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The Presbyterian Church’s “Brief Statement of Faith” begins: “In life and in death we belong to God.” They are not mere words, no academic proposition. They hearken back to the Apostle Paul’s words to the Roman church, when the end of the world seemed eminent – “nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God.” They hearken back to the Germany of the Middle Ages and the Heidelberg Catechism, when plague and warfare could wipe families and cities away. They hearken back to some 20 years ago when they were adopted, when we watched TV shows like “The Day After” and worried about nuclear annihilation and the end of the world. They are not mere words, no academic proposition. I thought of them again waking up early in the morning of February 13 to learn of the airplane crash in Buffalo the night before. I thought of them talking to my father yesterday, on his birthday. I recalled that when he was a young minister (I was no more than a month old), a coal mine just miles from our house exploded, killing 37 miners. He was a friend of the local undertaker, who was also the country coroner, and they went to the entrance of the mine and talked with the rescue team and saw the bodes being removed from the site. The memories are vivid 46 years later, he said. “Intense and tragic” were the words he used to describe the Robena mine explosion. The theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff remembers. “The call came at 3:30 on that Sunday afternoon, a bright sunny day. We had just sent a younger brother off the plane to be with him for the summer. ‘Mr. Wolterstorff?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is this Eric’s father?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Mr. Wolterstorff, I must give you some bad news.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Eric has been climbing in the mountains and had had an accident.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Eric has had a serious accident.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Mr. Wolterstorff, I must tell you, Eric is dead. Mr. Wolterstorff, are you there? You must come at once! Mr. Wolterstorff, Eric is dead.’ For three seconds,” Wolterstorff concludes, “I felt the peace of resignation: arms extended, limp son in hand, painfully offering him to someone – Someone. Then the pain – cold burning pain.” (Lament for a Son, page 14) In life and in death we belong to God. No mere words, but a central tenet of our faith, perhaps its cornerstone. When the call comes and we learn that a child has died before her time. When the call comes and we learn that a sibling has died before his time. Or a spouse, or an aging parent at the end of a long struggle. Or a doctor calls, not the doctor’s office, but the doctor, and we know that the news will not be good. Or other deaths – a relationship, a job, a dream. Faith does not inoculate us from death. It is no magic wand of prevention. Bad things do happen to people, good and otherwise. But there are at least two trajectories in the affirmation that in life and in death we belong to God, trajectories embedded in our sacred scripture and articulated for us this morning. * The first is that there is a place to take our grief, our anguish, our suffering. Scripture insists to us that our relationship with this God is so intimate, so personal, so real, that we can take it to God, and God will listen. So much so in fact that it has a name – lament, lamentations. How extraordinary! This is not whining or complaining, but sharing with God from the deaths of human experience. * The second trajectory flows from the first. We lament not to a dispassionate, distant God. We lament to a God who hears our cry, who hears our voice, who shelters and protects even in the midst of deep sadness and tragedy, even in the midst of death itself. We lament to a God who suffers with us. We gather at the outset of Lent. We begin a 40-day journey to Jerusalem, which stands in for a lifelong journey to Jerusalem. It is a journey to resurrection, to be sure, but we must journey through Good Friday to get there. Nicholas Wolterstorff writes: “So I shall struggle to live the reality of Christ’s rising and death’s dying. In my living, my son’s dying will not be the last word. But as I rise up, I bear the wounds of his death. My rising does not remove them. They mark me.” (pages 92-93) Death is a part of life. It comes “like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,” the poet Mary Oliver writes. And when it does, we lament to a God who hears our voice, who journeys with us, who suffers with us. And we are consoled. And God’s wings are wide enough, even for us. Even for us – thank God. Amen.
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