Expecting the Unexpected Joyce Hollyday Luke 7:11-27; June 9, 2013 I like that we have four gospels in our

Bible. We have the gift of four different perspectives on the same events by four interested, and interesting, witnesses. Of course, wed have even more if the thoughts of women counted and were recorded in that time; but the few accounts by women that did survive were systematically left out of our Bible by the male church authorities who began deciding back in the fourth century what belonged in it. So we have the gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They agree on most of the big events in Jesus lifehis birth, death, and resurrection, for example. They differ at the point of emphasis. Luke has always been my favorite. Hes identified elsewhere in the scriptures as the beloved physician. And if you read through his gospel, youll find that its packed with healing stories. He had a particular love for people on the margins of societythe sick and neglected and outcast. And his compassion for them led him to offer a persistent stinging critique of unjust economic and power arrangementsthe things that were making them sick. And so our text tonight is a perfect Luke kind of story. You wont find it in Matthew, Mark, or John. Clearly Jesus raising of a young man in Nain left an impression on Luke, who seemed intent on portraying a picture of Jesus that mirrored his own deepest concerns. It would be easy to miss the economic and political implications of this act of healing, reading it as we are almost two thousand years after it happened. When the text tells us that Jesus had compassion for the grieving mother and told her not to weep, this was a response to more than just her sorrow. A widow who had just lost her only son would have been cut off from any means of financial support. She would have immediately joined the ranks of those cast to the edges of society, dependent on the charity of neighbors, or strangers. Over and over in the scriptures, we read of the prophets encouraging care of the widows and orphansthe ones without the protection and support of men in that very structured and patriarchal society. Jesus cared enough about this woman and her well-being to break the law to heal her son. His touching of the bier where the sons body lay was a total violation of Jewish purity codes, which forbade any contact with the dead. By this act, Jesus was confronting the powers of oppression, and injustice, and deathexposing their impotence. Jesus broke the law on behalf of life. He brought the young man back. And what was the first response of the crowd? Amazement? Gratitude? Celebration?...No. The text tells us that Fear seized all of them. Now, some of this fear was similar to the awe that comes when you encounter divine power and recognize a prophet in your midst. But some of it was that kind of fear that gets people riled up when someone breaks the rules and causes troubleeven if for a good cause. Its the kind of fear that gets planted, and takes root, and ends up with these same folks who hailed Jesus as a prophet in Nain yelling Crucify him! a couple of years later in Jerusalem.

Now, I know that our lectionary gospel passage was predetermined long ago. But, still, I think theres a divine providence at work that this story appears in the same week that Bradley Mannings trial started. Three years ago, Manning was a 22-year-old Private First Class in the U.S. Army. As an intelligence analyst, he had access to hundreds of thousands of classified documents. And what he read troubled him greatly. Heres a very small sampling: Manning found documentation that, between 2004 and 2009 during the Iraq War, 66,081 Iraqi civilians suffered violent deaths. In 2006, U.S. troops executed at least 10 civilians, including a woman in her seventies and a five-month-old, and then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence. During the U.S. occupation, U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers. Despite persistent public denials by Washington, Special Operations forces were conducting offensive military missions inside Pakistan. And in Afghanistan, while hunting down 2,000 Taliban and al-Qaida leaders targeted for death or detention without trial, they mistakenly killed women, men, children, and Afghan police officers. In 2009, in violation of the international Geneva Accords, the U.S. government initiated a spying campaign that targeted the leadership of the United Nations, aiming to gather top officials private encryption keys, credit card information, and biometric data. Bradley Manning couldnt keep quiet about what he learned. He handed over about 720,000 diplomatic cables, war logs, and other records to WikiLeaks. Though this seems like a stunningly large number, it is less than one percent of the reportedly 77 million documents classified by the U.S. government in 2010. Do you think they have a few things to hide? Bradley Manning made it his business to stop the secrecy and deceit and expose the truth, hoping to spark a public debate in the United States about our countrys foreign policy and the nature of our wars. At the start of his trial on Monday, his defense attorney described him as youngand he does look so very young in his pictures nave, but good intentioned, arguing that he passed on the documents to make the world a better place. Manning, whose lawyer filed a complaint that he is suffering abusive treatment and extreme isolation, has spent three years in military prison. He has admitted to leaking the documents to the whistle-blowing website and will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. He is charged, among other things, with aiding the enemyan offense that carries a life sentence, or death. His trial is expected to last through the summer. Bradley Manning broke the law on behalf of life. And fear seized all of themall of the generals and politicos and intelligence agents. All of the people with secrets to hide. And they are coming down hard on him. His supporters have hailed him as a heroa prophet, if you will; a young man confronting the powers of oppression, and injustice, and death, and exposing their impotence. But paying the price with his life. Perhaps there is another divine providence at work, in that another court proceeding also began this week, on the other end of the country and the military spectrum. Robert Bales is a former stock trader, who was found guilty of committing fraud to the tune of 1.4 million dollars. He enlisted in the United States Army and did four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2

