The Rev. Kate Braestrup, chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, opens her Week Five sermon series Sunday morning in the Amphitheater.
When the Rev. Kate Braestrup first encountered the hymn “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,” she thought it read, “There’s a wildness in God’s mercy.” That was the closing hymn after the sermon at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. In her sermon, she touched on the wildness of God’s love in the face of evil.
Braestrup’s sermon title was “Baby Henry Meets Diablo,” and the scripture reading was 1 John 4: 7-12.
Baby Henry is Braestrup’s newest grandchild. He did not come into this world easily and after a long labor and a complex cesarean birth, he was life-flighted to the Eastern Maine Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. He was there for 15 days.
His mother encouraged herself by saying, “Henry is not quite all the way born.”
“He was sedated, on a warm pad that was like a second womb, but it was not an upgrade,” Braestrup said. “The older womb was warm, albeit getting a bit snug, and peaceful. The new one was cold, loud and he was poked a lot.”
The family knew that his second birth was imminent when his mom, dad and granny could hold him, and when the one feeding tube to get his mother’s milk into his belly was removed.
Henry was able to live because of love, the wider love of the community, the flight crew and the NICU nurses. Braestrup is familiar with life-flight helicopters because the Maine Warden Service needs them to evacuate casualties who are beyond the reach of an ambulance.
“They are angels in jumpsuits,” she said.
Braestrup was invited to bless the newest helicopter in the fleet. “I don’t usually bless objects, but every part of the aircraft was created with a loving end in mind. The machine was built for agape and the people who staff it make sacrifices for the well-being of the beloved, the patient.”
Even though Henry was a stranger to the flight crew, he was recognized as being intimately related. “Their patient is my sister, my brother, my baby, one of us,” Braestrup said. “So I blessed the helicopter and named what was true — it was a mitzvah, a blessing.”
Love may be an emotion that everyone feels, but in the life-flight and the NICU, 1 John and its proclamation of love seemed only briefly superfluous.
“My theology has simplified over the years,” Braestrup said. “It is more demanding and goes straight to the heart, mind, soul and body that God is love, and we are created in love. So why are we sinners?”
She continued, “I am a sinner, too. I am an ordained, good person, but every time I inventory my mind and behavior, I find unlove and the too-familiar weaknesses summed up as iniquity. As Paul wrote in Romans, ‘For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ ”
Human beings are a social species and our iniquities mingle like slime mold, she told the congregation. “Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. They were known for such ordinariness. Did they light a fuse on an existing bomb?”
Is this original sin, she asked, “or is our species overdue for extinction, or do we externalize evil and call it Satan? We talk about evil as if it was a person. I can’t do that yet. We give evil a name and agency and a supernatural personality. We anthropomorphize evil, like saying evolution wants animals to reproduce. Evolution does not want anything, like gravity does not want anything.”
Braestrup envisioned evil like a tornado, called Diablo, that flings apart what God has joined. A car horn blared outside the Amp.
“Diablo does this easily; he is a very persuasive dude. Diablo tells us that self-love is as holy, as we get more from it than love that expects sacrifice for others,” she said. The car horn blared again.
She continued, “Diablo assures us it is OK to see others as instruments or obstacles.” The car horn sounded again and she laughed. “Diablo says we are so much better when we are thrown apart.”
The God of Jesus and Christianity demands the opposite, Braestrup said. “Love can only be reached or rejected through relationships. It is through the tiresome, vexed relationships that bring us closest to God. We enjoy the nurture and endure the pruning to make us more truthful.”
She continued, “Jesus didn’t go around spritzing the poor-in-spirit with a feel-good aerosol. God is a demanding god and the love of God is extended willingly in sacrifice in many ways.”
To follow God in love is not easy, but Jesus never promised easy, Braestrup said. While we are trying to love as God loves, Diablo is at work, slowly or suddenly, ripping the world apart. If there was no Diablo, there would be no need for Moses, Jesus, the Bible or Buddha.
She told the congregation, “Some might see the divisiveness and destruction around as Diablo getting the upper hand. When I feel that, I think of Baby Henry in the company of human angels and my stubborn faith returns.”
Braestrup continued, “I can’t self-love God anymore than I could self-baptize or self-ordain. We must give and receive the imperfect love that breathes between us. We are each other’s guides and companions. Diablo hasn’t won yet; God’s wild mercy remains so hold fast to it.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor for Chautauqua Institution, presided. Annie Leech, a student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and student minister for Chautauqua in 2024, read the scripture. The prelude, by Charles Hubert Hasting Parry, was “Melody,” played on the Massey Memorial Organ by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist. The Motet Choir, accompanied by and under the direction of Stafford, sang “Ubi caritas,” music by Zachary Wadsworth and words in eighth-century Northern Italian or Burgundian. The postlude, played by Stafford on the Massey Organ, was “Fugue in G Major, BWV 577,” by Johann Sebastian Bach. Support for this week’s services and chaplaincy is provided by the Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy and the John William Tyrrell Endowment for Religion.
