Sermon January 10, 2010
“Called by Name”
Isaiah 43: 1-7   and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 

In your bulletin is a copy of the famous painting by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch called “The Scream.” The basis for this remarkably evocative impressionist painting of a figure -- head in hands shrieking out at the top of his or her lungs -- has been the subject of speculation, as Munch never definitively explained the painting. When I look at the painting, I think of that profound “why moment” -- that moment when the world has been turned upside down – perhaps by a call telling of the death of a cherished friend or loved one, by a bad medical report, by a pink slip signaling the end of a job or by an event that robs us of a lifelong dream. [1]

On Thursday night the national championship of collegiate football at the top or nearly professional level was at stake -- when the number two ranked, University of Texas, and the number one ranked, University of Alabama, football teams met in the Rose Bowl. The quarterback for Texas was a young man named Colt McCoy. (Could there be a better name for a Texas football player than Colt). In his four years at Texas he has had a distinguished career -- winning more games in the history of major college football than any other quarterback. And he had been a finalist the last several years for the Heisman Trophy, one of football’s highest awards. Thursday’s game was the most important he had ever played in, representing the opportunity to win a national title and to cement his place in collegiate football history. Five plays into the game McCoy was tackled -- it looked routine but instead resulted in a shoulder injury that knocked him out of the game for good. Though he did not scream on the sidelines, as the figure in Munch’s painting did, I can imagine that at some point he wanted to. 

            No matter one’s station, place or circumstance at some point we are all met with inexplicable disappointments, setbacks, and suffering when we could -- like Munch’s figure -- scream at the top of our lungs “why me” or “why my mother” or “my son” or “my family” or “my friend.” And that is not a new phenomenon. The Israelites of Second Isaiah’s time experienced such a moment. Utterly defeated by the Babylonians with Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed, they were forcibly exiled nearly a thousand miles to what would be modern day Iraq.  There they languished for generations, slowly losing through assimilation and oppression their identity and their faith.

            How we respond to such situations reveals much about our faith and about how we understand God.  On the one hand there are those who see such “why” moments as the work of a God of judgment. In other words some look at these difficult situations and see them as God’s response to some action by humankind. And so there are those who see natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina as God’s punishment for our sinful ways. Such believers take comfort in such views, because they see God as all-powerful and seemingly just. The thinking goes -- if humanity could only be better, these bad things wouldn’t happen. The problem, of course, is we humans just can’t seem to get it right much of the time. So those holding this view of God live in fear, expecting the next punishment from a judgmental God. Not many of us here ascribe to this view, but many in our culture and world do. Some of the zealousness behind anti-abortion and anti-gay efforts comes from a real fear that such conduct is not simply wrong morally but will bring God’s judgment on humanity.

            Most of us look at these difficult moments and try to explain them rationally. There is probably a genetic component to our child’s disease– it must run in the family. I lost my job because I annoyed my boss by being candid when he didn’t want the truth. Or because the whole economic system got over extended by the foolish acts of some, my job has been eliminated.  We don’t tend to ascribe such things to God. Yet aren’t their times when after we have gone through all those analyses and  calculations that we do turn to the God question – if there is a God why do these bad things happen?

            In the mid 1990s my 83-year-old mother had surgery. It confirmed that she had cancer and sadly that it was incurable though treatable. And so she became the oldest patent of a young oncologist in Florida. Together they embarked on a journey of various chemotherapies. My mother was eager to live as long as she could so long as life was really life. She tried a number of different therapy regimes and for a while they each worked. She gained two years of wonderful living -- a gift to her and to her family. And then she began to decline. It reached a point when she could no longer be home alone and she needed to move to a nursing home. She understood this but hated the idea. And so we all spent a final Christmas together in her home and after New Year’s she moved to a nearby nursing home. My family and I returned home to DC. 

The doctor when pressed predicted that she would live for another 6 months to a year. I made arrangements to visit her in February. Several weeks later I went on a long planned ski vacation to Colorado. Late on Friday afternoon, I got a call from my sister saying that the hospice people working with my mother had called to say that they thought the doctors were wrong and that my mother’s time was very short. And so I decided to go immediately to Florida. I booked the first flight on Saturday out of Eagle Colorado, made the earliest possible connection in Denver for a flight to Tampa. The flights out of Eagle and Denver were delayed a few hours by a snowstorm but I got out and arrived in Tampa and raced in my rental car to Sarasota. I walked into the nursing home and walked to my mother’s room where I was meet by a nurse and a social worker telling me that my mother had died ten minutes earlier. I wanted to scream and cry at the same time. All I could think of was that I had not been there to say my goodbyes. The nursing home had thoughtfully left my mother in her room and so I had some time with her. But when I got to her house alone I was in anguish. If I driven a little faster, if I had flown out Friday night – if there hadn’t been snow and a delay-- I beat myself up and God as well. How could this happen? Was there no fairness in life? Where was God – asleep at the switch?

            What I went through is what I suspect some, perhaps even many, of you have at some time or another experienced. It certainly had to have been part of the Israelites’ experience. The prophet Isaiah speaks to these “Why God” moments, when he says “When you pass through waters … when you walk through fire.”  Isaiah is speaking about those hard, sometimes inexplicable times – like those when the Israelites’ suffered in exile. Notice the way Isaiah phrases it – it’s not “if” your walk through fire but “when” you do. These difficulties of life are inevitable but not of God’s making. Faith – no matter how deep -- cannot eliminate suffering, difficulties and challenges – though certainly we as faithful people are to make this as kind and generous a world as we can. The reality is that this will never be a perfect place and we can never fully live, as God wants us to live. We will with our freedom of choice make mistakes – some profound. What God promises is that God will be with us. We will not be drowned by the waters or consumed by the fire. We will not be separated from God! In the wonderful words of Isaiah, God says “You [meaning each and everyone one of us] are precious in my sight and honored and I love you ….”

            Sounds wonderful but what does it really mean?  In my time of darkness I grieved over my mother’s death and even more over my failure to be with her at the end. However, through the help of a wise family friend, I began to realize that I could not play the “what if game” either with myself or even more with God.  What had happened had happened; I needed to let go of my anger and my guilt.  I was able finally to do that through the support and love of my friends and other people of faith. But even more what got me through this was the belief that God loved me – even though I did not drive fast enough or leave early enough to be there for my mother’s last moments.

I am privileged as a minister to have been allowed into people’s lives at times of suffering, sorrow and grief. They are difficult times characterized by a multiplicity of emotions – anger, sadness and fear. Yet, I have seen those who suffer profoundly helped by the presence of family and friends. I have seen them realize that they are not alone and that a loving God is with them and understands their anger, their sorrow, their regret, and their fear.

            Why is this sense of God’s presence so important? Because lurking behind every “Why” moment –behind the scream in Munch’s painting is fear. Our anguish over some difficult event is in part prompted by our fear of more pain, more unfairness and unexplained suffering to come. No wonder we spend so much of life trying to be in control. We desperately want to do away with the fear of an uncontrolled future. Yet our faith does not give us that kind control over the future. There will be unexpected and unwanted events in our future. We will all walk through waters and through fire. But we don’t have to fear.   Why -- because as the Lord says “I am with you.” For you see God not only knows us but God calls us by name. That is even better than the illusion of control -- for we will never encounter the unexpected alone. So if nothing -- else remember when you leave today that you are precious, honored and beloved by this all encompassing and ever present God. Amen