"God's Broken Heart"

A Sermon for All Saints Sunday

Lanny Peters

Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church

Decatur, Georgia

November 5, 2006

 

There is a maple tree right outside my office window. It is so close that I can open the window, reach out and touch it. Our educational building was dedicated on All Saints Sunday six years ago. At that time, Cathy and Jim Culpepper were consulting with a landscape architect about our new grounds, and planted trees all around the church, including a small tree that I hardly noticed. Over the years, it has grown up to my window on the second floor and beyond.

When I am working on a sermon, and my thoughts get stuck, I often find myself looking out that window. I can see the front porch of the Oakhurst Recovery Program, and occasionally see the staff and residents come or go; a reminder that right under my nose, lives are being reclaimed and new life is beginning. In the spring, I watch the buds on the tree slowly emerge, and then pop out so quickly I wonder when that happened. After a while, new branches are sprouting out. Summer comes and the tree goes though several shades of green.

Friday night Karen was going through some old Halloween costumes and found a little costume she had made for Thomas when he was two years old. It was his favorite character at that time, Winnie the Pooh's bouncy friend, Tigger. We went trick or treating that year with our little Tigger. In the spirit of things, I dressed up as Christopher Robin and Karen dressed up as Piglet. Karen and I looked at that tiny little Tigger outfit in disbelief that our strapping twenty-one year-old, now going to college and working at Border's, once really wore that outfit. He was able to wear the same costume the next year so I am sure we were hardly aware of his growing. It is one of the mysteries of life how slowly we change and, at the same time, how rapidly we change.

For a while, my maple tree has been fiery red, so beautiful that it grabs my attention as soon as I walk into my office. As I sit at my computer, the sun will catch it in such a way that the tree shines so brilliantly that it demands, "Stop what you are doing, and look at me!" But lately, the leaves are turning a duller red with just a few patches of dazzling red. I do not have to be an oracle to know what will happen next. Those once green leaves, now red, will turn brown. Before my eyes, the first of them are already being blown off by gentle winds. Soon, they will all be gone, and the tree will be barren.

I am fifty-four now, and can hardly believe I have more years behind me than in front of me. I stare at pictures from when I was a child, an adolescent, a young man, at my wedding thirty years ago, when I came to Oakhurst seventeen years ago, and marvel at how I have changed. And when I look at old church directories, I see how we all have changed! This is one of the strangest things we ever experience; and at the same time, its perfectly natural. Look at those around you. One hundred years from now, every one of us in this room will be dead, except perhaps for an infant or two whose time would be coming very soon. Growing up and growing old and dying is a mysterious and ordinary thing.

But there are times when the normal way of life gets interrupted. A young sprout does not survive; a young sapling is trampled to death, a young tree dies of some disease, a mature tree dies for no apparent reason. This is not the normal way of life, and yet, it is natural in that all of us will eventually die of something.

Everyday, babies die. In the not so distant past, and in much of the world today, people want to have lots of children knowing that many of them will not live to be adults. This is not normal and, yet, it is also natural. There is predictability and randomness in the way the universe is created. But as every parent who has lost a child knows, knowing that many children die does not make it understandable or a bit less painful.

            My mother and father's first child, a boy named Frankie, died when he was five months old of spinal meningitis. I was born a little over a year later. Once in a while, I would notice his picture on my parent's dresser with his tiny baby shoes encased in bronze. Since then, I have at times realized that it could have been me that died instead of him as a baby, and someone else would be standing here, and Frankie would be living somewhere doing who know what with his life. Some might argue with me here, saying his death and my living was not by mere chance, but that this was God's will. To which I say, No! It was not God's will! Not the God I know, anyway. The God I know is not capricious, but is instead, merciful, and gracious, and loving.

            Recently, I read in the paper a sad account of a young mother who was killed in a single car accident while her two young children both survived with no injuries. Her husband told a reporter, "I guess God did not want to take them now." I cannot criticize that man for finding whatever comfort he can in getting through something terrible like that. At the same time, I personally cannot believe that God works like that. Why would God decide to take this man's wife and leave him a widower and his children without a mother? Years ago, a man walked into a fast food restaurant with a gun and randomly killed a number of people. One of the survivors said, "God decided it was not our time."

So God decided it was the time for the others to die, and sent a madman to shoot them? And for what; so they could be with God? I personally do not want to be with a God who acts that cruelly.

I am reading John Lewis' autobiography, Walking With the Wind," which painfully reminds me of our country's legacy of racism and hatred. It is sickening to think about all the lynching and murders of innocent people, including children like the four little girls murdered by a bomb at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. Though some of the murderers were finally brought to justice, many others lived out their lives with their families going to church and pretending to be upright citizens. This is surely not God's will.

