The recent deaths of three high school students in our community challenge us to a deeper contemplation of our common humanity. At a time when so much global and domestic suffering threatens to overwhelm our senses and drive us in search of those safe diversions that leave us comfortably numb, a local tragedy that impacts people we know, people our children know, calls us up short.
Such an immediate threat to the sanctity of our own families or our friends' families, forces us to look more deeply into those reservoirs of truth that we have been filling since childhood with the Wisdom of the Ages: .... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. At what age did we first hear and perhaps commit to memory those familiar verses from John Donne, not foreseeing then just how they might prove valuable, yet instinctively knowing that they would?
Our religious formation provided us with similar words early on: ....though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff - they comfort me.. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Yet there is always the risk that things learned in our precritical youth are not our first choices as adults when crises threaten too close to home. We may well have learned everything we needed to know in Sunday School, but what is the likelihood that we will return to the story of Noah's Ark when storms threaten our coast as they do this weekend? NOAA would be a more obvious choice.
And as powerful as the story of Holy Week may be at its core with its language and imagery of God-in-our-midst as suffering servant who washes our feet and calls us to an unconditional love for one another, Lenten observances notwithstanding, we may still opt to look elsewhere for that hedge against our fears and uncertainties regarding death when it happens so close to home.
However, Holy Week can teach us much about ourselves and the choices we make, when what we treasure most is at stake. Five weeks ago the invitation to a Holy Lenten observance during the Ash Wednesday liturgy included Holy Week. But Holy Week is like that last mile in a marathon, or anything else in life that tests the limits of endurance. And too often we end our Lenten observance after Passion Sunday, or even before, because the details of Jesus' last week with his disciples can leave us feeling awkward and uncomfortable at best.
Unlike finishing a race, Holy Week does not show us "what we are made of." Ash Wednesday reminded us of that: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Going through Holy Week ultimately shows us Easter and By Whom we are made - shows us that for every death we encounter there is the resurrection hope: life is changed, not ended. But Holy Week also shows us how fragile and frail our humanity can be when facing the realities of death.
The language we use to express our sorrow for someone's loss is often awkward, if not clumsy, because we seek to remove the pain of grief too soon. Grief is pain that ultimately heals, leaving behind the scars that are permanent signs that we have loved. Offering to share that pain is the best we can offer anyone in such a place. But even then we must take care to know our limits in making such an offer.
Holy Week gives us poignant reminders of how promises to stand by one in their grief or in their dying, can fall short. Peter's denial that he would deny knowing Jesus, followed by his subsequent denials, provides us with a contemplative tool as we consider how we have been there for others in the past in their grief or in their dying, and how we might do it differently in those times that are ahead of us.
Our past inadequacies in the face of death puts us in good company with Jesus' closest friends in the days before his death. The words which best expressed this in John's Gospel, ...and they remembered that he had told them this after he was raised from the dead, hint that we too may only see clearly in hindsight.
But God blesses our frailty in the presence of death and the dying, and infuses those occasions with grace in ways that we may know only in hindsight or perhaps never know. Yet in each year that we are willing to walk through this solemn season to its conclusion, there is always the promise of having our eyes opened in new ways. There is the promise of knowing beyond doubt that, nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God..
Or, if you prefer the language of the poet, Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful....Death, thou shalt die.
Bob Stephenson
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