Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor Sermon Podcast
Living with Loss (#1): The Mystery of Loss in Biblical Perspective
The Bible doesn't offer pat answers in the face of loss, but bears witness to a more profound engagement with those who mourn.
Living with Loss (#1): The Mystery of Loss in Biblical Perspective by Ken Wilson, Senior Pastor, Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor - www.annarborvineyard.org.
Well, you know, life is full of experiences that press us to search for God, beauty is certainly one of those experiences, longing for justice, the intuition of hope, our craving for relationship. But among these things that get us thinking about God are also painful experiences, like the experience of loss that we feel most acutely, for example, when a loved one dies. So today we're going to begin a two-part mini-series on loss, living with loss. After this, we'll be doing a series on the Da Vinci Code, probably beginning at the end of May, some of the issues raised by that movie we'll be addressing here at the Vineyard. But first, this living with loss series, today we'll be talking about the mystery of loss in biblical perspective. And then next week, we'll be getting very, very practical and looking at loving those who are living going through a time of loss in their lives. So first off, the mystery of loss in biblical perspective learned very early on in marriage that Nancy and I have different orientations to life in general in the universe. And one of the differences, when Nancy would share a problem or a concern or some point of distress in her life, I would instantly try to solve it. And I cannot express to you my shock. In fact, I still experience the same sense of shock to learn that most of the time, Nancy is actually not looking for my answers. She's looking for something else. She's looking for connection. She's looking not to be alone in her distress. You know, the Bible is a lot like Nancy. The Bible doesn't offer us pat answers in the face of love, loss, but what the Bible does offer, the Bible bears witness to a God who engages us at a more profound and ultimately a more satisfying level when we're in mourning. The mystery of loss in this book called the Bible makes a very early appearance. Genesis chapter one, the book of beginnings, ushers in the era of light and life unfolding from God's hand, Genesis chapter two, the human entry into the stage of life. And then Genesis three is classically referred to as the account called the fall in classical Christian doctrine, the fall, but really a better name might be the loss. Because it's all about the loss of innocence, the loss of relationship, the loss of home, the loss of life, the loss of God. Loss in the Bible, in other words, isn't sugar-coated. Loss is not presented as some kind of illusion. If we only knew better, it wouldn't hurt. Loss is as we feel it to be, loss is tragic. It's something to weep over. Of course, like anything else in the Bible, it's not quite that simple. Loss is also tied to blessing and to gain. So in some sense, loss is integral to life. It's not just an assault or an injury to life. I became aware of this the year before my father passed away. I had a growing awareness that felt almost like a betrayal. It felt very odd, very weird. It was that through his death, I would gain something. I knew not what, that through his death, I would gain something, and that's actually a very common experience that people have. There are two signs of this different kind of loss in the garden, this less tragic loss. One would be in Genesis 2 where it says, "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh." I still remember my shock at my daughter Amy's wedding, or at the end of the wedding party, she actually drove off with Ben. And I felt that ouch, that leaving thing, it was one of the happiest days, but also one of the saddest days of my life. The second indication of this other kind of non-tragic loss, perhaps, is the loss that involves an offering of an innocent life for our gain. We see that in the garden where the Lord God provided animal pelts to cover the human shame, and that infers that there was a loss of an innocent life even in the garden. Abraham and Sarah are really powerful, important figures in the biblical story. The father of all those who believe Abraham is called, the friend of God, well Abraham and Sarah lived their entire lives intersecting frequently with just a diverse mystery of loss. The first appearance of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible is Genesis chapter 11. We begin with their father, who's named Tara, the Texas up there on the screen, Tara became the father of Abraham, Nihor and Haran, and Haran became the father of Lot. Abraham and Nihor both married, while his father Tara was still alive, Haran died in the Ur of the Chaldean. So the first loss is the loss of Abraham's brother, Haran dies. Abraham and Nihor both married, the name of Abraham's wife was Sarah I, and the name of Nihor's wife was Milka, she was the daughter of Haran, the father of both Michael, and the names are really important to whoever wrote this, I don't know why. Now Sarah was