Sunday, March 30, 2014

Joy


On the day of the service, Carl texted me at 8:00 a.m.

Make sure you watch out for ‘roos. 
There are lots of things I'm more afraid of on Australian roads than kangaroos.  Although they can cause quite a bit of damage, kangaroos are easier to avoid then the potholes the size of Chicxulub crater which appear almost overnight.  (Chicxulub is just off the Yucutan Peninsula.  It is thought that an asteroid impacted there millions of years ago almost causing the extinction of all life on earth.  We have those appear in the roads every time it rains.)

With eyes peeled I drove the speed limit while thinking about Carl Thiele’s regularization service.  Deciphering the nuances of having a regular pastor could lead in all sorts of non-necessary directions, but I thought about Carl and his own journey, of living with and through God’s call; how we all have different sensory organs with regards to God’s voice, how we experience joy and lament along the way.

I arrived at the church a little early and took in the surroundings.  Surrounded by a vast openness, a blankness in the landscape if you will, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Rosevale looked bleak against the dripping sky.  Various mud-spattered cars and pickups were parked in the ankle deep mud outside the fence of the church.  I reached in for my umbrella and immediately left it where it was.  What difference did it make if my shirt was wet when my socks were full of mud?

Greeted by Pastor Carl and the Bishop of Queensland, Noel Noack, I settled in for the service.  Blanketed in silence, at first I was uncomfortable: my life is so full of sound that silence is unnerving.  But after a few minutes, I settled back into the painful pews and awaited the words to flow over me. 

Quiet.  Silence.  Calm.

And then they came in during the first hymn – a grandmother, three daughters (I assumed) and five granddaughters all in beautiful dresses. 

I smiled as the service progressed; the confession, the readings, the Psalm, each designed to heighten the intensity of God’s interaction with us, but what I noticed was that the length of the service also turned the dial on the little girls’ decibel levels.  They were fantastic.  Then, as Bishop Noel stood to give his address on the specificity of pastor’s calls, one of the girls stood up by the baptismal font and began to dance her little heart out.  With hands in the air, she jigged and jived, singing whatever tune was available and as her mother did the inevitable fingers to the mouth…

Shhhhhhhh!!!!

The little girl responded in words that topped them all.  “It’s okay, Mommy, I’m wearing my knickers!”

Most were intent on the sermon, but I was captured by the joy exhibited by the font, the selfless abandon of a little one done with silence, maybe even tired of incomprehensible words, and she couldn’t help but lift her hands by the Font of Life and sing… “Life is beautiful and it doesn’t even matter what I’m wearing.” 

Or not wearing for that fact.

I could use a good dance by the font remembering the saving grace in word and water of baptism.  A little more joy in life would do me good even as I dodged cows, ‘roos, peacocks(?!) and cane toads on the way home. 

Have you found the joy of the Lord lately?

Friday, March 21, 2014

The Funeral

12:00 p.m.  Clarendon Cemetery.

In the eucalyptus tree above me, the breeze pushed the branches harshly as if somehow even the elements were upset about the setting below.  I looked up, almost expecting to see something incredible, some thing supernatural, I don't know, something miraculous, just like the readings from the funeral - Jairus' daughter in Mark chapter 5 - but there was nothing supernatural about the intensity of the sun's heat or the deep, cerulean blueness of the firmament above.  Nothing in creation would have suggested that this day was any different than the rest except for the three hundred people that surrounded the yawning mouth of the grave in front of me.

They were waiting for me to say something, anything, and I was waiting for God to do something, anything, to make this day different.  But as I looked at the faces of the mourners, tear stained cheeks, vacant expressions showing the bottomless abyss of grief, I had no choice but to step forward with the small spade of sand and say...

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust we commit Kylie's body to the earth.

The sound of the sand hitting the casket was repulsive, immoral, in a way, and I wanted to find a way to erase the sound, but it is the sound of finality.  It is the way all things end.  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.  As we stood in silence, some drawing close, most standing farther back as if somehow getting to close to the grave would somehow bring about their own sense of death, we recognized once again two things about life:  How short it is.  How unfair it can be.


