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Making a Choice for Hope, Being a Broker of Hope 26 August 2018
Reading: John 6:56-69
And Jesus said, “The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
On Wednesday the funeral directors of Canterbury, Nelson, and the West Coast asked me to go and speak to them. I heard the words, “You will get a free lunch,” so I was keen. I felt a bit sorry for them. Clergy can be so difficult to work with. Just take our names. Anglicans and Romans Catholics are priests, Presbyterians and Methodists are ministers, Baptists are pastors and Salvation Army are officers. So I offered them a new term that I thought better described our role: a broker . A broker is someone who links people with something they need. We have stock brokers who link you to the stock market, we have mortgage brokers who link you to a mortgage, and we have insurance brokers. Christians I explained to them take funerals because we are hope brokers. We believe that because of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we all have the hope of eternal life. At a funeral people often say we live on the memories of our loved ones, and that’s beautiful, but Christians are the only ones that offer the hope that we actually live on. Like the little caterpillar which becomes a soaring butterfly, so we become something more, and, because of God’s Love, we live forever. A Christian funeral can bring lots of things like dignity and beauty with music and buildings, and compassion with prayers and love. But the unique offering of a Christian funeral to the family of the loved one is hope. It is good news and we broker it. We also offer the prayers and the support of a caring community. The community of faith can surround the family beautifully.
What amazed me was that they got it. In fact one of the directors challenged the others to offer this hope too. Don’t worry he said about making the 4pm deadline for the paper, why not have a Christian funeral.
Jesus, the first hope broker, put it like this, “The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
In synagogue by the Lake of Capernaum, Jesus is stirring up a storm. He is continuing to teach about himself as the Bread of Life. Many Jews find this impossible to accept, even profoundly offensive. Many of the disciples so too. They say to Jesus, this teaching is difficult, we can’t accept it. In the face of such difficulty a lesser person would back down, try and find a halfway point, especially when his own followers are finding it hard to swallow. Not Jesus. He offers them a stark choice, “Do you wish to go away?”
Peter gives a heartfelt answer, “Lord to whom can we go, you have the words of eternal life?”
In the storm in the synagogue, it is only Jesus who offers life. The really good news is that we don’t have to wait unit we die to enjoy this new life with Jesus. And we don’t need to be priest, minister, pastor or officer to be a broker this hope to others.
It was the year 1917. The place was an Armenian hospital. Day after day, Elizabeth Caraman, a nurse in that hospital, cleaned and bound up the wounds of Turkish soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefields. Often when the soldiers came to her hastily applied bandages were dried on to a gaping wound. It was extremely painful to remove them.
One day Elizabeth was working on an especially bad wound. To help the young soldier think about something besides the pain she told him a little about her own history. “My father and I were deported from our home by the Turks,” she said bitterly, “and my father was thrown into prison. In 1915 they took him out of his cell, rolled him in a carpet and hoisted him up on a donkey. Together with other Armenian men they sent him away to die.” At this moment, Elizabeth, for some reason, looked up. To her surprise the young soldier was staring at her with a look of horror in his black eyes.
“What is the matter?” Elizabeth asked.
“I killed your father,” he said in a low voice. Elizabeth could only gasp. With a super human effort, she went on cleansing the wound. “I rolled him off the donkey onto the ground,” the soldier continued. “With one jab of the bayonet I killed him. I have never been able to forget it. The whole business of killing has sickened me.”
Elizabeth felt a wave of hatred and sorrow sweep over her. Here was the murderer of her father. In some strange way, the enemy had fallen into her hands. She knew she only needed to withhold her treatment and he too would die. But at that moment Elizabeth thought of her mother. What would she have done? Her mother loved Jesus and tried to follow him.
The power and love of her mother’s life reached out to Elizabeth.
Gently Elizabeth turned to the soldier lying in front of her. “Christ says we must forgive our enemies. For his sake, I forgive you.” she said. The soldier stared at her in amazement. He could not say anything. Every day, when Elizabeth came to his bed to dress his wound, she saw him looking at her with awe and wonder in his eyes.
Finally, one day, the healing soldier said to Elizabeth, “Your Christ must be very great! His teachings really live in your heart, for I see them in your life.”
Somehow God had given Elizabeth the power to forgive her enemy! It cleansed all bitterness from her soul. The soldier had the gift of life and she was free to love and live again.
You may not, thank God, have to face this sort of human suffering, but we each are called in our own way to be a broker of hope, even in the dark places in our lives, especially in the dark places of our life.
There was a poem found on the wall of a concentration camp:
I Believe
I believe in the sun
Even when it’s not shining
I believe in love
Even when I don’t feel it
I believe in God
Even when he’s silent.
And Jesus said, “The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
This is the hope to which we cling, this is the hope from which we live our lives. This is the hope that we have to broker to others, even the funeral directors of Canterbury, Nelson and the West Coast.