barren, she had no children, so there's the second loss, the loss of a dream, the loss that's involved in infertility. Here I took a son, Abraham, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter Lot, Sarah I, the wife of his son, Abraham, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldean's to go to Canaan, but when they came to Haran they settled there, the loss of home. All change involves some loss, and they went through that massive transition of uprooting from their home and going to another place, Tara lived 205 years. In the Bible they had a different relationship with numbers than we do, numbers were symbolic, numbers were fluid, this would be an example, as a way of saying Tara lived a really extraordinary long time, and he died in Hara, so the whole thing ends with the loss of Abraham's father. So at the very introduction of Abraham it's just riddled through with one loss after another, and then the very next text regarding Abraham in chapter 12 is about that different kind of loss we talked about, not so much the tragic loss, but that leaving, cleaving loss, and Genesis 12, the Lord said to Abraham, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you," etc. So after suffering multiple involuntary losses, Abraham is invited to suffer another this time voluntary loss, to leave home again in order to make way for this new blessing. So it's a package deal, leaving and cleaving, and we're meant to wonder could he have known this God as his God without suffering the loss that he was invited to suffer. There are many losses to come in the life of Abraham and Sarah, separation from their nephew, loss of domestic tranquility when Sarah and her handmaid, Hagar, have a falling out, and Ishmael Abraham's son by Hagar has to leave. Like so many of our losses, separation, family distress, loss, contact with kids. Then in chapter 22 of Genesis, this mysterious awful, awful, wish it weren't in the Bible awful loss. Sarah finally conceives, gives birth to Isaac, the child of the promise, all their hopes and dreams. All those hopes and dreams that God himself gave them rest in that child, what a weight Isaac carried, all those hopes and dreams invested in his puny life. And inexplicably, God makes a demand of Abraham that can only be described as obscene. It is completely beyond the framework of a conventional understanding of morality. God demands of Abraham that he offer his son Isaac in sacrifice. Abraham responds inexplicably, dutifully leading Isaac up Mount Moriah, binding him and then raising his knife over the altar. I mean, this is one of those losses, some losses seem just all together wrong. They are beyond tragic or sorrowful, they're beyond infuriating, they're too horrifying even to consider that alone watch, this is one of those losses about to happen. But then we open our eyes, Isaac is still alive, and there's a ram caught in a thicket. And the angel of the Lord stays, Abraham's hand, and says that's what the ram is for. That goes again of the garden where a ram, a lamb, a bull we don't know, provides a cover and out for human shame. Most mysterious, the most awful loss of all, others' loss for our gain. We barely want to think about it. You know, it's a very humbling thing about this book, it reveals sometimes that some of the ancient cultures are better at what they do than what we do. Like a relationship to one's emotions, here we are 110 plus years of modern psychology, and yet the ancient peoples are more enlightened than we are when it comes to human emotion. Oh, we can talk about emotions, we can analyze emotions, but these people actually had one or two emotions and lived within their emotions rather than simply analyzing their emotions. Take their response to grief and mourning. Such a holistic, physical, spiritual, emotional, communal response, rending of garments, sitting down in the dust and throwing dust on one's head above all weeping and wailing. But very uncharacteristically, we never see Abraham or Sarah weeping through all this long legacy of loss. I mean, of course, they must have wept, but we don't see them weeping in the text until Sarah dies. Sarah died and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her, Genesis 23. So far as I know, this is the first mention of weeping in all of the Bible, and there's been a lot to weep over up to this point, it's the first mention of weeping. The closest thing to it is in Genesis 5 when it said the Lord God saw all the violence that was in the land and his heart was filled with pain. Sarah was piled up, don't they, like they piled up for Abraham, one sorrow upon another, and finally his wife dies, and it's almost like a note that's suspended in a song and you're just waiting for it to resolve, it just stays there and stays there, suspended, and then finally, it resolves, and that's the feeling we have when Abraham is finally shown weeping. He's not just weeping for the loss of Sarah, but every time you mourn, you're mourning for all the previous losses cumulatively, that's why old people cry a lot. I cry a lot more now in my 50s, certainly than I did in my 30s. So yes, the story of Abraham and Sarah is shot through with loss. But woven