Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] So I was 26, almost 26. It was the month of my 26th birthday when I lost to death my first grandparent. Like I just wanted like to. I'm not saying that for sympathy obviously, But I lived 26 years before I went to a funeral of note in my family.
[00:00:28] I grew up with my grandparents on my dad's side. They were the older of the grandparents. And then that was Mimi and Papaw. That's common Arkansas names.
[00:00:42] There's so many GGs now and lollipops and they're making up new names for these. But we had old school Mimi and Pawpaw, Momo and Pawpaw.
[00:00:55] My mom's parents are just 20 years older than her and so I was.
[00:01:03] And I'm 20 years younger than my mom. So my grandfather is just 40 years older than me. So I was born, he was 40 years old and when I was 16, he was 56.
[00:01:15] And so I had three great grandparents living that lived well into my. It was just such a blessing to go to these big family get togethers and both sides of. And they all lived in Daquin. We didn't travel to see any of them except to go from Cross Trails Road on the north side of town to Dogtown Road on the south side of town.
[00:01:43] So I didn't actually ever like I was a minister and so I'd go to visitations and shake people's hands and say sorry for your loss. But I didn't ever sit on the other side of that visitation until very late in life.
[00:02:00] And I was shocked to hear how many people. And it was my, it was, it was Papaw.
[00:02:11] He was. He died in June of 2008.
[00:02:18] It was as Papa was there and the casket was open and people came by and they'd say he looks so good.
[00:02:28] Just disturbed by.
[00:02:36] He sent a casket.
[00:02:41] I didn't know that this was the thing people said.
[00:02:46] I'd never said it.
[00:02:50] I'd never gone into a visitation. Sorry if you're lost. Nana looks great. Thank you. Bye. And like.
[00:02:59] And I know what they're saying now.
[00:03:02] And by the way, here's a tip. If you're ever going through grief at visitation as they walk by, you people are going to say some insane things.
[00:03:17] Every single one of them mean I'm sorry and I don't know what to say.
[00:03:24] Just take it as that and take it with gratitude and love.
[00:03:28] But as a 26 year old minister, I kept thinking, this is odd.
[00:03:34] What. Who says that Papaw didn't even look great alive at the end I'll tell you a real quick story about Papaw. He had a picture of himself, a black and white picture of himself that he carried around from whenever he was in his 30s and looked sharp. And he loved showing that to Rachel. For some reason, he would just be like, look how handsome I was. And she'd go, wow. And he'd go, yep.
[00:04:03] I don't know why. But he loved showing that he needed to confirm to her that he was a looker.
[00:04:13] I didn't feel that comfortable about it. I didn't like it.
[00:04:17] But just now. And that's all fine to me. That's just people.
[00:04:26] When people feel like they have to say something and they don't have anything to say, some strange stuff comes out of their mouth. And that's just humanity, and it's silly.
[00:04:41] But in that visitation line, there are some things said that I think not only are trite, but they're trite about God.
[00:04:52] And that's problematic.
[00:04:56] God didn't need a new angel.
[00:05:03] God doesn't want us to only remember the good times.
[00:05:10] God doesn't want us to put on a happy face because heaven exists.
[00:05:19] That's not what God wants. That's what people want. We want everything to be fine, to be okay. It's okay. It's fine. It's fine. It's going to be fine. Probably not.
[00:05:33] Y'all met life, haven't you?
[00:05:36] Not always fine.
[00:05:39] And it also doesn't always get better.
[00:05:44] Sometimes it gets worse.
[00:05:48] Not always fine.
[00:05:52] But when people come to you and they want to, like, explain to you, like, just, you know, God wants us to be like, joyful Christians. He wants to put a smile. God, we want this to be a celebration of life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you.
[00:06:06] But can we also, for a second, throw a fit about death?
[00:06:12] Can we also, for a second, like, sit with our grief?
[00:06:18] Because we want to fix it, but fixing it is not always what we're called to do.
[00:06:28] I'm reminded of Job's friends. You remember the book of Job?
[00:06:32] You might remember the first two chapters. And you might not be aware that there's like, 112 chapters after that. Not really, but close.
[00:06:42] So Job is. Is a guy who bad things happen to.
[00:06:48] He loses his family, his farm, his wife.
[00:06:54] Well, he gets a new wife. His wife actually survives that first, and then she. But she tells him to curse God and die. Which I feel like that last part was unnecessary, and she'd been holding onto that for a while.
[00:07:12] Die. That's weird.
[00:07:15] But Job has three friends who show Up Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.
[00:07:20] And these guys are like every other Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar you've ever met.
[00:07:29] They spend the majority of the book trying to figure out why all this bad stuff happened to Job.
[00:07:42] But it says at first, at first they do the right thing.
[00:07:47] They show up and they sit in silence with Job, and they were quiet with Job.
[00:07:58] That's when they start talking that they kind of get into trouble.
[00:08:01] They say, well, you must have done something or God wouldn't have done this. Or May. And Job says, no, I'm great. I'm a great guy.
[00:08:11] They go back and forth. And then God finally shows up and says, who? Why do you think you can explain the world?
[00:08:19] Did you create it?
[00:08:23] Why do you think this is your role?
[00:08:28] And so our brains are jerks to us.
[00:08:37] You ever been driving and just out of nowhere, a memory that just you'd rather not think about pops into your head?
