In a season of sorrow
07/03/14 05:09
There is a verse from Isaiah that has been in my head for the past couple of days. It is in the 53rd chapter, a section known as the song of the suffering servant. There is a scholarly argument as to the identity of the servant. Prominent Jewish scholars argue that this section is not and cannot be a reference to Jesus of Nazareth. The prophet is not one who predicts or even speaks of the future. Writing well before th time of Jesus, the prophet’s attention is focused on calling the people of God back into relationship with God. The suffering servant section is, rather a painful description of the human condition.
On the other side of the argument are Christian scholars, often some of the more fundamentalist Christians, who believe that the passage is a direct reference to Jesus. Some Bibles, like the New International Version, even make a cross reference between Isaiah 53 and Mark 10.
With all due respect, the argument doesn’t interest me very much. Isaiah is the master poet of the Old Testament. His poetry rivals and even exceeds the poetry of the Psalms in my opinion. Perhaps better than any other collection of words ever written, he describes God, humans and the relationship between God and humans in ways that are so vivid that the words fairly weep with God’s grief over human injustices. This exquisite description of the human condition rings true to my own experience, and the experience of our people over so many generations.
And, from my perspective, the incarnation of Jesus, described in the Gospels, perhaps most poetically in John, is the reality of God taking on human form so completely that there is no distinction between God incarnate and any human. Written long before Jesus’ birth, the description of human nature is so real. In Jesus God’s taking on human nature is so complete. As such, it cannot be two different topics, but at once different and the same.
But I am no scholar.
I am a pastor, often unequal to the tasks God has placed before me. And this has been a week of being overwhelmed by the reality of a congregation that I love deeply and the pain that lies within our community.
So I have been thinking of Isaia’s song. I know it in the King James Version: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3)
“A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief . . .” I have needed a man of sorrows who is acquainted with grief to walk with me this week. We have four members of our church family who are journeying through the end stages of various forms of cancer. The remaining span of their lives are now measured in days and weeks.Such occasions are not rare in this life and not foreign to our congregation, but it is a bit unusual to have so many at once. I have visited with the families of three of the four face-to-face and missed the fourth only because another death in the congregation necessitated that I reschedule one visit to instead plan a funeral with three sons grieving the death of their mother, who they lost so very slowly that there were at least three years of not knowing how long she would continue to live having forgotten so much of her life that she did not recognize her own children. And I know that there are at least five other faithful members of our congregation whose span of life is likely measured in weeks and months, not in years.
We begin Lent weighed down with grief.
My own personal faith is so tied up with the experience of grief that it is impossible for me to separate them. I understand well and acknowledge the joy of a personal relationship with Jesus. I revel in the celebrations of the high and holy days. But I find something almost generic in our celebrations. Anyone can be happy when things are going well. My experiences of the depth and power of the Christian faith come from the way that we face loss and grief.
We do grief very well in the church.
Our faith is so intimately acquainted with grief that Jesus’ tears at the death of Lazarus run down our cheeks when our friends die. His anguish in the garden on the eve of his own death is felt by every one of us when we seriously contemplate our own death. We are so in love with life that death shakes us to our core.
And there, at our core, “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (I Corinthians 4:8-9) . . . there at our core we remember that love is stronger even than death - more powerful than the weight of the multiple griefs that we bear. “Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It is so deep within me that I have no understanding of how someone can walk the journey of grief without faith.
Walking this journey, however, does mean walking alongside people who have little sense of the power of the community of God’s faithful. Frequently, most often in the children of those who are dying, I encounter people who have left the community. They may have grown up in a church, but as adults they drifted away from the church. They don’t know the dynamics of the ebb and flow of the community. They see the church - and my role in the church - as a service provider. They call us on the phone like the call doctors and nursing home staff and hospice workers. They make their case that their grief is more important and a higher priority than the grief of others. It would make no sense for me to explain to them what their parents know - that there are over 600 real, living people in our church community. I often am dealing with multiple families at the same time. I don’t sit around the office waiting for the next call and we don’t earn our living by providing services for a fee.
The midst of grief is no time for intense lectures or lessons in the nature of the community. I try to respond to each call with the love and attention that is due to every child of God.
But I am weary. And I get tired.
