Pentecost 13: Tommy

“But who do you say that I am? You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!”
This is not just about who Jesus is.
This is also about who WE REALLY are.
Who we are as the united Church.

We hear today, about who Peter really is:
Peter: Who’s doubted, who’s misunderstood Jesus countless times.
But today: if even for a brief moment: Peter gets it.

Jesus tells Simon Peter who he is,
“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”

So often we think of Jesus as the one who is both human and divine.
We think of ourselves as merely humans.

But we are more than mere humans and so was Peter.
We’re certainly not God.

But we are the Church—which is no normal human thing.

I want to tell you about a young man who taught me about who WE are in the body of Christ—in the church.

I met Tommy in the hospital in the wee hours of a Sunday morning over a decade ago. I was a hospital chaplain in a level 1 trauma center hospital in Hartford CT.

I met Tommy on a day when he wasn’t himself.
After a terrible accident, this young man was on his deathbed from the moment he came through the doors.
I never heard his voice.
I never saw him breathe on his own.

There was nothing the doctors could do.
But Tommy: a high school student:
was kept alive for a few hours while his parents rushed to the hospital from a nearby small town.
The scene was brutal.
The kind of thing that nobody should ever have to witness.
The kind of thing that shouldn’t happen to anyone.

His mother holding his hand,
His father’s hand resting on his chest as it lifted and dropped for the last few times.
In these moments, there was nothing that my human sensibilities could actually do.
Nothing that I could ever say.
But God did a lot of work on that early morning.
Just as God always does.

It was no mere human thing.
On that night, I felt profoundly human—emotions of pain and grief running through me as I watched these loving parents say goodbye to their young son.
But that hospital room was not just human stuff.
God was in that room.
Not in a “God in the clouds” sort of way.

God was in each of us—and God—is ALWAYS in each of us.
Because of who we really are.
We are not merely human:
We are the church: holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven just like Peter.

Being “Church” is no normal human thing.
When Paul talks about “Church” he says:

“For as in one body we have many members”
“Individually we are members of another.”

In that hospital room, as Tommy lay dying, we were members of another:
with the holy spirit—moving, breathing, and beating within us.
The Living God—putting deep and intense love within us.

Unfortunately, it’s not an easy kind of love.
Because this kind of love—God’s love—is REAL.
REAL. PAINFUL. BRUTAL.

And we can’t pretend that it’s not.
God sent his only Son to literally Die—real death.

It’s brutal, Death:
The most painful thing that can happen to a human, because of awfully Divine love.

Completely, incomprehensible love.

On that early morning: I was overwhelmed by the REAL Divine love in Tommy’s parents.

Their human grief was profoundly Divine.
Human pain--from real love.

And we love: Because God first loved us.
Because God has made us into lovers.
It’s no normal human attribute--
This divine love placed deep within us—forming us into who we really are.

But do not misunderstand.
This does not, in any way discount the awful grief and pain that humans feel.
This does NOT take away from the intensity that Tommy’s parents (and unfortunately many others) will feel for their entire lives.
This does not make anything good or better.
There is Nothing that could ever make this pain good.
There is Nothing that ever makes it okay.

But our pain is not merely a human thing.
Because our Love is not merely a human thing.

The real brutality—the most painful part— of that morning was the desperate love of Tommy’s mother.

His mother, in the most intense grief I have ever experienced also loved him fiercely--
(I witnessed this, well before I was a mother myself)

Tommy waited to take his last breath:
AFTER his parents had arrived, and we said the Lord’s prayer together.
And his mother: through shouts of anguish:
Also told her Son how happy she was that he could join the heavenly host.

But don’t mistake me.
In this profuse love, Tommy’s mother felt unbearable pain.
Pain that I will always remember and pain that will never ever leave her.

And that’s how God is.
That’s how God made us to be.

To love profusely.
It is not who we are “called to be”
But who we really are at our deepest being.

So who do you say that I am?

Who do we say that WE are?
Christian? sure.
But to be a Christian means that we are more than mere humans.
We hold the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
To be “Church” means we must be lovers.
Divine lovers.

And it hurts. It’s painful. It’s brutal.
We can’t run from it.
We can’t hide from it.
Because it is deeply a part of who we are.
Because God Loved us first.
And Loved profusely.
Desperately.
Fiercely.

Amen.