through the loss, life, promise, blessing, partial fulfillment, above all hope. And you can't separate these plot lines out in their story, they're just inextricably bound together like they are in our lives. Of course, the story of Abraham and Sarah isn't finished even with the end of their lives because it's a future-leaning story, they've gotten something rolling here. They're rolling toward a time of blessing when all the nations of the earth will be blessed through their seed, beginning with the people of Israel, also a people of great loss and promise and blessing and hope. There's a way into the story of Abraham and Sarah, even for those of us who aren't their natural offspring. We Gentiles, and it's through the suffering servant of Israel, the fulfillment in a sense of what Israel is all about. We read in the servant song in Isaiah the prophet, "He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." So today, if your story involves living with loss right now, that is right now you're facing loss of a loved one or maybe a parent in hospice, loss of a dream, like infertility, loss of relationship, a breakup, a divorce, a child who's run away from home and can't find their way back yet, the loss of a job that's dear to you. The chances are you are not looking for bad answers right now. You're looking for connection. You're looking for love. You're looking for someone or something or somewhere to turn in your loss. When you are in the throes of grief, who do you turn to if anyone? I'll tell you who you don't turn to. You don't turn to your lucky friend, your young friend perhaps, who's not yet lost a family member, not yet lost a job, not yet lost even a pet, not yet even lost their car keys. There are such people, and they should enjoy their lives while it lasts. But you don't turn to those lovely, wonderful people when you are suffering some loss. You turn to one who is acquainted, don't you, with grief. Rick and Jenny have been dear friends of ours for 30 years. Rick lived with us before he was married. Nancy and I have owned three different homes in Ann Arbor sequentially. Rick and Jenny have lived either next door or down the street from us in each of our three homes. One year, in 1981, Nancy, we were shocked by the death of Nancy's mother, age 54, on the golf course, two weeks later, Nancy gave birth to our Judy at St. Joe's Hospital. The very next day, Jenny, our next door neighbor, gave birth to Sarah in the same hospital. Sarah was born with hydrocephaly, she was in need of a shunt, there was all that grief and concern, she turned out fine, everyone lived happily ever after Sarah is a lawyer now putting people into jail, prosecuting attorney for the military, she's a jag. Another year, 1985, my mother lived with us. My mother and father, because my mother was dying of cancer, we took care of her. Jenny and Rick lived next door and of course they helped. Within months of my mother dying, Rick's mother came down with Lou Gehrig's disease and they moved into his house. Before Rick's mother died, Rick's father came down with stomach cancer. So they're caring for two dying parents in their homes, it was a terrible burden. At our urging, they took a break, thinking the end wasn't yet. And while they were gone, his dad passed away, so we kind of stepped in. With this, in 1999, I took a break caring for my ailing dad, thinking the end wasn't yet, and I was on vacation with Rick and Jenny when we got word that he died. It's an amazing, amazing couple of friends. When I faced my next loss, I know where I'm going, to these friends who were acquainted with grief, theirs and mine, which are really and truly ours together. And for the same reason that I would turn to them, I will turn to Jesus. Because Jesus reveals something that's very important for us to see, Jesus reveals that God is not as the Greeks taught, God is not, and Christians have sometimes wrongly believed God is not what's called impassable. There is a doctrine of God that God is impassable. What that means is God is unable to suffer. And it is a doctrine that is asserted by many in the name of orthodoxy. We are wise to keep a distance from such a Kevlar-coated God. What is there to get close to a God covered in Kevlar? But the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a different God than that. This God, the God of the Bible by contrast, famously, shockingly, is a friend at least on a par with Rick and Jenny, which brings us back to that horrible story of Abraham almost losing Isaac in that horrible, horrible way on Mount Mariah. If we could, I had to read this story, it was doing the divine hours and sometimes tickle slips in just a story like this in the compliment prayers that you have to read every Tuesday night for the whole month. And darn her, she stuck this Mount Mariah story, it was long in there. And she was forcing me to read that sucker four times, I hate that story. And yet I read it, nevertheless, I hate this story because I'm angry with God for that demand and I'm angry with Abraham for obeying God's demand. I mean, I don't think you read the story honestly without that anger. But if we could just get beyond our anger at God's horrible