Good Friday 3.29.24
When my son died a week and seven years ago, I knew that I would never feel so lost and hopeless. Losing a child is something that I never expected to experience but I always worried that I would. That sounds like something made up to say in a sermon, but it’s so very true. I lost my dad when I was 23 years old and the pain of that loss was also intense. It’s easy to conjure up the feelings I had for both my dad’s unexpected death and my son’s, Joseph’s. While I thought the loss of my dad would always be the worst experience of my life, I now realize that it wasn’t even a close second to losing Joseph. I’ve often used a metaphor to describe Joseph’s death. It was like my skin had been removed from my body, it was so painful that it felt like I was dying. Yet my life continued and the pain only got worse.
I couldn’t go on as a priest. One of the hallmarks of my ministry has always been transparency, passion and hope. I felt like both were evaporating. At times, I couldn’t breathe. I would gasp for air and then wonder if I couldn’t get enough oxygen, I would just close my eyes and stop trying. Even to this day, I am amazed that somehow, here I stand, having rediscovered the passion and hope that I had relied on for so many years. Indeed, I can say with all the honesty and transparency that I can muster, my hope is more intense and passion more authentic than ever before. I suppose that might leave you with a question: how could I ever find both after such a bone crushing experience?
We were able to make it to Joseph’s bedside in just a few hours following our departure from Houston to Northern California. We knew that when we would get there, we would face something neither of us wanted to face. To see your first-born child clinging to life is a scene I hope none of you ever encounter. In fact is was worse than we expected. I wish I could tell you that my faith emboldened me to face whatever I would find in a powerful way, but that would be a lie. I felt many things but hope wasn’t there. Faith was but it took a back seat, making not even a murmur of a sound, acting as if it were simply a bystander, watching how I would deal with watching my son, slowly slipping from this life to whatever awaited him. I was mostly bewildered, wondering how I could go on without him. I also wondered what would become of Julie and me as we would soon have to gather around a freshly dug grave, watching our beloved son be lowered into a grave that seemed to have gotten it all wrong; he wasn’t supposed to be there. He was supposed to watch my body be lowered into the gaping mouth of the earth. And yet, there we were.
Much of what happened following his death is still a blur. There were arrangements to be made, people to be called and services to be planned. We had the funeral in Lawrence Kansas and a memorial service at the church where I served in Houston. At times it felt like I was situated outside of my own body, watching things happen. The busy-ness helped but I knew that there would come a time when there was nothing to plan, no one to call, nothing to do but to sit in this new reality, living in on an earth where Joseph was no more.
We had two services because we felt like it would help the church in Houston to be able to grieve with us. I am, to this day, grateful we made that decision. It’s not that I am so self-less but the sermon that the Bishop of Texas preached, still causes me to feel the love and support of not only the Bishop but also of God. Andy Doyle, the bishop, remains one of my most valuable friends.
When it was all done, I needed to reemerge. I was still the Rector of the parish in Houston and I needed to get back. In one of those moments of either grace or serendipity, I did make it back to preside and preach but that moment was either the best I could have imagined or the worse. That first time back in the pulpit was Good Friday. You would think I could have chosen better but I am not sure I could. For the first time in my life, on Good Friday I didn’t think about or even preach about Jesus. I was drawn to the broken heart of God, the Father. For the first time in my life, I got a full glimpse into pain of the Father.
I don’t know why I never considered the Father’s pain. I think I just thought that God knew what God was doing and since it was the plan from before time, then what the heck. Sure the Father allowed the pain, suffering, humiliation and death of his son, but that’s the story and I would rather ruminate on the loss Jesus experienced. Then God opened a new door and the beginning of my rebirth emerged.
There is so much more to this story but let me say it this way: the loss of Joseph forever changed me. God became more real to me. My theology changed. I became more accepting, more loving, more inclusive, more hopeful and more passionate. God never abandoned me. I never said “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” In fact I came to realize that even Jesus didn’t stop his recitation of the 22nd Psalm with those words. What we fail to understand is that when someone in the first century would recite a psalm with just the first verse or two, the rest of the psalm was brought to mind. I had once thought that God had abandoned Jesus on the cross. I no longer believe that. Listen to a big part of this psalm:
But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
O my help, come quickly to my aid!
20 Deliver my soul from the sword,
my life[c] from the power of the dog!
21 Save me from the mouth of the lion!
From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued[d] me.
22 I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;[e]
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
24 For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,[f]
but heard when I[g] cried to him.
25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26 The poor[h] shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
May your hearts live for ever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.[i]
28 For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
29 To him,[ indeed, shall all who sleep in[k] the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.[l]
30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.
Yes, God the Father delivered his son. In the process God the Father’s heart was shattered. I understood that in a powerful way.
You see: “The cross is not what God inflicts in order to forgive; the cross is what God in Christ endures as he forgives. This is an essential and enormous clarification! At the cross the Son does not act as an agent of change upon the Father. Orthodox theology has always insisted that God is not subject to change or mutation. Rather, God is immutable. Thus the cross is not where Jesus changes God but where Jesus reveals God. On Good Friday Jesus does not save us from God; Jesus reveals God as Savior! We don’t have to imagine the Son pacifying an angry Father in order to understand Good Friday as the epicenter of forgiveness.”
Zahnd, Brian. The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross (p. 16). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.
It took me a while but as I allowed God to put all the pieces of my heart back together, I realized that through my story future generations will be told about the Lord, the goodness of God and despite the pain that life often brings, I will proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.