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Good
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 Sermon
06/06/10
You Restored Me to Life ~ by Reverend
Thomas Cary Kinder
June 6, 2010 Second Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 30; Galatians 1:11-24; Luke 7:11-17
Many
of us here are on journeys through the valley of the shadow of death
right now. Some are grieving
the loss of people we love.
Some are facing a life threatening illness in ourselves or in
others. And everywhere we turn
we are confronted with the news of the deadly violence humans are
inflicting on the earth and on one another. The shadow of death is an oil plume
spreading menacingly through the sea, or a sea blockade shutting off
the light of hope from an oppressed people.
This
is the context in which we have read the 30th Psalm this
morning, saying, “I will extol you, O God, for you have drawn
me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me. O God my God, I cried to you for
help, and you have healed me.
O God, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit….
Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the
morning…. You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have
taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may
praise you and not be silent.
O God, my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”
“You
Restored Me to Life” is the title of this sermon, and it is all
about the path that leads us to praise and joy, but the word
“restore” keeps alive the memory of the condition from
which we are being restored.
Thomas
Lynch is an undertaker, poet and author of fiction and nonfiction
books. I read an article by
him in the April 6th edition of Christian Century magazine as I was working on my
father’s memorial service two weeks ago. Lynch says that such services too
often focus only on the celebration of the life of the person who has
died. They fail to deal with
the reality of death. He says
that when they do that, they are leaving out the most important
message, which is that our religion offers a path through death and
the fear of death to peace and joy and more abundant life. We cannot find that path if we
focus only on giving thanks for good things, because the path to
transformation and restoration begins at the gate of the Pit of
death. The path to the joy
that comes in the morning begins in the darkness of a grievous night.
The
deepest, darkest Pit in modern history was the Nazi holocaust. Some Jews were able to find the
path of transformation even in the death camps. Some emerged from that hell to
write profoundly hopeful, life-affirming books.
One
of the best known holocaust stories is of Jewish prisoners who put
God on trial. Leading lawyers
tried the case before a jury.
A distinguished rabbi served as judge. After all the witnesses and
arguments and deliberations, the jury found God guilty of abandoning
the Jewish people. The rabbi
pronounced God guilty, declared the court adjourned, and said,
“The sun is setting. The
Sabbath is beginning. Let us
turn to God in prayer.”
Viktor
Frankl wrote of his discovery of the path of
transformation and restoration in Auschwitz. His suffering found meaning and
purpose in his love for his wife who had been taken to another death
camp. The thought of enduring
for the sake of that love changed his daily experience from being all
about death to being all about life.
He knew there was a good chance she had already been killed by
the Nazis, but it didn’t matter. His faithful love was what
mattered. It was the gate to
the path.
I
have walked with many people through the valley of the shadow of
death. They have all
confronted some form of fear or anger or deep grief, they have all
struggled, but for some, dying became all about life. For these people, the struggle was
to have their dying somehow give and serve love and life and light,
to have dying be a time for continuing the fulfillment of their
purpose and meaning.
I
think of Rod Webb, who had just fallen in love and been wed in a
service of holy matrimony to Helen Mac Lam in the last year or so of
his life. As his cancer
advanced, all he wanted every day was another day with Helen. He endured terrible suffering, he
had bad days, but you could feel light and love shining through him,
whether Helen was there or not.
His time of dying served life abundantly and lifted us all,
right to the end.
But
I also remember a friend of mine who died with no faith, with no
hope, with no purpose, crying out of a darkness of despair that
dragged down all who heard his voice.
For
both those who die and those who grieve, death can be a terrible
place where we remain stuck, or death can be a terrible place that
turns us onto a new path that leads to restoration and to more
abundant life. Death can be
like a toxic waste dump where nothing will grow, or it can be like a
compost heap that may be full of stinking rot now, but will serve to
grow a garden full of beauty and nourishment over time.
We
can learn how to transform death into something that advances
life. This is the wisdom that
we find in our spiritual tradition.
The Psalm tells what one person did to find the path out of
sickness and loss and the Pit of death. “O God my God, I cried to you
for help,” it says.
“You hid your face; I was dismayed. To you, O God, I cried, and to you
I made supplication.”
