From Mourning to Ministry

Background Passage: Matthew 14:9-23

No physical pain eclipses the pain of losing a close friend or family member. The grief of personal loss hurts. Shatters our sense of normalcy. Threatens our emotional stability. Chokes the very breath from our souls.

Grief might be tempered by the circumstances of our loss. When a loved one has faced months of pain from an insidious disease, for instance, the believer feels a sense of comfort and release knowing that a mother, a sister or friend is no longer suffering. That realization may lessen the gravity weighing on a sad heart, but it does little to fill the emptiness one feels.

Grief is a process as anyone who has lived it knows. Our reactions to it as individual as our own unique personalities.

In their respected book, On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler plotted five stages of grief that all must travel. People express themselves in various ways, passing through the stages in different ways or times because our relationship to the one who died was unique to us. The authors suggest we must go through each stage if we are to recover from the sorrow that engulfs us with the loss of someone special.

Kubler-Ross and Kessler define the stages of grief: Denial…a time of shock and emotional paralysis where we tend to avoid our new reality; Anger…a time when all the emotions we bottled up for a time get released; Bargaining…when we look for alternatives to fill the void within us; Depression…when reality weighs us down; and acceptance…finding our way forward into a new normal.

I know two families this week going through the death of a family member. Having walked in their shoes in my own family, forever uncertain what to say, I found myself scanning the scripture for words that might grant all of us a foothold of understanding on the slippery slope of sorrow.

Well-meaning folks like me will offer these families platitudes in the coming days based on our personal experiences. The intent will be appreciated. The care and concern evident.  But the words will most likely fall on a heart too troubled to hear.

Many passages of scripture tells us about God’s comfort during times of despair. There is beauty and value in those verses. As we seek to live in the image of God and if Jesus represents the image of God on earth, then what did Jesus know of our sorrow?

I suspect there were a thousand of unrecorded occasions when Jesus put his arm around a crying widow, offered a prayer for a brother in mourning, took a meal to a neighbor who lost a sister, prayed for a family whose mother died peacefully in her sleep, or stood quietly beside a parent whose child was ravaged by disease when no word would bring comfort. Scripture also tells us Jesus felt the grief resulting from the death of someone for whom he cared deeply.

His experiences with grief were personal, not second hand, full of the emotional trauma death brings. Late in his earthly ministry, his good friend Lazarus died. Though Jesus knew the outcome of this experience would be new life, scripture tells us he wept. His anguish over the loss of someone he loved so real and heart-wrenching.

Yet, another profound encounter with death touched Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. Not too long after Jesus gathered his disciples together and taught them things they needed to know about the kingdom of God, he sent them out, two-by-two, on a mission trip to preach the good news of God’s coming salvation.

At the same time, Herod, the Judean tetrarch, arrested John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and early partner in ministry. The Baptist ran afoul of the regional governor when he challenged Herod’s divorce and marriage to his sister-in-law. While John was in prison, Herod, intrigued by his step-daughter, promised her anything she wished. After talking to her conniving mother, the step-daughter asked for John the Baptist’s head on a platter. Herod did not disappoint and ordered John beheaded.

News of this horrific death reached Jesus just as the disciples were returning from their trip. The news was unsettling. Jesus and John, connected by circumstance of birth and passion of ministry, held deep respect for each other.

Jesus once told the crowds who followed him that “among those born of women there is none greater than John,” revealing his level of affection and respect for the tough-minded preacher. Jesus’ love was returned many times over. John stood waist deep in the Jordan when Jesus presented himself to be baptized at the starting point of his earthly ministry. Knowing who he was and the nature of his work, John hesitated. “I’m not worthy to tie your sandals,” he said.

When Jesus heard the news about his cousin, Matthew 14 tells us , “he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.” Saddened. Distraught. Struggling with both the loss and the method of his death. Seeing in John’s death, perhaps, a reflection of his own future.

As he so often did when troubled with life, Jesus needed to feel the presence of his heavenly father. In the middle of the excitement of the missionary reports, he moved away from the crowd to find a quiet place to be alone in his thoughts, to deal with his emotions and his grief.

Yet, the crowd would not let him go. Maybe they were unaware of John’s death. Maybe they didn’t understand the connection between the men as cousins. Maybe they were so caught up in their own struggles they couldn’t see into the hurting heart of another person. Whatever possessed them to come, a large crowd circled around the Sea of Galilee to wait as Jesus’ boat came ashore.

Many of us can empathize with Jesus. He needs his time alone…his space to deal with his own breaking heart. Life will not allow it. Jesus had a choice, to look inward or outward. We face the same choice in times like this. We can turn inside ourselves, skirt the crowd and run into the desert alone. Or we can look outside ourselves to the people pressing around us and extend God’s mercy to them.

