Emily's Garden

If you look around the sanctuary and ask, how much do I really know about people, the bubble of our life should appear. We know bits and pieces, a couple anecdotes. We know some names, maybe even an experience in the past. True, there are people for whom we may say, "I know too much," but such people are few. We live in a kind of bubble, a sound-bite-world with impressions, voices, but not a depth of understanding. 

              When people die one of the most common expressions I hear is: I had no idea. A close second is: I didn't know that about them. A common lament: I wish I had known them more. 

              At a men's breakfast, after a member died suddenly, these words were spoken around the table of twenty guys who shared a meal every Wednesday and often worshiped together each Sunday.  Most of them knew John for thirty years, but most were quick to say, there was so much about him I didn't know.  One person lamented, I always wanted to ask him about his father, but I never did.

              To break the downward spiral of sorry sop I said, "alright, let's go around the room.  Say something good about your father.  If you can't think of something good to say, make it up."  What transpired in the next hour was remarkable.  By asking about our fathers, a lot became clear, a lot was discovered.  It was revealing.  One person shared a story about a father of a younger man at the table, a sweet story of their friendship, a tender moment of dying. The son said with tears, "I never heard that." 

              The last person to speak, Richard, almost ruined the moment.  Tender stories, loving stories, kind stories one after another and then Richard said, "my father was a terrible man."  He went on to describe how his father abandoned his mother on a regular basis. He was selfish and cruel.  He would come home long enough to take money and then leave his wife and many children in dire straits.

              "I hated him.  Still do to some degree."  Part of the hatred was how Richard gave up his freedom, gave up opportunity in his life to provide where his father failed.  He had to provide for his mother and siblings, and it robbed him of adolescence.  "And then," he said, "to add insult to injury, he needed to be cared for when he was dying, and I had to do it."  At this point most of the room wanted to climb back into their bubble.  This was not a nice story.

              "When he was dying, he told me of his childhood.  His father was just awful, a truly terrible man.  And then it was as if I could see how he did what he did, how it could make sense to him.  He was awful, but he was better than his father.  “Not excusing him, not forgiving him," he said firmly.  "I could though understand him and that made it easier. And that is the nicest thing I can say."

              Sometimes when we learn about people and their life and childhood it is sweet, tender.  When I sat with Christy Wilson and her sisters and they spoke of their mother, Ellie, there were beautiful images filling the room.  One image was how Ellie was the daughter of first-generation Scottish immigrants, how she grew up in a neighborhood of newly arrived Scots.  As a child she watched her family and neighbors roll up the carpets and make music, dance and sing.  For just a moment I could sense and feel her childhood, watching her parents and their friends trying to conjure the world they left behind, trying to capture their home far away.

              Sometimes, like with Richard, the past is hard, disappointing, traumatic. Asking people to speak of their childhood can be a bitter cup, not a sweet one.  In the hard stories there is a risk of feeling pain again or losing the distance we have gained in life.  Here people say things like, "I have tried hard to forget that" or "I have not thought about this for years."  Bob Dylan said, "someday maybe I'll remember to forget."

              When people die, we are supposed to say nice things.  There is a common saying, "don't speak ill of the dead."  We can also hear this in "let the past stay in the past."  It is revealing how the words we speak at the time of death are called "eulogy."  Eulogy is Greek; it means "good words."  Often in funeral bulletins there will be a place for "eulogy" or "tribute".  A time to conjure good memory, to speak well, to be thankful for the life now gathered to God. What a different moment if instead of eulogy we had a time for settling of scores, setting the record straight, a moment of diatribe.  A bitter cup, not a sweet one.

              When I became a pastor, I was truly unprepared.  Had no idea what I was getting into.  In some ways this saved me.  Having no expectations meant I didn't struggle to lose them.  Having no preconceived notions of what a church should be freed me to find the church simply as it is.  Yet, at times the lack of preparation was rough.  It never occurred to me that churches have budgets or costs.  Reading my first profit and loss statement, let's call it a crash course.  After money there was music.  Having me choose hymns?  Folly.  Or, managing a staff, developing a board, what it means to organize a Christmas pageant.  Odd, confusing, perilous.

              Of all the aspects of ministry for which I was unprepared, death was the most challenging.  I had encountered death and tragedy before the parish, but I had never thought about what it meant to abide in death, be with the dying, see life in terms of loss.  Just never considered such questions, such possibilities. This is part of the bubble of life.  Most people don't consider death until someone dies, most of us don't live in loss.  We just don't.  To lead a church though you must lose that bubble.  Look at life differently.

