Spac rm many-fam hse. Inqr owner.
(Rutgers, May 2, 1999; Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A)
Psalm 23 (OT, p. 553); John 14:1–7 (NT, p. 112)
A
long week of funerals has come to an end
in Littleton, in Serbia, in Macedonia, in Kosovo.
In
Littleton, one of the first of the 13 to be buried
was 17-year-old Cassie Bernall. She was the one who
had been sitting in the school library with her Bible open
and was asked by the gunman, "Do you believe in God?"
She answered "Yes,"
and he executed her.
And the last of the 13 to be buried in Littleton
was 18-year-old Isaiah Shoels.
He was the one who
was singled out to be killed because he was black.
In
Serbia—Surdulica, Serbia—20 people were buried this week—
10 grown-ups, 10 children—all civilians.
7 of the 20 were from one family, the Milic family.
All were killed Tuesday,
by one of our NATO bombs.
In
Blace, Macedonia, 5 Kosovo Albanians—one just 12 years old—
were buried after being blown up Wednesday by a landmine,
blown up as they trekked through the rugged mountains
trying desperately to escape from Kosovo into Albania.
In
Kosovo, near the city of Djacovica and in the village of Meja,
mass executions of some 100 to 200 people occurred on Tuesday,
and the bodies, many burned and charred beyond recognition,
may still be lying there on the ground or in ditches, unburied.
13
and 20 and 5 and 100's—
and each and every one of these people was a child of God,
a child of God with many friends, family, and loved ones,
a distinct and beloved person for whom many now mourn
and whom many now carry in memory.
Littleton,
Surdulica, Blace, Kosovo—all places distant from here.
Yet grief + memory are not just distant realities for us here today.
For we of the Rutgers community are linked in grief and memory
to them and also to members of our own church family
who've recently lost loved ones—
Anita Jones, mourning the death of her husband Frank;
+ Chris Schmitt, mourning the death of his father Gary—
and we are also closely linked in grief and memory
to members of our congregation who this month are marking
the first anniversary of the death of their loved one—
John Lembo, mourning his partner Carl Bisson,
in whose memory this morning's flowers are given,
and Nora Lidell, mourning her sister Stephanie,
in whose memory next week's flowers will be given.
Grief
and memory—
I remember the first time in my own life that a person I loved died.
I was 12 years old when the news came.
I was sitting at the keyboard of our family's big old upright piano,
going through the motions of practicing the scales and exercises
with which my teacher, Miss Cookingham, loved to torture me.
The
phone rang. It
sat on a table just a few feet from the piano bench,
but, as instructed, I let it ring until my father answered it.
As he lifted the receiver to his ear,
I looked toward him, anxiously.
.
For a time, he was silent; then tears welled in his eyes,
and I knew that my sick grandfather had died.
There'd
be no more visits with Grandpa Shafer at the family farm—
no more getting up before dawn to help him milk the cows,
no more trips to the mud wallow to slop the hogs,
no more pitching hay alongside him in the barn
no more piling corn cobs into that beat-up old crib,
no more riding to church beside him
in his Model-T Ford, ancient but well-preserved,
no more listening to his observations on life
he slowly chewed that day's tooth
pick.
For
John Wesley Shafer was dead … dead.
The unique and unreplaceable person he had been was lost to us,
+ even one so young as I both recognized and mourned that loss.
Even to one so young as I
the loss to death of one so deeply loved,
of one so uniquely and inexchangeably
interconnected with me—
this loss to death of my grandfather
seemed horribly wrong and terribly unjust.
It was as if a hole had been punched in my heart.
In
the same way, the loss to death
of each of the unique and unreplaceable persons who died
in Littleton, in Surdulica, in the towns and cities of Kosovo,
and in the extended Rutgers community—
the loss to death of each has seemed to friends and family
wrong and unjust, as if a hole had been punched in our hearts.
And our grief and mourning for ones
so uniquely and inexchangeably interconnected with those
of us left behind—that grief is itself hard to leave behind.
Yes,
the loss of loved ones can leave us in deep + long-lasting despair,
and can lead many of us to cry out with questions like:
"What's the point of life if it ends only in death?
What kind of
a bad joke is it that this precious human consciousness of ours
—filled as it is with such beauty and wisdom and goodness—
what kind of a bad joke is it that our human consciousness
can be so easily snuffed out and extinguished?"
"Is life anything more than the hyphen on our gravestone—
the non-descript hyphen that simply fills the space
between the time of our birth + the time of our death?"
Last
Thursday, at the end of the two and a half hour funeral service
for Isaiah Shoels at Denver's Heritage Christian Center,
Isaiah's parents solemnly closed the lid of the casket.