Matthew tells us Jesus saw the crowd and had “compassion on them.” What an amazing picture this presents! A grieving Christ sees the gathering crowd. When most of us would turned the boat around, Jesus dried his tear-stained cheeks with the sleeve of his cloak, said a new prayer for emotional strength, took in a deep breath and went about his work healing the sick, comforting the sorrowful and feeding the famished.

He spent the rest of the day with them, eventually feeding them with a little bread and fish before sending them on their way. A picture settles in my thoughts. The last family finally turned to leave. Jesus, who set aside his own sorrow for that time, waited until they were out of sight before sagging heavily on a boulder, allowing the emotion pent inside to flow freely.

Scripture says at some point he gathered himself, climbed the wilderness mountain as he had intended to do earlier that day and sought refuge in a father who understood clearly the heaviness of his heart.

So, what does this tell me about grief?  My faith pales in comparison to the faith of Jesus. How hard it is to carry on when all we want to be is carried away. This biblical episode in the life of Jesus tells us life never stops for the grieving. Never slows down. Never considers our emotional state. Life goes on.

The daze of days surrounding the loss of a loved one blow by with little regard to what we want or need. In the days that follow death there will be bills to pay. Places to go where no one knows our anguish. Children tugging at our sleeve who need us to be in the moment with them. Co-workers expecting us to be on our game. Work still to be done. Our ability to find the peace we need, the solitude we crave, gets overshadowed by the press of the crowd around us.

We can push the crowd away or do as Jesus did when he pulled the boat to shore…embrace for a moment the opportunity God puts in front of us to serve him. To testify through our last reserve of faith and strength to the power of the father who gives us the ability to put one foot in front of the other and move when all we want to do is turn the boat around.

I don’t want to minimize the difficulty of walking our grief walk. It is healthy to grieve. Healthy to find time alone to consider the meaning of this personal loss. Healthy to weep.

As Jesus sailed the boat across the Sea of Galilee that day, I suspect the horizon lay unseen in the distance obscured by the tears in his eyes. His vision limited to the prow of the boat as he stared blankly into a tomorrow without his dear friend. That’s the way I feel on days like that.

However deeply Jesus mourned John’s death, he didn’t stay in the boat. He turned grief into the fuel that fired his own sense of mercy and ministry. You see, all the hurt and pain we experience at the death of one we love can empower us to love more deeply, embrace more often and to serve more willingly.

These two friends of mine who mourn this week the loss of a brother and sister, respectively, will be in Collique, Peru, next week on a mission trip. They join others in building small homes for families who possess next to nothing. Despite their personal sorrow, they will step out of their boats on the shore of a dusty hill in South America to share the compassion of Christ to strangers unaware of the grief they bear. What a testimony!

In our most desperate times, our dependence on Jesus Christ serves as dynamic evidence of the power of God’s sustaining love to a lost world with little on which to cling in life’s toughest times.

Grieve because you must.  Mourn for lost love ones. Cherish the memories of love that runs deeply. But, along the way, may our emotions turn ever outward to spirit-inspired, Gospel-driven, compassion.

 

A Matter of Choice

Background Passages: Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

He stood on the high bank
on the east side of the Jordan River,
looked down at the milling masses,
lining up to be baptized by John.
The butterflies in Jesus’ stomach fluttered,
the stirring of the Holy Spirit within.
For the past 18 years he waited.
Listening for God’s call
to begin the work he was sent to do.

“It’s time, Jesus.”
The voice within urges him on.

Jesus shuffles forward in the meandering line.
Waiting his turn.
Deep in thought.
His sandals sink into the mud,
Toes touch water.
Snapping back to reality,
he looks into the disbelieving eyes of his cousin,
staring back at him.

“Why are you here?”
“I am not worthy…”
“You should baptize me…”

“No, John, you need to do this for me…
I need you to do this for me.”

Rising from the cool waters of the Jordan,
Liquid cascading from his hair and beard,
Jesus wipes the water from his eyes,
Looks up to heaven…
a prayer on his lips.

The clouds break.
A dove descends.
A voice declares his name…

“My Son…”

Value and Validation.

*

A mountain top experience on the floor of a river valley.
Jesus slogs out of the river, climbs the bank,
Retracing his steps to the crest of the hill.
Jesus looks back at the crowd below
Waiting for their shot of redemption
Unaware that redemption stood beside them.

He turns away from his past.
Takes one step into the jagged edge of the wilderness.
Then another and another.
Into the desert to face the life options open to him.

*

Every step Jesus took into the barren, desolate and deserted landscape led him to a familiar place. I doubt it was his first time in the solitude of the wilderness. A place to ponder. A place to plan. A place to pray. Led by the Spirit as if the Father called to his son, “Let’s go someplace where we can talk.”