demand and Abraham's horrible obedience and begin to feel the awfulness of Abraham's anguish and just think of it, the prospect of losing a son like that and what could be worse? What father wouldn't rather slay himself than slay his own child? If we can begin to feel, maybe not feel, maybe just to notice at a great distance, father Abraham's anguish, then maybe we can begin to catch just a hint, just a glimpse of the depth of the divine loss when the son of the promise is slain. I'm not sure we're supposed to understand this, I certainly don't. I'm not sure that we're ever going to be able to successfully explain it, though we keep trying with various theories of the atonement, substitutionary atonement, this kind of atonement is all supposed to explain the thing by developing a metaphor and that this is what it means that Jesus died for our sins, I'm not sure we're meant to understand it. We stand before Mount Moriah as we stand before Calvary Dumb, we're at a loss in the face of a God who suffers loss for us, and though we can't explain such a thing, we can turn to such a God in our grief, and maybe that's the point, and it's all right if it's the only point. How might we in practice actually do that, turn to such a God in our grief? Well, first of all, we do that by turning toward not away from the pain of the loss itself. Not because we're gluttons for punishment and we need more, but because loss is part of the human story, the real human divine story, the one that is tangled up with all the good in the world, that loss is tangled up with it too. You know, the only realm that God enters is the realm of the real. You cannot meet God anywhere but the realm of the real. After my father died, of course, your busy life goes on. You can't attend to your grief 24/7, but once a week on Mondays, my day off, I sat in my little prayer place, and I just let myself think or feel whatever there was to think or feel about my dad. And it wasn't Oprah, it wasn't, it didn't feel productive, it was just, sometimes it was just feeling dull and wondering why I wasn't feeling more and then feeling sad that I wasn't. It just let yourself feel whatever is there to feel, I just did that one hour a week. It's hard to engage the real God if we're running away from our real selves. So first, we turn toward not away from the pain of the loss itself, at least sometimes. And then secondly, we express the pain of loss directly to God. You know, emotions are well labeled, emotions because emotions involve movement. The old way of talking about emotions and feelings, back before we had the language of modern psychology, for example, Jonathan Edwards would talk about the motion of the humors and the fluids. He was referring about feelings, their feelings are by nature, things that move, once you understand that emotions are emotions, it helps you to deal with, they can pass, do you let them pass through you? You don't freak out because you're feeling them, they won't last forever, just let them pass. Thankfully, their emotions are because they're emotional, their emotional emotions are directional. If we coop them up like a horse and a stall, we shouldn't be surprised if they start gnawing at the insides of the stall and getting a little bit compulsive and weird on us, but we can direct them toward God if we wish. We have that power to direct our emotions toward God. If God feels remote, as God often does in a time of loss, we can get our emotions to Him as it were by speaking them out to one of His image bearers. That's part of the point of God having image bearers on the earth, other human beings, we carry His image and so if you're having trouble expressing your pain directly to God, you can express your pain to God by speaking it out to one of His image bearers. That's what our Stephen ministry is for. They're trained to listen to people who are going through a time of loss or suffering. And then third, we can bring our turn to God and our grief by meditating on those parts of the story in the book that resonate with us. You know, we tell stories, we listen to stories, songs, movies, books, whatever, because stories heal us. And that's why we're always after stories, stories heal us. This book is God's book in a way that, and our book in a way that no other book is God's book and our book. It's the book Jesus turned to. It's the book of Jesus, it's the book of His movement that followed in His way. There are a thousand and one million and one like thin spots where our lives and the divine life intersects thin spots in this book. That's just amazing correspondences between something we're going through in our lives and something that's going on in the story here. That's one of the main reasons you want to familiarize yourself with this book when you're not in crisis so that when you are, there's a little something in your well that the Holy Spirit can kiss and it'll rise up. Oh yeah, I remember that and you realize that's a thin spot for you and you go and you find the thin spot. I knew when my father died, Psalm 23 was a thin spot. My sister was caring for him at the very end and she was beyond just being able to handle it. She went out of the room