come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.” Peacefully in his sleep on Sunday, February 21, 1999, our cherished son, brother and friend, Matthew Stanford Robison was received into a state of happiness, and began his rest from troubles, care, and sorrow in the arms of his Savior and friend Jesus Christ. Matthew was a joy and inspiration to all who were privileged to know him. He was a testament to the supreme divinity of the soul and an embodiment of the completeness our spirits yearn for. The godliness of his soul inspired, influenced and blessed all who knew him. He came into this world as a miracle and left this world as a miracle. Born with severe earthly disabilities on September 23, 1988 in Salt Lake City to Johanna (Anneke) Dame Robison and Ernest Parker Robison. At birth, Matthew’s life expectancy was anticipated to be only hours long. However, fortitude, strength, and endurance, combined with the power of God allowed Matthew to live ten and one-half years enveloped in the love of his family and friends. His family was privileged to spend time with him here upon earth, to learn from his courage and marvel at his constant joy and happiness in the face of struggle. His family will be eternally changed by his presence and temporally changed by his passing. His presence inspired all those who knew him. He opened their hearts as well as their eyes. He is survived by his parents: Ernest and Anneke; sisters and brothers, Korrin, Marc, Jared, and Emily of Murray, Utah, and Elizabeth (Czech Prague Mission) Also, grandparents and other family members. A heartfelt thanks to his special care givers, especially Shauna Langford, and others at Liberty Elementary School.
Burial: Salt Lake City Cemetery Salt Lake City Salt Lake County Utah, USA

Here is part of Matthew’s obituary:

The problem with our dualistic approach to life and death (i.e. the separation of “this world” and the “next world”) is that it tends to create this phenomena called the “God of the gaps” or the deus ex machina.

The “God of the gaps” is when there’s a knowledge void or a valley of difficulty that we either can’t comprehend or don’t want to deal with so we simply stick God in the gap.

Question: “Why did my sister die so young?

God of the gap answer:  “We can’t always understand God’s plan, but we know it’s for the best.”

Question: “What happens after we die?”

God of the gap answer:  “God brings us to paradise.”

When it comes to death and the difficult journey that it produces for the living, the God of the gaps answer is simply “heaven.”

Honestly, I think Christians have a better answer than “heaven” and that is the idea of resurrection.

Today, believers tend to focus on heaven, while keeping the idea of resurrection as a tertiary sub point.  But, it would seem, that it should be the other way around.  Resurrection is at the center of Christian understanding, while heaven is secondary.

The idea of resurrection is that life can come out of death.

The dualistic idea of heaven has little benefit for grief work, as it expects life after this life.  But, the idea of resurrection is that which is lifeless is being given new life in the here and now; not in the hereafter.  That despite all the evidence to the contrary, there is hope in our grief, hope in our despair, hope for the future, hope for the present.

Resurrection takes what we have and breathes life into it.  It doesn’t look to replace this world and solve all of our fears in the future; but it gets dirty, messy, now.

Every time we choose guilt, we deny the resurrection.  Every time we choose bitterness towards a family member or the deceased, we deny the resurrection.  Every time we choose hatred of the deceased or of ourselves for not “stopping it” or “doing more”, we deny the resurrection.  Every time we choose to be guarded and elect NOT to heal, we are denying the resurrection.

Resurrection life says keep on walking through your difficulty … there’s hope.

Resurrection life says embrace your doubts, strength is in silence.

Resurrection life says it’s okay to fear, to cry, to struggle.

There is life in death.

Resurrection, though, is a not a rejection of the body for the spiritual realm, but a renewing, redeeming of the present condition.  The resurrection brings heaven to earth; not earth to heaven.  When we work through the here and now with love and compassion for ourselves and others, when we deal with the gap – the questions and the difficulty — we advance our grief work and bring the future to the present … we look to bring heaven to earth.

And, you’re opinions are probably wrong.

If heaven exists at all, it – by definition — is much different than what you or I imagine it to be.  And while my religion’s scripture (Christianity) has little to say about what heaven is like, it seems that my religion’s preachers – especially the ones at funerals – know much more about it than their Bible.

So, here are eight common ideas about heaven that I think are false.

Heaven is not …

One.  An opiate.  Like religion, heaven has too often been used as an opiate to blind people to the dismal reality that someone is in fact dead.

Two.  It’s probably not about you.  It’s selfishness that has made this place so shitty.  So, if heaven is better than what exists today, it will probably only happen when we are somehow drawn out of self-absorption by something greater (i.e. God).

Three.  A product of subjective validation. If you find heaven meaningful, good for you.  But, that doesn’t mean it exists.  Just because you like the idea of an eternal life where everything is unicorns and butterflies is not proof for heaven being an actual reality.