              The way life appeared with death was surprising.  First, I was surprised that most theology didn't work.  Most Christian theology is based upon the Apostle Paul and his ideas of atonement.  You are a worthless sinner, due the wages of sin, death, but somehow, by the grace of God, with no merit of your own, Jesus died for you, redeemed you, reconciled you to God.  That is the heart of Pauline theology.  The heart of the "sinner's prayer" and the kneeling plea for salvation.  Burying people, sitting with people as they die, hearing words like chemotherapy, hospice, I was surprised by how little such a theology worked, how little power it had in the face of loss. 

              That is what Jesus is saying to the people who asked about tragic death.  He is saying, when you think you have figured it out, when you have worked out a theology of justification and sanctification, when have got the meaning of life clearly defined by what is deserved and what is not deserved, then you are truly lost.  Abiding in death, I could see how weak was the theology of magical forgiveness, cheap grace—dial a prayer and God will work it out everything.  I was surprised to see how quickly the theology of atonement evaporated. 

              In seminary in theological training you learn about the resurrection, you debate it and define it and build a theological system upon it.  Yet in more than thirty years of ministry I have never heard someone speak the word resurrection at the time of death.  Heaven, home, eternal life, gathering, rest, joy, peace, freedom.  I hear those words each time someone dies.  Resurrection, atoning blood of Jesus?  No.  On a few occasions children of a deceased parent, children who are caught up in evangelicalism will speak of such at the funeral, believing this is a time to call people to repentance, but it always falls flat.

              Of all the words translated from Greek into English, of all the words chosen, the word repentance is one I wish we could disallow.  "Repent!"  It sounds so powerful.  But it is so far from what Jesus is actually saying.  In our reading Jesus is not calling people to have a moment of shame or to see the depth of their sin or misdeed.  Jesus says, "metanoia".  We translate that as repent. But the better translation of metanoia is "change."  "Look at life differently."  "Go in a different direction."  "Change course."  Repent, and its partners, penance and penitentiary and penal system, are all about wrongdoing, sin, depravity.  Metanoia here simply means, change your way of seeing life.

              When people die, we should not call the bereaved to consider their sins, to be ashamed of their life, to find some sort of satisfaction in a sinner's prayer.  It is a hollow comfort that Jesus was resurrected, his tomb was empty as we fill the grave with the ones we love.  I was surprised when I saw how little our theology brought comfort, hope, peace when faced with real loss, or even more, tragedy. 

              What we must do, what Jesus is calling for, is to see life differently in the light of death. Metanoia.  Change your way of seeing.  Metanoia is what I found in Emily Dickinson.  As the weak theology of Paul's atonement and wages of sin and sting of death were being washed out to sea, in its place came the verse of Dickinson.  With her I heard things like: I went to heaven, it was a small town.  I don't want to go heaven yet, because I would like to look a little more at such a curious earth.  Or the tender sigh, I haven't told my garden yet, nor do I have the strength to break it to the bee, that I should die. 

              One could say, given how many poems Emily Dickinson wrote about death, that she was a bit grim or morose, or obsessed with dying. You could say that.  But such an appraisal misses what she did.  By looking at death so often, poem after poem about dying, she was finding life, changing how she looked at living, becoming more and more free of the cheap theology, the weak sauce of atonement and determination and the terrible idea of what is "deserved."  She was changing, metanoia, how she looked at life by considering death.

              We live so much of our life in a bubble.  We walk a community of strangers.  And then, something changes.  A conversation, a meal, a delay, and suddenly we are sharing life, finding a new way of living.  The stranger becomes a moment to rejoice, the acquaintance becomes a friend.  Life changes.  Metanoia. 

              Through the years, this is what I hear in loss, grief, death.  When people speak of the ones they love, they gather memories, conjure words and images where the beauty of life was found. Eulogy.  Good words.  We say thank you to God for giving us loved ones.  We see in an instance how much we were given, how life is a tender mercy from on high. Looking at death should change how we look at life.  Metanoia.

              At the end of the funeral for Ron Davie, I charged his family and friends to do something Ron did in his life.  He waved at strangers.  Randomly, no rhyme or reason, just waved.  As if to say, I see you, hope you are well.  Or in his words, isn't life just ducky?  He confused people on a regular basis.  I told the congregation, be so confusing.  Wave at strangers, offer kindness in passing, a gesture of welcome and cheer. Break out of that bubble.  Live unto joy.  Offer peace and kindness without expectation of return.  Metanoia.  Change for the better.  Amen.