            Each time I reflect on this, I find myself coming around again to a story about one of the great saints we lost this year, William Sloane Coffin, a prophetic and powerful voice for justice and peace. Many years ago, Coffin's young adult son's car ran off a cliff into the ocean and he died there. A well meaning woman trying to offer comfort to Coffin, shook her head sadly said to him, I just don't understand the will of God."

            Coffin angrily confronted her, and later reflected in a sermon, "The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is, 'It is God's will.' Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex died; that when the waves closed over the sinking car, God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break."

            When Jesus was hanging on the cross, suffering terribly, he cried out loudly, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15: 34) According to the gospel of Mark, these are the very last words spoken by Jesus before he cries out in agony, takes his last breath and dies. These words are so powerfully etched in the account of the crucifixion that the author of Mark switches from Greek and recalls them in the original Aramaic that Jesus spoke: "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthami?"

            Jesus' life on earth ends with a sense of abandonment and his last words are an anguished question of where God is. But his question receives no answer, only silence. Before we came to Oakhurst, our dear friends Olivia Kay and Bob lost a full term baby days before it was due when the umbilical cord inexplicably kinked, something that rarely but randomly happens. I still remember when we were on our way to be with them when Karen said painfully, "What kind of God cannot take a kink out of an umbilical cord!" In the silence, I certainly had no answer.         

            This makes us very uncomfortable. It is fairly certain that both Matthew and Luke had a copy of Mark's gospel before them as they wrote. The author of Matthew follows Mark's account almost verbatim here, and also says Jesus' the last words Jesus cried out were "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthami?" that is"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:45) But Luke must have been uncomfortable with this being Jesus last words so much that that he leaves them out entirely. Instead, Luke says Jesus' last words were, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23:46)

            You could say somebody's not telling the truth. But I believe they are two versions of the truth. Some deaths, particularly of the young and innocent, or those who are suddenly without warning taken away, leave us stunned and crying out for answers. Death can come at any time and unpredictably. It can be a baby with so much promise, a young person in the spring of life, a friend healthy in the summer of life, someone in the autumn of life, recently retired and looking forward to enjoying some restful years. Even those who may be entering the winter of life can suffer from an awful and unfair disease before dying.

            Over the last years, we have seen another of our saints, Nell Knight, deteriorate from Lewy bodies syndrome, a form of dementia that shares characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, but is more unpredictable. The suffering that this has caused Nell, as well as Walker and their family, is totally unmerited. It is not God's will. Our suffering is not willed, intended, or caused by God. And yet in the midst of our suffering, I do believe we experience God's presence and love.

A couple of weeks ago, it appeared that Nell was dying. She seemed to no longer be aware of even Walker's presence. The children began to gather to say their final goodbyes. Jill shared this with Walker who shared it with me. It was so powerful that I asked him if I could share it with you, and he was glad to share it with his community. Jill was with her mother while Walker had a chance to rest. Jill later reflected on this time with her mother and sent it to Walker:

 

I've been here since last Sunday, thinking the final journey would be around the corner. I don't think it is. She had a remarkable day of clarity and alertness on Saturday. She didn't sleep during the day at all, recognized all of us, and even initiated conversation.  In fact, I recorded some of the things she said.

After I got there on Saturday afternoon, I told Mom that "Your boyfriend is coming." 

She said "Who?" 

Me: "Daddy - your husband."
Mom: "I haven't even told him."
Me: "Told him what?"
Mom "That his wife is leaving him."
Me: "You are his wife. Where are you going?"
Mom: "I don't know."
Me:  "Are you ready to go away?"
Mom: "Yes."
Me: "It's okay if you want to go, Mom. We will all be fine."
And Jill said to Walker later, "Isn't that amazing? She somehow is aware that she is dying."

 

            Jesus' last words in Luke remind us that for some the time comes when they are able to say, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." At other times, we are left with nothing but loud cries and unanswered questions, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

            Death, in whatever season, is a mystery in the face of which our attempts to explain fall empty. But there is another mystery. It is the mystery of God's presence. During World War II, just after word had arrived that an only son had been killed in battle, a minister was called to the home of his parents. The father, half in grief and half in rage, blurted out as son as the minister arrived. "I want to know where was God when my son was killed?" The minister thought for a long time and then replied softly: I guess where he was when his boy was being killed."

            I find this story powerful because the minister did not try to explain God's will but brought God out of remoteness into that circle as a grieving companion. And that is all that this minister, who stands before you, can proclaim. God is present with us when those we love die, and God will be with us when we die. That, I do believe, along with Paul: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8: 39)

Frankie died fifty-four years ago. I never knew him yet have never forgotten him. Neither has God. And when my mother and siblings are gone and no one remembers him, God will. I believe that God is there the moment we die, that God's heart is the first to break. And then God takes us into that broken heart. Eternally. Forever and ever. Amen.