Job 19:25

So I went to the web site and, per his recommendation, clicked on a short video clip of the great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman, offering his thoughts on this topic. Brueggeman began by saying that he'd recently heard a rabbi complaining, only partly in jest I think, that Christian ministers have ruined the life of the average rabbi.

Rabbis have traditionally been understood to be scholars and preachers. Since time began they have been the keepers and interpreters of Torah, and that's always been their primary responsibility.

The rabbi went on to say that Christian pastors have come along and changed that. In our over-functioning culture, his Christian counterparts function as social workers and spiritual therapists and budget managers, and now people in his synagogue expect him to do that. And he's grumpy about that!

I must say these multiple demands do sometimes make it hard to give the kind of time to sermon preparation that one might like to give it.

Brueggeman's suggestion is that preachers must be very intentional about ordering their priorities so as to make sure they have enough time for reading and prayer and study. For in his words, "these are the disciplines that cause the pastor to live to some extent in a different zone."

"If we are to bring a word from elsewhere," Brueggeman concludes, "then we have to live to some extent elsewhere."

I find those words particularly apt, given that as of yesterday I was literally in a different zone, the Pacific Time Zone to be exact. But also because at this time in our life together as a congregation, I think we need a word from elsewhere, a word from outside the zone of the mundane and the ordinary.

It was a difficult spring for us, with one death in our church family in February, when we lost Cathy Clarke, and one death in the larger Warren Wilson community just a few weeks later, when we lost Andy Summers.

And those losses, and other challenges, have continued on into early summer. We had a difficult memorial service for Tori Barnes earlier this month. And several other beloved members of our community are struggling with serious illnesses, and with changes in long-term relationships. And then this past week we lost our dear Danny Verner, small in stature but possessed of a giant heart and a sweet, sweet spirit.

So I would like to stand up here this morning and tell you that everything is going to be okay. I'd like to tell you that the shock and the grief we have experienced in the last few months are now lastingly behind us and that the second half of 2008 promises to be filled with nothing but sunshine and roses.

But as you yourselves already know, life is just too wild and unpredictable to make such grandiose promises. Things will continue to happen to us that we do not expect and simply cannot control.

Not every unforeseen event in the weeks and months to come will be difficult, of course, but many of them will. Someone you know, or someone you love, may wake up and find a lump on a breast or under an arm. A marriage you thought was rock solid will inexplicably end. Gas will rise to $19 a gallon and we'll all be forced to walk everywhere.

The good news, in a way, is that life has always been like that. We often gloss over the chaos and pain of life, and we go to great lengths to minimize its unpredictability. But in the end we simply can't control much of what happens to us.

So it's important to realize that this patch we've been going through is normal. Not good, and not pleasant to be sure, and decidedly unwelcome. But still normal.

When bad things happen it's not a sign that we've done something wrong, or done something to deserve the losses or crises that happen to us. It's simply the price we all pay to be alive, the entry stakes that allow us to participate in the only game that's ever really been worth playing.

But that of course is not the only thing there is to say about life, nor are unwelcome things the only things that have happened in our life together.

In the midst of all this challenging stuff, we've also experienced a number of joys. We've welcomed new members, we've baptized two children and an adult. And in July, the Joel and Laura Becker will return and we'll baptize little Abigail, the newest member of their family. And speaking of the Beckers, Laura just graduated from seminary and is now ready to take her first call and to be ordained. And the same is true of our own Sara Wilcox.

All of that taken together, I think I can safely say that our emotions, both as individuals and as a congregation, have bounced around like a pinball, though perhaps at times it feels more like a wrecking ball.

Right before I left for vacation, I sat with one of our members in her small apartment and I could tell she was feeling blue. And not surprisingly. She's experienced several severe medical mishaps in the last couple of years. She has lost the ability to drive and has had to move out of her home where she had lived happily for many years.

So as I sat with her I realized she is still in the middle of the grieving processes. I think it's important to name that, for others of us may be there too. We've lost members of our congregation and of the Warren Wilson community. And if you're new to us, or visiting today, I'll bet you've had your own losses.

But we don't experience grief only when we lose a loved one. We experience it when we lose a job. We experience it when our bodies can no longer do what they used to do.

When we experience these losses making it through to the other side is a process, one that happens in stages. My guess is you've heard of these stages. Opinions vary on this some, but most experts agree there are five of them, the five stages of grief, popularized by Elizabeth Kubler Ross. They are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

So we may be familiar with those stages, but what may comes as a surprise is that the process of process of making it through those stages is not particularly tidy. Or linear. The progression from one stage to another is not always predictable. It differs widely from one person to another, sometimes dramatically. That's why grief can be so hard on families and congregations. One person is still in denial while another person is angry and still another person has moved all the way to acceptance.

And here's another surprise - sometimes as you make your way through these stages you actually go backward! One day you wake up and feel a calm serenity about a particular loss you've experienced. You feel like you've finally come to terms with it, finally reached the acceptance stage and you breathe a sigh of relief and a prayer of gratitude. The next morning you wake up and you feel like yelling at God or at your spouse for no apparent reason other than you're angry and hurting and it feels good to yell.

In congregational life, that unpredictability can play out too. People who are ordinarily level-headed have been known to act out of character. People who are known to be kind have been seen to lose their tempers. Maybe that's where you are now - a little more grumpy or a little less patient than you normally are, or than you want to be.

If any of that rings true, please know this - it's normal. It's okay. It's part of the process of going through hard times. I want us to be aware of the process. But more than that I want us to trust the process, as we wait for better times to come.

The good news is we don't have to simply wait for better times to come in the future. We can choose what the present looks and feels like.

I say that because Job did. This famous man, this long-suffering faithful man has just gone through a series of losses that make ours pale by comparison. By the point where we pick up the story, he has lost family and property and health. And for no apparent reason.

I think he knows, as Barbara Brown Taylor has put it, that sometimes life boils down to choices, and . . . "our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that as being held out to me or no, I will not; yes, I will explore this unexpected turn of events or no, I will not." ⁽¹⁾