Memorial Service 2013

All of us, to a degree, suffer from deafness or hardness of hearing, though not in the physical sense.

Sometimes we find it hard to hear what other people are genuinely saying to us – either hard in the sense of difficult, or hard in the sense of painful, and sometimes hard in both senses at once.

Somebody comes up and makes a remark about the weather – and all that we hear, or allow ourselves to hear – is a remark about the weather. “Looks like we  might be getting some rain later” is all that gets through to us, but what he’s really saying – and sometimes we know this and sometimes we don’t – is maybe “I’m lonely. Will you talk to me”. Or maybe “I know that you’re lonely, and I want to try and talk to you”.

But in our deafness, we don’t hear that. We hear the talk about the weather, or the crops, or the family or the ailment but oftentimes we miss what they mean. And more often than not, what they mean is: “I want you to listen to me. I want you to know me.”

When we speak, we’re not just communicating information. We’re also communicating something of ourselves,

Most of the time we’re too busy, or too deaf to pick that up in our conversations, but every now and again something reaches our ears that goes a little deeper.

The writer Fred Buechner tells of a time he went shopping with his wife, and as they stood at the checkout she berated him for adding a tub of full fat cream to the conveyor belt when he was trying to lose weight. “Oh well – you only live once” he said.

“And then it happened” – he writes. “This thing that broke for a moment through my deafness. It was a hot, muggy afternoon and the cashier had been working hard all day and looked flushed and hectic there behind her cash register and the racks of sweets and chewing gum and TV guides, and when I said “Oh well - you only live once” she broke into the conversation and what she said was “Don’t you think once is enough?” – That was it.

And of course, they laughed as she’d intended them to laugh. But afterwards, as he thought about it, Buechner found himself wondering where those words had come from within her. What was she really saying? Was she saying “I’m sick and tired of this job”. Was she saying “You’ve no idea how hard my life’s been lately”. Was she saying “I feel trapped, and I don’t see any way out”?

“You only live once” he said. “Don’t you think once is enough?” she replied – straight off the cuff.

Gets you thinking. Especially on a Sunday like this, when a good number of us are here because someone we love experienced too little of life, rather than too much of it.

Why would she say those words?

Well I guess we all know the weariness that can accompany our living at times. There are spells when life seems almost entirely drained of music or colour. Circumstances weigh us down; responsibility narrows our horizons; the drudgery of routine saps us of joy. Life, in those times, gets reduced to the business of simply getting through the day. If you’re speaking out of that place, small wonder that one life seems enough, or more than enough.

Or sometimes we’re just so busy that we miss life even as it happens to us. We’ve got a full schedule, a busy day, a host of commitments at work and at home. But the danger is that life then becomes a game of join the dots between those different commitments; getting from one meeting to the next, one appointment to the next; one task to the next as fast as possible. Kiss the kids on the forehead at bedtime and then get back to it again.

In the middle of that, even the best and most energetic of us find ourselves wondering if this is the life that we really wanted to have.

“Don’t you think once is enough?” she said. And for that kind of life, I guess maybe she’s right.

 

But here’s the thing. All of us know that life has more to offer than that. We’ve tasted it.

We love; we create; we tend and grow; we nurture, we laugh; we share; we worship; we play; we pray.

There are things we can happily lose ourselves in for hours and hours and they’re as unique as our fingerprints. For me it’s playing guitar or shaping words in poetry. Some of you run, some of you garden, some of you walk, some of you read; others love company or being with family, or travelling, or music.

We cherish those God-given moments and experiences, and when they’ve passed, we cherish the memory of them because they are what makes life worth the living.

And there enough of them, scattered throughout our days like little diamonds, to make the leaving of this life hard to bear for everyone concerned.

Hard for those who have lived out their days. Harder still when someone’s taken young and still with so much living to do.

“Don’t you think once is enough?” she said.

Of course once isn’t enough. It’s not nearly enough. But on this side of eternity, it seems to be all we get.

And if that were the end of the story, it would also be the end of hope.

I don’t decry the work of the humanist folk who take funeral services. I’ve always believed that as a minister, my job in a funeral service is twofold. To do justice to God and to do justice to the person who’s passed on, and I can’t fault the humanists on how well they do the latter.

But at the end of the day, no matter how much bonhomie and celebration there is of the life departed, a humanist service is devoid of hope. In that worldview, the person you loved, in his or her entirety, has ceased to be.

And as the Apostle Paul once said – ‘if for this life only we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men’.

But in Christ, the Christ who IS the resurrection and the life, the Christian dares to hope for more than that.

Fred Buechner puts it this way: “Once before, out of the abyss of the unborn, the un-created, the not-yet, you and I who from all eternity had been nothing became something. Out of nonbeing we emerged into being. And what Jesus promises is resurrection, which means that once again this miracle will happen, and out of death will come another realm of life.”