4:45 a.m.  My home in Gatton

I couldn't sleep.  Knowing that the day would be emotionally charged, I found my brain waking the rest of my body even before the birds normally do.  Purposely I hadn't written my sermon yet and even though it was the day of the funeral, I kept hoping that God would somehow place the words into my ears, like some kind of spiritual eardrops, but I'm pretty sure that only happens in movies that star Kirk Cameron.  So, after making myself a cup of coffee, I sat down at the table and opened my Bible.

After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him and went into where the child was.  He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" which means 'Little girl, I say to you, get up!'  Immediately the girl stood up and walked around...  Mark 5:40b-42a.

When the family asked me to choose the scriptures, I spoke of the first one that came to mind.  It's probably not the best method of doing things, but I opened my mouth and that's what came out.  Kylie was a small woman, the size of a young girl, and immediately after I'd spoken the scripture, I was aware of the inherent problems of using this as a funeral text.

The girl lives. 

Jesus spends time making his way to Jairus' house.  Just before he arrives, the crowd reaches him and tells him his services aren't needed anymore.  Just a subtle way of saying what most of Christianity and the world says in these present times, "If you can't do what I need, you're not really welcome."  If you can't fulfill my expectations, Jesus, just keep moving.

If I'm honest with myself, I'm finding that idea more and more in my ministry, and even in my own life.  Unless Jesus miraculously produces that which is pressing down on me, relieving the stress associated with 'walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the way of sinners and sitting in the seat of mockers' (Psalm 1:1), then He has no place in my life.  I silently, in my own way, relegate Jesus' to genie, or worse yet, Harry Potter status, who produces the correct spells when I need them.  Fill me with happiness, Lord, or move on.  The significance of a culture that refuses to embrace or even accept grief is overwhelming.  And once we've relegated the Lord of life to mere medicine, we've lost the truest of blessings that Christ brings -

Christian community.  Taking care of each other in Christ's name.

The question posed after reading this as a funeral text is:  If God could save Jairus' daughter, why not Kylie?  Why would someone as vibrant as this young twenty-nine-year-old mother be taken from the arms of a loving husband and newborn daughter?  Where were you, God?  Where does our help come from?  The hills don't seem to be providing it.


8:30 a.m. driving to the funeral.

As I drove, I turned the music on high.  Any kind of distraction to take my mind off the difficult task approaching.  I tried to sing the words, but my mind kept floating back to my expectations of God.  Who are you God?  Where are you when we most need you?  Quickly a voice came to the innermost reaches of my mind.  "Turn off your music.  I want to talk to you."

I'm not one of those kind.  It wasn't a physically rap on my tympanic membrane, but more of a gentle brush stroke on my heart strings.  Turning off the stereo, I began to notice the arid landscape passing me at a constant speed.  Dams and streams had dried; the Australian landscape has become bereft of water, kind of like the landscape of my heart.  I feel a little dried up right now, as if my spiritual washcloth has been squeezed and wrung so that there is a faintness of the memory of my baptism.  "Okay, God," I propose to him, "Let's talk.  In this amazing world that you've created it seems like I see more evidence of your non-existence," and then just to make sure that I didn't offend God too much, I added, "Or your non-care."  Talk to me.  What's this all about?

The pastoral scene continued to wrap around the car windows.  Thirsty eucalypts and various other trees sprinkled the countryside.  A few cows grazed discontentedly trying to reach through the barbed wire fences trying to snatch the last blades of green grass.  The farther their necks stretched, the more that their skin was scratched, but in the stretching they were nourished.

How far can I stretch?  What else can you want from us humans?  What are you trying to tell us?


9:00 a.m. Trinity Lutheran Church, Lowood.

The church is relatively large as far as Australian Lutheran churches go.  Seated in the round, there are enough uncomfortable pews to fit around three hundred people.  The altar area is small and bordered by an ancient altar railing, or, as I call it, the Wall.  I understand the symbolism of the Wall, but it's unfortunate that the altar railing has caused so much division in the Holy Christian Church throughout the centuries.  What we believe about Holy Communion has destroyed families, congregations and denominations and the Wall becomes one more opportunity to divide rather than bring God and people together. 

An ancient piano sat along the southern wall and on the northern façade hung the screen.  Almost all churches have them; in many ways, they are a microcosm of how we understand worship:  Our eyes follow the action on the screen and distract us from the action which occurs on the altar.  How God comes to us in Jesus Christ. 

