4th sunday after epiphany | Feb. 2nd

Sermon Title:  Kobe Bryant
​and the others

“May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

Last Sunday afternoon I was out for a bit and someone told me for no particular reason that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter accident.  When I got home, I turned on the television to find out more. 

I think the first news report I heard had listed five killed in the accident, one of whom was Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna.  Soon that number increased to nine killed.  There was a father, mother and their 13-year-old daughter Alyssa, who was a teammate of Gianna’s. 

Two additional deaths were that of a mother and her daughter Payton who was another teammate of Gianna’s.  The girl’s basketball coach from Kobe Bryant’s sports academy was another one who died that day, and there was also the pilot.

I completely understand why Kobe Bryant’s death was the one that turned this tragic accident into headline news, but I was still bothered by announcements that grouped the others together anonymously. 

There was nothing the reporters could do.  I understand this.  They had to report about Kobe Bryant’s death even before the rest of the details were known and confirmed, but I was still bothered by the fact that people who were loved by family and friends just like Kobe was by his family and friends, were lumped together anonymously.  “Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others,” is what I kept hearing.  And again, I understand why this happened, but it still bothered me.

Kobe Bryant is a world-wide phenomenon.  I’m not much of a basketball fan, and since I did once love and follow Larry Bird’s Celtics I definitely was not a big fan of the Lakers, but even I knew who Kobe Bryant was when someone blurted it out to me last Sunday. 

And Kobe Bryant was a good man.  He gave back after a spectacular and lucrative NBA career.  He became an investor in start-up companies.  He was trying to help young people, to give them a better chance. 

I heard an interview with him.  The reporter asked if he were more proud of his basketball career or his work with start-ups.  I was surprised by his answer.  He said that you can win a championship or an MVP, but the next year it’s done all over again, and someone else takes your place.  But when you help a young person get started, when you inspire the next generation ... that's when you create something forever. 

Kobe Bryant was a talented man, and a good man, and I understand why his death got so much more attention than the others on that helicopter, but their anonymity still bothered me.

Tomorrow evening we’re going to meet for Bible study, and I don’t know if we’ll make it all the way there, but we’re supposed to talk about the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Jonah.  This is a great story for kids – the prophet being swallowed by a great fish, but there’s also an extremely important message being shared that is sometimes swallowed also by that great fish.

I’m not going to repeat the whole story, but this little four-chapter book ends with God chiding His prophet because Jonah resents God’s mercy.  Jonah wants God to destroy the city of Nineveh, but God responds and the book ends with God asking:  “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a 120,000 persons?”

Jonah personifies a negative “righteousness,” a morality that resents compassion, that dwells on judgment, that forgets that God cares about people, that God doesn’t only care about the people who are like us and who we like, but that God cares for everyone, the stranger, the alien, the widow, even the people of hated Nineveh. 

The way God looks at us, all of us, is not at all like those first reports of Kobe Bryant dying and 8 others with him.  God knows and cares for everybody.  He knows us all by name.  None are anonymous for God.  We all matter.

We need to remember this, and as we do, we need it to keep us from imagining that God loves judgment as much as we do.  God’s compassion actually angers Jonah, and that’s the very adult lesson of a very child-like story.

I’m sitting down having breakfast on Monday, and I’m finally making my way through the rest of the Sunday Boston Globe.  I start reading Yvonne Abraham’s column about Michelle Carter being released from jail.  She’s the young woman and girlfriend who kept sending texts to her boyfriend encouraging him to go through with his suicide plan. (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2020/01/25/michelle-carter-out-jail-but-not-out-spotlight/Ouazpks0qZGxg4LkFDledL/story.html)

She is far from a sympathetic character, but Yvonne Abraham was being sympathetic.  I resented it, and then as I was sitting down to write today’s sermon, I realized that I was like Jonah.  I resented her compassion.  I had chosen and liked judgment.  It’s so natural I didn’t even realize it.

This is why we need to constantly keep in mind God’s message that compassion is more godly than judgment, that everyone matters to God, and so everyone should matter to us. 

This is why Jesus shared with us a recipe of how to live our lives when He gave us the Beatitudes. 

This is why we should try to remember and repeat what the prophet Micah reveals:  “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” 

Everyone matters to God because ours is a compassionate God and we are to be a compassionate people.  May we do our best to live according to our faith.  And for this we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.