Four.  Subject to wishful thinking.  “In heaven I’m going to have a Ferrari with Kathy Ireland as my wife.  I’ll dress her up in My Little Pony outfits and I’ll play Black Ops all day.  Oh yeah, and grandpa will be there too and we’ll fly around together on the back of my Pegasus.”  Probably not.

Five.  A product of communal reinforcement.  If the only reason you believe in heaven is because your family believes in heaven and because everybody wants to believe in heaven, you probably haven’t thought about it too much.  And any perception you have about heaven probably sucks.

Six. Escapism.  Or, an excuse to trash this world because it’s going to be destroyed anyways (some evangelicals believe this.)  If anything, I believe in an inaugural eschatology that is bringing heaven to earth as opposed to bringing us earthlings to heaven.

Seven.  Hedonism.  A place where we can do whatever the hell we want.  Yeah, that place – if it exists – is called Las Vegas.

Eight.  A certainty.  That’s right.  It’s a hope, not a certainty.  It’s a valid hope during death.  It has a valid place in our lives now, but you simply can’t prove its existence empirically.  In some sense, we are creating heaven.  We are bringing it into existence.  And its creation is conditioned on us losing our egotistical outlook.  Heaving is becoming, but it’s not a certainty.

*****

At 7:30 am my wife and I took the boat across Jenny Lake and hiked 7 miles up Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude in Grand Teton National Park in Northwestern Wyoming.  From Lake Solitude, high above tree line, you can view the back side of the majestic Teton Range and bask in the wonder of creation.

As we drove back to our campsite I turned on the radio and heard the news of the horrific shootings in Aurora, CO.  I was shocked.  Life is so fragile.  Idyllic, serene Lake Solitude – a perfect name given its location – gave way to the stunning news of the senseless killings and maiming in an Aurora theater.  Feelings of appreciation and wonder earlier in the day suddenly collided with emotions of tension, mystery, paradox and complexity.

A few days later I was standing on the western shore of Lake MacDonald in northern Montana’s Glacier National Park when I overhead two men discussing the Aurora tragedy.

“It was pure evil,” one man said.  “There is nothing else to say.”

The other man was intent on blaming guns.  “Why is it so easy to buy guns?” he said.  “Can’t we as a nation do anything about this?  I’ll tell you this country needs a national discussion about how easy it is to buy firearms.”

The man who spoke first sighed.  “The poor young man who did this is just sick, just very, very sick.  How utterly senseless.  It makes me so sad for all those innocent people and their grieving families.”

Now he’s getting somewhere, I thought.  Later that day I turned to the beatitudes and read these words of Jesus: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

The writer of Ecclesiastes said there is a time to weep and a time to mourn.  The days following tragedies are times to mourn.  Real mourning, true grieving, humbly says, “I am so sorry.  I can only imagine how the families must feel who lost a loved one.  I can only imagine how those who were maimed must feel.  I can only imagine how the family members of the shooter must feel.  This is so heartbreaking, so sad.”

Mourning does not say: “As horrific as this was, we know God works all things together for good, if we turn to him.  Evil will not win the day.  Now is the time to stand up and fight.”  Those phrases may be true.  But is that what you would want someone to say to you, if you had just tragically lost a loved one?  I doubt it.

Neither does mourning say: “I’ll be there for you, whatever you need.  You are in my prayers every single minute.”  Well, maybe you will be there.  Maybe you will pray for a while.  But what are you really saying?  Are you actually saying: “What happen scares me so much and I don’t know what to do. What if it was my child?  I could never face this if it were me.”

Finally, mourning does not say:  “I just can’t imagine what you are going through.”  Really?  Maybe you ought to try to imagine.  A person who mourns never denies what happened.  True mourning is not afraid of suffering.  No, a person who truly mourns tries to imagine how another feels.  Thus, you might say something like: “I’m so very sorry.  I can only imagine how you are feeling.”

To imagine how a grief-stricken person feels takes intentionality.  Imagine being the parent of one of those young people killed in the theater on that awful night in Aurora.  Or imagine being the father or mother of the young man who did this awful deed.

“I don’t want to imagine that,” you say.  “Please don’t make me.  It’s too awful, too hard, too painful, and too scary.  I can’t go there.”  Well, okay.  I certainly can’t make you.  But you will not fully understand mourning unless you engage your imagination and your emotion.  That’s what mourning is.  You enter right into the middle of the grief-stricken person’s world. Are you afraid of crying?  You may cry.  You think you might blubber or sigh or moan?  You might.  Are you afraid that giving yourself emotionally to mourning might feel scary?  It will.

