Aspen Hill Christian Church

10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 5:10-11/NIV

Introduction…

In the midst of the joy of Christmas came a cold and soul piercing wind. With the weather cold and nasty I got the call that my good friend Dan was about to die. Dan and I formed a fast and strong friendship a number of years ago through the world of Scouting. Small world that it is, Dan was the brother of Chet and Anna Lu’s sister-in-law. We were good friends and comrades in spirit long before we knew we were related through the Clifford family.

He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer about 12 months earlier and after a long and valiant fight he was finally ready to pack it in for the last time. It was the Thursday or Friday before Christmas and I was knee deep in alligators trying to get ready for Christmas. I got a call that the time had come and Dan was about to die. He asked that I come and talk with him about the bridge over. I knew it was coming, sooner or later and I dreaded it. You can only “be ready” to a point.

I dropped everything I was doing and went over to see him and Barbara. The only gift I had left to give my good friend was the gift of my friendship and my faith. I had watched Dan be the most faithful friend anyone could ask for as his good friend Ron was dying of cancer just a year or so earlier. I wanted to be as good a friend to him as he had been to me.

I wasn’t feeling full of faith. I was angry; as angry as I’ve ever felt at God before. Something wasn’t fair in all of this. Dan had just spent a year walking down the long road of terminal cancer with his friend, and no sooner than what should have been a time of healing and restoration came Dan’s cancer. Now, I had spent a long year walking down the road with him.

As I drove over to see Dan and Barbara I felt the bitter juices of anger and resentment and sadness in my mouth. Yet, I knew I had to bring faith, love, support and a positive spirit to Dan and Barbara. T.S. Elliiot wrote in his famous poem “The Wasteland” (1922) that April is the cruelest month but for me, this year December felt pretty cruel.

I prayed to God for the strength to be faithful and the faith to be strong. I went in, had a few precious moments with Dan and shared a prayer. Because of the heavy dose of morphine he had just received he just couldn’t stay awake while we talked. He tried but he he couldn’t do it.

Dan died the next day. On Saturday he quietly slipped into death. Already overwhelmed with Christmas programs and services and other people with an large basket of needs and attention and with presents to buy for my loved ones and a list of “to do’s” longer than my arm I began in earnest planning what I hoped would be a meaningful service for Dan. He had asked me to do his service and I saw it as the last gift I could do for Dan. I’ve since come to understand some other things I can do for Dan but at that moment creating and leading in a service he would have been proud of was my last gift.

The service was on the Tuesday before Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve was Wednesday and altogether the Service was a good celebration of Dan’s life and about the best I could have hoped for. The flood of tears, both from myself and from others who knew and loved Dan were from deep within the heart and came at great price.

I. December can be a cruel time for those who are in the midst of loss.

There was a terrible incongruity in Christmas for me this year. As I had driven over to Dan’s house for that last visit Christmas music was coming from my radio. “Do you hear what I hear?” “O come all ye faithful”, “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”. No, no, no, I wanted to shout. It’s not joyful. It’s not happy. I was feeling the incongruity of the joy of the season mixed in with the pain of my loss. Two and two didn’t equal four - the joy and happiness of the season was out of pitch with the sadness and pain of my heart and somehow it didn’t all add up.

As strange as it may sound Christmas can be cruel. It can feel cruel to…

• Those who lost a loved one or were about to lose one.
• Those who were spending their days in hospitals, praying and hoping for the health of someone they loved who was fighting illness.
• Those who were struggling with the pain and anguish of a family in crisis.
• Those living with bitter tears of disappointment or loss or failure.
• Those who had just lost a baby, or a child.
• Those who had just had a serious fight with a family member or loved one.
• Those who were stuck deep inside a bottle as they fought the lure of the drink.

Going through the season of happiness and joy; parties and seasonal joys the pain and anguish of personal loss or hurt only seem cruel to those facing the days of December. Our mood of dark, brooding, contemplating, struggling becomes all the more difficult in the midst of joy, happiness, frivolity.

It’s hard to be happy when you are losing someone you love.

It’s hard to be joyful when you have just left the cemetery.

It’s hard to dance when the devil is riding on your back.

