Melanie and the Last Enemy

I got the news during a worship service.  I couldn’t believe it.  Melanie Braley had died.  What?  It couldn’t be.  She’s only 34.  Everyone who knew her was shocked—her dad, mom, and sister most of all.

The privilege was mine to say a few words at her memorial service at the church.  What to say?  I hoped to say something that would honor Melanie, bring glory to God, and address the issue of the Christian and death.  For what it’s worth here were my remarks.

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If you know the story of Job in the Bible, you’ll recall that after Job’s avalanche of short-term trouble with long-term consequences in which he lost his crops, his servants, his livestock, his health, and his children, four of his friends came to pay their respects.  They didn’t even recognize him as he sat in a pile of ashes scratching his boils with a broken potsherd.  His friends were so overcome by Job’s condition and his grief, that they just sat down around him and didn’t say a word.  Not a single word for seven long days.  And when they finally spoke up, Job wished they’d have just kept their mouths shut.

Ecclesiastes 3 says that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.  Even though this family may be best served by our silent presence, a funeral service demands a few words from those who lead it.  Here’s praying that our words today won’t spoil the silence. 

It’s in times like this that we understand why Paul called death “the last enemy.”  There are those for whom death feels more like a friend than an enemy:

The cancer-ridden patient who has no quality of life, no chance for recovery, and pain upon pain upon pain.

·         The 85-year-old whose body has worn out.  No more sparkle in the eye.  No more skip in the step.  Only walker and wheelchair and mostly bed—a bed positioned so he can see out the window and remember when he lived his life rather than endured it.

·         The son of a mother stricken with Alzheimer’s.  A woman who has no idea who she is or where she is or that strange man is who comes to visit her so often.  Her body is decimated.  She can’t swallow.  She can’t walk.  And though he loves his mother, death will be a friend when he finally calls her name—a friend to his mother, a friend to him.  Death will be release and relief and rescue and finally peace.

Today, we do not grieve this kind of death—the death that comes dressed in party clothes driving the welcome wagon.  When a 34-year-old woman like Melanie dies so suddenly and unexpectedly, death comes dressed in black, a hood over his head, with sickle in hand to reap a too early harvest.  It hurts all who are left behind. 

·       We are left with questions: “Why her?  Why now?  Why, God?  And how do we go on without her?” 

·       We are left with things unsaid and acts undone: “I was going to call her last week and thought, no, I’ll do that next week.” 

·       We are left with anger as we shake a fist at heaven shouting: “This is not fair!” 

·       But mostly we are left with grief—grieving what was and what could have been and should have been.  And grief hurts.  It feels like numbness and emptiness, like darkness and depression; it feels like a dagger straight through the heart. 

Melanie was one of earth’s bright lights.  As Mike Pounders was preparing for the service, he asked me if I could tell him anything about Melanie that would help him in his preparations.  This was my return text:

Bright, extremely caring, driven, something of a perfectionist, loved God and loved people, wanted to please the important people in her life, a great daughter and sister, a runner, Kanakuk alumni, sweet, highly thought of by those who knew her and worked with her, died way too soon.

It was my joy to know her for 18 years, though I didn’t see her much when she went off to college.  She went way off to college in San Diego.  You don’t come home a lot of weekends when you’re that far away.  Still, I saw her on occasional holidays when she was home.  She and her family began attending our church in 1998, and I had the privilege of baptizing the whole family at the same time.  I got acquainted with Melanie because she was the same age as my daughter, Kristen.  They were friends.  I still remember sitting with her out beside the old sanctuary on the little retaining wall that separated some parking places from the educational building.  She was in her senior year and she wanted to visit with me and have me pray with her concerning the choices she needed to make about her future.

And that future became a quite accomplished one for her in her nursing work and then as a nurse anesthetist which she was doing in Dallas and Austin when she died.  Her future never got her back to Hot Springs to live and work.  She was very good at what she did, took a deep interest in the patients that she served, and was much loved by her colleagues.

Of course, she loved her family.  Her mom and dad were here chief encouragers and confidants, and she was a source of joy and pride to them.  And what a sister!  She always said that when she felt like she was finally settled down and could build a house, she would build a cottage on the house in which her sister Kathleen could live when their parents died.

Melanie was no more perfect than any of the rest of us.  She had her issues and her struggles.  But she was one fine human being and Christian.  She leaves a huge hole in all those who had her in their heart.  And especially for her mom and dad who naturally anticipated Melanie would bury them, not the other way around.

Yes, Paul was right.  Death is “the last enemy.”  It kills life in full bloom.  It cheats us of an anticipated future.  And it steals, at least for a season, a measure of our faith and hope and joy and peace.

