"What Happened To You?"

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           I am reminded of a great story of a beloved priest in the diocese who stuck his foot in his mouth at the bed side of a woman who was recovering from a hysterectomy. The young priest listened as the woman described the terrible pain she was in. In an attempt to offer words of comfort, the priest said, “I know exactly how you feel.” The woman, who thankfully had a sense of humor, replied, “Oh, do tell me Father, when did you have your hysterectomy?”

            In Pastoral Care 101, you learn that there are certain things you just don’t say to people in a pastoral setting. And near the top of the list is, “I know exactly how you feel.” This applies to even those situations that you yourself are familiar with.

This does not mean, however, that it isn’t sometimes appropriate to comment on the shared experience. This does not mean that you can’t try to be sympathetic or even empathetic. But the truth is – none of us really know exactly how the other feels. So, if I ever slip up and say to you, “I know exactly how you feel,” you have every permission to reply, “So, tell me Father, when did you have your hysterectomy?”

In my experience, the human condition and experience is sorely hindered by the feeling of aloneness. From the moment of our birth, when we are ripped from our mother’s womb, we cry to know that we are not alone, we cry to know that someone understands how we feel. Our entire lives are marked by different manifestations of the feeling of aloneness expressed at our birth.

And in my experience, the human condition and experience thrives when we know that we are not alone, we thrive when we feel understood. So, the question that begs to be reconciled asks, “How can we truly know that we are not alone if no one truly knows how we feel, if no one truly understands us?”

Thankfully, this is a question that scripture helps us answer starting at the beginning in Genesis when God looks upon the man he has made and says, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper and support.”

Unfortunately, the story unravels quickly and the very people who are supposed to help us feel not so alone end up failing us. Even more, we too, end up failing those whom we are supposed to help feel not so alone.

Again and again, scripture shows us how God intends to reconcile humanity to God and other. During this season of Lent, our Old Testament lessons have displayed God’s various attempts to reconcile humanity one to another.  Again and again, God makes covenants with his people and promises to be with them no matter what.

Even more, God makes covenants to help humanity remember that they belong to each other. God tries to help us remember that we need each other. But again and again, humanity resolves to go at it alone, without each other’s help, without God’s help.

And finally, as we see in today’s lesson from Jeremiah, God devises a way to make his promise to reconcile one to another stick. God says, through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people.” And as the passage concludes, this covenant hinges on God’s promise of mercy. “I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”

A part of me always wonders, why does God continue to show mercy to a people who rebel? Why does God keep coming to save us from sin and death? What about humanity makes us so lovable that God wants to rescue us again and again? What makes humanity so worth saving?

Based on both my own experience with God and my own experience of parenthood, the word that helps me answer this question is “pity.” I imagine God feels much the same way about sinful human beings as do parents feel about their toddlers when they are throwing a temper tantrum because they can’t communicate what they want.

When God looks at humanity acting out like we do, God doesn’t see bad people who just feel like being bad. Instead, God looks with pity upon us. Like a parent, God’s anger is turned because God sees a lonely and lost people who are crying to be known and understood and loved. God sees a people who have the capacity for good when they feel connected to God and each other. God believes in humanity even when humanity cannot believe in itself. 

And God’s ultimate expression of pity and call for togetherness comes from the cross where Jesus begs, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Our gospel scripture for today tells us that this act on the cross of Christ is the judgment of the world where the ruler of this world will be driven out.

In other words, the cross of Jesus Christ shows the world (i.e. the fallen realm) that our feelings of aloneness are a lie. Our feelings of aloneness are lies that the ruler of this fallen world (i.e. Satan) is trying to convince us to believe in for if we go one believing this lie of aloneness, we will go on destroying each other.

And the cross exposes the world to this lie by showing us a God who is willing plumb the deepest, darkest depths of the human experience simply to say, I am with you even when the rest of the world has abandoned you to the powers of sin and death. Ultimately, God’s action in Christ crucified is the very act that draws all the lonely people of the world together as one under God.

  Jamie and I watched a segment on 60 minutes last Sunday on children who have experienced trauma. The trauma these children experienced was in the form of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their parents and relatives. And in one way or another, these children cry to know that they are not alone.

Not surprisingly, their cry of aloneness is often manifested by acting out against others. The only way they know how to feel connected is by hurting others because the only way they knew connection as young people was in the form of abuse at the hands of their loved ones. These young people were wired to experience connection in ways not intended by God. And if there is no intervention, then these sins will be handed down to the next generation.

Thankfully, there are organizations who are committed to stopping the cycle of abuse and abandonment. In particular, the organization featured on 60 minutes hinges their whole philosophy on how one question is framed. Instead of asking, “what is wrong with you?” when a victim of abuse acts out, the question becomes, “what happened to you?”

The story went onto chronicle how this subtle turn of phrase changes the trajectory of the conversation. Turns out people respond much better when they feel heard than when they feel threatened – this is also good paternal and marital advice.  Instead of putting the victim of abuse on the defensive by asking, “what is wrong with you?”, the victim is invited to tell their story when asked, “what happened to you?”

The telling of these stories help the victims not feel so alone. For once in their life, these victims can tell their story to someone who is listening, to someone who wants to understand, to someone who wants to help. And I hope we all know the healing found in simply being able to share our story of aloneness and abandonment with someone who wants to understand. In a very real way, these victims get to say, “And I lived to tell the story.”

In the end, the cross of Jesus Christ gives all of humanity the chance to say, “And I lived to tell the story.” The cross is God’s intervention for all of humanity. The cross is erected to stop the perpetual cycle of sin that says we need to inflict pain on others in order to feel connected. The cross gives humanity a way to share in our collective story of aloneness and abandonment, a way for us to say, “We are alone in this together.” And that alone begins the process of healing.

The cross shows us a God who isn’t in interested in beating up on us by constantly asking, “What’s wrong with you?” but a God who is interested in helping us answer, “What happened to you?” And ours is a God who isn’t simply willing to listen to our story of aloneness, but a God who is interested in sharing the human story of aloneness, so that all may share in God’s never ending story of wholeness and community, a story where feeling alone and misunderstood is finally written out of the script through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.