Sermon for Easter Sunday Beach Service at Santa Monica Beach
Not Beyond Hope
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
An Easter story –
Joyce Hollyday tells the story of a young man, a school teacher, whose special teaching duties included visiting children at a large city hospital, helping them stay caught up with their studies while they were hospitalized.
One day this teacher was asked to visit a particular child in that hospital.
The teacher wrote down the boy’s name and his room number. His classroom teacher mentioned that the class was studying nouns and adverbs right now. “I’d be grateful,” she said, “if you could help him with his homework, so that, while we he is the hospital he doesn’t fall behind the other students.”
So, the young teacher set out for the hospital. It wasn’t until he got to the floor where the boy was staying that he realized that the boy was in the intensive care burn unit. No one had prepared him for what he saw – a young boy horribly burned and in constant pain.
The teacher’s first thought was to turn around and leave. This was just too hard to face. However, the teacher knew he could not do that, so he went in the room and stammered to the boy in the bed, “Hello, I am the hospital teacher, your regular teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs.”
The boy was in such pain that he hardly responded. The young teacher stumbled through the lesson, not certain if the boy even knew he was there or if he heard anything the teacher was saying, mostly feeling ashamed that he was putting this very sick young boy through what seemed to be such a senseless exercise.
The next morning at the hospital a nurse from the burn unit sought out this teacher. “What did you do to that boy,” she said. Before the teacher could finish apologizing for putting the boy through a useless English exercise, the nurse interrupted him, “You don’t understand. We have been very worried about this boy. He was not responding and seemed to be getting worse instead of better. But, ever since you were here yesterday, this boy’s whole attitude has changed. He is fighting to get well. He is responding to treatment. It is as if he has decided to live.”
The nurse continued, “So I asked him what changed. The boy shared that he had, indeed, given up hope until he saw you, a teacher, at his bedside. Then, everything changed for this boy. Through joyful tears the young boy, still in great pain, said, “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a boy who is beyond hope, would they?
And God, our God, would not send His son so die and rise for people, people like you and me, who are beyond hope, would he? If Easter is anything, it is hope for us all. None of us are beyond hope. None of us are beyond God. The story of Easter, Jesus’ rising from the dead and Jesus’ promise of such a resurrection for each of us, is at heart a story of hope. For you and me. Today and every day.
Amen
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018