But the good news of the gospel is that death is a defeated enemy.  Death was defeated by a young man just year younger than Melanie who chose to die to break our bondage to sin and death and the grave.  Jesus took death head on.  And while it looked like death won, while it looked like death had Him, death couldn’t keep Him.   On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, spit in death’s eye, and offers eternal life to all who put their faith in Him. 

Melanie put her faith in Jesus during her youth years.  She never left Jesus, and Jesus never left her.  He has Melanie in his strong hand and nothing—not death, not life, not trouble, not hardship—can separate her from His love or snatch her from His hand.  Melanie is with Jesus today.  Of course, we’d rather have her with us.  But since she can’t be with us, how grateful we are that she is with Jesus!  She is well and she is at peace.  And death won’t even get to keep her body forever, for God will raise her body from the dead on the last day.  And we who trust Jesus will see her again when we join her in heaven or when Jesus comes again.  Like Peter Marshall used to say to those grieving a believing loved one: “Since she is with Jesus and Jesus is with you, you will never be too very far apart.”

Jesus defeated death.  That’s our hope in life, in death, and in grief.  This is why Martin Luther could say of his 14-year-old daughter Magdalena who died of the plague as the carpenters were nailing down the lid of her coffin, “Hammer away!  On doomsday she’ll rise again.”

Jesus defeated death.  That’s why Thomas Brooks could preach in a funeral sermon from 1651:

Death is another Moses: it delivers believers out of bondage, and from making bricks in Egypt.  It is a day or year of jubilee to a gracious spirit—the year wherein he goes out free from all those cruel taskmasters which it had long groaned under … .  Death is a believer's coronation-day, it is his marriage-day. It is a rest from sin, a rest from sorrow, a rest from afflictions and temptations,

See that Christ be your Lord and Master, … and then your dying-day shall be to you as the day of harvest to the farmer, as the day of deliverance to the prisoner, as the day of coronation to the king, and as the day of marriage to the bride.  Your dying-day shall be a day of triumph and exaltation, a day of freedom and consolation, a day of rest and satisfaction!

Jesus defeated death.  That’s why John Piper could write: “For believers, death is not the condemning wrath of God toward them, it is the last gasp of a defeated enemy who opens a door to paradise.”

It’s a lot harder to take and appreciate at the funeral of a 34-year-old.  But this is true for every believer whether she is 6 or 16 or 36 or 66 or 86.  It’s the gospel truth.  And it’s our only hope.

So when your grief is hardest may God stir up this hope in the deepest parts of your lives in the name of Him who conquered death and walks with us through our grief to a brighter day—Jesus Christ the Lord—amen.

A Little Pastoral Wisdom in This Strange Election Cycle

I am among a rather large group of pastors who dread presidential election years.  I have pastored a couple of church with a pretty diverse membership, so I worry a little bit about whether election year politics will create disunity in the church, whether small group Bible studies will turn into campaign rhetoric for one candidate or another.  This is my ninth presidential rodeo since I've been a lead pastor—three in the first church I served, six in the church I serve right now.  Somehow we have always survived election years with minimal damage.  On occasion a handful of folks get angry about this or that and a couple of others get their noses out of joint for a few weeks, but all in all, no harm, no foul.

 

Every cycle there are a few who think I need to be more vocal about these things, educate the church on the issues and the candidates.  I've had a hard time finding that in any pastor's job description in the New Testament, so I resist.  I speak in general terms at some point in the process: Christians should study the candidates, discern how the candidates' views conflict or agree with basic Christian morality, pray diligently, and vote their conscience as they sense the Spirit leads them.  I encourage the folks not to sell their souls, their conscience, or their vote to any political party, but to assess candidates for their own merits.  In 35 years of pastoring, I've never done anything more than that.  I have talked with people privately about these matters, but I don't use the pulpit to endorse political parties or candidates.  Usually, that is the alpha and omega of it.

 

But this is the first time in all these election cycles when I have had a number of people ask me what I think of the presidential election and how I am going to vote.  Many believe we have no good choices this year.  Many don’t like either of the presumptive candidates.  I couldn’t agree more.  So let me tell you what I’ve told them for a while now: It’s a long way to November.  Pray.  Watch.  See what happens.  See if or how things change in the next few months.  And in the end, vote your conscience as you sense God’s Spirit leading you.  Oh, and in light of America’s ongoing rebellion against God, His love, and His ways, here’s how I’m praying about the election at this point: "Lord, please don’t give us the president we deserve; give us the president we need."  Our country has always stood in the need of prayer—maybe now more than ever.  America's answers, America's healing, won't be found at a ballot box but in a prayer closet.  Please join me in praying for revival and awakening in our country.  If solutions and answers and unity are to be found, they'll be found there.