And then it hits me.  Once again, as we come into a place where the living God's name resides, the magnitude of Christ's life, death and resurrection allows me to resurface in the ocean of my questions.  What is God trying to tell us?  In the mystery of life, we find the majesty of God's life in the trinity, that in community we are bound to find the story of the gospel.  We are bound, tied, to Jesus' promise of life in and amidst the Christian community and as I watched the mourners file in, I knew that which I would speak.  I felt as if the words were placed in my ears, swallowed by my heart and were caught behind my lips.  I finally felt ready, or as ready as I could have been.


10:00 a.m. Beginning of Service

At this very time, I had no idea that scores of people around the world were praying for me and for Ashley, Sophie and family.  I had no idea that Christine was at home furiously praying for her husband to speak the Gospel message in a place where it seemed as if there was no good news.  All that I knew was that at 10:00,

my hands were shaking.

Normally not prone to jitters, I was not so much nervous about the words to say as much as if I was going to break down.  The elder of the church mentioned to me five minutes to ten o'clock, "You're going to have to be strong."  No pressure there.  Strength in many people's opinions means not crying, but true strength means taking on the emotions of others and allowing yourself to be enveloped in their story.  I felt like I was supposed to do the former, but sliding to the latter seemed inevitable.  Ashley, Sophie and Kylie's parents had gone for a drive at 9:30 and by 10:00 they hadn't arrived yet.  So, without an organist, I sat at the ancient piano and began to play the story that had been building inside of me.  The notes sounded hollow, aching with unfulfilled resolutions, but at 10:05 there was a stirring behind me.  I couldn't see, but I knew that they had arrived and taken their seats.  As I turned, there sitting next to the coffin, a smiling portrait of Kylie sitting on top, was Ashley with a one week old child in his arms.  Sophie was asleep and Ashley was staring at the garish reddish carpet underneath his feet. 

Be strong. 

I ascended the pulpit, not sure how to start but said, "We're going to be taking our time today.  There is no hurry.  As much as we, as a community, mourn the passing of Kylie, we take as much time to celebrate how her life has touched ours.  And in our communal mourning and celebration, we find, at the heart of our life together,

God. 


10:15  Eulogy and Sermon

I held it together until the end of the eulogy that Ashley had written.  I thought I was prepared, but no one can be ready for the moment of the eulogy, staring at the sleeping infant in her father's arms and having to read, On March 13, my precious daughter was born at 6:00 in the evening.  But unfortunately, my precious soulmate and mother of my sweet baby Sophie passed away on the same evening.  The unfairness of it all hit me and I stumbled over the words, lip quivering, not able to continue for a few seconds.  Taking a drink of water, I finished the written prayer, but at that time, I remember thinking,

This isn't the time for a stylized prayer.  We need God in this badly. 

I took my seat while the song played and at that moment I felt a sense of peace.  God's will and word would be shared.  As I took the step up to the pulpit again, iPad open in front of me, I took a deep breath looking at the grieving sea of mourners.  And I opened up my own questions before them, questions of fairness, and God's seeming indifference to matters of the world, how difficult it is to switch tenses - to change from talking about Kylie in the present tense to the past tense - how insurmountably difficult it is to envisualize a future after today without this young woman.  I invited the congregation to sit with Ashley and Sophie, like Job's friends, to cover themselves in dust and sackcloth and sit in silence for a week just to be in close community.

And there, in the midst of the pit of anguish, in the silence beyond the deepest part of space, we find the crucified Christ sitting with us in the midst of that dejection, offering us the only thing that can bring a semblance of healing.

The promise of hope.  Somewhere outside the boundaries of time, Jesus has already stretched out his hand and said to Kylie, Talitha koum!  "I say to you, Little one, get up!" 

As I spoke those last words, the faces of the congregation raised ever so slightly, like when the darkness has been too long for the night and the first splinters of sunrise crack the edge of the horizon.  Faces raised in a communal hope that this is not the last time we will be connected - there is a promise in the Apostle's Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the dead - and reconnected with all those who have gone before.

That is the hope beyond the Wall.


12:15  Clarendon Cemetery

Most of the mourners have left for refreshments back at the church and I stand beside the mouth of the grave.  Sprays of flowers encircle the pit and I am reminded that new life surrounds even death.  The wind continues to blow.  Somewhere, anywhere, God sighs.  Not a sigh of despondence, but one of impatience.  Return to me, O Israel.  My Beloved.  Impatience for all to be reunited in his love. 

