Sermon delivered on Sunday, August 22, 2010 at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Lewis Center, OH. Due to technical difficulties, the audio version of this sermon is not available.

Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

What is the Human Condition?

Good morning, St. Andrew’s! This morning I am going to preach a different kind of sermon. It is intensely real and still quite raw for me. It is about real grief and real hope. I preach it to you as an offering to God in the hopes that he will take my wife’s and my grief and use it to help you deal with your own. This is not a “how to” sermon, but rather my story of how I am attempting to be faithful in my grief. I am preaching it as much for myself as I am for you because I too need to hear some Good News right now. Consequently I ask that you hear it not just from Fr. Kevin, the priest, but also from Kevin Maney, a Christian disciple who struggles like the rest of you with all that can go wrong in this broken world of God’s.

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.
I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

Back on July 10 of this year, a stray little kitten adopted my wife and me at the local cemetery as we were riding our bike. He was about 4 months old at the time and cute as he could be. It actually took him two nights to adopt us because we did not stop to pick him up as he chased us the first night. On the second night, being the suckers we are, Dondra and I stopped and took him with us after we found him in the same place and after he once again chased us. We named him Woodland J. Pussycat after the name of the cemetery in which we found him and called him Woody for short.

He was moving right along, enjoying his new family and growing nicely, until last Tuesday morning when we noticed his breathing was labored. We took him to the vet and then to the vet ER where we discovered he had irreparable heart disease. He didn’t respond to aggressive treatment to get the fluid off his lungs and the docs pretty much gave him no more than three months to live, if that. This forced us to make the painful decision to have him euthanized Tuesday evening about 6:30. All of this in a span of about 8 hours.

Dondra and I are both devastated by this sudden turn of events because we loved the little guy and he brought great joy to our home. Now he is gone, yet another stark reminder that we live in a world created good but which now struggles under the curse caused by human sin, and about how terribly fragile and transient mortal life is.

At this point, some of you may be scratching your head over this. “What’s the big deal over a cat?” you may ask. My wife and I are still grieving pretty intensely, in part, because we did not see this coming at all nor did we have time to process it. All of this is made worse by the fact that Woody basically adopted us. We rescued him from starvation and a sure death, only to have him die an untimely and premature death. He was a very trusting and friendly little kitten that picked up everyone’s spirits in a family where there has been grievous loss, alienation, and separation of all kinds of late. In short we loved him and quickly made him part of our family, and he responded in kind.

These are the times, then, when all we can do is to follow the psalmist’s lead in Psalm 130. We cry out to God for help, and are reminded of God’s great love and mercy for his creatures, sometimes despite appearances to the contrary. In other words, these are times that demand a human response of faith and trust in God’s great love for us in Christ.

Where is God’s Grace?

But is that all there is for Christians, to cry out in anguish to God in the midst of our grief? Does not the Christian faith have anything else to offer to help us in our grief? Thanks be to God that it does. We have the promise of the New Creation that the writer of Hebrews talks about in today’s Epistle lesson. It is essential for us to remember the hope and promise of the New Creation, especially in the midst of our grief, so that we can grieve as people with real hope, defined as a sure and certain expectation, rather than as people who have none.

What is the hope and promise of the New Creation and why is it essential for us to grasp onto it and hold it firmly? God’s New Creation, the new Heaven and Earth, is God’s promise to finally redeem all that has gone wrong in his broken and fallen world. Isaiah talks about it in the latter half of chapter 65. Paul talks about it in Romans 8. John talks about it in Revelation in chapters 21-22.

The New Creation is our final destination. It will be ushered in at Christ’s Second Coming and those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead to receive our new resurrection bodies, bodies that will be immortal and not subject to decay or death. We will be reunited with those in Christ whom we have loved and lost for a season. We will be finished with sin forever and get to live directly in God’s Presence forever. As John reminds us in Revelation, God will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away. There will no longer be any curse in the New Creation, the curse that our sin brought on the old creation (Genesis 3:14-19; cf. Romans 8:18-25). No wonder the writer of Hebrews exhorts us constantly to keep our eyes on the prize and run the race with perseverance! The New Creation is infinitely better than the old!

And how do we get into the New Creation? By our merits? Because we are good people or more deserving of it than others? Heaven’s no! We are allowed to live directly in God’s Presence forever because of the blood of the Lamb, shed for us so that God’s holy justice and mercy could be at once satisfied. Our destiny in the New Creation is God’s ultimate gift of love to us, secured because of the cross of Christ and validated by his mighty Resurrection.