We live in a cynical, secular age. Any talk of life after death is written off as mere comfort for the gullible. But it’s a brave man who from this side of the chasm dares to tell us what’s on the other side, when he’s never actually crossed over himself.

I came across this wee story the other day which made me smile.

The story is that there were two babies in a mother's womb – we’ll say there was a boy and a girl.

"Do you believe in life after delivery?" asked the boy.

 

“Of course” said the girl. “There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we’ll be later on.”

"Rubbish," says the other. "There’s no life after delivery. What would that kind of life even look like?"

"I don't know” said the girl. “But I’d guess there’ll be more light than here. Maybe we’ll use our legs for walking and eat using our mouths?"

The boy laughed. "That’s nonsense. Walking’s impossible – you know that! And eating with our mouths? Are you kidding? We get fed through the umbilical cord, and any fool can see it’s not long enough to stretch very far.”

"Well I think there is something more than this, and maybe it's different from how things are in here." said the girl

"Wishful thinking” said the boy. “No one’s ever come back from the other side. Delivery’s the end of life. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.”

"I don’t think so" says the girl "I think we’ll see mother and she’ll take care of us."

"Mother??" You believe in mother? Where is she now?”

“She’s all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her this place wouldn’t even be.”

 "I don't see her” said the boy. “And until I can see her I’m not going to believe that she exists”.

 “I can’t see her either” said the girl. “But sometimes when we’re quiet I’m sure I can hear her and sense her. I know it’s hard to believe, but deep down, I’m sure that there is life after delivery. And I can’t help wondering if part of the reason we’re here is to prepare ourselves for what that life is going to be like”

When it comes to life on the other side, we are all still in the womb. None of us have crossed over, and none of us can speak with certainty . But there is one who can speak with certainty about the afterlife. He died on a Friday and was raised on the Sunday, and it’s in his name that we gather here today. And it’s his voice that I choose to listen to.

And he tells us: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die”

 

“Do you believe this?” – he asks Mary, whose brother Lazarus lay in the sleep of death.

This morning he asks you and me the very same question. “Do you believe this?”.

May God give us the faith to echo Mary’s answer –

 

“Yes Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world”.

(This sermon draws from a sermon by Fred Buechner called 'The Killing of Time')

God's Questions - "What Are You Doing Here?"

(Parts of this sermon - probably the best parts - were used with permission from my friend and colleague Paul Grant)

It should have been his moment of glory,

On the top of Mt Carmel, with the people of Israel gathered, Elijah stood alone against the prophets of Baal, a pagan god championed by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

Today he would force the nation to decide between Israel’s God, YHWH, and idols.

“If the Lord is God - then worship him" he yelled to the crowds;
"And if Baal is God - Then worship him”

It all came down to a challenge. Two sacrifices were prepared, one by Elijah, and one by the prophets of Baal. They were to call on the name of their God in turn and whichever answered by fire would show himself to be worthy of worship.

For all their hours of blood letting and chanting and rabid dancing, the prophets of Baal couldn’t stir their god to action.

Elijah offered a simple prayer, and fire fell from heaven and consumed his sacrifice.

The prophets of Baal were shown up for the charlatans they were, and Elijah dealt mercilessly with them, putting them to the sword.

It was his ultimate vindication. So why, in his moment of victory, do we find him running away in today’s reading?

Well, he’s trying to put as much room as he can
Between himself and Jezebel’s threat to kill him.
For in her anger she’d spat out these words:

“May the gods strike me dead
If by this time tomorrow
I don’t do the same thing to you
As you did to my prophets.”

And when he heard that, he was afraid, and fled for his life.

But that’s what I don’t get.
How can a man defy a king, his army and his spies
For over 3 years,
Then stand alone against over 800 opponents
And invoke the power of God
Only to suddenly crumple
Before the words of an angry woman?

What’s going on here, Elijah?
I don’t think you are afraid of Jezebel.
I think you are just afraid.

Afraid with the kind of fear that comes when your courage has been
called on so often it’s worn perilously thin.

You’ve had enough, Elijah.
You’re tired. You’re burnt out.

We find you under the branches of a broom tree,
Sodden and cold
Feelings as dark as the rain clouds above you
Unable to hold together a heart that’s close to cracking.

And the only prayer you have left is for release
For escape:
“It’s too much Lord. I might as well be dead.”

But death doesn’t come.
Instead, the steady patter of the rain drops lulls you into the little death that we call sleep.
A blessed oblivion where, for a while, you’re out of reach
Of failure, fear and responsibility.

But sleep can help heal us too.
Can make room for better perspective to grow.
Can sew patches on courage worn thin.

Sleep and a little food, ministered to him by angels,
leaves him rested enough for the long, lonely journey
Up to the holy mountain where Moses once met God,
And the slaves of Egypt became the people of God.

And when he gets there he finds a cave to shelter in.
And in the mix of stillness, space
memory and being alone, God’s voice emerges
In the form of a question:

“What are you doing here Elijah?”

