A theological reflection upon the student forum on grief and loss

It’s Sunday morning in any of our congregations. Here comes the line of people to receive Holy Communion. Look at them: to outsiders this seems to be a “parade of the pious.” These people often are well dressed, well scrubbed and well disguised. They call their clothes, “their Sunday best.” Imagine both the night before and the Sunday alarm clock awakening: shoes shined, baths or showers appointed, clothes arranged, perhaps even a table set and Sunday dinner in the oven. If there haven’t been too many family fights on the way to church, the air probably is still punctuated with the protests of children, then the excuses of a father who has to drop them off today and a mom who has learned to conceal disappointment at this great Sabbath divide between Mom’s church and Dad’s work at home. Marriage may be intact but reality shows this to be a “Sunday divorce.” In the first weeks of new parish, the lines of people do indeed look like a pious parade: everyone so well groomed, well put-together, so hidden and concealed. Appearances can be deceiving.

Now some time passes. A pastor lives with this people, visits, counsels, consoles and comforts this people. A narrative story is being written: new chapters underway as daily installments in a chronicled saga. This congregation is a work in progress. One day, as the pastor, it flashes in your mind that you know the name of every member who has walked forward for Holy Communion. Some months pass; you have visited, worked, helped, and listened to these people; you have baptized some, married some, buried some, been bored by some, been attacked by some, misunderstood sometimes; you’ve argued now and then, been dumped on and occasionally incited the riot yourself. The line forms one Sunday for Holy Communion. It occurs to you: this is not a “parade of the pious.” This is a “broken body,” and come to think of it, you’re rather “busted up yourself.” What a strange company we all are. With you, they have begun to label or name the burdens and, through your years and experiences with them, they occupy special “places in the heart,” to this very day. I remember their names and their stories.

I was just weeks into my first parish. I was the “new” assistant pastor. In a few weeks, I was learning a rthymn of time and routines. I read the Scriptures texts, prepared for sermons and classes, got to hospitals and nursing homes. I visited in homes, took shut-ins communion and attended evening committees. Saturday was a day to sleep in, wear grubby clothes, rest and re-coup. Until the jarring phone call on that gray, rainy cold day….”Pastor, we just found Justin in the basement. He’s killed himself. Please come.” The sobs were so intense and tortured it was hard to decipher the call. This was a 13 year old who had barely introduced himself in the few weeks of youth group meetings. Could any one have known, predicted or intervened?

After police left, the parents were in shock but had to go to a funeral home; could I drive them? There is a place in the heart where I see them still in my rear view mirror, in more ways than one, sobbing, clinging tight to one another; tears inside the car, pounding rain outside on the windshield, broken bodies in the family’s basement, broken bodies in the back seat of this improvised funeral hearse, broken bodies that would walk again some day, in that church’s communion line.

I remember Teddy. He was 4 years old. His mother called and said, “his dog died and he wants to talk to you about it.” Into the office he came, nearly inconsolable. His mother said, “I’ll let him talk to you by himself.” He sat in a large green wing chair, legs straight out, too small to bend towards the floor. “Pastor, what happens when my dog dies? Does he go to heaven?” There is a place in the heart where I see that child with expectant face asking the most important question yet in their young life. “Ted, long ago, the church had a great leader named Martin Luther. He had a dog named ‘Topel,’ and when Topel died he was sad and he said, “surely, Topel will have a golden tail in heaven. How ‘bout that?” “Pastor, we had a service in my backyard for my dog. Do you think he’s in heaven?” “I think if God made dogs, God must enjoy having them there in heaven.” “Thanks Pastor; that’s what I wanted to know.” Now, I don’t know, but maybe it was a passage-point conversation with a 4 year old. I wouldn’t want to be evaluated in a systematic theology course on my conversation but then they’d have to go after Luther too…

I remember Bob. He was my age, and also with a new wife and baby. He was beginning a business career, just out of military service. He had served as a green beret in Vietnam. He was a health nut: ran and jogged before it became vogue, drank water only, before the days of commercial brands; developed a cold during his winter run and the doctor took a preliminary xray showing a massive lung tumor. Doctors at the Medical College of Virginia had weekly meetings about his tumor since it was atypical of any cellular configuration they had ever seen. He was invited to sit in on those sessions. They knew not what to do. He went to radiation treatments. The whispered suspicions were about “agent orange,” used in Vietnam as a scorched earth fireball to burn forests. Two issues loomed large: first, his wife became pregnant during his treatments and the questions over the affect on the fetus overwhelmed this couple. A debate about full term pregnancy or abortion was part of our conversation through the time. In one of his later appointments with doctors, the tumor, massive, large and showing no signs of diminishment, suddenly disappeared from his body. Doctors had no explanation. No one could accurately predict the status of the fetus. Later, after their decision to go ahead, there was a celebration of a healthy baby’s baptism and his miracle recovery, quite unexplainable and a total bafflement to the medical community. In a place in my heart, I can see their lives churning in confusion, trying to hope and trust, unsure about their decisions, praying for guidance but wondering on the way: how would they be?

Every congregation’s ministry has strands of such stories woven into this fabric of life. This week, the emphasis in our chapel services has addressed: catastrophic losses, relationship losses, losses in pregnancy, health, aging and death. Each entry into worship with a particular emphasis, was a moment of “punching up” memories, with remembrances of names and circumstances. All of these “losses” happen to every one in our world and our world makes attempts to construct a way of dealing with human tragedies. Do you know this Ollie and Lena story?