Turning from the grave I walk to the car.  Life is short. 



7:30 p.m. Friday, at home in Gatton.

As part of the community of the world wide church, I would ask that anyone who would like to send a sympathy card to Ashley are invited to do so.  Perhaps somewhere in twenty years, when Sophie is old enough to travel, she will visit some of you who prayed from a far distance for the funeral of her mother. 

His address is:

Ashley Sippel
7 Red Ash Court
Lowood, Qld.
4311
Australia

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Broken Hallelujah

One of my favorite bands right now is called The Afters.  Modeled in the contemporary Christian rock genre, they are lyrically better than most; they think deeply, sing in arching high voices and portray the emotion of the common Christian that most bands only pretend to get to.  Where I have heard many musical groups, some which I listen to regularly, stop at the only emotion that seems to matter in our contemporary culture

Anger

The Afters have found and avenue to talk about pain.  Here are some lyrics from one of their best songs:

I can barely stand right now.
Everything is crashing down,
And I wonder where You are.

I try to find the words to pray.
I don't always know what to say,
But You're the one that can hear my heart.

Even though I don't know what your plan is,
I know You're making beauty from these ashes.

I've seen joy and I've seen pain.
On my knees, I call Your name.
Here's my broken hallelujah.

With nothing left to hold onto,
I raise these empty hands to You.
Here's my broken hallelujah.


The song continues, but I pause here because this song came to life today.  As if miraculously shimmering from a bad dream, I drove to the house of a young man, early thirties, who must learn to be a new parent by himself.

As I entered the house, the funeral home director sat opposite Ashley, the husband.  The funeral home director has the unenviable job of trying to help the grieving family process the funeral arrangements and in the midst of the tragedy that has just occurred, it was obvious that Ashley couldn't concentrate.  Somewhere in the midst of his deepest soul he couldn't find any emotion to help Paul, the mortician, to choose the casket, the spray of flowers, or the endless other details that come after the loss of a loved one.  He stared vacantly at his hands which fumbled with a torn Kleenex.  He'd been hugged to death in the last week, but those hugs were not from the one that he wanted.  His thoughts were of his twenty-nine year old wife who had died hours after childbirth.  These things don't happen anymore, he said.  It's not supposed to be like this.  His first born daughter, Sophie, came into the world last Thursday
...and Sophie's mother left it. 

So now we sat, wrapped in quilts of grief and confusion, disappointment, anger and pain, trying to make any sense of why our hallelujahs are broken.  I watched Ashley attempt to make sense of anything, not just the fact that he and Sophie had left the hospital less than a day after she had been born; he not only was trying to learn to be a new dad but also how to be a widower.

It's not fair. 

Where did the Hallelujah go?  Where do we find joy in a world when this happens?  Every word I say would ring strange to his ears - this loss confounded every sense of faith: why, God?  Why?  There are so many more people deserving of death, why this woman?

It's a question that rears its ugly head every minute, day and night, all year long.  Death puts its stamp on unprepared lives and that question bubbles up between the bouts of sobbing.

We talked about the funeral.  Ashley and his parents, Kylie's parents, and I sat around the rectangular table with the yellow checkered table cloth looking through my funeral notes knowing that we had to talk about the particulars of the worship service but knowing that no one at that table, including me, was ready to choose songs, hymns, photos, scriptures, pall bearers etc...  So I did the only thing that I knew to do.

I prayed for them ... us.

Perhaps I should have started earlier, but I think God knows the right time.  We bowed our heads not sure what would come out, but the Spirit spoke the words that only used my lips as a conduit for the beginning of healing.  Ashley's last words to his wife were, "I'm so proud of you.  I'll see you soon."  Funny how those words have so many different meanings.  I prayed that the soon-ness that is never soon enough, would be replaced by a presence of the Holy One who embraces us in our grief and brings us to a reminder of the promise of God in the cross.  We prayed for a while, I spoke the words and they provided the receptacle for God's healing, and after the 'amen' was spoken, I looked up at the wet faces, tear streaked and broken and I saw, just for a moment, the beginning. 

The beginning of reconstruction of the 'hallelujah.'  Even in its present broken state, just like the season of lent that we are in, where 'hallelujah' is buried beyond reach, we find the stirrings of hope in the promise.

