Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Being There

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 12:15

May 21, 2000

Edward Arlington Robinson's poem, "Reuben Bright," touches emotions that lie deep in each of us.

Because he was a butcher and thereby

Did earn an honest living (and did right)

I would not have you think that Reuben Bright

Was any more brute than you or I;

For when they told him that his wife must die,

He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,

And cried like a great baby half the night,

And made the women cry to see him cry.

And after she was dead, and he had paid

The singers, the sexton and the rest,

He packed a lot of things that she had made

Most mournfully away in an old chest

Of hers, and put some chopped up cedar boughs

In with them, and tore the slaughter house down.

Those who have been plunged into grief at the death of one they love the most can best understand what Reuben Bright did -- and why. Life is a startling mixture of heartache and happiness, contradiction and celebration. Some events make us cry. Some make us want to laugh. The writer of Ecclesiastes suggests that there is a season for both. People who never weep have never loved enough and, therefore, have not lived enough. People who never laugh, whose first smile is placed on their face by the funeral director, have never lived enough to love deeply.

A teacher warned one of her students, "Freddie, you mustn't laugh out loud in class." "Teacher, I didn't mean to," Freddie explained. "I was just smiling, and my smile busted." Well, both busted smiles and broken hearts mark a full life. And we are called to enter all of life -- not just for ourselves but also for each other.

In Romans 12, Paul writes about the practical actions that express our love. In Romans 12:15 he tells us that we are to "laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep." This is the powerful verse I want to explore with you this morning.

There is a model in counseling which has been adopted by many Christians, which says that the best way to counsel is to be detached -- to speak from outside a situation -- pointing out possibilities and maybe suggesting some good verses to read.

It’s not a terrible thing to do. The Apostle Paul himself gives lots of advice and points out many verses in his letters. But the greatest thing we will probably ever do for others is to simply be with them in their pain and joy. Love identifies with people, sings with them and suffers with them. Love enters deeply into their experiences and their emotions, their laughter and their tears.

At the height of the integration controversy in Alabama in the early ‘60s, a first grader went to a newly integrated school the first day classes began. Her mother worried all day. When her daughter came home in the afternoon she asked her anxiously, "How did everything go honey?" Her daughter answered, "Oh Mommy! You know what? A little black girl sat next to me!" Fearful of trauma of some kind, the mother tried to ask calmly, "And what happened?" Her daughter said, "We were both so scared that we held hands all day."

Holding hands all day isn’t easy. It’s against our nature and against our culture. We have a natural tendency to be distant and protect ourselves. If we care about others, we become vulnerable to pain at their pain. But we can overdo it.

Charles Swindoll writes that the world is "characterized by indifference, non-commitment, disengagement, no sharing or caring --meals eaten with hi-fi headsets turned up loud, even separate bedrooms, each with a personal telephone, TV, and turntable, private toilet, and an ‘it's none-of-your-business’ attitude. No hassle.., no conflict,.. no accountability. No need to share. Or reach out. Or give a rip. Just watch the numbers and look at nobody."

Eileen Guider writes, "You can live on bland food so as to avoid an ulcer, drink no tea or coffee or other stimulants in the name of health, go to bed early and stay away from night life, avoid all controversial subjects so as never to give offense, mind your own business and avoid involvement in other people's problems, spend money only on necessities and save all you can. You can still break your neck in the bathtub, and it will serve you right."

It will serve you right because you will have missed life and you will have caused others to miss you in life. We are to enter each other's lives in the good times and in the bad as participants. This is the meaning of the word compassion which means to "suffer together" or to share in the emotion of a situation as well as in the intellectual analysis.

Father Damien, A Roman Catholic priest, served for years by his own choice in the leper colony of Molokai in Hawaii. There was a T.V. special on him just last week. He customarily began his Sunday morning sermon with the words, "My brothers and sisters." But on the Sunday after he contracted leprosy himself he began with "We lepers..." Until that week he had led as one outside who had come to help lepers, but now his ministry was different. He was locked in and irrevocably committed to his congregation. They were equals. And amazing things began to happen in the lives of the other lepers.

Paul writes that we must minister in the same way -- not from the outside but from the inside. For true love adjusts to other people's moods. For example, when someone in your office is feeling down, don't come in and sit down and whistle "When the Red Red Robin Comes Hop Hop Hoppin’ Along." Then, when they don't respond, don't ask, "What's the matter with you? How come you're so down all the time? Why aren’t you cheerful like me?". No, Paul says. Adjust yourself. Mourn with those who mourn.