Then
the Reverend Dennis Leonard asked everyone
to come down and surround the casket.
They did.
Next, the pastor asked them to raise their right hands
and to call out, "Isaiah's life was not in vain."
And they did,
following which they broke out into applause + cheered.
Then the choir began singing, "It'll be all right,"
and people started dancing in the aisles.
"It'll be all right.
It'll be all right," the choir
kept singing as the people left,
many of them now smiling.
(based
on the report of the funeral by Evelyn Nieves in
The
New York Times, 4/30/99, p. A26)
The
1st affirmation that transformed the grief into dancing was this:
"Isaiah's life was not in vain;
it was no mere hyphen on a gravestone;
Isaiah's life was not empty, was not futile, was not in vain!
God was with him; God was in him; God was through him!"
This
is the affirmation made by the Psalm of Confidence that
Roger read as our First Lesson this morning—the 23rd Psalm.
Whatever dark valleys this life may have in store for us,
our life will not be empty, our life will not be futile,
our life will not be in vain, we shall not want—
for every step of the way God will be with us,
as our Shepherd, leading us in right paths,
providing us with what we need,
restoring our very souls,
so that whatever evil may befall us,
we need not fear, we need not fear!
The
goodness of God, the mercy of God, the fullness of God
will be with us, and in us, and through us our whole life long,
even in our moment of death
so that our life is not empty, is not futile, is not in vain!
This
is the 1st affirmation that
transforms mourners' grief into dancing:
"Isaiah's life was not in vain!"
"Frank's life was not in vain!"
"Gary's life was not in vain!"
"Stephanie's life was not in vain!"
"Carl's life was not in vain!"
"God was with them;
God was in them;
God was through them!"
And
the 2nd affirmation from the funeral of Isaiah Shoels,
the 2nd affirmation that transforms mourners' grief into dancing
is this: "It'll
be all right.
Death is not our end!
At death, our consciousness will not be snuffed out,
will not be extinguished!
Death is just the passageway from this life
to the glorious life that lies beyond!
So—it'll be all right, for Isaiah!
It'll be all right for Frank and Gary!
It'll be all right for Stephanie + Carl!
It'll be all right!"
This
is the affirmation made in the passage from the Gospel of John
that I read as our Second Lesson this morning, a passage
in which Jesus gives to his companions this firm promise:
"Do not let your hearts be troubled.…
In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.
If it were not so, would I have told you
that I go to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you,
I will come again and will take you to myself,
so that where I am, there you may be also."
"I will take you to myself!"
Here
is the most hope-filled promise of all:
the promise that the Risen Christ has gone before us
to prepare for us, metaphorically speaking,
spacious rooms in God's heavenly many-family house,
so that death may be for us simply the journey
from the house of the Lord in this world
to the house of the Lord in the next.
Death
becomes for us, therefore,
"that unique point between time and timelessness
when the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of life," (Walter Burghardt, S.J.)
the Spirit of love,
returns to take us and to guide our spirits
beyond this earthbound existence of ours
to life eternal with God.
In
Kathleen Norris's "Three Small Songs for the Muse,"
this great contemporary author,
who
also happens to be Presbyterian, writes:
"I know for sure
that at the end
the playful stranger
who appears
is not death
but love."
Yes,
the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of life, the Spirit of love
will appear as a playful stranger at the moment of our death
to carry us home to that spacious room that has been prepared
for us in God's heavenly many-family house.
It'll be all right!
Yes, it'll be quite all right!
Metaphorically
speaking,
it's when we've gathered around the coffin of our loved one,
it's when we've exclaimed,
"Frank's life—Gary's life—has not been in vain!"
it's when we've sung,
"It'll be all right—for Carl, for Stephanie!"—
it's when we've so gathered around, and exclaimed, and sung
that our Good Fridays can begin to turn into Easters;
it's when we've gathered around, + exclaimed, + sung in that way
that we can begin to catch a glimpse through those holes that
the death of our loved one has punched in our hearts—
it's then that we can begin to catch a glimpse
through those holes of pain
of the face of Christ,
of the face of love,
of the face of God.
And
it's then that our grief can turn into dancing.
There've
been many, many funerals this week,
and many, many funerals throughout our lives.
But thanks be to God who has given us an Easter faith—
the faith that we and our loved ones have not lived in vain,
and the faith that it'll be all right!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
It'll be all right!
Let
us pray:
We
praise You, O God, that You lead us like a Shepherd
all the days of our lives, so that we may not live in vain.
We
thank You, O Christ, that at our moment of death,
You come as the Spirit of Love to carry us home.
We
thank You, O Holy Spirit, that You fill all those
who grieve and mourn with the faith that it'll be all right.
Amen.
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