winning many medals. Between tours he got into bar fights and was charged with assaulting a woman. In March last year, 38-year-old Staff Sergeant Bales went on a rampage in Afghanistans Kandahar province, slipping away from his army post with a pistol, a rifle, and a grenade launcher. He attacked two villages, killing 16 civilians, including 9 children, torching some of their bodies. He returned wearing a blood-spotted bed sheet like a cape and announced to a fellow soldier, I just shot up some people. Bales lawyers argued that he suffers from both a Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Witnesses stated that he was greatly affected when a fellow soldier lost a leg during a bomb blast at his post. One told the court that Bales had watched a violent movie and gone on a drinking spree before his rampage. Bales himself admitted to using illegal steroids to build up his body and aid his recovery time between military operations, and that they increased his anger and irritability. Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, but Bales guilty plea at his hearing that began on Tuesday removed that option. He will either be sentenced to life without parole, or given a life sentence that will include a parole hearing and possibility of release in ten years. Its easy to hate Robert Bales, the anti-hero. And easy for army officials to single him out as an aberration, a disgrace to the thousands of honorable men and women in uniform. But will they ask the deeper, more difficult questions about military culture? Will we as a nation begin to understand that it is impossible to fight in a war without suffering PTSD? Might we find a way to use this momentwhen two trials reveal so much about who we areto once and for all declare that war is unacceptable? The truth creates fear. The truth creates offense. When John the Baptists disciples reported to their leader the story of the raising of the son of the widow in Nain, John sent two of them back to Jesus, to find out if he was the longexpected Messiah. Jesus responded by telling them about all his healing miraclespeople seeing and hearing and walking for the first timeand about the good news he was bringing to poor folk. Jesus ended by saying, And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. I think he said it like he knew it was a small pool. He was the unexpected, expected one. Not the powerful king the Jews were hoping for. He reminded the crowds where to look for hope. He encouraged them to set their gaze on the wilderness, not the royal throne. To expect wisdom in unexpected places. To seek truth from a prophet who wore rough camel hair and ate bugs. Or one who sits alone in a jail cell, paying the price for telling it. We lost another prophet this week, the same day that Bradley Mannings trial started. Will Campbell, a saint of the civil rights and anti-death-penalty movements, died at the age of 88 on Monday night. He was a dear friend of Nancy and Ken Sehested and many other progressive Baptists. Will was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of 17. At the University of Mississippi, he received death threats for his integrationist views and was fired from his job as chaplain there for 3

playing ping pong with an African American man. He worked with the National Council of Churches on race relations from 1956 to 1963, and was the only white person invited by Martin Luther King to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in 1957. Months later, Will helped escort nine African American students through an angry mob in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the effort to integrate Central High School. He participated in sit-ins, marches, and Freedom Rides across the South to end legal segregation. He abandoned organized religion when Southern churches refused to integrate. Will protested the Vietnam War and, in more recent years, was an outspoken advocate for equality for women and gays and lesbians. Once, in a public debate once over the question of capital punishment, his opponent gave a lengthy, academic defense of the practice. Then Will took the podium, said I just think its tacky, and sat down. Will wrote a moving memoir titled Brother to a Dragonfly and several other books. He was the inspiration for Doug Marlettes preacher Will B. Dunn in the cartoon Kudzu. He called himself a bootleg preacher and drank whiskey with members of the Ku Klux Klan. He visited James Earl Ray in prison after he assassinated Dr. King in 1968, claiming that Jesus Christ died for bigots as well as devout people. Like Jesus, I suppose, Will Campbell could say Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me to a largely empty room. He left the heart of the church and went to the wilderness. He broke the lawrepeatedlyon behalf of lifeuntil the law changed. He learned to expect the unexpected. Praise God for the life of this courageous follower of Jesus. I invite us now into a time of silence. I encourage you to take this time to pray for Bradley Manning. And for Robert Bales. Give thanks, if you feel so moved, for Will Campbell and all the other saints who have persistently claimed life in the face of death. And ask God to turn our fear into awe; to help us look for hope around the edges; to keep on expecting the unexpected. Amen.