From a Distance

So I was finishing Michelle Bell’s rocking FBC-Fitness Core and More class at our gym last Thursday.  As I was helping clean up a little, Steven came into the gym with his mother.  Steven was there for Adult Upper Level Basketball.  I know Steven.  I’d never met his mother.  As we were picking up all the fitness shrapnel (Bosus, med balls, gliders, mats, weights) following the workout, Steven yells over, “Hey John, come and meet my mother.”

 

“Sure,” I said.  “Let me finish picking up and I’ll be right there.” 

 

So once the gym floor was clear, I walked over to meet Steven’s mom.  She gave me the once-over, kind of squinted a second, and said, “You look a lot younger from a distance.”

 

What do you say to that?  “Uh … I’m better looking from a distance too.”  I kind of chuckled.  She didn’t.  We chatted a moment.  I bragged on her son.  And that was that.

 

But I grinned all the way to the car: “You look a lot younger from a distance.”  And then another thought struck me.  Maybe it came from the Spirit; maybe it came from me—I’m not sure: “Live in such a way that your Christian life looks as good up close as it does from a distance.”

 

You’ve heard the old saying: “An expert is the guy from out of town.”  People almost always look better from a distance.  The guy or girl we don’t know very well almost always looks pretty good.  But get to know her, see her up close, peel back the layers that distance wraps around a person, and how does she look then?

 

Except for some of those much-deserved wrathful outbursts of God in the Old Testament, God looks pretty good from a distance too.  But when we read the Gospels, and see God-in-the-flesh, Jesus Christ, up close and personal, God looks even better.

 

I’m praying that the better people know me, the better my Christian life will look to them, the better Jesus-in-me will look to them.  I have some work to do here.  How about you?

And Mike Scott Smiled

I attended a funeral today—helped with it even.  Mike Scott died last Saturday at the end of a battle with liver failure.  And it wasn’t the liver he’d been born with.  That one gave out years ago, and Mike was the recipient of a transplant from some kind person who determined that death for him would mean life for someone else.  He couldn’t have donated his liver to a better man.  I had known Mike for the many years he and his family had been part of our church.  I got to know him a little better during his liver transplant.  But I never knew him all that well …

Until today.  The service was simple—the way Mike and his family wanted it.  Laura, his wife, and his adult children, Rachael and Bailey, didn’t want a lot of fuss.  These are quiet people.  That didn’t change with the funeral.  There was a piano medley of praise songs, one solo—Great Is Thy Faithfulness—and three speakers.  I was the parenthesis around a beautiful sentence weaved together by two of Mike’s best friends: Robert Farrell and Kevin Scanlon.  These guys were Razorback buddies in the late 70s who have maintained a growing friendship across all these years.

What rich tributes they offered to their friend!  Robert shared about visiting with Mike on the team bus as the Razorbacks were leaving College Station on the heels of a big Hog win over Texas A&M.  Robert had caught the first touchdown pass in his Razorback career.  And he told Mike, “Why is it that when I just achieved a childhood dream, I feel a little empty?”  Mike said, “Robert, it is just a football game, you know.  Maybe your priorities are out of order.  Try seeking Jesus first.”  Robert remembers that to this day, and he said that statement got him moving more fully toward the Lord.

Kevin and Mike were roommates in the athletic dorm.  Early in the relationship, Mike told Kevin, “I’m not a drinker or a carouser, and my faith is really important to me.  I also like Skoal.”  Kevin was amazed at the way so many people came to Mike for advice and how very much respected Mike was by the team and by so many others.  Mike was never shy to speak of Jesus but he didn’t blast his faith like a trumpet—loud and with a lot of fanfare.  He played it more like a flute—quiet, crisp, clean, and clear.  Kevin told a number of other stories as well.  Kevin’s presence on the team made it harder for Mike to ever get on the field as a quarterback.  And after college, Kevin even became Mike’s immediate boss with Stephen’s, Inc.  But their friendship ascended way above all that.