The
secret of the Psalmist’s eventual joy was to keep turning to
God even when God seemed to be guilty of cruel abandonment, just as
those Jews did who put God on trial in the Nazi death camp and then
turned to prayer. This may
seem too easy an answer, but it is hard to keep turning to the light
when the light looks like utter darkness. It is hard to keep turning to God
when God seems not to be helping, when nothing seems to be
changing. Our spiritual
tradition says that the act of this difficult but simple repeated
turning connects us to the source of abundant life and restores us.
Today’s
gospel lesson offers another perspective. On one level it can be read simply
as a miracle story designed to keep us looking to Jesus as we go
through death and grief. If we
believe the miracle and keep turning to Jesus to save us, that simple
faith is all we need to put us on the right path. But if we have trouble accepting
the factual truth of Jesus raising a man from the dead, there is a
symbolic truth in this story that does not depend on the facts, and
it, too, can lead us onto the path of life.
The
whole story takes place at the town gate. Jesus is just entering the gate
when a man is being carried out on a bier. The gate stands for the moment of
confrontation with death when we have the opportunity to find the
path through death to life.
The
man was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow. A widow with no son was one of the
most vulnerable and uncared for in that society. The son’s death cuts her off
from the abundance of life.
The dead man was all his mother had to connect her to
life’s source. This was
her one chance. Every form of
death we face presents us with its one chance to find the path to
healing and restoration.
Jesus sees the woman’s plight
and is moved by compassion for her.
The heart of the story, on which it all depends, is the fact
of Christ’s compassion.
If the Holy Spirit is not the force of compassion in the
universe, then there is no truth to the story and no hope. But God and Christ and the Holy
Spirit are the names we give to that compassionate, life-giving force
that people have encountered for thousands of years in the face of
death and grief. Connecting to
that force is the key to transformation and restoration.
Jesus
tells the mother not to weep, not because her loss is not tragic, but
because something else is about to happen. It happens when Jesus lifts his
hand to the bier. He touches
it and the bearers immediately stop.
Many along the route to the tomb would touch the bier in their
agitation and the bearers would keep on walking. But Jesus touches it and the
bearers become still and at peace.
A peace that seems to come from beyond us is one of the
characteristic turning points when we step on the spiritual path from
death toward restoration.
Jesus
tells the dead man to rise, and the man sits up and Jesus gives him
to his mother. The flow of
life is reconnected. The son
is restored to his source of life, and the mother is restored to her
way of abundant living. The
touch of the Spirit of God connects us to the eternal, ever-flowing
source of life.
So
what is all this symbolism telling us?
This
story can be read about the way we deal with our own physical death
and our grief at the death of others.
The compassionate, loving touch of Christ can heal us and give
us life even as we die. It can
reconnect us to love and life even when someone we love has
died. It gives us the hope of
life after death. It may take
a long time, but Christ’s power can move us from silence to
thanksgiving, from mourning to joy.
The
story can also be read about other forms of death, like the death of
passing from one stage of life to another,
or the death of our false self.
The touch of the Spirit can change any deadness in us into
life and restore our true self to its connection with God and the
earth and the one life we all share.
It can lead us to new, abundant life.
Or
this story can teach us how the touch of our compassion can give life
to those around us, and to the earth itself. It can help lead a violent, damaged
world toward restitution and sustainability.
It
may be that only going through something like today’s gospel
story will enable humans to emerge from our current deadly era into
new and abundant life.
Something has to die in order to be restored to life. Our materialistic society needs to
die, and within each one of us the worship of material things needs
to die, or else we will keep right on with our deadly ways. We need the touch of Christ to
transform us and restore us to the nonviolent life God created us to
live. We need the heart of
Christ in ourselves to feel the pain of the earth and feel the
compassion that can motivate us to change.
Whatever
kind of death we each face now is a terrible thing, but it is also a
gate that can lead to a new life that we cannot foresee, a life that
waits ahead in the darkness.
“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with
the morning,” the Psalm says.
If we follow the path of spiritual wisdom, turning to God,
opening to the touch of Christ, we too may feel able to say in the
end, “You…have restored me to life…. You have
turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and
clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be
silent. O God, my God, I will
give thanks to you forever.”
Let
us pray in silence…
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