“Lord” he answers. “I’ve always served you. Only you.
But the people have given their hearts away,
Have broken your covenant.
I’m the last one left. And now they’re going to kill me.”

Telling God where we are and what’s happening to us,
Is less passing on news to God and more
about putting into words what lies deep within us.

It’s as much about helping us sound out our depths before God
As it is anything else.

Because what we have suffered, or rejoiced over
Often needs to be given its own words and spoken to another
Before we can move beyond, accept or understand it.

So maybe Elijah’s speaking as much to himself here
As he is to God.

Maybe Elijah hasn’t realised it, but the whole of this journey
From frightened flight to exhausted sleep
to sitting in a cave speaking his experience to God,
has been a journey leading to this point:

The point where Elijah will hear the voice of God
Speaking in such a way that he is able
To move on in faith, hope and service.

And the voice speaks once,
Then after earthquake, wind and fire,
It speaks again in a gentle whisper he could so easily miss
Were he not listening with his whole being.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
“What are you doing here?”

Hold those words in your imagination for a moment.

How are they spoken?

None of us can say for sure, but it strikes me that they’re voiced without a hint of accusation or anger.

They sound more like the kind of thing a longstanding friend would say when they need to lovingly but gently confront you about something. They’re full of concern.

And I’d doubt that there’s anyone here who hasn’t heard an echo of those same words in their heart at some point in their lives.

“What are you doing here?” God asks us in a still small voice, or through the words of a friend, or in the eloquent silence of our own conscience. And implicit in the question is a truth we don’t want to hear: “This is not where you should be”.

How we receive those words depends largely on how we got to where we are.

Some find themselves under a broom tree or in a lonely mountain cave because with the slow slippage of time their lives have been moulded into something they would never have chosen.

I see a woman who worries that she’s losing her life in the middle of caring for others; exhausted by the round of responsibilities that fall to her and growing resentful at the cost of it all.

I see another who feels trapped in a loveless relationship. Where the early promise never materialised, and all that’s left now is duty and the daily struggle to maintain civility.

I see a man stuck in a job he doesn’t enjoy, but wedded to it because of the financial commitments he’s taken on.

They put a brave face on, but internally disappointment hangs over them like a pall of bitter smoke rising from the bonfire of their dreams.

For others, it’s not circumstance built up over the years that’s ground them down, it’s a sudden, drastic change. Someone they loved dies; serious illness visits them, or someone in the family. And they find themselves reluctant travellers in the barren landscape of loss where it’s so easy to lose direction and end up wandering round and round in the same circles. Revisiting grief, bitterness, loneliness and resignation. Grief, bitterness, loneliness and resignation.

Still others make bad choices that lead them into desolate places. Prodigals who reach out greedy hands for whatever promises pleasure in the short term, but who end up squandering all they have on things that never last and don’t satisfy. Disgraced – even if it’s just in the courtroom of their own conscience – they sit alone among the pigs with their head in their hands; but even there, God’s voice reaches them.

“What are you doing here?” he asks

When we hear those words, it’s always a sign that we’ve got stuck in a place we’re not meant to be.

But the good news this morning, is that those words also hold out to us the possibility of moving on.

As far as Elijah was concerned, the game was over. Humanly speaking, he could see no way out of his situation, and even if there were a way out he had no energy to go looking for it. But he didn’t reckon with what God had planned.

There were 7000 other faithful people in the land of Israel, men and women about whom Elijah knew nothing. He wasn’t alone at all. There was hope, and a future, for him and for his people.

When God asks “What are you doing here”, he’s not only saying, “This isn’t where you should be”. He’s holding out the promise that there’s somewhere better up ahead.

Maybe that somewhere better is the same place, but with a different mindset. Maybe the journey you need to make is in your imagination – looking at where you are through different eyes. Seeing those circumstances, that task, that relationship in a different light.

Or maybe God’s saying "it’s time. It’s time to get up and go. I know you’re afraid of the uncertainty that’s ahead of you, but you can’t stay here a moment longer. You’ve spent too much of your life in this place. This situation you’re in just now doesn’t have to have the last, or most dominant word on your life, so don’t let it. There’s somewhere better up ahead."

Generations after Elijah’s time, Israel was conquered by Babylon, and those of her people who survived were carried off into captivity thinking they’d never see their homeland again. They felt utterly trapped and powerless. But in the midst of that devastation, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed these words from God – “For I know the plans I have for you” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”.

This isn’t where you should be, God’s saying to Israel, to Elijah, and to you and me. I have somewhere better in mind I want to lead you to, and you’ll get there in the end if you keep listening for my still small voice.

I will not let you stay in captivity for long, Israel. I have 7000 people who have not bowed the knee to Baal, Elijah. I have hope and a future for every man, woman and child who seeks me with all their heart, whatever their present circumstances.

Thanks be to God for the ways in which his word has found us this morning.

Amen