It appears that we are to speak of death and resurrection today, given
the stories we have just heard (1 Kings 17:17-24; Luke 7:11-17, NSV). On a glorious June morning like this one, the
death part seems rather incongruous. It is very tempting to speed ahead to
focus on resurrection—an altogether more pleasing subject!
These are indeed stories that inspire hope. Nevertheless, I think we
must give death its due. I think we would cheat ourselves of the power of these
lessons by fast-forwarding to the good part.
I suspect we here this morning have all been around long enough to have
experienced sharp, deep, painful loss in our lives: parents, friends, perhaps a
spouse, maybe even—horror of all horrors—a child or grandchild, like the women
in these stories.
I’m not big on ranking human suffering. It all hurts, big time. But
blogger Lisa
Belkin has observed that there is no word in the English language for a parent
who loses a child. Belkin says, When our
parents die we are orphans. When our spouse dies, we are widowed. When a child
dies, we are speechless.
She’s
on to something here. It is just so…. inappropriate.
 |
| The Widow of Nain, by Corinne Peters |
The
plight of these women in the Bible was dire indeed. I take it as not a
coincidence that both were widows. The loss of their only sons was, therefore,
not merely the loss of a parent-child bond. It was a loss of economic security,
the almost certain facing of hunger and survival at the mercy of others.
But…
first Elijah and then Jesus come along to save the day for these grief stricken
widows.
And
that’s why, in fact, these are not the stories we turn to for comfort when tragedy strikes our own
lives. Did any of us think of these stories when 20 children were slaughtered
in Newtown, CT? I doubt it. Or, how about when tornadoes slammed through Moore,
OK, and took 10 more, including two infants? Again, I doubt it. And I cannot
see how these stories could be much comfort to the parents of those children.
Suzanne
Guthrie is an Episcopal priest and writer of online meditations keyed to the
lectionary. About today’s Gospel story, she writes,
The story offers
scant comfort to the parents of children Jesus doesn't bring back from the
dead. I certainly did not call the widow's son to mind when my two little
grandchildren died on the day they were born last summer. My son and
daughter-in-law cradled their son and daughter, comforting the children and
each other during the hours the babies lived. And after they died, I didn't
expect Jesus to arrive at the hospital and raise them from the dead. The
surprising thing is that Christians take hope in the raising of [these widows’
sons] in spite of the deaths of our own children.
So….
are we hopeless dreamers? Crazy? Why DO we have hope even in times of death,
loss and despair?
We
have all been there, one way or another. Human existence is a series of
tornadoes, large and small. Some are beyond our control. I have never
experienced a tornado or any other of the catastrophic natural disasters:
earthquake, tsunami, hurricane. But I am terrified by the thought of it. It is
the ultimate loss of control.
And
then there’s Newtown, and the failure of our political will to do the hard,
bipartisan work of developing more sensible and sane approaches to balancing
individual rights with reasonable efforts to keep lethal weapons out of the
wrong hands. We can do better. I know we can.
It
often seems to me that it is precisely when we think we finally have it
together, that we are finally on top of our game, that life hands us the most
deadly, life-destroying blows. And we suffer.
Maybe
like in today’s epistle lesson, we must die to one career in order to be born
to another. Saul the persecutor had to die for Paul the Apostle to be born.
Or,
someone we love dies. A spouse or lover leaves us. A friend betrays us. We are
downsized by our employer. An economic downturn takes most of our nest egg. Our
politics turn nasty. Our children and grandchildren are sent half way around
the world to fight a war that we are just not sure is worth the sacrifice of
young, beautiful lives.
We
aren’t in control. And much of the time it looks like God isn’t either.
But
God become human to suffer and die on a cross in order to rise again in power
over death. How do we understand that? As a one-time event? An economic
transaction in which Jesus paid a “price” to God.. or was it to the devil? ..so
that we can live happily ever after.. some day in some glorious future?
That
kind of thinking certainly creeps into our religion, but it is wrong-headed. It
diminishes the meaning of resurrection by making it a mechanical transaction
trapped in history, and our lives something to be “gotten through” for some
period of time while we await the coming of Glory.
As
Fr. Richard Rohr observes, it makes our religion a mere “evacuation plan for
the next world.”
The
foundational story of our faith is that death makes way for resurrection.
Something dies, but something new awaits birth.
The
human condition at its most hopeless… is pregnant with a new thing that lies
just beneath the surface. When we are thrown completely off our feet and have
fallen as far as we can fall, we have a better chance than ever of landing on
the breast of God.
For
me the most compelling line in the widow of Nain’s story is this one in verse
14: And the bearers stood still.
Have
you been there? Deep in the darkness before dawn with Mary Magdalene outside
the tomb that holds your most cherished hopes and dreams? So deep in darkness
and silence that even your heart stands still?
Can you pause there? Wait there? Embrace the darkness and silence,
listen intently, because the new thing will most likely come softly, quietly…
I don’t know what that will look like, neither the many small deaths
and resurrections each of us will experience in our lifetimes nor the big
kahuna of death and resurrection each of us will experience only once.
I only know that death and resurrection go together. You can’t have one
without the other. And since they are an inevitable part of life, better to practice!
Practice letting go of things--the job that didn’t work out, the ideology we
thought was the answer to everything, the relationship we thought would always
be… Practice letting go, so that we can practice letting new things be born in
our lives.
And the bearers show us how. We stand still in prayer, making room for
the Holy to pass through the midst of death and lead us back into the light.
Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:6)
AMEN
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