Father John McGinn, Rector

Saint John’s Episcopal Church

Sandwich, Massachusetts  02563

 

June 10, 2007                                                                     Pentecost 2

 

The lessons today are taken from I Kings, chapter 17, verses 17-24, and the Gospel of Luke, chapter 7, verses 11-17.

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen

 

When you go to seminary you learn a lot about the scriptures, the conditions of the church, the history of the church; and one of the things they forget to tell you about is a day like yesterday.

 

Yesterday in the morning I had a funeral, in the afternoon I had a wedding, and last night at 5:30, I was preaching and also celebrating the Holy Eucharist.  And not that that was all that many things in terms of physically being tiring, but in terms of spiritually and mentally, it was a tiring experience because you are going from one thing to the next. And also, this week when I look this week at the lessons, particularly first Kings which Lance just read, and also the gospel that I just read; I found that they were talking about death.  And because I did that funeral, but I did it in the context of the others: the marriage and also a Eucharist, I thought that this morning I might talk about the topic of death.

 

I want to begin with a rather humorous story.  You may know the story of a young minister who was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man who had died while traveling through the area.  The service was to be held at a new cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first person to be laid to rest there.  And as he was not familiar with backwoods area, the young minister soon became quite lost, and finally arrived over a hour late.  He saw the backhoe by the grave and noticed that the crew was eating lunch under a nearby tree.  But the hearse was nowhere in sight.  He apologized to the workers for his tardiness and stepped to the side of the open grave where he saw the vault lid already in place.  The young preacher assured the vault crew that he would not be long, but this was the proper thing to do.  The workers gathered around, still eating their lunch, and the young preacher poured out his heart and soul.  And as he preached, the workers began to say, “Amen, praise the Lord, and glory halleluiah.”  The young preacher preached and preached like he had never done before from the book of Genesis through the book of Revelation, and he closed the lengthy service at last with a prayer.  He began to walk towards his car.  He felt he had done his duty to the homeless man, and that the crew would leave with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication in spite of his tardiness.  And as he was opening the door of his car and taking off his coat, he overheard one of the workers saying to another, “I ain’t never seen anything like this before.  I’ve been putting in septic tanks for over twenty years.” 

 

We laugh about things (at least I try to sometimes), things that make us uncomfortable.  Therefore, there are many good jokes about death.  One of my favorites is the funeral notice for a movie theater owner.  It reads like this:  “Martin Levine, the owner of the movie theater chain in New York City, has passed away at sixty-five.  The funeral will be held on Thursday, at 2:10, 4:20, 6:30, 8:40 and 10:50.”

 

 A lot to times in  jokes we laugh about death to keep from crying.  Woody Allen once said something to the effect that few people are able to whistle a tune while pondering their own mortality.  And I think he is probably right, but as they say, two things in this life are inevitable:  death and taxes.  The Bible doesn’t give us any good news about taxes, but it does give us good news about death.  Both the old testament lesson and the lesson from the Gospel of Luke for this day are about death; and they are quite similar.

 

In the story from first Kings, the prophet Elijah is a lodger in the home of a widow.  This widow has been very kind to Elijah, and tragically her only son becomes ill, and he grows worse and worse, and finally he stops breathing.  The poor widow strikes out at Elijah, as if somehow this was Elijah’s fault.  We learn that this is not unusual. 

 

There was a book a decade ago written by a Jewish rabbi who noted that people in grief often experience misplaced anger.  A death in the family draws out a lot of complicated emotions, putting a strain on what may already be strained family dynamics.  Many times grieving persons take out their anger on the clergy member presiding over the funeral.  They complain about the music, the sermon, the decorations, the length of the funeral service.  “They may feel angry toward the deceased, toward God, toward other family members, but they direct their anger at the clergy,” says the rabbi.  It is a safe way to preserve family harmony during a time of great stress. 

 

Hurting people:  hurting people hurt other people.  And this woman was hurting, and she struck out at Elijah, and Elijah had no desire to strike back.  This woman had befriended him; now it was his turn to help her.  “Give me your son,” Elijah replied.  And he took the boy from her arms and carried him to his own bedroom, and he laid him on the bed.  Then Elijah cried out to the Lord, “Oh Lord, my God, have you brought tragedy also on this widow I am staying with by causing her son to die?”  And then, the Bible tells us that Elijah stretched himself out on the boy three times, and he cried to the Lord, “Oh Lord, my God, let the boy’s life return to him.”  And the writer of first Kings tell us the Lord heard Elijah’s cry.  And the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived.  And Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house, and he gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive.”  It is quite the remarkable story.

 

And Luke’s story is a little bit different:  Jesus and his disciples are visiting a town called Nain, and a large crowd accompanies them, and as they approach the town gate a body is being carried out, the body of a widow’s only son.  And Jesus did not know this woman, but when he saw her, his heart went out to her.  He said, “Don’t cry.”  Then he went up and touched the coffin, and those carrying it stood still, and he said, “Young man, I say to you, get up.”  Miraculously, this young man who was dead sat up, and he began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.  Luke tells us that the people who observed this were all filled with awe and they praised God.  “A great prophet has risen among us!” they said.  “God has come to help his people.”

