In the wake of destruction

Text: Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

The news over the last two weeks has been full of stories, photos, videos revealing the shocking destruction, especially in Florida and Western North Carolina, in the wake of the floods, winds, landslides, and tornados wreaked by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. I read story after story of folks who had survived the monster storms, and also those who did not. 

It has been almost unbelievable to see the wreckage - roads, highways, even the Blue Ridge Parkway washed away; the French Broad and Nolichuky Rivers coursing down interstate highways, sweeping away crops and farmland, entire houses, a paper mill. People standing in what is left of their houses staring at mud covered furniture and walls, cars crushed like cans, smashed up timbers, and upside down refrigerators. I saw scenes of things lodged in the mud where someone’s home used to be - a stuffed teddy bear, a Fender guitar, a piano. People’s ruined possessions in public view. I felt like I shouldn’t be looking at them.

And a woman wading through knee-high water holding a child’s hand and carrying the family dog as they leave everything behind in their home engulfed with floodwater, knowing that none of it will still be there if they can ever get back. An elderly couple being helped into an inflatable boat from their second floor balcony. A man sitting on the curb in front of the Gas Plus, head in hands, wondering what to do.

Now that everything he has but the clothes on his back has been washed away, I don’t know if the man sitting in front of the Gas Plus would want to hear the story of Jesus telling the man who knelt before him to get rid of all his possessions so he might inherit eternal life. 

It feels callous to hold up the virtues of voluntary poverty amid the real and raw grief of those who have just lost everything they owned the span of a few hours. And although we know deep inside that God always brings new life out of destruction, that’s the story of God, it feels a little too soon to press him to look at the bright side now. 

Sometimes we just have to sit with our grief and mourn our losses. Actually not just sometimes. None of us can really fully live without acknowledging and grieving the things we have lost, be they possessions or memories or relationships. Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died, and Mary Magdalene stood weeping at Jesus’s tomb after the disciples had gone home. The Israelites were devastated by the destruction of Jerusalem - the Psalms say that the people loved her very rubble and had pity on her dust.

So let us acknowledge the pain that destruction brings. Let us grieve not only the loss of life, but the loss of a way of life for some, and the loss of the material goods that supported the lives of others - beds to sleep in, refrigerators in which to keep food fresh, cars to take people to their jobs, shoes to protect their feet, roofs to shelter them from heat and cold and wind and rain. 

Let us not condemn the man who sadly walked away, grieving at just the thought of giving up everything he had. Surely we can relate. Nobody wants to lay themselves bare before the eyes of those who would judge. Nobody wants to be so vulnerable.

In the end, though, it is vulnerability that Jesus is offering as the way to the kingdom. He said that we must become like children to enter it. We must be like those who are, and know they are, completely dependent on God as Blake reminded us last week. Like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, relying on manna from heaven for their daily bread for forty long years. Completely dependent on God. 

The hard truth is that we cannot save ourselves, we cannot grant ourselves the fullness of life God intends for us, neither by following the rules, nor by accumulating money and possessions to shield us from all the things we fear. Jesus knows we’d be better off if we could accept this. And yet he looked at the man kneeling before him and he loved him.

True connection comes from self abandonment in the face of love. Giving ourselves away, giving our wealth away, letting go of our shields and props, that’s what frees us from the bondage of stubborn self-reliance so that we might boldly approach the throne of grace. Giving ourselves away opens us up to the peace and beauty of life in God, a life where it’s not scary to be vulnerable because there is always enough and more than enough, and we are cherished and safe and will be cared for even though we can’t quite let ourselves believe it.

Back in Western Carolina, rescue crews are going door to door, or what remains of doors, and combing through debris, to find everyone who needs help. Old Europe Pastries Cafe in Asheville is offering free hot lunches served by its now laid off but still volunteering staff. Bear’s Smokehouse is full of volunteers with World Central Kitchen to cook and deliver food. A bunch of teenagers in Eastmoor have rigged up a pulley and filter system to collect clean water from a nearby spring to carry in buckets two at a time, on foot, to all their neighbors. The Popeye’s in Swannanoa is hosting a veterinary clinic. Story after story of individual people - as well as groups with names like the Pansy Collective and at the Cajun Navy - coming from places that were not devastated, to offer everything from garden produce for people to hay for livestock to insulin for the diabetic, delivered by truck or helicopter or paddle board or dirt bike or pack mules named Smoky, Jeb, Vader, LilWayne and Pistol Annie carrying supplies into places where roads are impassible.

The papers say these communities look like war zones, but to me they also sound something like the kingdom of God. Amid destruction, people are searching for the lost, feeding each other, offering a cup of fresh water, giving of themselves, giving away what they have to those who have suffered. Isn’t this what Jesus said the kingdom of God is like?

We should not look away. The losses are real, but so is the love.