Grace to you and peace…
Oh, Paul. He takes us many times where we do not want to go. He took those young preachers, Timothy and Silas into strange lands. He took those struggling Christian communities into challenges around faith, inclusion, and God’s radical and boundary-less grace.
And today he takes us into a conversation about death.
I don’t know about you, but I generally don’t like to talk or think about death. We’ve been described here in the United States as a death-denying culture. We can’t deal with it. In our culture, not only do we really try to push death under the rug during our lifetimes -- with endless painstaking and expensive efforts to look and feel “forever young”; even when that tragic day does come for our loved ones, we tend to -- as Presbyterian preacher and professor Thomas Long talks about -- we tend to “sanitize death”. We clean it up -- usually these days we don’t even have the body of our dearly departed present at the service -- instead we tell funny stories, show the cute pictures, and play happy music. We choke back tears and cries of anger at God. And after some coffee and cake, cocktails and condolences, we try to just go back to work, back to our lives, back to our children, back to our schools...
Maybe that doesn’t describe your own individual experience with or thinking about death, but I think that in our culture as a whole -- and frankly in much of my experience as a pastor around death and dying -- this denying and sanitizing of death rails against the reality of what Paul names as the sting.
The sting of death. Death stings.
Have you ever tried to pretend that a bee sting didn’t hurt? (I remember being stung by a yellow jacket when I was leading a worship service in the mountains…)
Death stings. Death stinks. Death sucks.
Why do we in our culture push that primordial fact down or out of sight? Make sure you make people laugh. My mom (on this Mother’s Day) always told us, make sure you have margaritas at my funeral. All that’s good and well-intended. “But maybe I won’t want to party, when that day comes, maybe I’d rather cry because, Mom, your death is going to sting me!” Death is a monster.
Paul sits us down and has us face the monster today. On this Seventh Sunday of Easter in the church, on this Mother’s Day in our wider culture, here we are facing the monster. How many of our mother’s helped us face our monsters? And how many of our mothers themselves faced fear and death with courage and hope, oftentimes when no one else could.
I love that movie Steel Magnolias: a strong and beautiful Southern mamma -- a steel magnolia -- at the death bed, when no one else could take it, everyone else left. She faced the monster.
And yet Paul does not abandon us to the monster. [Gonzo in a Muppets Christmas Carol]. Paul proclaims the gospel in the face of the monster, death. And this is what we Christians have done ever since! For us Christians, as well meaning as it is, a funny story or a favorite song, or that frequent promise that “we’ll never forgot you” is not going to cut it. Our human efforts are not not going to beat the monster that is death.
Only God can do that, friends. Only God through Christ Jesus who never ran from the monster, but undertook it, can beat death. Through Christ, death has been swallowed in life. Paul tells us today about what Jesus did. Jesus conquers the monster. And because of that we too can conquer the monster. Because we are joined to Christ. “By the grace of God I am what I am,” says Paul. I’m joined to Christ. Death stings, yes -- we face that honestly and tearfully -- but our tears are not the end of the story, sisters and brothers.
We watched E.T. last night with the kids. What an incredible movie experience! The whole spectrum of emotions. It was fun to ride that roller coaster with the kids.
Katie sobbing. “I don’t want to finish this movie!”
“Keep watching,” Heather patiently kept saying as she held her, “It’s not over yet.” She held her through her tears. And the next time I looked over at her, I couldn’t even tell she had been crying.
I was struck by both their lessons: first of all Katie’s -- facing the monster of emotion and sadness. The willingness to admit the sting. And then her mother’s -- holding her through it, speaking patiently, waiting with her in the sadness, and reminding her that the story’s not over.
Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the end, it’s not dependent on us. In the end, all we can do is let our mothering God hold us and comfort us and wait with us...and in the end, you wouldn’t even know we had been crying. God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
In the end, it’s not dependent on us. Our stories and music and movies all come up short. In the end, we have a God who conquers death, who swallows death. So we can face it.
All we all we can do is open our hands, and spread out our arms, and give thanks. The story’s not over. AMEN.
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Blessing of Mothers
God of all creation,
pour out your blessing on all mothers
and those who provide motherly care.
You have made them in your image
and given them children to love and care for in your name.
Bless them with a heart like your heart:
loving and kind, comforting and strong,
nurturing and grace-filled.
As they participate in your ongoing creativity,
give them discernment
to help their children discover their unique gifts.
As they teach their children,
grant them wisdom to know what is truly valuable.
As they strive to share your unconditional love,
give them long-suffering patience and a lively sense of humor.
As they model your mercy,
help them extend the forgiveness
they themselves freely receive from you.
In all circumstances fortify their faith,
that they may love you above all.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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