 

Now, what I want to deal with, first of all, is the tragedy of death.  We have two elements here in these stories that speak of the pain of loss.  First, both of the women in these stories are widows.  They had lost their husbands to death; and some of you know the pain in their hearts.  You have been there:  the emptiness, the fear, the loneliness.  For some people, their life comes to a grinding halt with the death of a loved one, the death of a spouse, the death of a good friend.  Some people have a terrible time dealing with the loss of a spouse or a friend.  Life comes to a grinding halt.  We don’t know how these women in our scripture lessons dealt with losing their husbands.  When we encounter them, however, life seems unbelievably cruel; for they are faced not only with the loss of their husbands, but also with losing their only child; and facing one of these life events is daunting.  To experience both would be more than many of us could possibly bear.

 

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Eric Clapton.  He is one of my favorite musicians from the 1960s and ‘70s; but he’s still active and probably one of the greatest guitar players in the history of rock ‘n roll. 
Eric Clapton is a Grammy Award winning English guitarist; he is a singer, he’s a composer.  Erick Clapton is one of the most influential musicians probably of the rock era.  He has been inducted an unprecedented three times into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. 

 

On a warm spring day in March of 1991, Eric Clapton received a phone call from his wife, Laurie.  In a frantic voice she told him that his four-and-a-half-year-old son, Conor, had just accidentally fallen to his death after crawling out of an open window of their fifty-third floor Manhattan apartment.  Eric Clapton could not believe what he was hearing, and he rushed over the ten blocks to find paramedic equipment everywhere; and ambulances, and police cars and fire engines.  And only then did he begin to realize with a sinking heart, “Oh my God, it’s true, my son is dead.”  And months later he was to say in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine, after it sunk in that my son had died.  “It’s funny, but I really didn’t feel anything.  I went blank.  I just turned to stone and wanted to go away.  I mean, there was no way I could have prepared for what had happened.  But in time I found that I couldn’t avoid feeling the pain of my son’s death.  I had to go through the suffering.”  And out of his suffering, Eric Clapton turned to his music and wrote a very personal song to express his grief; his struggle to live with the loss of his son, his yearning to know peace and life again.

 

I would guess you remember the song.  It became one of the most popular hits that Eric Clapton has ever had.  It is called “Tears in Heaven,” and its lyrics speak of Eric Clapton’s search for the healing of his shattered heart.  These are words that he wrote to his son:  “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven; would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven; I must be strong to carry on ‘cause I know I don’t belong here in heaven.”  And the last words of the song are these:  “Beyond the door, there is peace for sure, and I know they’ll be no more tears in heaven.”

 

The two stories from our scriptures remind us of the tragedy of death, of painful loss, of heartfelt grief.  But they also tell us of God’s love.  These stories are miracle stories:  Elijah resuscitates a child who has stopped breathing, Jesus raises up a young man already in his coffin. But our emphasis should not be on the miracles, but on the truth behind the miracles.  God sees and cares for us in our grief.

 

Years ago a man was traveling by ship with his young daughter across the ocean.  Earlier that particular Sunday he has preached a sermon about God’s love.  It had been a very difficult sermon to preach because he was newly widowed.  He was standing against the rail of the ship, looking out at the vast and magnificent ocean, when his daughter asked him if God loved them as much as they had loved her late mother.  “Of course, He does,” answered her father, “There is absolutely nothing bigger or more powerful or all-consuming than God’s love for us.  It’s the biggest thing that there is.”  And the little girl pressed on for more information, wanting to know exactly how big God’s love was.  And finally her father with great tenderness said, “Look across the sea as far as you can; look up and down and all around.  God’s love stretches around to cover all of that:  above the sky and deeper than the deepest part of the ocean underneath us.”  And the little girl pondered for a minute and replied, “And to think, daddy, we’re right in the middle of it and God.  We‘re right in the middle of God‘s love.”

 

We don’t need a miracle to tell us that.  Most of us have known God’s love all of our lives.  Of course, that is not to say that miracles do not occur.  They do to the eyes of faith.  

 

I want to tell you this morning from my heart:  In both life and death, we are surrounded by God’s love.  Some of you have experienced that love.  Perhaps it was in the midst of a time of loss.  You’ve been there, you’ve met God in your time of grief.  But there is one more thing that I want to say:  There comes a time when we must return to life.  There is a time for grieving, and it is an important time; but there is also a time for returning to life.

 

It was once the custom in Russian villages, at a time when many children did not survive infancy, to have a mourning hut in the outskirts of town.  All women who lost children were sent to live in that hut for a month of solitude and grief.  At the end of the month the hut was set on fire.  The women inside had to decide whether to live or to die.  If she came out of the burning hut, this indicated that she was prepared to live, and then she rebuilt the hut for the next mourner.  As harsh as the practice may sound to us, it provides a graphic picture of the necessity we confront to decide to move out of the despair that we find ourselves in when we are dealing with grief.  And that’s what those who have gone on to heaven always want for those who are left behind.  They want us to pick up our lives and move on with the conviction that the God who loves us also loves them. 

 

God is not - is not - the God of the dead, Jesus once noted; but of the living.  That means that those we love are still living with God, and if we believe that, we have no choice.  We must move toward abundant and Christ-filled living again.  We may not be ready to jump up and down and leave the hut of grief just yet.  But ultimately that is the will of God;  that is the will of those who have gone on before us, our loved ones.  Arise and live!

 

Amen

 

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