It was a rough time. Twelve years ago, our church family lost a 21-year old soldier to an IED in Iraq. An overflow crowd came to his funeral to support his grieving family.
Afterwards, the father of a young woman – she was a peer of that soldier – came to me. With pain in his eyes he said: “I expect the next funeral to be our daughter’s.” He feared she would lose the war – with anorexia.
Then, the six-year old daughter of one of our leaders – the youngest of five children – suddenly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor – was given less than six months to live.
And then our youth pastor was arrested…
It was a rough time.
That “roughness” is expressed by Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, in her 1980 poem, “In This Fog,” from: “In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart: Hope for the Hurting”:
“Sunk in this gray
depression
I cannot pray.
How can I give
expression
with no words to say?
This mass of vague foreboding
of aching care,
love with its
overloading
short-circuits prayer.
Then in this fog of tiredness,
this nothingness, I find
a quiet, certain, knowing
that He is kind”
I asked, “God of severity and mercy, what is your purpose in weaving all this together?
The mother who had lost her soldier son helped with an answer. “When I went to the Christian bookstore, I saw row after row after row of books on Christian Living. I finally had to ask where to find anything about Christian Dying. A very compassionate clerk led me to a miniscule section. We got two books – 25% of what they had.”
Scripture
As a church, how could we help those who mourn? I looked at Scripture. The Scriptures tell us the truth about the sorrows we have as broken people living in a broken world. No sentimental haze obscures that reality – about two-fifths of the Gospels are devoted to depicting the “passion” (literally, the “suffering”) of our Savior. And his passion steeps into the lives of his followers – we each “take up our cross daily” (Lk. 9:23).
Although I thought about preaching about our sorrows from Jesus, Paul, David and other Psalmists, I settled on the “weeping prophet,” Jeremiah – not his large book – but his book of crafted alphabetical poems – Lamentations. This poignant lament gives words to the horrors of a two-year siege – followed, in 587 B.C., by the Babylonians near obliteration of Jerusalem. The worst things that could happen in this world happened there.
Why not profit from an entire book the Holy Spirit devoted to grief?! “Laments complain, shout, and protest. In vulnerability and honesty, they cling obstinately to God and demand for God to see, hear, act” (“Lamentations and the Tears of the World,” Kathleen O’Connor).
Songs
As I preached from Lamentations, I needed songs. The mother of the soldier told me that coming to church could be difficult – particularly music could be too “happy-clappy.”
The Psalter helped. The Psalmist helped us sing: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” and “How long, O Lord, how long?”
I found few laments in our contemporary hymnals. Older hymnals – like Gadsby’s – first published in 1814 – had some. #307 by Hart (1712 – 1768) gives us these words to sing:
“And must it, LORD, be so?
And must Your children bear
Such various kinds of woe,
Such soul-perplexing fear?
Are these the blessings we expect?
Is this the lot of God’s elect?
Howe’er grievous the way,
Dear Savior, still lead on,
Nor leave us ‘til we say,
’Father, Your will be done.’
At most we do but taste the cup
For You alone did drink it up.”
Creeds – and our Historic Community of Faith
Of course, we also needed to keep coming back to Jesus. Reading the creeds together gave us another way to get to him.
Heidelberg Catechism 1: “Question. What is your only comfort in life and in death? Answer. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”
It was during that “rough time,” I learned these profound words were written in 1576 by Dutch men in their early forties. To be alive at forty meant they had avoided decimating plagues and war. Spain waged war against Holland’s Protestants off and on for 82 years,1566-1648. Such was the setting for the Heidelberg Catechism. Let’s listen to our tested Christian forbearers.
What about Montana – and Us?
What about Montana? Perhaps you’ve heard that our state is so patriotic that during WW1 and WW2 a great many of our men went to war. Compared to other states, a disproportionate number did not come home. And that has brought sustained economic implications – and other challenges too. On average, we still send more military away than other states – about one in ten. Montana has its own Lamentations.
