Special Note: This post comes from a piece I prepared and shared recently at the funeral of Marc Goodman, the son of friends Vern and Pat. This is to honor the Goodmans (Marcia and Victoria included) as well as other families who know what it is to lose one you love during the Holliday Season.
Being an artist, Marc could have told
you something about the two faces, the two masks - one with a smile, the other
a frown; one expressing joy, the other grief, sorrow, disappointment. They go
back to the ancient Greeks, who loved the theater, and are iconic yet today for
the performing arts. They are comedy and tragedy and they seem to bracket the
human experience.
These two opposite extremes are often
explored and experimented with in a relatively safe environment – the stage. But
art imitates life and life is tragedy, comedy and everything between. To be
fully human, to fully inhabit our humanness, to be fully alive and to fully
engage the time and space given for life is to be acquainted with both tragedy
and comedy.
I am not talking about a narcissistic
pursuit of pleasure or a masochistic ploy for pain. No thrill seeking and no
giveness to despair, but by taking life down the middle of the road, both masks
will finally find us by natural course.
It would seem that one mask tempers the
other. If we never knew sorrow, our laughter might become cheap and shallow, a
naive laughter that relies on ignorance for its bliss - an insincere, untested
joy, lacking credentials. Without the mask of tragedy the mask of comedy may be
nothing more than a staged performance -cheap laughs gotten by the idiocy of a
court jester yielding no residue of meaningful, enduring joy. And tragedy
without meaningful enduring joy eventually leads to hapless despair and heartsick
hopelessness.
For those who struggle with the unexpected
loss of a loved one today, appropriate grieving will eventually bring healing.
The unhealthiest thing we could do is to remain denial about what has happen
and try to live above the sorrow. I don’t understand how the Spirit of God can
use grief to heal, but it is a wonderful and marvelous truth…It is grace.
But not everyone is quick to embrace
this. Isaiah prophesied of one “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows,
and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised,
and we esteemed him not” (Isa 53).
So I wonder if he was despised and
rejected because he was a man of sorrow and suffering? And it might be said
Jesus acknowledges the issue when he says,
"To
what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? They
are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other:
"'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and
you did not cry.' For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking
wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and
"sinners." 'But wisdom is proved right by all her children."
Luke 7:31-35
John’s gospel says the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us. That in him was life and that life was the light of
men. We could say he fully embraced the human experience and played his role in
life neglecting neither mask. Still, he came to his own and his own did not
receive him, so we just have to ask, was he not received because he was not
recognized and did he go unrecognized because we did not expect our God to fully inhabit the human experience?
He embraced the sorrow and the joy, so
we have a High Priest that is touched and moved with the feelings of our
infirmities. Because he fully embraced the human experience, he is able to
fully redeem it. That is to say, though we grieve our grieving is not without
hope. Sorrow has an appointed end.
My grandfather was a minister with the
Church of God in Illinois for many years. After his death it was not uncommon
for someone to stop me to say how he had blessed their life or to share some
funny story about him – he loved life and living.
One such person told me this story; “I
was a young man, fresh home from Bible College and I was discouraged,
disillusioned and, quite honestly, ready to throw in the towel. I confided in
your Grandfather who suggested we go for a walk. As we walked he said nothing
most of the way. We walked in silence. Then, approaching the end of our walk he
stopped, turned to me, looked me in the eye and called me son. ‘Son, one day…it
will all be worth it.’ That was all he said. And that was all I needed to
hear.”
A reprisal of my grandfather’s words
may be timely just now; “One day…it will all be worth it.”
One day
We will
have what we have been waiting for and hold what we have been hoping for, and
as the songwriter says, “My faith shall be sight.”
One day:
>The dream becomes reality.
>Sowing becomes reaping.
>Pain will wane to pleasure.
One day:
>The famine becomes a feast.
>Fasting will cease for the banquet.
>Sacrifice becomes sweetness.
One day:
>What was out of reach will be embraced.
>The lost found, the stolen returned.
>The destroyed will be redeemed.
One day
> The
unholy become sanctified.
>The
sullied becomes saints.
>The
deformed will be reformed.
One day:
The heavens will open up and a white horse
mounted by the King will charge in upon time, depleting the world of its faulty
perception of reality.
>Finally,
his kingdom will come in fullness with every knee bowing, every tongue
confessing.
>The sea
will give up its dead while cemeteries rupture with resurrection and the grave
becomes a womb.
>The
earth filled with his glory.
One day:
>We will
need no preacher, teacher or prophet,
>No
steeples, spires, or crosses,
>No church
building, board meeting or budget.
One day:
>Angelic
choirs will be displaced by the song and singing of the redeemed.
>We will
be guests at the perfect feast, hosted by the Prince of Peace.
>We will
hear him say, “Well done.”
One day:
> What
was invested will pay off.
> What
was endured will recompense.
>What
was counted loss will produce a prize.
One day:
>Him
that we cannot see - we will see.
>We
shall behold him.
>“We
shall see him as he is and we shall be made like him.”
One
day…But until that day:
“I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I
do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those
things which are ahead, toward the goal, the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus”. (Phil 3:8-14)
Until that day we stand. Having done all we stand and remain
valiant, ready for the fight, counting all loss for Christ, believing,
enduring, suffering and celebrating.
Until that day:
> Every
song sung is down payment on eternal singing.
>Every
laugh is in lieu of forever laughter.
>Every
present celebration is in anticipation of the gala event of the ages.
Until that day:
> Every
wedding hints at the coming of our Bridegroom.
>Every
vow speaks of his covenant with us.
>Every
reception held down here on earth reminds us of the great banquet he has
prepared.
Until that day:
>Every
saint’s funeral anticipates resurrection.
>Every
baby born speaks of eternal youth.
>Every
sermon preached calls to mind the Word/Spirit made flesh.
Until that day:
>We live
in anticipation of that day,
>The
already/not yet,
>Abiding
incomplete understanding, healing, and prosperity…until that day.
One day - and it will be exactly that: one day.
>One day
with no night,
>One eternal
morning,
>An
eternal day without end - One day…