But mourning is a good thing, Jesus says.  Comfort comes to those who mourn. The Apostle Paul explains it when he says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice.  Weep with those who weep.”

Now let’s say, for example, that your son or daughter hits a home run during a little league game.  They are thrilled and so you are you.  You scream, “My goodness sweetheart, that’s the best hit I’ve ever seen.  What a slugger.”  That’s rejoicing.

How does that make the son or daughter feel?  Loved, naturally.  They think, “My daddy thinks I’m the best thing ever.”

Now imagine you know a family who has experienced a tragic loss.  Enter their world by imagining how they feel.  You mourn by saying, “I can only imagine,” not “I can’t imagine.”  You become focused and intentional about feeling painful emotions – grief, pain, loss and despair.  You may begin weeping or sobbing as you try to say:  “I am so sorry.  I love you.  I can only imagine your pain and loss.”

How do they feel when you join them in their pain and sorrow?  They feel loved and cared for.  When we enter another person’s painful emotional space, the person feels loved.  The feeling of love is the same as it is for the child who hit the home run.  That’s what it means to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

The grieving people in Aurora need love, not theological explanations.  There is a time to weep and a time to mourn. Both are on the path that leads through the valley of the shadow of death.  Don’t be afraid to walk on that path.

*****

Don Follis is a long-time (30-year) pastor in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, a college town (University of Illinois) in East-central Illinois.

Don first worked as a campus pastor, then on the staff of a large Vineyard Church and now with pastors in a coaching and mentoring ministry.

He writes a popular Sunday column called “On Faith” for the Champaign-Urbana, IL, News-Gazette.

Copyright 2012 by the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, Champaign, IL  61820.

Aside from picking up the dead at night, I also attempt to raise broken youth at The Parkesburg Point Youth Center.

Right now I’m working with a young girl who was raped by her father when she was eleven.  Raped by her father.  At the age of eleven.  And — with these young people — crimes of this severity committed against them aren’t abnormal.  Some have been prostituted by their parents for drugs.  Let me say that again: their parents allowed grown men to rape their children in exchange for a temporary high.  Others live with their cousins, grandmothers, aunts because their parents simply didn’t want them.

Broken.

And on Tuesdays and Thursdays I am there for them.  Whether it’s playing them in ping-pong or listening to their story, I’m there … practicing the ministry of presence.

This past week I talked to the young girl who had been raped.  She’s under professional care.  And I’m not a professional councilor.  But, I like to listen.

“How far ahead can you imagine your future?”, I asked.

“Not far.”, she said.

“What do you see in your future?”  I asked.

“I see suicide.”

“Do you see college, a career, a family … ?”

“No.”, she said.  ”All I see is death.”

And I just sat in the quiet of her answer, letting it fill the room with it’s darkness and my soul with it’s pain.

I finally responded, “I see more than death.”

At this point she looked up and made eye contact with me.  I was about to speak life into her death and she knew it.

“I see freedom.  I see you living and overcoming your darkness.  I see you graduating high school.  I see you going to college.  I see you finding someone who will treat you like a princess … a man who will encourage you and love you for who you are.”   And then (because this organization believes that God has something to say to these situations), I said, “I believe God is dreaming you a future.”

That conversation was the first of many that I’ll have with her over the next couple months.

As she left, I asked her to re imagine her future.  To create a different future and be ready to tell me an alternate story in our next conversation.

This is what I do at night.  In addition to being a funeral director, I’m also the part-time associate director at The Point, where I work with my best bud, Dwayne Walton (he’s the executive director).

Anyways, we just bought a building … a new building where our ability to provide educational and career opportunities for these youth will greatly expand.

If you’re interested in what we do, here’s a link to a video about our vision.  Here’s a link to our blog, which I manage.

And here’s the video about our new building.

After a few minutes his head came around the corner. “Whatcha reading?” he asked as he peered over my shoulder.  “My Bible,” I replied a bit impatiently.  Couldn’t he see I wanted to be alone?  I settled back in my seat, but a few minutes later the same pair of eyes were again looking over the top of my seat. “What kind of work do you do?” he asked.

Not wanting to get involved in a long conversation, I decided to make my answer brief.  “A kind of social work,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t be interested.  It bothered me a little that I was verging on not telling the truth, but I dared not tell him I was involved in helping needy people in the inner city of Amsterdam.  That would be sure to provoke more questions.

“Mind if I sit by you?” he asked as he stepped over my crossed legs.  He seemed to be oblivious to my efforts to avoid talking to him.  He turned to face me and he reeked of alcohol.  He spat as he spoke, sending a fine spray over my face.