Mike would have rather lived than die.  He had overcome a lot in his life to succeed on so many levels.   Sadly, he couldn’t overcome this latest bout of illness.  But he was okay with that.  He was content to leave that in God’s hands.  He never worried for himself, but he was concerned for his family.  Still, he knew God would take care of them too.  So Mike faced these days with confidence.  Not long ago he talked with Laura about the apostle Paul’s line to his Philippian friends: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”  That was Mike’s sentiment to a T.  As long as he lived, he wanted his life to reflect Christ.  But when death came, he knew it would be gain for him.  He tried as hard as he could to get through that infection and numerous other complications in his illness.  He gave it his best shot.  But when a Christian gets to the place where there really is no living and he can only say “For me to exist is Christ,” then the gain of death and heaven is just too enticing to kick against any longer.  So late last Saturday, surrounded by family and friends, Mike knew the race God had called him to run was coming to an end.  He saw the finish line.  Like any good athlete, he bolted for it, and as he broke the tape, he raised his arms in praise to Jesus for getting him all the way home.  And he did so amid the cheers of a great cloud of witnesses, some of whom may well have been there because Mike helped them to Jesus.  What the apostle Paul said about himself to Timothy, we could say about Mike today.  Mike fought the good fight, he finished the race, he kept the faith, and now he is enjoying Jesus and sweet reunion and the glories of heaven.

Did I tell you it was a really good funeral service?  Hopeful, encouraging, faith-filled, plenty of laughter, and a few tears too.  But here’s what was so remarkable about it: even though Robert and Kevin told a lot of Mike-stories, somehow Jesus came off the hero.  That’s the way, Mike, Laura, Rachael and Bailey wanted it.  And that’s the way it was.

I had two thoughts as I left the service today.  One, I sure hope my funeral is not the next one to follow his J—it would be so anticlimactic.  But the main thought I walked away with today is not a thought I’ve often pondered at the end of any of the gazillion funerals I’ve been part of in my decades of ministry.  I walked away asking God to make a better Christian out of me.

And Mike Scott smiled.

The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas - Day 12

I remember sitting behind a beat-up car at a stoplight: smashed rear fender, bald tires, trunk held shut with a rope, rear window cracked, and a sticker on a hanging bumper that read: “This is not an abandoned car.”  Christmas is God putting a sticker on the manger that reads: “This is not an abandoned world.”  When we could never reach up to God, God came down to us in His Son.  When we could never solve our sin and death problem on our own, God sent His Son to solve it for us.  So here’s the twelfth of The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas: We are not forgotten or forsaken or abandoned—God is with us … and always will be.  Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas - Day 11

I know Christmas is about birth, but Christmas is inextricably linked to death for me.  My father died the day after Christmas, 1987.  My mother died the day before Christmas, 2008.  And you’d be surprised how many funerals I do around Christmas.  For me, Christmas is not just about a baby’s cry in a manger; it’s about the tears of people in grief.  Away in a manger?  Yes.  Away in a casket?  That too.  But there’s comfort here for those who know the Savior.  When infant Jesus was dedicated at the temple, an old prophet Simeon, who had prayed to see Messiah before he died, saw the babe and declared, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart (die) in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation ….”  Without Jesus’ birth there would have been no cross or resurrection.  Jesus’ birth got the ball rolling for the remedy to our death problem.  Now all of us who know Jesus can, like Simeon, die in peace, knowing that the One who came for us in Bethlehem is preparing a place for us in the Father’s forever home in heaven.  Here’s the eleventh of The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas: the birth of Christ was the first nail in the coffin of the death of death.  Oh, and it also means we can grieve believing loved ones with hope.

The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas - Day 10

It’s not uncommon, even for believers, to look at all the evil and heartache in the world and think it even if they don’t speak it: Where is God?  Where is God in the wholesale slaughter of Christians at the hands of ISIS terrorists?  Where is God when the six-year old gets cancer, when a tornado rips through a quiet little town, or where poor people are starving and suffering from preventable diseases?  The question is legit.  So is the answer: God is with us.  Of all of Jesus’ Christmas names, I think my favorite is Immanuel—which means “God with us.”  Jesus left the peace, comfort, and glory of heaven to make a beachhead in Bethlehem in humble conditions, the child of peasants.  He grew up in obscurity and fulfilled His mission though a brutal death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.  And on the third day after, He rose from the dead in power and glory.  Where is God?  He is with us.   The manger shows us that no situation is too degrading, no experience too humbling what that God, in Christ, is with us right in the midst of it.   The cross shows us that no struggle is too great, no injustice too unfair, no sin too heinous, no grief too deep, no suffering too intense, not even death itself is so awful what that God faces it with us in Christ.  And the resurrection assures us that because Jesus rose from the dead and lives today, He is able to send us His Spirit so that He truly can be with us and in us everywhere, all the time, and in every situation.  Here’s the tenth of The Twelve Thoughts of Christmas: Jesus is God – with – us: now and forever.