A few years ago I read several of Jan Karon’s novels about Father Tim of Mitford. Part of what I loved about Father Tim was that he was a nearly perfect pastor. He visited on time, he kept his temper, he served his people well even when he was personally filled with turmoil. He also was a character in a novel - a pretend person in a pretend community. My world is not so perfect. And I am far from that perfect pastor.
These days I find it comforting to walk alongside a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.
On the other side of the argument are Christian scholars, often some of the more fundamentalist Christians, who believe that the passage is a direct reference to Jesus. Some Bibles, like the New International Version, even make a cross reference between Isaiah 53 and Mark 10.
With all due respect, the argument doesn’t interest me very much. Isaiah is the master poet of the Old Testament. His poetry rivals and even exceeds the poetry of the Psalms in my opinion. Perhaps better than any other collection of words ever written, he describes God, humans and the relationship between God and humans in ways that are so vivid that the words fairly weep with God’s grief over human injustices. This exquisite description of the human condition rings true to my own experience, and the experience of our people over so many generations.
And, from my perspective, the incarnation of Jesus, described in the Gospels, perhaps most poetically in John, is the reality of God taking on human form so completely that there is no distinction between God incarnate and any human. Written long before Jesus’ birth, the description of human nature is so real. In Jesus God’s taking on human nature is so complete. As such, it cannot be two different topics, but at once different and the same.
But I am no scholar.
I am a pastor, often unequal to the tasks God has placed before me. And this has been a week of being overwhelmed by the reality of a congregation that I love deeply and the pain that lies within our community.
So I have been thinking of Isaia’s song. I know it in the King James Version: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3)
“A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief . . .” I have needed a man of sorrows who is acquainted with grief to walk with me this week. We have four members of our church family who are journeying through the end stages of various forms of cancer. The remaining span of their lives are now measured in days and weeks.Such occasions are not rare in this life and not foreign to our congregation, but it is a bit unusual to have so many at once. I have visited with the families of three of the four face-to-face and missed the fourth only because another death in the congregation necessitated that I reschedule one visit to instead plan a funeral with three sons grieving the death of their mother, who they lost so very slowly that there were at least three years of not knowing how long she would continue to live having forgotten so much of her life that she did not recognize her own children. And I know that there are at least five other faithful members of our congregation whose span of life is likely measured in weeks and months, not in years.
We begin Lent weighed down with grief.
My own personal faith is so tied up with the experience of grief that it is impossible for me to separate them. I understand well and acknowledge the joy of a personal relationship with Jesus. I revel in the celebrations of the high and holy days. But I find something almost generic in our celebrations. Anyone can be happy when things are going well. My experiences of the depth and power of the Christian faith come from the way that we face loss and grief.
We do grief very well in the church.
Our faith is so intimately acquainted with grief that Jesus’ tears at the death of Lazarus run down our cheeks when our friends die. His anguish in the garden on the eve of his own death is felt by every one of us when we seriously contemplate our own death. We are so in love with life that death shakes us to our core.
And there, at our core, “troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed” (I Corinthians 4:8-9) . . . there at our core we remember that love is stronger even than death - more powerful than the weight of the multiple griefs that we bear. “Nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It is so deep within me that I have no understanding of how someone can walk the journey of grief without faith.
Walking this journey, however, does mean walking alongside people who have little sense of the power of the community of God’s faithful. Frequently, most often in the children of those who are dying, I encounter people who have left the community. They may have grown up in a church, but as adults they drifted away from the church. They don’t know the dynamics of the ebb and flow of the community. They see the church - and my role in the church - as a service provider. They call us on the phone like the call doctors and nursing home staff and hospice workers. They make their case that their grief is more important and a higher priority than the grief of others. It would make no sense for me to explain to them what their parents know - that there are over 600 real, living people in our church community. I often am dealing with multiple families at the same time. I don’t sit around the office waiting for the next call and we don’t earn our living by providing services for a fee.
The midst of grief is no time for intense lectures or lessons in the nature of the community. I try to respond to each call with the love and attention that is due to every child of God.
But I am weary. And I get tired.
A few years ago I read several of Jan Karon’s novels about Father Tim of Mitford. Part of what I loved about Father Tim was that he was a nearly perfect pastor. He visited on time, he kept his temper, he served his people well even when he was personally filled with turmoil. He also was a character in a novel - a pretend person in a pretend community. My world is not so perfect. And I am far from that perfect pastor.
These days I find it comforting to walk alongside a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.