Ollie is on his death bed and drifts in and out of consciousness. When he sees Lena the first time, he says,
“Lena, remember the time we were on the farm and the depression came, we thought we would lose everything?” “Yah, Yah Olie, I remember, but we got through that time.” Ollie drifts off, then awakens again:
“Lena, remember that time when our son went off to war and we worried he might not get back?” “Yah, Yah, Ollie, I remember, but we saw him return.
Ollie drifts off, then awakens.
“Lena, remember the time of droughts and floods and all those seasons when we thought we had lost our crops?” “Yah, Yah, Ollie, I remember. But we got through.” Ollie drifts off, then awakens,
“Lena, Lena, I beginning to think you are just bad luck!”

Sometimes that all the world can offer. It has categories of luck, good and bad; fortune or mis-fortune, life is all a matter of the luck of the draw. That’s what the world has to say about all this trouble stuff.

But, what are the resources from our Christian faith?
God’s gift to the world through the church is this: and it will sound familiar to everyone here: we have incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

INCARNATION: “The Word became flesh to dwell among us full of grace and truth.” And now the word becomes flesh in the presence of the baptized, called to be “light shining before others,” called to be members of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus that we may proclaim the praise of God and bear his creative and redeeming Word to all the world.” So, we go forth as the very compassionate companions, Christ himself has called as the caregivers, caretakers of all creation and the creatures within it all. You have probably all the heard the story of the toddler who has been put to bed when a huge thundercap strikes and he bounds of bed to the stop of the stairs, calling down….”help me I’m scared.” “Go back to bed, honey, it’s ok.” Another big boom. Another scampering child, “I’m scared.” “Go back to bed child, just remember God is with you.” BOOM! Feet scampering, a yell from the child, “I know God is with me but I’d rather have someone with skin on up here now!” In seminary there is much conversation about the ministry of “presence.” You are to be a presence to those in need. To accompany on the journey is the best of all gifts. To listen and receive the words, stories, sobs and wonderings of another human being is the love of God gone incarnational. Every one of God’s people has an Emmaeus road journey…shocked by recent events… wondering what will happen next… gifted with a meal, prepared and served and perhaps then to be wonderously grateful when eyes are open and we behold the miracle presence of a friend, or an angel or the Lord himself. Accompaniment is the very settling of miracle. Companionship (presence) is a means of the Word taking flesh and dwelling with us, full of grace and truth; (and as Pastor Corinne Chilstrom added, it comes with “hugs, hot dishes and the gifts of the communion of saints.”

Christians have the story of CRUCIFIXTION. The cross is the ultimate truth-telling about all pain, all suffering, all trouble. All losses, however defined, fly to this place and event we call the cross of Jesus. All rejection, all betrayal, all cruelty flies to this place and event we call the cross of Jesus. The cross is everyone’s dark place, dark side where death takes hold and smothers life and then professes to win the day. Doses of death are sprinkled in angry words and deeds that lead to divorce. Death snatches away health and lets aging move toward a heart and brain stoppage. Death rolls through viral and bacterial cellular structures to cause us to limit and lose our lives. Death stings with words and “put downs” and all the cold pricklies that stifle spirit and dash dreams into smashed shards of brokenness. Death can also link to ferocious nature and spew volcanic fire, spin tornadoes, freeze the earth, dry and crack the earth, blow billows of hurricane destruction, rumble and tumble and quake down buildings and jerk the oceans into wave walls of death. Death can grab a young person and cause an impulse of self destruction. Death can take up a gun, a bomb, a car, a plane, a boat, a drink or a drug and destroy. The cross of Jesus defines all death as the event toward which all life crashes and burns. No one can accuse the Christian faith of escapism into some unreality, parallel universe or fantasy land. Suffering is interpreted by the very Son of God being subject to the same pain and death and dying as every one of us knows and experiences it.

And now we have God’s sole and unique word and deed done in the mighty RESURRECTION of Jesus! Into this event, faith must leap and hope must cling. One dim morning in a Jerusalem cemetery, the dead one was raised to new life. He appears to trembling witnesses, along dusty roads, at a beachfront breakfast, among some crowds and even to a dirt splattered persecutor of Christians. This Living One appears to many. At his bodily departure at the Ascension, he promises the coming accompaniment of the Holy Spirit. This reception was soon seen to be this Resurrection gift of new life, incarnate now in the new Body of Christ, called Church, where God’s new people would be bathed, fed and “worded” in Good News! The reality of crucifixtion would still leave its marks on the people who come: not a parade of the pious but an unending line of truly broken bodies and lives…coming with hands outstretched, coming with lives interrupted by cruel death and lonliness and loss of many sorts and conditions. And now forgiveness of sin, grace of new life, and what we call redemption and restoration, will wipe the tears, speak with assurance, bind up the brokenhearted, and vanquish death, all death, once and for all. And this new life, as Pastor Chilstrom spoke it: “we will live and love and laugh again!”

Through this week, I know every person has identified with the stories of life’s losses. They begin at birth and go till death. I am not sure about “lessons learned,” except that 1.) many bad things happen to all people, and 2.) we’re all in this together. But for many of us, only the Gospel (its INCARNATION, CRUCIFIXTION and RESURRECTION) can proclaim all the truth about these things we have dared to mention and explore. So, forgive me sometimes if I am not singing during communion. I am watching the people, the lines of those coming forward, these burdened and broken and busted ones, the frail and the failing ones, the ones who wear masks and disguises so well…we all know the truth: we’re bringing our brokenness to the table of the One who makes us whole. His broken body and shed blood is the for us and in Him is our forgiveness, our life and salvation. Think on these things and welcome the long lines of sisters and brothers who so desperately hope for Good God News. Amen.