Pumping Gas With Tears in Our Eyes

One of the most poignant images of Jesus’ passion often goes unnoticed, because of all the fanfare and celebration of Palm Sunday. It comes at the end of that memorable day. Only Luke Gives it to us:

As the came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)

His words and his tears are timeless, because peace is so elusive. Now we are in the days he laments. I saw with my own eyes last night a hollowed out and burning children’s hospital, with piled up corpses out in the street. I watch a father moan over his dead teenage daughter covered up by a blood soaked sheet. I see this morning a family of four laying dead outside their smoldering home. Tears come. Clearly, clearly, we still don’t recognize the things that make for peace. Clearly now peace is hidden from our eyes. There is so much to weep for these days.

Frederick Buechner moves the narrative close to our tear ducts, when he says “If Christ were alive in the world, his eyes would still have tears, and of course he is, and the tears are yours and mine.” We can distance ourselves because we are on the other end of the world, or because we locate this evil acted out by just one man, or because its all just too painful to hold onto. Tears might not come after all.

But that’s impossible if the suffering and dying love of Jesus is beating in our hearts.

A friend relayed her sorrow at the gas pump yesterday. She talked about how she lamented getting out of the car the expense, until she started to pump the gas, when she was overwhelmed with tears in thinking about mothers in Ukraine. Suddenly, she said on Facebook, “pumping gas, even at this price, and getting in my car to go to work, was a privilege, while I drove away with my heart breaking for those who are being needlessly slaughtered.”

This would be a good time for us, friends, to pump gas, and to go to work, and to drive back home with deep sorrow and tears for his dreadful war and suffering going on. As those who long for, and work for, and seek and speak peace, the peace of Christ, let our hearts be heavy and our prayers be many, and let weeping come. This is our way of loving and caring or the suffering of others; this is how we allow ourselves to suffer with them, even from here.

And here or there, wherever you are, “turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” (Ps. 34:14). And “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you have been called.” (Col 3:15) And remember what Jesus said as you pump gas with tears in your eyes: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Peter Hawkinson

Pumping Gas With Tears in Our Eyes

One of the most poignant images of Jesus’ passion often goes unnoticed, because of all the fanfare and celebration of Palm Sunday. It comes at the end of that memorable day. Only Luke Gives it to us:

As the came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)

His words and his tears are timeless, because peace is so elusive. Now we are in the days he laments. I saw with my own eyes last night a hollowed out and burning children’s hospital, with piled up corpses out in the street. I watch a father moan over his dead teenage daughter covered up by a blood soaked sheet. I see this morning a family of four laying dead outside their smoldering home. Tears come. Clearly, clearly, we still don’t recognize the things that make for peace. Clearly now peace is hidden from our eyes. There is so much to weep for these days.

Frederick Buechner moves the narrative close to our tear ducts, when he says “If Christ were alive in the world, his eyes would still have tears, and of course he is, and the tears are yours and mine.” We can distance ourselves because we are on the other end of the world, or because we locate this evil acted out by just one man, or because its all just too painful to hold onto. Tears might not come after all.

But that’s impossible if the suffering and dying love of Jesus is beating in our hearts.

A friend relayed her sorrow at the gas pump yesterday. She talked about how she lamented getting out of the car the expense, until she started to pump the gas, when she was overwhelmed with tears in thinking about mothers in Ukraine. Suddenly, she said on Facebook, “pumping gas, even at this price, and getting in my car to go to work, was a privilege, while I drove away with my heart breaking for those who are being needlessly slaughtered.”

This would be a good time for us, friends, to pump gas, and to go to work, and to drive back home with deep sorrow and tears for his dreadful war and suffering going on. As those who long for, and work for, and seek and speak peace, the peace of Christ, let our hearts be heavy and our prayers be many, and let weeping come. This is our way of loving and caring or the suffering of others; this is how we allow ourselves to suffer with them, even from here.

And here or there, wherever you are, “turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” (Ps. 34:14). And “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you have been called.” (Col 3:15) And remember what Jesus said as you pump gas with tears in your eyes: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

Peter Hawkinson

126

‘When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.” (Psalm 126:1)

Thus begins Psalm 126, one of the Psalms of Ascent (120-134) which are multi-dimensional in meaning. They were spoken, and more often sung by pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem for one of the great religious festivals. Every road to Jerusalem is a road up, an ascent. Also, the number of Psalms of Ascent, fifteen, corresponds to the number of steps up to the great Temple Mount in Jerusalem, as if there is one psalm for each step. Fascinating!

I have been captivated of late by number 126. It captures and invites the people to relive the moment when Israel came home from captivity in 538 BC, after 50 years of life in Babylon. It speaks of laughter and joy repeatedly, of “watercourses in the Negeb” — streams in the desert, a miracle! The breath-taking joy of this time of restoration. What grabs me most these days is how they became dreamers again, how having their hope restored gave them permission to contemplate a future after all, to begin dreaming again about what might be.

I believe it’s high time for us to dream again, as we find ourselves in another moment of restored fortunes. We have the chance now to imagine a future once more!

It is two years ago now that our lives her taken captive by a dreadful pandemic, which took the lives of a million Americans and six million of our fellow human beings. We became quarantined from one another, our lives thrown upside down in every way imaginable. COVID’s tentacles of devastation reached all of us. Fearful, grieving, and exhausted, we have been ravaged.

But now Spring is coming, quickly on its way! The pandemic is losing its grip on us, and we are coming back home to life as it was before: “Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy!” (v.2). It is time to come home to life again, and nowhere is that more exciting than in the church, where we locate our primary community of belonging in this world. God is good!

I’d like to invite you to dream with me anew and again as we look forward into a new season of life and ministry. The Dream Team will be a group of us who gather together to intentionally look ahead with hope for renewed healing and joy in the church. As we think about the rest of this year, or the next three or five years, what dreams fill your spirit? What visions for Church renewal bring you joy and hope? What plans might we make to build up our community again, to re-connect, and to celebrate anew God’s love and goodness?

If you’d be interested in joining this group, please be in touch. We’ll likely gather 2 to 4 times in a casual atmosphere (maybe around a fire pit?) to dream together, and make some new plans for fun things.

“Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy!”

Love from Here,

Peter Hawkinson