I was deeply irritated by this man’s obnoxiousness.  Couldn’t he see I wanted to be alone?  All my plans for a quiet morning were destroyed by his insensitivity. “Oh God,” I groaned inwardly, “please help me.” The conversation moved slowly at first.  I answered a few questions about our work in Amsterdam, and began to wonder why this man wanted so desperately to talk to someone.  As the conversation unfolded it dawned on me that perhaps I was the one who was being insensitive.

“My wife was like you,” he said after a while.  “She prayed with our children, sang to them and took them to church.  In fact,” he said slowly, his eyes misting over, “she was the only real friend I ever had.”

“Had?” I asked.  “Why are you referring to her in that way?”

“She’s gone.” By this time the tears were beginning to trickle down his cheeks.  “She died three months ago giving birth to our fifth child. Why?” he gasped, “Why did your caring God take my wife away?  She was so good.  Why not me?  Why her?  And now the government says I’m not fit to care for my own children, and they’re gone too!”

I reached out and took his hand and we wept together.  How selfish, how insensitive I had been.  I had only been thinking of my need for a little rest when someone like this man desperately needed a friend.  He filled in the rest of the story for me.  After his wife died, a government appointed social worker recommended that the children be cared for by the state.  He was so overwhelmed by grief that he couldn’t work, so he also lost his job.  In just a few weeks he had lost everything, his wife, his children and his work.  It was December so he had decided to leave; he couldn’t bear the thought of being at home alone for Christmas without his wife or children, and he was literally trying to drown his sorrows in alcohol.

He was almost too bitter to be comforted.  He had grown up with four different step-fathers and he never knew his real dad.  All of them were hard men.  When I mentioned God he reacted bitterly.  “God?” he said.  “I think if there is a God he must be a cruel monster!  Why did your loving God do this to me?

As I flew on the airplane with that wounded, hurt man, I was reminded again that many people in our world have no understanding of a loving God – a God who is a loving Father.  To speak of a loving God, a God who is a Father, only evokes pain for them.  And anger.  To speak of the father heart of God to these people, without empathizing with their pain, verges on cruelty.  The only way I could be a friend to that man, on the trip from Oslo to Amsterdam, was to be God’s love to him.  I didn’t try to give pat answers.  There were none.  I just let him be angry and then poured some oil on his wounds.  He wanted to believe in God, but deep inside his sense of justice had been violated.  He needed someone to say that it was okay for him to be angry too.  By the time I had listened and cared and wept with him, he was ready to hear me say that God was more hurt than he was by what had happened to his wife and family.

No one had ever told him that God has a broken heart. (8)

From “The Father Heart of God“

What does a broken hearted God imply?

It implies that God is not the victimizer… He’s not the master puppeteer behind this world of evil, but rather that HE HATES EVIL!

His grief reveals that God doesn’t have control over evil, for, if God controlled the evil, why would He grieve Himself?

God’s broken heart attests to his innocence, justice, hate of sin and effort to do everything in His power to stop sin.  God is not the one inflicting suffering, He is the ultimate one who sufferers!  Recognizing this alone has often staved my heart from losing faith in the goodness of God.

And maybe the cross is the pinnacle of that suffering.  A suffering so intense that His body was unable to handle the grief and he died, not from the wounds of the body, but the wounds of the heart (more thoughts on this tomorrow).

The Vulnerable God

William Placher writes,

Love involves a willingness to put oneself at risk, and God is in fact vulnerable in love, vulnerable even to great suffering.  God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ, and, as readers encounter him in the biblical stories, he wanders with nowhere to lay his head, washes the feet of his disciples like a servant, and suffers and dies on a cross — condemned by the authorities of his time, undergoing great pain, “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity”

This week we reflect on the pinnacle of the vulnerably of God … the death of Jesus.

Pulled Into the Narrative of Suffering

In Matthew 20: 20 – 23, the mother of disciples James and John asks Jesus this question, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.”

Jesus’ response turns the whole conversation on it’s head.  James and John’s mother assumes that Jesus is coming into Jerusalem to set up his Kingdom, whereby Jesus will claim the thrown of David and push the Romans and their rule out of the land of Israel.

The disciples see Jesus’ entering Jerusalem as a power play and they want a piece of the power.

It was evident that James and John, their mother and the disciples had yet to understand the nature of the Kingdom: freedom, vulnerability, love and often suffering.

Jesus responds, “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”  In the Old Testament “the cup” was a metaphor for suffering … the very opposite of power.  In fact, power is the human response to suffering.  Power is the human response to vulnerability.  Suffering is the divine response to vulnerability.

Jesus then states, “You will indeed drink from my cup ….”