and Psalm 23 came into her awareness and it was comforting. She went back into the room, my father who was unconscious until then rose to consciousness and told her the story of when he prayed Psalm 23 out loud when he was in the infantry in World War II and he was wounded that day. That's a thin spot and so I knew it was one of those places I would meet God in my grief and so I went off into Psalm, Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down and green pastures, he leaves me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul, "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. You are with me, you're broad and your staff, they comfort me." It was a thin spot so meditate on those parts of the story that resonate with your part of the story they're found all over this book. And then for really this is a way of saying what has been happening through all these other steps invite Jesus into your sorrow to bear it with you. We first have to feel our sorrow, we have to turn toward it in order to invite him into it so that it's real and authentic but invite Jesus into your sorrow to bear it with you. This can be done explicitly, use words if necessary, it can be done wordlessly, it often is needed to be done frequently. invite Jesus into your sorrow to bear it with you. He's a helper when he gets in there he just, it's almost like he's part of a dysfunctional family, he just has to help, he gets in there and he, he helps. I'll explain what I meant by email if you're wondering. And then fifth, light a candle to remember your loved one. Some Protestants have just a lousy attitude toward candles, I never got the memo where candles are so awful would someone please send me the memo, there's some memo that went out to us Protestants that candles are so bad, what's so bad about a candle I'm thinking? You know a candle is fragile like a human life yet it can light up a room that's dark or it can burn down a house, a candle, what's, you know the Saturday night service, a man came forward to let people light a candle for their loved ones and he said to me, you know it's just funny how you go places and you hear, he's first time visitor, you hear things that you need to hear and then he kind of started to shake. He said I lost my son recently and he burned in a fire that was started by a candle. And here you're talking about this and so he took a candle and he lit it for his son and he set it down, it's just like wow. Light a candle to remember your loved one, Jesus who lived one of those fragile human lives is compared to a candle in the Bible. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, that's fragile light that's being talked about there, not the bright shining light where darkness doesn't have a chance but the light of a candle, the darkness has not yet, the darkness has not, though it's been trying to overcome it, it has not overcome it, that's the light of a candle Jesus being compared to, so light a candle for your loved one, Nancy taught me this on the anniversary of the death or the birthday light a candle, just leave it on for the day or whatever as a remembrance because that's one of the tasks of grief, is to transition from a relationship and flesh and blood and time and space to a relationship of memory with a loved one and so the candle is a great thing, let's, the worship team could come back up, we will close with communion together and what I'd like to do is just I want to offer, for those of you maybe you've lost a loved one in the past year or so or you're just feeling, feeling that loss and would find it meaningful, you certainly don't love your loved one less not to do this but if this would be meaningful for you, we've got some like, of those candles that I remember, candles and if you'd like to, as you come up for communion, take one of those candles, Nancy's got them in the back there, just bring it up with you and you can just place it, actually, since we'll be having communion, just place it on this little stand here and just as a remembrance of your loved one if you'd like to, so let's stand, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread, when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you, likewise after supper he took the cup saying this cup is a new covenant in my blood, do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for whenever you eat this bread or drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes, so God we do come into your presence today and we thank you that you are so wonderfully approachable in spite of your awesome stature as the God of heaven and earth and we do come to this table Lord such as we are today carrying our hopes and our dreams, our joys and our sorrows and we thank you that you receive us as we are, we thank you that you are the Lord of our hearts and the lover of our souls and so we wish this morning to allow you to love us through our participation in this meal, this God's love made edible for us, we thank you Jesus and we bless you and we worship you when he prays you, oh man, so two lines down the center aisle if you'd like to ground for first and peanut gallery next. 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