And while there is no scriptural warrant for this, I hope (as in wish) that God in his tender mercy will redeem his innocent little creatures who loved his human creatures and who loved them. After all, if Christ died for someone the likes of me so that I might have a chance to live with him forever, he can surely redeem a sweet little creature like Woody.

Where is the Application?

So what would I like you to learn from all of this? First, it is OK to grieve and show emotion because our loss is real and our grief does not indicate a lack of faith. There is a time when our grief is too raw and we are too numb to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and the promise of the New Creation. It is precisely during those times when it is best to give our pain up to God and leave it at that for the moment. For example, this past week, I have read Psalm 130 and Psalm 90 frequently because they express well how I feel and the hurt that I bear. Both psalms acknowledge the brokenness of the human condition but they also affirm God’s great love and mercy for us.

Second, and related to the first lesson, despite the seeming paradox regarding what I just said, it is precisely when we are grieving the most that we must turn back to Scripture to help remind us of our destiny in Christ. We may be in no condition or mood to hear it but hear it we must. I cannot tell you why it is so but the more I read Scripture, the better I have been able to persevere.  For example, in addition to the psalms I mentioned, I have also read the New Creation narratives in Isaiah, Romans, and Revelation to remind me of God’s ultimate gift of love to us. I have read the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2 to remind me that God is a good and loving Creator and that the kind of things that happened to Woody and to others is not what God intended for us.

It is important to read passages like this because they serve as healthy antidotes to Satan whispering in our ear that God really does not love us or cannot help us, or that God is responsible for our grief and pain. Don’t listen to that voice. Listen to the voice of God contained in Scriptures. Find verses that speak to you in those times and rehearse them as often as you can. Make this a priority! When you are in real trouble, turn (or return) to God’s word in Scripture for real help. Your grief will not magically disappear but you will be better equipped to deal with it.

Third, offer your pain and hurt up to God in prayer. Be honest with him. Tell him how badly you hurt and ask him to bring comfort and healing to you in his time and in his way. Ask him to use your grief to teach you what he will, even when it is not obvious to you. Ask him to strengthen your faith in the midst of your sorrow so that you will be equipped to persevere. Ask others to pray for you as well. There is no magical formula here. Simply lay your broken heart at God’s throne and ask him to do with it as he will. If you are worried that he might further break your heart if you offer it to him, resist that temptation by remembering the cross of Christ and the horrible death he suffered for you so that you can live with him forever. The God who became human to die for you so that you can live will not break further your already broken heart.

Fourth, let God’s people comfort you. Turn to your Christian friends or spouse or small group for help and let God love on you through them. I cannot tell you what a help and comfort my wife has been to me this past week, just by being there for me and holding me as I cried like a baby over that little kitten who stole my heart. I hope I have done likewise for her as well. Don’t be too proud to let God love you through other faithful souls.

If you are asked to comfort those who grieve, remember that your presence is more important than anything you can say or do. One of my favorite book titles is Don’t Sing Songs to a Heavy Heart. We hate seeing people grieve and want desperately to make them feel better, which is really beyond our immediate power, although perhaps not beyond our ultimate power in Christ. This leads to all kinds of poor or awkward attempts to deliver comfort to the afflicted when there is none to be had. When you are uncomfortable or don’t know what to say, then simply let your presence do the talking or acknowledge the person’s hurt or pain instead of trying to fix it.

Summary

We live in a broken and fallen world because of human sin, sin that has real and dire consequences to it. Consequently we must inevitably face grief. But we are a people who can grieve with hope because we have the sure and certain expectation of the New Creation, God’s ultimate gift of love and grace to us, and that makes all the difference in the world.

I started this sermon by telling you about our little kitten and how I am handling my grief over his untimely and unfair death. In doing so I hope I have offered you some real help and hope, help and hope that is based on Christ, not me. In closing I would be remiss if I did not remind you to also thank God in all things, for he loves you and cares for you and is generous to you beyond description. And so let me practice what I preach and close this sermon by offering a quick prayer of thanks to God.

Let us pray. Thank you, merciful God, for blessing our house with your little creature, Woodland J. Pussycat, even if it was only for 5 weeks. Help mend the Maneys’ broken hearts and be pleased to remind us all that in you we have Good News in any and every situation, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.