These many years later, I can still remember the
sinking feeling in my stomach and the burning in my
cheeks. I was standing next to a friend, Nathan, a man
in his late twenties, and we were at the funeral home.
It was a Thursday evening. Vases of flowers and boxes
of Kleenex occupied every surface in sight. We were
there at that funeral home on that Thursday evening,
standing side-by-side, because my friend’s father had
died. It was both tragic and unexpected. No chance to
say goodbye. It seemed like every person in that small
town had come. My friend was visibly distressed.
He was struggling to maintain the energy necessary
to greet that long line of visitors. He wanted to be
anywhere except here. You could see it in his eyes.
A family friend approached and shook his hand. He
politely thanked the man for coming, for supporting
the family. And then, rather than move along, the man
patted my friend on his back and said, “I know it’s
hard right now, son, but in time you’ll see this was all
a part of God’s plan.”
The grieving son looked quizzically at his would-be
comforter, thanked him, and then turned and looked
straight at me. What I saw now was not sadness
but bewildered frustration, even anger. Even in this
moment, I can feel the force of those words. Part of
God’s plan. Someday you’ll see. Now to be clear, I have
no doubt that the objective of the visiting friend was
sincere. I have no doubt that he intended, he meant,
to bring comfort. But I also know—because I saw it
with my own eyes and not for the last time—that his
choice of words brought only pain in that moment.
The cliché did not hold the weight.
Was there something different the man should have
said? How are we to make sense of the unthinkable?
Where is God when the innocent suffer and the
grieving can find no comfort? What does our faith
offer to us when God is silent? When God is absent?
I wonder if you have ever prayed the words of Psalm
13. I wonder if you have ever asked how long the pain
will last, if you have ever questioned the suffering of
the righteous. I wonder if you have ever felt forgotten.
Abandoned. Forsaken. Have you ever cried out to God
in anger? I have. I have reached the outer limits of
my faith. I have lost patience with God’s inexplicable
absence when I needed the most. I have become
angry at pain I do not understand and cruelty I cannot
accept. I have wondered how long such conditions
will be permitted to persist, and I have wondered
whether God has simply abandoned us all.
If you have never asked those questions, then God
bless you. But if you have been there, then perhaps
the words of the Psalmist will find a home in your
heart. This book of poetic prayers contains forty-two
psalms of lament—nearly a third of the total collection.
Each one offers an unfiltered and unedited picture
of the relationship between God and God’s people in
moments of particular pain, doubt, and despair. These
psalms move beyond pious platitudes to embrace the
realities of human life. They transcend statements of
faith to vulnerable confession. They open a deeper
understanding of our relationship to God.
And so, they can comfort us in ways that vapid
expressions of condescending concocted
confidence cannot. They refuse to ignore the
reality of suffering. They face it head on. They invite
honesty. They bear witness to a God who can bear
the complexities of our lives. A God who is with us.
With us not only in the moments of triumph and
glory, celebration and rejoicing. A God who goes
with us into the valley of the shadow of death. Into
the deepest depths of our despair.
And at its most faithful, at our most faithful, this is
how the community of faith functions as well. It is
true that none of us can carry the weight of belief
all by ourselves. It is true that we need others who
share our pain, who walk alongside us, who prop
us up when we are falling. Because the life of faith
is no predictable path of steadily growing certainty.
There are mountains and there are valleys. Our
faith is unflinching at one moment and flickering
the very next. This is what it means to be human.
And so, we need each other.
When I was twelve years old, my mother picked me
up from school early so that I could attend the funeral
of Edmund Cooper. Mr. Edmund was an elderly
member of our church. He had battled cancer for
some time. Edmund and his wife, Miss Lena, were
like grandparents to my siblings and me. We spent
many afternoons at their home, playing dominoes
on the floor or chasing each other in their expansive
backyard. Miss Lena was a saint. She was the kind
of person who just radiated the joy of faith in every
setting. But not that afternoon. Not that day.
I will never forget watching from the back of the
sanctuary as the organ played and Miss Lena walked
down the aisle all by herself. Her gaze was not lifted
up or turned side to side. She is looking down at the
floor, and she is sobbing. I had never seen her cry.
