March 7, 2021 ~ Third Sunday in Lent ~ Sermon & Sermon Video Link

https://youtu.be/CmvVuVUJsd0

3^rd Lent/Communion                                           03/07/21—Highland—Meute

“Lamenting Death”

Psalm 23; John 11: 28-37

Series based on Horizons Bible Study “Into the Light: Finding Hope through Prayers of Lament”

Pearl: The death of someone we love may be an occasion for lament.

Function: To commend lamentation as a valuable practice to use in the grief and bereavement at the death of love ones and at the tragic death of those we don’t even know.

The greatest King of Israel, David, did not come into office easily. The previous King, Saul, was aware that David would be the next King and tried to kill him on several occasions. At other times he loved David whose gifts of music would calm his soul.

1. David was also a very close friend with Saul’s son, Jonathan. David spoke of his relationship with Jonathan as a love which “surpassed the love of a women” (I Sam. 1:26).
   1. David and the soldiers under his charge had to hide out so that David would not be killed by Saul and his men. One time Saul literally went into a cave to relieve himself, where David was hiding and David snuck up to cut off a piece of his robe so that later on he could prove that when he had the chance he did not kill Saul who was trying to kill him. So highly did he honor the king of God’s own choosing!
2. When both Saul and Jonathan were finally killed in battle with the Philistines, the scriptures read that David lamented before God the death of Saul and Jonathan. This moving lamentation is recorded in II Samuel 1: 17-27. His lamentation is called “The Song of the Bow.”
   1. A phrase within this lamentation is repeated about three times and is used today in a different context but it originates from David’s lament: “How the mighty have fallen!”
   1. Further: “You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, or bounteous fields! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more…
   1. O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with crimson, in luxury, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel…
   1. Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly loved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women…
   1. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!”
      1. You cannot ignore the honorable way that David spoke of King Saul and acted toward this King who tried to kill him on many occasions with his own spear and at other times sent others to do it. Yet David expressed remarkably warm regard for him!
      1. And you could hear the deep pain of his lament over his close friend, Jonathan!
3. Jesus was deeply moved at the death of his good friend Lazarus. He arrived some days after Lazarus’ death. In fact when he arrived to the home of Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, Mary got on her knees and wailed that if Jesus had been there her brother would not have died.
   1. Jesus asked to see where they laid the body of Lazarus and when told he began to weep as he made his way to the place.
      1. Jesus wept openly such that people saw the deep love he had for Lazarus.
      1. I would further suggest that Jesus lamented Lazarus’ death because he did more than weep.
         1. He who has the power of life itself revived his friend, calling him forth from the tomb three days after he was put there.
         1. Jesus did something that only Jesus could do but it was for him a form of lamentation.
4. Early in my ministry I came upon a short book entitled Lament for a Son. I liked it so much that I buy multiple copies of it over and over to give to people who are deeply grieving the more difficult and hard to accept deaths of loved ones.
   1. The author, Nicholas Wolterstorff, is an American philosopher and theologian and is currently a Professor Emeritus at Yale University.
   1. He wrote this short book, a lamentation, when his 25-year-old son Eric died in a mountain climbing accident in Austria. You can feel the deep emotion of his lamentations:
      1. “Someone said to Claire (his wife, Eric’s mother), ‘I hope you’re learning to live at peace with Eric’s death.’ Peace, shalom, salaam. Shalom is the fullness of life in all dimensions. Shalom is dwelling in justice and delight with God, with neighbor, with oneself in nature. Death is shalom’s mortal enemy. Death is demonic. We cannot live at peace with death.
      1. When the writer of Revelation spoke of the coming of the day of shalom, he did not say that on that day we would live at peace with death. He said that on that day ‘There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
      1. I shall try to keep the wound from healing, in recognition of our living still in the old order of things. I shall try to keep it from healing, in solidarity with those who sit beside me on humanity’s mourning bench” (p. 63).

A universal truth is that the death of someone you love is devastating.