To pretend that life’s tragedies don’t happen on what were scheduled as “happy days” is to be foolish and wrong to boot. I couldn’t do that this season

I was far more sensitive and caring this year for those facing their own struggles as Christmas unfolded this year than I have ever been in the past. I knew how they felt. I knew how they struggled. I knew, first hand, the incongruity of it all.

II. The seeming contradiction isn’t incongruous at all – it’s a deep and poignant reflection of what we believe in. It is what we ultimately believe. It is what our faith brings us to.

To shout out “shut up”, “turn that radio off”, “can’t you hear what I hear would be unfair to others and ultimately to ourselves as well. Christmas doesn’t get canceled because of our losses.

Nor should it.

That’s the depth of Christmas.

That’s the meaning of our faith.

That’s the message we’re trying to proclaim.

Life does go on.

Life does have meaning beyond this world.

There is hope in the midst of loss.

To cancel Christmas because of our losses or pains or in the midst of our tragedies would be just as wrong. There is, when all is said and done redemption and restoration if we can just grasp it.

Our faith doesn’t deny the reality of loss of relationship.

Our belief doesn’t cover over the pain of the death like some sort of cheap wallpaper.

Our God doesn’t abandon us in the cold, bitter days of December.

No, not at all.

Faith is most relevant in the deepest and darkest moments of our life.

We don’t have to deny our pain and our loss and our hurt in order to be faithful.

We celebrate because life does go on.

We come together to proclaim that in midst of loss God embraces us and calls us close to him all the more.

We light a candle in the dark to bring light where we might otherwise stumble and fall and not are able to get up because of the darkness.

We sing, not to cover over our sadness but to lift us above it.

We are here because God’s “Yes” is greater than fate’s “no”.

We are here because life is greater than death.

We are here because hope is preferable to hopelessness.

We are here because faith carries us beyond pain and loss.

Love is stronger than hate.

Life exceeds death.

Light is greater than dark.

Truth is more enduring than falsehood.

That’s what my faith is all about.

That’s what my God wants to tell me.

That’s what I believe in the emptiness of days and seasons when I am overwhelmed with loss and hurt and unfairness and anger and all those things that only separate me from the love of God.

December is only cruel if we make it so.

Loss only has the last word if we surrender to it.

Out of the cry of a little child, born 2000 years ago in a mucky, dirty, smelly little stable in a far way place comes life and hope and faith that is greater than any loss, greater than any death, beyond any pain.

That is exactly what faith is about.

That is exactly what we to offer those who come today and any day with loss, and pain and hurt and hanging on their shoulders like an old worn out coat.

III. It is through the baby in the manger who grew to be our Savior that we can swing the doors open; wide open; for those who feel pain and the depths of loss at it’s deepest levels.

Come, those who have lost their friends to the stench of cancer.

Come, those who fight the demon in the bottle or the drugs in the needle.

Come, those who have felt the pain of anger and separation in their heart.

Come those who are hungry – not for physical bread but for the bread of life.

Come, those in their last days – as well as those in their first days.

God is here to hold us in the midst of our greatest cries of the soul.

God is here to welcome us when we seek bread that will last.

God is here to be with us in the loneliest moments of the day.

God is here to welcome when the world shuts it door in our face.

That is the ultimate message of our faith.

This is what we believe.

This is what we know.

This is what we strive to remember on our way to a dying friend’s house.

This is the message of life that we are about.

Closing…

Just as the Psalmist cried to God we too come to the Lord and open our hearts to him.

“Restore our fortunes, O LORD,

like streams in the Negev.

5 Those who sow in tears

will reap with songs of joy.

6 He who goes out weeping,

carrying seed to sow,

will return with songs of joy,

carrying sheaves with him.”

(Ps 126:4-6/NIV)

On the longest night of the year;

In the midst of December’s coldest day;

During the strongest of the winds of March; the deluge of April or the parched streams of August, God comes among us and dwells with us.

We are never alone.

We are never without hope.

We are never consumed in tears of loss or pain or grief or hurt.

0 Create in me a pure heart, O God,

and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

11 Do not cast me from your presence

or take your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation

and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Ps 51:10-12/NIV