Even though I don't know what your plan is,
I know you're making beauty from these ashes.

Heal our broken hallelujahs.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Time Never Stops

Yesterday, my family and I went to the Gold Coast.  Just south of Brisbane, the Gold Coast (an area, not a city) sits like a sandy jewel on the ring of Australia.  There are many beautiful things about the great southern land, but as I grew up in the middle of the United States, the closest thing we got to a beach was the hard sand shore of Lake Okoboji - about as much a beach as a Chihuahua is a guard dog.

As we drove down the busy stretch of highway, our excitement mounted; even though we live only two hours from the ocean, we visit relatively rarely.  I'm sure it's like those who live in St. Louis never see the Arch, or those that live in Phoenix never visit the Grand Canyon.  It's not that we don't want to, I think overcoming the energy it takes to produce the inertia to drive two hours overwhelms us sometimes.

Two hours.  That's it.

We were heading to the coast this weekend anyway to lead worship as Apostle 13, so Saturday we made a beeline for the beach.  After eating the prerequisite culinary cuisine of the beach - fish and chips - we noticed from our perch at the restaurant that the wind had picked up and the waves were pounding the shore.  We could hear the beat, the insistent thrumming, never ceasing under our feet, an echo of the ageless ocean.  With the tide as high as it was we decided to go the mouth of Currumbin Creek.  This stream flows directly into the ocean coursing through a channel of sand.  Where the creek meets the sea, there is a small sanctuary of non-waves.  Revelers can walk all the way across the river at low tide and swim across at high tide.  It is salty, endless salt and sand along the ocean, but the salt gives buoyancy.

We pulled our car to the end of the drive and to our great surprise, only a few people were parked there: mostly scantily clad twenty-somethings urging their endless push to skin cancer and a few even more scantily clad Europeans wearing teeeeeeeny tiny bikinis and the guys wear what Australians call 'Budgie Smugglers.'  A budgie is a kind of pet bird here in Australia that when combined with a male speedo, well, let your imagination wander - but not for too long.  One of the males on the beach was wearing his budgie smuggler with pride and we tried purposely not to look, but it's like when someone has left a little something in their teeth:  your eyes just naturally go...

Anywho (that's what Grandma says to change the subject),

We walked out onto the beach with all the paraphernalia.  Chairs, books, bags, skip balls, were set up near a tree and after applying a liberal covering of sunscreen, the girls screamed towards the water while I discreetly changed in the car.  After setting up camp, (and after my quick nap) I sat up and watched my family by the waters edge.  Funny how all humans have a similar desperate longing to be near any kind of water, but there we were smiling, swimming, and enjoying life as it occurred.  I watched Christine holding her wide brimmed hat on her head staring out across the water at our girls paddling across the channel paying absolutely no attention to Mr. Budgie Smuggler (thank the Lord.  Literally.) and I began to ask God for just one impossible thing...

A pause button.

I wished at that moment, at 3:30 in the afternoon on March 8, 2014, that time would stop for a while.  Well, not necessarily stop, but at least slow down so I could memorize it - just the details of the girls laughter, to record it so that I could play it on a rainy day when they aren't living with us any more; just the details of my wife's non-gray hair blowing in the wind.  As I've reached the age where white whiskers and gray temples are pretty normal, some people still think that she is in her twenties.  I haven't been carded since 2002.  Life isn't fair all the time.

Anywho,

There's a picture on our wall in our bedroom.  It's a professionally done photo of Christine during her modeling days and every morning as I awake much earlier than everyone else in the family, I look over her sleeping form, her hair askance across the pillow and I think to myself, "Yes, she does look even better now than when she was twenty-three when we were first married." 

So she sits on the sand covered by a sunsafe top, a sunsafe hat, sunscreen (we might as well been indoors, she is the safest sunsafe person I know.  I can't even walk out of the house in the morning without a query whether I've got my own hat) hair blowing in the wind and the deepest part of my soul has taken a photo that I'll stash away in the attic of my brain for that same rainy day.

Time never stops.  I wish it would, or at least slow down.  I hope you all have an experience soon that causes you to wish for the impossible pause button. 

God bless you on your journey.  Life is, ahem, a beach.

The Pit

In the beginning was the pit. Yesterday, I did something I hadn't done in a quarter century. To be entirely frank, that quarter century ...