Some year ago, a good friend of mine, a fellow pastor, came to visit. He was in pain because of a failed romantic relationship. I didn’t think it was such a terrible thing. I wasn’t alone in the belief that the relationship not only would not last but should not last. But my friend’s pain was real.

I guess I didn’t appreciate the fact that my friend could not be as insightful and balanced about the loss as everyone else would be. And, quite frankly, his gloom was bringing me down. So I decided that it was my job to make him snap out of it. I did this by playing really sad songs about lost loves from my "Best of the Fleetwoods" CD -- until he started to laugh.

It worked. But I don’t think I did what I’m supposed to do. God does not call us to talk people out of their genuine pain — even if we know that that pain is not the last word — as it wasn’t for him. But it’s equally true that God doesn’t call us to pour cold water on other’s happiness. We also called to laugh with those who laugh.

Why does Paul put this first? I think Paul puts "Laugh with those who laugh" first because that is sometimes harder to do -- especially if it awakens our envy or self-pity. If someone else has achieved something that we think we, ought to have, it is so hard to go up to that person and genuinely say, "I’m so glad for you." When a friend is promoted we send congratulations and may even attend a party in her honor. But we may find it hard to be anything but jealous, even when we are congratulating him or her.

There is only one way to break out of this — this reluctance to share pain and this reluctance to share joy. We have to stop thinking of ourselves and our own interests all the time. And the only way we can do that is by a transformation accomplished in us by Jesus Christ. Jesus set the example for us to follow about sharing pain and joy when He joined us in life. Jesus was not content to reveal God's will from a cloud. He came to experience human life from the top to the bottom -- to celebrate in the wedding at Cana and to cry with Mary and Martha at the tomb of Lazarus. If we follow the Lord and walk in His way, our Christianity cannot possibly be a spectator sport.

John Donne wrote the famous words "No man is an island." He also wrote some lines about the church: "All that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me, for that child is thereby connected to the head, which is my head too and engrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me."

Do you find it that way in the church?

I hope so. But it's hard for some of us to believe that the church can be like that. We've been let down by too many people. We've experienced lonely times even in church. Instead of seeing the body as something that works well together, we sometimes see it as a little reflection of the world around us, splintered into fragments, isolated individuals meeting together -- power, politics, and wary strangers.

I see the bruises on some people who start worshiping with us. They are hopeful but they are also wary. They hope Moorpark Presbyterian will be different from what they experienced elsewhere and they are afraid hat it won’t. They tend to connect very slowly — testing the waters — looking for the hidden hooks.

This is because in many churches we see the same thing Charles V saw in Europe 400 years ago. Charles was the Holy Roman Emperor. But he got tired of being in that position, so he gave up the title before he died. He was tired, he said, of all the petty bickering and all the national wars and all the fighting and all the bloodshed. He turned over the reigns of power to his son, Philip II.

Then Charles went home to his palaces in Spain. He set himself to do some unfinished projects. One of those projects was this: he had six great clocks in his house, and he wanted them all to chime exactly on the hour together. But those six clocks, no matter how much he adjusted them, continued to ring at slightly different moments.

In his memoirs, he writes about that: "How is it possible for six different clocks to chime all at the same time?" He reflects on that even further: "How is it even more possible or impossible for the six nations of the Holy Roman Empire to live in harmony? It can't be done. It's impossible. Not even if they call themselves Christians."

We kind of agree with him." When Paul writes about Christian community it seems like a fairy tale, kind of wishful thinking, whistling in the dark. It will never happen, not even here at Moorpark Presbyterian Church. But somehow Paul's words keep pressing the issue. He says, "There is a way." There is a way to establish a true interdependent, caring community. There is a way for us to do it better here at Moorpark Presbyterian.

Think again of those six clocks of Emperor Charles V. Charles V couldn't get them to chime together because each of them had an independent source of power. Each clock had its own set of weights and pulleys. Each clock regulated itself by its own wheels and gears. Each clock had its own brain, you might say, and its own heartbeat. As long as the timepieces were run by different brains, and as long as they were energized by different hearts, they could never chime exactly the same time together. They would always run independently of one another in their separate worlds.

Now in today's world you can actually have all of the clocks in a single building showing exactly the same time. Charles V would have loved it. He'd ask us, "How does it happen? What's the magic that makes it work?" We'd tell him that all of those clocks operate together and show exactly the same time because they're governed by the same official time signal--Greenwich Mean Time. And more, those clocks show the same time because they're powered by the same frequency of electricity. And more than that, they're connected to one another by the same brain and power source.

