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    Feb 17, 2019

    Take Heart

    Take Heart

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Category: Grace

    Maybe the first thing to say is that pain, of course, is universal…No matter who you are, how lucky or unlucky, or rich or poor, or this or that, part of what it means to be a human being in this world is to labor and be heavy laden, to be in need of whatever [Jesus} means by rest. ~Frederick Buechener, A Crazy, Holy Grace, p. 17

    I do it, and I’m sure that many of us in this room do it.  Someone asks, “how are you” and what do we reply?  Yes – I’m fine.  I’m great.  Or some clever version – like my friend’s “I’m delightful.”

    How often are we honest about that?  Maybe the better question is how often can we admit that things aren’t really fine – that the dishwasher broke down, three of the four kids are sick, I hate my job, my dog peed on the carpet.  How often can we admit to how much pain we are really in – there is a this popular kid in my class who keeps ragging on me about my nose or my hair or my clothes or my weight or what I eat for lunch, my parents are fighting again, I got a D on that test even after studying for hours and hours, I just don’t fit in! 

    As we listened to the speakers at ROCK last weekend, all I could think about was that they were preaching my sermon for today.  Every one of us lives with some kind of pain.  Every one of us experiences loss.  Every one of us has our own personal challenges.  And sometimes it feels like God doesn’t care.

    Frederick Buechner is a Lutheran pastor who has written many books.  His most recent is entitled A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory.  This is not the first of his books to recount and to reflect on the pain that he has experienced in his life, nor the first to express his deep, deep faith that has brought him through.  I’d like to share with you a little of his story:

    I don’t speak often about my father’s drinking.  He wasn’t a raging drunk.  He didn’t go around smashing furniture and punching people in the nose.  Rather, I think drinking was one of the ways he survived his life.  Especially when he went out to parties, he would drink too much.  When he would come back, as much as I can remember him, which is dimly, he was another person.  He was sort of scary and sad.

    One night, he had been drinking, and he decided he wanted to go away somewhere in the car.  My mother said something like, “You can’t do that.  You’ll kill yourself or smash up the car,” and she somehow got hold of the keys.  She gave them to me and said, “Whatever else you do, don’t give them to your father.”  I was in bed, and I remember gripping the keys in my hand.  There were two twin beds—I was in one with the covers over my head, scared.  My father came into the room, sat on the other bed, and pled for me to give him the keys.  I didn’t know what to do or what to say or what to be or what to think or what to do.  I just remember, sort of dimly, his voice saying, “Please give me the keys.”  And I, of course, said nothing at all.  The keys were clenched in my fist under the pillow and the covers were over my head.  Eventually I think he went to sleep, and that was the end of that.  But of course, it left a tremendous mark; I can remember it to this very day.  That is the kind of shadow side of my childhood.[1]

    Buechner carried the memory and the pain of that night throughout his life – he carries it still.  His life and his faith have been further impacted by the tragic death of his father by suicide when he was 10. 

    Pain is universal.  Your pain may be different from my pain, but we all live with pain and suffering.  The question for us is what do we do with our pain?

    We develop “safe” coping mechanisms, don’t we?  Things we think others can’t see.  We self-medicate.  We withdraw.  As the Spoken Word performer named Egypt reminded us last weekend, some choose to inflict pain and scars on ourselves, hoping no one will notice – or maybe praying someone will notice.  We act out.  We try to forget.  We become stand-up comics as if pain is a joke.  And we sometimes try to survive by competing with someone else’s pain – “if you think that’s bad….”

    Beloved, pushing it aside or denial of our pain by any method often allows it to fester into a nasty wound or to grow to unimaginable heights.  And as the pain festers or grows, it takes over – and can completely close us off – even from God.

    I do not believe that God causes our pain.  We may bring it on ourselves.  Others may do something that is hurtful to us.  Illness.  Poverty.  Death.  Jealousy.  I don’t believe that God makes those things happen.

    But the way we cope with pain can make all the difference in the world – and in the coping, in “honestly living out of our pain,” we are more likely to see where God is in the midst of the messiness of life.  We can find a richness – a depth – in life rather than living in the shallows.  We find rest, as Jesus said.

    One of our church families knows what this means.  Roger and Linda Adams lost their son Jeremy in a terrible automobile accident in 2011.  They have told many of us how others shared their grief and surrounded them with love by showing up for his funeral and in reaching out in love to them as a family. 

    And then they made an investment.  Jeremy was active in a ministry in their Florida church, feeding people who were hungry.  To honor Jeremy’s memory and to keep his ministry alive, Roger and Linda invested in a trust that will continue that legacy – Jeremy’s love lives on in the ministry of our food pantry here at RUMC. 

    Acknowledging their deep pain, Linda and Roger reached out both financially and also by participating in that ministry.  Linda also serves in the Community Kitchen.  It’s almost like Jeremy is by her side as she serves hungry people, always with a smile and a word of grace and welcome. 

    Buechner talks about living out of his pain this way.  He thinks about the servants in the parable of the talents – you know, the one where the master gives different amounts to servants to care for while he is away – by saying that the one who buried the talent was just afraid while the other two took the talents they were given and invested them – and turned them into treasure:

    Speak out of who you truly are.  And when somebody says, ‘How are you?’ don’t say, ‘I’m fine.’  Maybe you say, ‘Well, I’m not so good.  How are you?’  Then let the conversation move.  Talk not about it but talk out of it.  And, I mean, literally talk in this place.

    I think of the little boy with the keys in his hand under the pillow and the covers over his head.  If only I had been able to raise the covers and say to my father, ‘I’m scared.  I’m scared.’  Maybe it would’ve been possible for my father to say, ‘So am I.’  And who knows how that might have changed the day?[2] 

    Maybe it takes courage.  Maybe it’s not easy.  But when we withhold our deepest selves we may miss the joy – we can miss the blessing of seeing God in the midst of our pain.  But when we reach out, trusting that another may help us through the pain, we may find grace.  This piece of music speaks to me about this, and I hope it will speak to you.  (click link to watch).

    Hezekiah Walker - I Need You to Survive

    [1] Frederick Buechner, A Crazy, Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory.  Copyright © 2017,Abingdon Press, Nashville.  Pages 15-16.

    [2] Buechner, page 32.