It made me anxious and fearful. I wanted to bolt, to
escape that heavy place. Throughout the service, I
could see her. She was inconsolable. Her weeping
was unceasing. She simply never stopped crying.
Her shoulders were shaking with grief. I hated every
moment of that service, and afterwards, I ran to my
father’s office. I closed the door to hide.
Later, when I finally gathered my courage to walk into
the fellowship hall, I saw something I will never forget.
As our church family gathered for the traditional
cookies and punch, Miss Lena was sitting on a metal
folding chair in the corner. She was no longer alone.
She was no longer weeping. No, she was surrounded.
She was surrounded by all her church grandchildren,
some of them well into their forties. She was laughing
and smiling. She was kissing cheeks, just like she
always did. Now listen, the grief was real. It had not
magically, suddenly, miraculously disappeared, and
no one pretended it had. But in those moments,
Miss Lena was lifted by a community of faith whose
presence mattered far more than their statements. It
was beautiful. And sacred.
In a powerful eulogy for his dear friend, the writer
George Saunders spoke these words: “The disaster of
his loss will fade. It will be replaced by the realization
of what a miracle it was that he ever existed in the
first place. But for now, there is just grief. Grief is, in a
sense, the bill that comes due for love.”
The cost of love is grief. The answer of faith to
suffering is not sentimental platitude meant to mask
the awkwardness or drown the tears. Faith’s answer is
simply presence. Use words sparingly if at all.
William Sloane Coffin was one of the great preachers
of the last century, and he was also a father who lost
his son, Alex, in a tragic accident. The very next week,
Coffin gave Alex’s eulogy. And here is what he says:
“When a person dies, there are many things that can
be said, but there is at least one thing that should
never be said. The night after Alex died, I was sitting
in the living room of one of my sister’s houses outside
of Boston, when the front door opened and in came
a nice-looking, middle-aged woman, carrying about
eighteen quiches. When she saw me, she shook her
head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over
her shoulder, ‘I just don’t understand the will of God.’
Instantly I was up in hot pursuit, swarming all over
her. ‘I’ll say you don’t, lady!’ I said.” Coffin continued,
“For some reason, nothing so infuriates me as the
incapacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it
through their heads that God doesn’t go around this
world with his finger on triggers, with his fists around
knives, with his hands on steering wheels…The
one thing that should never be said when someone
dies tragically is ‘It is the will of God.’ Never do we
know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in
knowing that it was not the will of God that my son
die, that when the waves closed over his sinking car,
God’s heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”
That’s it. The God of the Psalms, the God of the
prophets, the God of Jesus Christ, the God whom we
worship today, is simply incapable of keeping distant
from our suffering. The God whom we worship is
one of vulnerability and sacrificial love. The God we
worship fully embraces our human lives. God, whose
heart breaks for the brokenness of humanity and all
creation. For us, this was most clearly demonstrated
on a hill called Golgotha, where Jesus Christ revealed
to us a God who will suffer the depths of human pain
for the sake of human relationship. The cross for us is
a sign of hope because it reveals a God who takes on
human flesh and shares in human suffering.
Presence. Presence. This is what God offers, and
it is the gift we can offer one another as well. Use
words sparingly if at all. No platitudes to block the
pain. Simply sit in the darkness long enough to
receive what it has to offer. The promise of God is the
promise of presence.
No one is forever lost because God will find us all.
No one is truly alone, because God walks with each.
Every single soul of unimaginable worth because
each belongs to God.
And so, even from the valleys, we cry to God. We cling
to the conviction that God permits nothing to separate
us from divine love, that God goes to the depths with
us, that God stays right there with us in our pain.
And so, our hope will never rest on human ability.
Our faith will never be grounded in knowing the right
answers or speaking the right words. Our hope is in
God’s grace. Our faith is rooted in God’s promise of
presence. We can trust God’s sturdy love enough to
stay in the discomfort of unexplained suffering. And
we can trust the truth sung by the Psalmist. Joy will
find us again. Joy will find you again.
Hold fast. Hang on. You belong to God. Amen.