A week ago, Carrie, Nathan, and I met with a doctor to hear the good news of Nate’s recent MRI as he told us what wasn’t there. That night, I hugged him tight, and he assured me, “I’m going to live a long time.” For that moment, death seemed distant.
Since then, I’ve seen pictures and heard stories of lives ended too soon not from ill health but horrific violence. I’ve heard theories of more than one gunman, theories of conspiracy from ISIS to “The Company.” Because I don’t have their intellect, I’ve had little response. I have no theories. I cannot make sense out of the past week’s events. The images of mass homicide at a nightclub along with the death of a two year old from an alligator attack at the happiest place on earth has scarred my psyche perhaps to that broken place beyond repair for this week’s events are beyond sense, beyond any rationales, traumatic by definition for a trauma is any disturbing experience which the brain cannot comprehend by relating to previously held concepts or experiences.
Though traumatic, let us stay here for a moment. Let’s forget the explanations of the philosophers and the rhetoric of the politicians lobbying for us to let them aim our anger at the evil among us. Let’s give witness to the pain of our neighbors, some we know, some we don’t. Let’s find language for their pain by looking beyond politics and philosophy to the poetry. Philosophers nor politicians can express the pain of the survivors from the Pulse shootings or the family who will return to Nebraska without their son. Only the poets can. Poets like Jane Kenyon,
The Sandy Hole
The infant’s coffin no bigger than a flightbag…
The young father steps backward from the sandy hole,
eyes wide and dry, his hand over his mouth.
No one dares to come near him, even to touch his sleeve.
…poets like Reed Whittemore
Psalm
The Lord feeds some of His prisoners better than others.
It could be said of Him that He is not a just god but an indifferent god.
That He is not to be trusted to reward the righteous
and punish the unscrupulous.
That He maketh the poor poorer but is otherwise undependable.
It could be said of Him that it is His school
for the germane that produced
the Congressional Record.
That it is His vision of justice that gave us cost accounting.
It could be said of Him that though we walk with Him all
the days of our lives we will never fathom Him
Because He is empty.
These are the dark images of our Lord
That make it seem needful for us to pray not unto Him
But ourselves.
But when we do that we find that indeed we are truly lost
And we rush back into the safer fold, impressed by His care for us.
And poets like the Psalmist,
Psalm 13
1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I bear pain[a] in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God!
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.
5 But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
All the above exhibit a darkness that we too easily dismiss but after weeks like this past one, cannot reasonably deny. If we let the poets like the Psalmist guide us, there is a way in the overwhelming wood, there is a light in the dark.
That Psalmist, even when feeling forgotten by God, looks toward the future with hope when he or she would sing again to God who has and will deal bountifully in a way more plentiful than even the Psalmist can imagine in the pain of the present moment. Yet, he or she trusts God even when God seems silent and absent.
This week, this 13th Psalmist’s story is our story. The Psalmist’s path is our path. And, honestly, it is the only path. Who should know that better than we? Our worship is on Sunday, and every Sunday is Easter Sunday. Every Easter Sunday has one prerequisite, Friday comes before it. As Easter people, we only find life beyond death, paradise beyond our pain, the kingdom of God beyond whatever this is for the path to Easter is through Friday, which only in reflection, only looking backward, can we call it, “Good.” The hope of God’s resurrecting power is the only hope that enables us to face the horror of any cross trusting that no matter how terrible, the power of Friday is always limited, because Sunday is coming.
See you on Sunday.
For a lift to your soul, listen to this excerpt from a sermon by Tony Campolo that asserts this central facet to our faith, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming.”