In the weeks after the spiritual high of his baptism, he found himself sitting in the shade of a grotto carved into the desert rock by wind and rain, looking back toward the setting sun over Judea…in the direction of Jerusalem where he knew his path would someday take him to the cross.

We call it the “Temptations of Christ” as if this was the first time Jesus faced his own human desires. We want our savior to be immune to the pressure of living up to God’s expectations. As God’s son, we want Jesus to know from the moment he was born that his role would be and how it would play out. We don’t think of him tempted as a young boy to lash out in selfish anger. Tempted as a teenager to disobey his mother’s command. Tempted as a man to stay with the family business rather than take that journey to Jerusalem.

We want to think that Jesus never faced the choices we face. Never faced the litany of options that pull us from God’s will. We want Jesus to demonstrate his rock-solid faith and obedience to God from the moment of his birth until he rose again into heaven.

To lock Jesus in that box of spiritual piety puts him on a heavenly leash, restrained from the possibility of sin. Negating the free will God gave him. Taking those possibilities from him makes his human birth unnecessary. His walk among us a sham. If the cross was not a choice, his ultimate sacrifice loses its meaning.

When Jesus walked into the wilderness, ready to begin his ministry, he faced a world of choices that would determine if he would follow the will of his Father or chart his own course. It was a time for Jesus to prepare himself mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the life ahead. He had to decide what kind of Messiah he would be. The Messiah God sent him to be or the one for whom the people would later clamor.

After weeks of prayer and preparation in the desert where all these possibilities flashed through his mind, Jesus awakens to his ravishing hunger. A voice begins picking at the heart of Jesus, trying to shake his resolve. The stone looks a lot like a biscuit. The voice says, “You’re hungry. To do this work, you’ve got to take care of yourself. Under the circumstances no one would blame you if you were a little self-absorbed. That rock looks a lot like a biscuit. Just say the word…” Jesus knew the power given to him by the Father. The counter argument of sin pushed him to selfishly abuse the God-given power. To place his own desires first in his life.

Yet, Jesus understood that selfishness served as a stumbling block to service and sacrifice. “Man shall not live by bread alone…” The work of God is not about us. It’s about those who need God’s touch in their lives. Living in the image of God demands that we set aside the selfish desires of our hearts and mirror the heart of God.

The voice in his heart says, “God will protect you in all circumstances. Hurl yourself from the temple roof. When the people see that you land unharmed, you will draw a crowd. Then when you preach, they will have to believe.” Jesus understood that we cannot bend God’s will to ours. We cannot force his hand by insisting our way is better. Jesus knew that calling attention to himself by an ostentatious show of power, might attract a crowd, but the faith it bought could not be sustained. “Do not test the Lord, your God…” His plan for our lives remains the perfect plan. Our errant decisions derail what God intended for us. We must avoid dictating the terms of our obedience to a God who knows us better than we know ourselves.

Jesus hears the voice say, “You’ve been asked to do the impossible. It doesn’t have to be that hard. I can set you up as ruler of the world with a snap of my fingers. Bow down to me. I’ll make it happen. No drama. No trauma. No painful sacrifice. Kneel.” Jesus fought the urge to take the easy road. It may have been a daily struggle throughout his ministry. As he began to grasp the magnitude of the sacrifice God asked of him, at a time when he could only imagine the agony that would come, he resisted sin’s easy path in favor of the road less traveled. He chose to connect with the one who offered real power rather than the one whose power was limited. “Get behind me, Satan. Worship the Lord your God and serve him only…”

To be sure, Jesus faced tough choices in the wilderness. We want the temptations of Christ to end in the wilderness, but they didn’t. Throughout his life on earth, Jesus faced the choice to do things differently…right up until the end. Sitting alone in the darkness of Gethsemane, agonizing over that which he knew lay ahead, Jesus fell to his knees. The depth of anguish in the prayer he pray to his God poured from his heart. “Please, take this cup from me. If there is any other way to do this, let’s find it.” When the voice inside him remained silent, he knew God’s way was the only way to bring salvation to a lost world. “Not my will, but yours be done.” A temptation. A choice. A decision.

If our strength to face the temptations we encounter feels weak in comparison to Jesus’ resolve, it is only because our connection to the one who gives that strength is frayed by our own selfish desires. We see it when we try to bend God’s will to serve our purpose. When we choose to follow the path of rebellion…the easy road…rather than rely on the power of God to keep us from stumbling on the rocks along the road he asks us to travel.

Will I live life my way or God’s way? Will I love or reject? Will I serve or demand? Will I help or hurt? Will I give or covet? The decisions we make must reflect his will and not ours. To live in the image of God requires us to make an active decision to do so. Every day. Every minute. With every decision point.

Sin will promise the world. God gives us the freedom to follow or flee. We do or we don’t.

A temptation. A choice. A decision.

Which will it be?