Dead Wrong

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Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.  For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. (Hebrews 2:14-16)

BREAKING NEWS: After continuing and extensive research, it has now been determined that the human mortality rate remains stubbornly fixed at 100%.  

And BAD NEWS: you will die.  Everyone you love will die.  Everything you love is ephemeral, transitory, mortal.

Hebrews 2 speaks of those (namely, all of us) who have been held in slavery all our lives by the fear of death.  Faith in Christ does not allow us to whistle past the graveyard.  If you have recently planted the mortal remains of someone you love into the earth from which they were made, a certain kind of “Christian happy talk” comes across as no comfort indeed.

Yes, because of Jesus, we “believe in the resurrection of the body,” we “believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.”  But this belief does not give us a pass on suffering, on tears, on doubt, on depression, on darkness, on grief, on death.  

When it comes to death, you can’t get your Get Out of Jail Free card until you go first into the jail.

Since “the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity” Hebrews 2 tells us.  Before he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus wept – and the Greek for this famous “shortest verse in the Bible  does not mean he shed a few polite tears, it means he was torn open in grief.

As Jesus hung on the cross, he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  He wasn’t play-acting, he wasn’t merely proof-texting his experience with a Bible verse.  He was dying, he knew it, and he was experiencing God’s absence from the entire process.  He really was in a place of absolute God-forsakenness.  He shares our humanity.

Which means Jesus understands God-forsakenness.  He knows what it’s like from the inside to be in agony watching a child or spouse or friend on a self-destructive course, and we are helpless to change it.  He gets what it feels like to get the worst possible news from your doctor.  To be so depressed that even the noonday sun in a cloudless sky seems a disc of black.  To loft weak and tiny prayers into a heaven of brass, and finally to stop praying, weary to death of the empty echoing of our own seemingly worthless words. To weep inconsolably by a grave, and weep and weep and weep.  To pound our fists into freshly tilled cemetery ground, to pound our heads against the unanswerable question “Why?”, to raise our voices in anguished protest and receive no response from a heaven gone silent.

Let’s end with a sort of parable.  For those who might remember the television series The West Wing, this story was told by the President’s gruff chief-of-staff Leo McGarry to the young, feisty, confident, troubled presidential aide Josh Lyman:

This guy’s walking down the street when he falls down a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey, you! Can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription and throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts, “Father, I’m down in this hole. Can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey, Joe, it’s me! Can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

Yes, dearly beloved of God, there is a way out, and there is a Friend who knows the way because he is the way.  His living hands bear the scars of his death even today.  But we only really get to know this, and him, when we’re together in the bottom of the hole.

This may not have been the kind of devotional you were expecting today.  Take a minute now to pray whatever responses you’re having – anger, confusion, distress … perhaps encouragement, hope, even gratitude.  Whatever your responses, sit with them in God’s presence now.

Who in your circle is in a dark, seemingly God-forsaken place of some kind?  Don’t pray for them just yet—try to pray with them, do your best to come alongside them in their praying.

A “big tent” church has room for people whose faith is broken, weak, confused, distorted by what they have suffered.  Pray that we could become a church that can welcome and accept them, honor them – and even learn from them!

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