There's the key to what the Scriptures tell us about what the church is called to be. Paul’s letters don’t suggest that the early church was always a caring community. In fact, when you read through his letters, you find that greed is there, as is pride and envy and snobbishness and deceit. The list of sins is a long one. But those congregations, he says, can become caring fellowships and healing communities. They can grow as expressions of the love of Christ.

How does it happen? It happens, Paul says, when people begin, together, to take their cues from Jesus Christ as the head of the body. We each have to ask, "What is He thinking? What is He doing? What is He wanting? Then that's what I want to do and think and desire as well."

And when we act that way -- when we get it right -- we make a powerful, winsome witness to the world.

Many people from our congregation were been involved in ministering to Tom Kidd during his struggle with cancer. Some of this ministry involved going to the hospital to learn how to use some specialized equipment so Tom could be at home. One doctor watched over several days as many people from our congregation went to the hospital to be trained or just to visit with Tom. Finally he asked who we were and why Tom rated such an outpouring of practical love. When he was told that we were all from Tom’s church, the doctor replied, "I’ve got to get me one of those." I hope he does.

For let me close with an account by Surgeon Paul Brand in his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Dr. Brand tells a story that provides a gripping picture for us of what it means to be there for each other.

Brand was a junior doctor in a London hospital when one day he came into the room of an eighty-one-year-old cancer patient named Mrs. Twigg. Her cancer was in her throat and. Brand writes, "This spry, courageous woman had asked that we do all we could medically to prolong her life, and one of my professors removed her larynx and the malignant tissue around it."

Brand received an urgent summons to her ward one day, and walked in to find her bleeding profusely from her mouth. He guessed immediately that an artery on the back of her throat had eroded. There was only one thing he knew to do to stop the bleeding: apply pressure. They had to wait for the surgeon and the anesthetist to arrive. Looking into her terror-stricken eyes as she fought the urge to gag, he assured her that he would not remove his finger until it was absolutely safe to do so. He describes what happened:

"We settled into position. My right arm crooked behind her head, supporting her. My left hand nearly disappeared inside her contorted mouth, allowing my index finger to apply pressure at the critical point. I knew from visits to the dentist how fatiguing and painful it must be for tiny Mrs. Twigg to stretch her mouth open wide enough to surround my entire hand. But I could see in her intense blue eyes a resolution to maintain that position for days if necessary. With her face a few inches from mine, I could sense her mortal fear. Even her breath smelled of blood. Her eyes pleaded mutely, "Don't move-don't let go!" She knew, as I did, if we relaxed our awkward posture, she would bleed to death.

We sat like that for nearly two hours. Her imploring eyes never left mine. Twice during the first hour, when muscle cramps painfully seized my hand, I tried to move to see if the bleeding had stopped. It had not, and as Mrs. Twigg felt the rush of warm liquid surge up her throat she gripped my shoulder anxiously.

I will never know how I lasted that second hour. My muscles cried out in agony. My fingertip grew totally numb. I thought of rock-climbers who have held their fallen partners for hours by a single rope. In this case the cramping four-inch length of my finger, so numb I could not even feel it, was the strand restraining life from falling away.

"I, a junior doctor in my twenties, and this eighty-one-year-old woman clung to each other superhumanly because we had no choice--her survival demanded it. Finally the surgeon came, and they were wheeled into the operating room. There, as everyone stood poised with gleaming tools, Dr. Brand slowly removed his finger as her aged hand clutched his wrist. When his finger was totally re-moved, a smile spread across her bruised lips. The clot had held. She would be all right. With no larynx, only her eyes could express her gratitude.

"She knew how my muscles had suffered," writes Brand. "I knew the depths of her fear. In those two hours in the slumberous hospital wing, we had become almost one person."

After telling the story, Dr. Brand made two comments which open up the meaning and power of laughing and weeping with others. He writes: "In all of my years as a physician, the thing that keeps coming back to me time and again from my patients is that when they are on their backs and at the very extremes of. their ability to believe and to endure, only one kind of person can help. That person rarely has any answers to their questions, he seldom has a winsome and effervescent personality. It is always someone who does not judge or give advice but who will simply be there with them in their suffering, who will be present, perhaps to share tears, or a hug, or a lump in the throat."