Is there a difference between lamenting death and mourning death? I think we all mourn the death of loved ones. We don’t always lament the death of loved ones. Usually we lament the death of loved ones and those we don’t know when those deaths are tragic in some way.

1. So there is plenty of reason for lament! We lament the tragic deaths of loved ones…somehow going beyond mourning and crying. We do things which somehow call out for response from…anyone…especially God. We do this:
   1. At the death of our children…of any age,
   1. The death of our closest companions,
   1. Untimely deaths of those gone too soon,
   1. The slaughter of innocents:
      1. There are too many to name. But after the terrible attack on a Muslim worshippers in New Zealand almost exactly two years ago (3/15/19), I lamented by writing down the names of all of those who were killed. I put them in my desk drawer thinking we might pray over them corporately at some point (pull out and read some names).
      1. And then there was the attack on the synagogue in Pittsburgh the previous fall (10/27/18). I wrote the names down again and, if you remember, we lamented those people after our worship the Sunday afterward. We named each one. Each soul was named in our Highland sanctuary that day.
2. We mourn all deaths of loved ones. But we can practice lamentation for the very difficult ones.
   1. In an October several years ago I performed the marriage ceremony of a couple. The bride had been divorced for many years and everyone was so happy she found love again.
      1. In only January of the next year her new husband dropped dead of a heart attack in his mid-40s.
         1. So as I stood before this much the same group of family and friends I led the congregation in lament, crying out to God—indicating our collective frustration, even anger at his untimely death.
         1. On another occasion I married a young couple at a huge wedding celebration.
            1. Within six months I was with the same crowd lamenting the death of the groom in a freak four-wheeler accident.
            1. It was shocking to go from celebration with these family networks to lamentation in such a short period.
            1. In these tragic circumstances something beyond mourning is needed. Lamentation is called for in these circumstances.
         1. Think of the continuing suicides of young people on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
            1. Ongoing lamentation is needed and at the same time continuing to do the work to change things so that they can find more hope.
         1. The author of this Horizon’s Bible Study “Into the Light: Finding Hope through Prayers of Lament” makes an interesting comparison between the famous stages of grief identified and made popular by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and the movements within lamentation.
            1. Anger leads to addressing God.
            1. Describing the situation contain elements of denial—shock over what happened.
            1. Statements of trust are similar to bargaining.
            1. Calling on God to act and then perhaps long waiting may include depression.
            1. The sense of assurance of being heard is similar to acceptance.

As devastating as death is, with God, we have the hope of the resurrection. That hope exists. It is an element of every service of worship.

1. The hope of being raised again from the dead when our Lord Jesus Christ is sent forth to work this most amazing miracle one day is a very real, true, and a living hope.
   1. It includes more than just our bodies being raised but also a brand new earth and a brand new heaven, whatever a new heaven would be.
2. This hope that death is somehow a temporary condition, very hard to endure nonetheless, is what keeps us breathing and which keeps our hearts beating.
3. //But in the meantime, we go to God with our lament in these most difficult-to-accept deaths.
   1. A Native American Proverb reads: “The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears.”
4. Lamentation before God can be your life-saver.
   1. I finish with another excerpt from Wolterstorff’s lament for his son, Eric:
      1. “I am at an impasse, and you, O God, have brought me here. From my earliest days, I believed in you. I shared in the life of your people: in their prayers, in their work, in their songs, in their listening for your speech and in their watching for your presence. For me your yoke was easy. On me your presence smiled.
      1. Noon has darkened. As fast as she could say, ‘He’s dead,’ the light dimmed. And where are you in this darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in this darkness I cannot find you. If I had never looked for you, or looked but never found, I would not feel this pain of your absence. Or is it not your absence in which I dwell but your elusive troubling presence?
      1. Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will you find me in the dark—not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they love what they saw? Did they see love? And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim? The songs I learned were all praise and thanksgiving and repentance. Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?” (p. 69).