April 18, 2021 – Psalm 4, Luke 24:35b-48
Psalm 4; Luke 24:35b-48
God Gives Us Room
Third Sunday of Easter – April 18, 2021
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When I was in a tight spot, says the Psalmist in Psalm 4, you, O God, gave me room.
That’s a fairly literal translation.
The Psalmist is having slanderous things said about him and he feels like
the walls are closing in – he feels constricted, defined.
He can’t sleep and is clearly worrying over the damage to his reputation.
He finds refuge and peace, though, in his creator,
in the one who called him into being, whose word to him is a good one,
who gives him room to just be himself, just the way God made him.
God graciously accepts him the way he is.
In this way, God gives him room.
And when he literally goes to his room at night, he is able to lie down and sleep in peace,
and get that good night’s sleep he so desperately needs.
God gives us the room we need to be the people God calls us to be.
God delights in giving us the room to develop and grow and
become all that we were created to be.
God does not delight in anything that hinders us in that enterprise –
in the Psalmist’s case, hurtful words that are meant to tear down.
God’s gracious, unconditional love, rather, gives us room – room to live, to breathe, to be.
On this Third Sunday of Easter, we are still celebrating Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
If ever there was a tight spot, surely it is death – surely it is the tomb.
Death is, perhaps, the ultimate way of hindering someone from all they can be.
In Jesus’ case, his crucifixion was meant to hinder him from proclaiming God’s reign and
inviting others into that reign.
His crucifixion was meant to hinder him from bringing in God’s restoration of this world,
from fixing what is broken, and fixing those who are broken.
Jesus is greatly hindered in death – he is in a tight spot.
But God gives him room by raising him up again.
And what does Jesus do with the room he is given?
What does Jesus do now that he is no longer constrained?
What does Jesus do with his freedom?
He certainly does not linger in the tomb – in every account he just gets up and goes!
He’s got stuff to do!
He moves forward!
In Luke’s account, he seems to be intent on dealing with the trauma his friends have undergone
as a result of his arrest, trial and death.
They are scared, they are grieving, and they have been traumatized.
He greets them always with the greeting of peace, something they sorely need.
And then – he eats with them.
As one commentator astutely observes, Jesus turns trauma into communion.
I would say, perhaps, he counters trauma with communion.
That’s what he does with the room he is given by God: he counters trauma with communion.
And for that, he needs a body: a physical body with which he can share food and
everything that goes with the sharing of food: conversation, understanding, and love.
In this way, he gives the disciples room.
Room to live again.
Room to be themselves again.
Room to not worry or be afraid again.
Room to invite others to repent – that is, to change what they care about – and forgive.
Room to counter trauma with communion.
Room is what we are given by Jesus – room to be who we truly are.
Room to be deeply and unconditionally loved just as we are.
There are many things that hinder us from blooming into
the fully human people we are meant to be:
The harsh words and judgments of others, to be sure – like the Psalmist.
But there are other things that kill us just as surely as the cross killed Jesus.
Grief, loneliness, prejudice, poverty, illness,
our failures as well as our own unrealistic expectations.
But God’s love gives us room to become the people we were created to be –
and it allows us to give others that same room.
In the past week, with Derek Chauvin’s trial for the death of George Floyd continuing,
the death of yet another African American, Duante Wright,
at the hands of a police officer has
heaped yet more trauma on a devastated community in Minneapolis.
George Floyd was literally constricted to death and not given room to breathe.
What I was most interested in reading this week was
the response of the Floyd family to Duante Wright’s mother.
In the midst of their own grief, and in the midst of this all important trial,
Floyd’s family left the courthouse on Tuesday in order to be with Wright’s mother.
Their family thought it important, said their lawyer, to give comfort to her.
George Floyd’s brother Philonise said this:
We will stand in support with you. . . . The world is traumatized, watching another African American man being slayed. I woke up this morning with this on my mind. I don’t want to see another victim.
Somehow, Floyd’s family was given the room to do something with their grief.
They found the room to counter trauma with communion.
What if all the traumas we experienced were met with communion?
With coming together, rather than with further division?
God gives us the room to do so.
Can we give others the same room?
On Easter day, Jesus is given room by God and uses it to get up and
go meet his disciples where he finds them, traumatized –
and meets their trauma with communion.
In the normal run of things, Jesus meets us the same way, in Holy Communion,
with physical bread and physical wine.
In the normal run of things, we meet one another in the same way,
with physical bodies in physical space.
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it is the importance of being able to
physically meet with one another, which impossibility has been so disorienting.
Friends: we will be given room again – the question is what will we do with it?
With Jesus let us use the room God gives us to get up and be about God’s work of
meeting trauma with communion.
Let us get up and be about God’s work of blessing and healing and setting free.
Let us get up and be about God’s work of meeting one another as human beings.
Let us give one another room – to live, to grow, to be.
Amen
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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