Texts:
Revelation 21:1-6a A New Heaven and a New Earth
John 11:32-44 The Raising of Lazarus
Friends in Christ, grace to you and peace, from the God who made you, the Christ who loves you, the Holy Spirit, who lives in you. Amen.
During my senior year at Luther Seminary, I was required to do a 3 month clinical pastoral education course, working full-time as a hospital chaplain. While I thought this to be a major inconvenience to my life…I already was married, had one child, a part-time job and two classes, it turned out to be one of the greatest shaping events in my becoming a pastor.
I was sent to, what was then, St. Paul Ramsey Hospital, my supervisor was Pastor Bob Bergeson, a good old Norwegian Lutheran Pastor, who saw through the thin-veneer of my sheltered life rather quickly. CPE supervisors are well-trained in dissecting young pastors with incisive questions and deft dodges of our questions, like a psychological surgeon, cutting out whatever needed removal and replacement. It was a long and important three months.
I remember the second day of work, I was given a name-badge that read Chaplain Paul Pettersen, which immediately caused me to feel inadequate to the task. I had done nothing to earn the title “Chaplain,” other than to show up here with my shirt and tie on. With no experience, no direct training, no even observation of what a chaplain is and does, this name badge made me quite nervous. Chaplain Bob Bergeson quickly noted my hesitation, as I clipped it on the pocket of my sport coat. I asked, “so what do we call ourselves when we walk into a room?” Bob looked into my hesitant eyes and returned my question with a question, as good rabbis are known to do, “what would you like to be called? Are you uncomfortable with the title ‘chaplain?’ What does your name badge say?
From that day forward, I was Chaplain Paul Pettersen and the patients called me everything from Reverend to Father to Pastor…and I let them make me be what they needed me to be.
On the third day, we were assigned to serve on different wings of the hospital. We had been given the opportunity to suggest which floors, based upon our interest. I was to select two, so given my love for working with children, I selected pediatrics, and then because it sounded somewhat safe, I chose orthopedics, which is mostly surgical repair. When the assignments were made, I was surprised that at that top of my list from Chaplain Bob Bergeson was 6 East, with no other description. Again, like the name badge, I asked what that meant. Chaplain Bob shared that 6E was the Trauma Unit, the title of which, was somewhat lost in this young chaplain, whose experience with trauma to this point had been limited to a bad grade on a test.
He new he was sending me to suffer and grieve, and he did it anyway, because God is there.
My first day, I arrived on 6E with a big smile on my face. I had been told to introduce myself to the head nurse. As the doors of the wing swung open, I was met with an emergency room times ten. There were staff people scurrying in every direction and bells, whistles and flashing lights everywhere. I was now on the floor where the worst car accidents victims, the most acutely injured and critically ill were cared for. The head nurse spent about three seconds with me and hurried off. I was left standing there with my name badge, my carefully combed hair and my tie in place, staring at a floor full of frightened, suffering, grieving and dying people.
It would become some of the three most difficult, wonderful, terrible, blessed three months of my life.
And God was there.
Day after day, my entrance onto 6E changed, from heightened anticipation and a smile, to hesitation and confusion, to humility and awe, to sorrow and suffering, to quiet and presence.
I remember a particular incident, where a 19 year-old young man had attempted suicide by shooting himself in the face, and he had lived. Michael was completely wrapped around his head for the entire time that I visited him. I never saw what he actually looked like, only by a picture beside his bed, did I know his physical appearance. Never before in my life, had I felt so helpless to come up with words. Words were my strength, my creativity, the tools of my craft. To that point, I had a belief that I could come up with something I could say to make things better, to bring hope to the hopeless and peace to the despairing.
For Michael and his family, I had nothing.
So, I knocked on the door of Chaplain Bob Bergeson, my supervisor, and I sat beside his desk and started asking questions, “what do I say to a family whose 19 year-old son and brother has survived his attempted suicide? What words can possibly be adequate? What can I do to help them?” I was lost!
From across the desk, Chaplain Bob could see my despair. He knew I was relying on myself; my skills, my smile, my demeanor, and he asked me, “what do you feel like saying?”
I hesitated, not knowing what the ‘right’ answer was, still thinking there was a right answer, and I said, “I feel like I have nothing to say.” And he said, “then say nothing.” And I asked, “then what do I do?” And he asked, “what do you feel like doing?” Again, I waited for a profound answer of chaplaincy wisdom, but all I came up with was, “I feel like crying.” And he said, “then cry…just cry, be there, be present, be silent and cry. You don’t have to change this, you can’t change this, you are helpless to change this, but you can be there with them in their suffering and you can suffer with them, and in that, God will be present and do what God will do, even through you.”
The shortest verse in the bible teaches us this truth.
Jesus wept…John 11:35…memorize that, write it on your hearts, take it with you into a world of grief and suffering…Jesus wept…the heart of God is to suffer with us in our suffering, to not leave us alone, to not shy away from our pain, but to enter, become it, take it on, live in it and transform it by presence.
Jesus wept…this family that he loved…Mary, Martha and Lazarus, sisters and brother of deep friendship to Jesus, sat at table together, prayed together, laughed together, loved God together…and now Lazarus is dead.
Both sisters hearken to Jesus’ arrival with the words, “Lord, if you had been here our brother would not have died.” Their hearts are heavy and their tears are pouring out at the loss of their loved one. The surrounding community of beloved friends is there to grieve with them.
And when Jesus saw their weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and deeply troubled, asking where they had placed Lazarus. And along the way to the tomb…
Jesus wept. Our God is a suffering God, whose heart is the first to break when the children suffer.
Today, we gather to be present in suffering, to honor and walk together in the grief of those we remember today, but also to be present…to weep with those who weep…to quietly sit without words alongside the grieving, not needing to fix it, not relying on our own power to change, but just to be in it
…and then, let the God we have in Jesus Christ, be glorified…because while we sit in silent weeping, the power of God is revealed, for in Jesus Christ, death is not the end, suffering is not the end, tears and crying are not the end, because just as Jesus was not done with Lazarus, he is not done with us…and just as Jesus revealed the glory of God to Mary and Martha, Jesus reveals the glory of God to us…and into our places of suffering and grief, and into our places of tears and death, Jesus speaks a new word, a word of promise and hope, a word of assurance and life, a word of forever in the heart of God…
“Lazarus, come out.” And the glory of God was made known and the promise of the resurrection revealed and the hope of eternal life given…thanks be to God!
You have come in here today with the grief of people you love who have died, to remember their love, to celebrate the marriage of heaven and earth…the communion of saints.
Your tears are fitting to the pain you feel. We sit in the silence of our suffering, together…because we are stronger together than we are on our own, because God has given us each other to be a people who walks the crossroad, enters suffering and willingly bears it for one another.
But we do not grieve as a people without hope. We do not cry without an eye on the empty cross. We do not suffer in complete emptiness. We hear again the words of Jesus…”I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believe in me, though they die, yet shall they live, and those who live and believe in me, shall never die.”
Death is not the end…O death where is thy victory, death where is the sting. The sting of death has been swallowed up in the victory of Jesus Christ.
We can live as people for whom death has no power over our days. We will live again!
Jesus wept…God suffers with us!
Jesus revealed the glory of God…and we say thanks be to God! AMEN
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