And although they didn’t understand it, the disciples eventually would understand the brokenness of God over the world.  They would eventually re-narrate the vulnerability of God in their own suffering … a re-narration that God invites all of his followers to embrace. As we’ve prayed so often, “Lord, break my heart with the things that break yours.”

Simon of Cyrene

Perhaps that re-narration is nowhere more visually clear than in Simon of Cyrene.  It seems that Simon is actually forced into helping Jesus carry the cross to Golgotha.  Mel Gibson portrayed Simon in “The Passion of the Christ” as being unwilling to carry the cross.

And I think most of us respond in the same way.  When God asks us to help him carry his burdens and we realize that his burdens are the weak, the poor and the sinful, we all turn our heads in disgust.

“You mean you’re calling me to weakness?”, we ask.   “I thought you saved me in order to give me strength?” we snark.

And we find ourselves like Simon of Cyrene being forced to carry a cross that isn’t ours.

“But, you’re God … why can’t you carry this on your own?” we retort.  ”Aren’t you all-powerful?  Aren’t you the one who created the world?”

The truth sets in.

God  needs  our  help.

HE  CAN’T  CARRY  THE  BURDEN  ALONE.

Some final thoughts from William Placher,

If God becomes human in just this way, moreover, then that tells us something about how we might seek our own fullest humanity — not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity with the despised and rejected, and the willingness to be vulnerable in love.

We become human when we become Simon of Cyrene and embrace the vulnerability of God by carrying his cross with Him.

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

****

Nearly two weekends ago we reveled in the uncomfortable in breaking narrative of the Kingdom of God.

And as the narrative unfolded, we played the part of Jesus.

We are used to playing the part of Jesus.  After all, we’re Christians.  We’re a “little Christ”, “followers of Jesus” who are supposed to think, feel and do like Jesus in this world.

I work at a funeral home where I regularly minister – what I hope – is the compassion, grace and perspective of Jesus.

Both my wife and I work and volunteer at a parachurch ministry for at-risk and vulnerable youth, being Jesus to youth who have little to no family.

And this past weekend we were the adoptive couple to a healthy newborn baby boy.

But, we didn’t play the part of Jesus that you might have assume we played.

You – and I – would assume that we would have played the part of the redemptive Jesus. The Jesus who swooped down in the life of this little boy and rescued him from a potential life of difficulty.  His biological father out of the picture.  His biological mother fighting to provide for herself.

And we – the 30 something, financially stable, mature Christian couple – swooped down to take him into our Christian family.  We were the redemptive Jesus here. Right?

Wrong.

Nicki and I were the poor and broken Jesus.  The Jesus in the jail.  We were the homeless Jesus.  The whore Jesus.  The Jesus on the street corner begging for money.

We were the least of these.

In this situation, we weren’t the Jesus who gave all, we were the Jesus who received all.  We were the ones who couldn’t provide for ourselves.  We were the ones who needed the redemptive Jesus to come in and make us whole.  We were the couple who couldn’t conceive.

We were the ones who needed to be lifted out of our misery by someone else’s act of unselfishness.

And by one act of unselfishness, we were redeemed this last week.  We were lifted up.  We were made whole by a young woman who made the utterly unselfish choice to give us her baby.

“For I was broken and infertile and you gave me your son.  Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did it me.”

It’s not very often that we really get to act like Jesus.  But last week, we were able to be Jesus – not in our giving – but in our receiving.

There’s only two white guys in this picture: the one is the white pastor who is sitting beside the soundboard. The other is the white Jesus engraved in the stain glass.  The rest are African American.

There’s a white Jesus in stained glass because this is a white church, that has had 30 plus pastors in it’s history, all of whom have been white.

And today the church is full of African Americans in a white church for a funeral.

The Mt. Zion AME church is in the process of being renovated.  And this week the Mt. Zion AME church lost not one but two of their members.

The Parkesburg United Methodist Church opened their doors, their sanctuary and their cafeteria hall for not one, but both funerals.

African Americans in a white church where the white pastor isn’t in the pulpit, but serving the black female pastor in the pulpit by running the soundboard.  In fact, he was serving since 8 AM in the morning when he helped carry the casket up the two flight of steps and into the sanctuary; when he vacuumed the entire sanctuary at 9 AM; extended gracious hospitality from 10 AM to 11 AM; and even organized five members of the auxiliary crew to set up plates and places for 100 plus people for the post funeral luncheon in the cafeteria hall.

This is how unity is supposed to work.

One hundred years ago, this wouldn’t have happened.  Fifty years ago … maybe even 10 years ago this wouldn’t have been considered.  But today I witnessed it.  I witnessed the body of Christ.