[00:08:48] Just blindside you while you're eating with a friend and you're like, oh, my goodness, I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed.
[00:08:57] I'll tell you mine. There's a lot tell you one that pops into my head all the time.
[00:09:08] So Scott McKnight is a new Testament scholar.
[00:09:13] He wrote a lot of great books about the New Testament even before he was popular. And he wrote a popular book called the Jesus Creed that sold millions and is just influential guy in my circle.
[00:09:33] I happen to be sitting next to him at a lunch, at a conference. One time I sat down, sat down to eat. Scott McKnight sits down next to me and I thought, oh, no, I don't belong here.
[00:09:49] He's a doctor who's made all. Who's written all these books, and I'm just a reader of books.
[00:09:55] But we had a conversation and at one point he actually said to me, hey, I really like that you don't have your phone out.
[00:10:03] I'd lost it. I didn't know where it was.
[00:10:07] No, I'm just kidding. It was in my pocket.
[00:10:10] I'm not gonna have my phone out. But there was other people around the table. He just leaned over and he goes, hey, I really like that you don't have your phone out. He and I talked about a lot of things. He knew that I did stand up comedy or that came up cause someone had told him. And he said, do you travel a lot? And I said, no, I don't. He goes, you know, I didn't write Jesus Creed until after all my kids were out because I Knew that book would do well, and I didn't want to.
[00:10:34] I didn't want to travel while my kids were still at home. He said, so you always have time to leave your wife at the house after your kids leave the house?
[00:10:44] He didn't say it like that, but it was funny the way he phrased it.
[00:10:48] We had a great conversation. It was a great meal. Like, they catered this meal, and it was steak and mashed potatoes and edamame beans.
[00:10:59] And we ate together, Scott McKnight and I, and had a good conversation. I was so excited to tell Rachel about this. She had to pick me up from the conference, and she took me to her parents house. They lived in Mesquite at the time. It was really close to the conference, and she picked me up. We were driving home, and she said, how'd it go? And I told her we had a great conversation with Scott McKnight and the meal was great. And this is.
[00:11:25] Told her what they had, and she goes, you've never had edamame beans. Did you like them? And I said, yeah, they were crunchy, but they were fine, y'all.
[00:11:36] I wasn't.
[00:11:39] I wasn't opening the Adama. I was just popping, like, eating a banana with the peel on. Like, I was.
[00:11:49] Scott McKnight was watching me eat whole edamame beans.
[00:11:59] And he probably at that point was like, okay, this guy doesn't have a phone.
[00:12:05] I am mortified to this day. Like, I don't want to meet him again because he's gonna, oh, you're that hillbilly that ate on.
[00:12:15] Oh, gosh, I thought it went so well.
[00:12:20] And I will be having a good day.
[00:12:24] And then out of nowhere, you ate adamame beans whole in front of Scott McKnight. Well, just. There's this voice in your head that tells you you're awful.
[00:12:36] You're not as good as you think. You're embarrassing. You're ashamed. Now, I enjoy those times. I laugh about those. But, man, in the moment, it feels like you can feel that deeply. The same thing happens with, like, grief and pain, like, actual shame. Things will just jump into your head and you'll think, I haven't thought about that for years. Why is my brain bringing it up now?
[00:13:02] And there's so much shame and embarrassment and pain in this life that your brain just seems to bring it up out of nowhere.
[00:13:16] Throughout the past year and a half, we've experienced a lot of grief. Not just me personally, but, like, our community, where at times where we just feel like, man, when is this going to end. It seems like an onslaught since 2020. And even before grief and death just keep happening.
[00:13:41] And where.
[00:13:43] When people try to offer, like, oh, well, God thinks you're hilarious, or, well, it's an. It's terrifying to be in my body at times. It's rude to allow my, like, what my brain does to me. It's. It's not kind, this remembrance of, of even the grief. And over the last year, there's times where, like, something will hit you and hit me and I'll think, why am I so sad about this?
[00:14:12] It's something small.
[00:14:14] And it's not really just that. It's more. It's bigger. You're sitting under this big umbrella of brokenness. And there is no response from that. When people say, well, God just wants you to be happy, there's no response to that. That I could come up with this kind in the moment, I just say, oh, well, thank you.
[00:14:36] But what I want to say is, that's not true.
[00:14:42] God doesn't need another angel. God doesn't need another, like, let's quit trying to fix pain by explaining it away to make it, like, fit us better or suit us better.
[00:15:01] Right in the middle of the prophets. So the prophets in the Old Testament are a. It's a mess. They're rarely prophesying, like, hey, good news, everybody.
[00:15:15] I mean, there's some of that a lot of times at the end. But most of the prophets, what you find is like, there's an army coming and you're losing.
[00:15:26] There's an army showing up and you're going to. Even that famous Jeremiah, I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord.
[00:15:37] If you read anywhere beyond that placard you found at Canton, the Babylonian army is a part of those plans.
[00:15:53] Part of the plans did Jared. And now all the prophets are saying, listen, if you don't repent, if you don't stop from these sorts of ways, then this will happen. Prophets aren't fortune tellers. They're just saying there are consequences to the actions of the moment.
[00:16:16] They're saying something. If you don't stop, this is going to happen. And guess what? The Israelites didn't stop and the prophets were proven right.
[00:16:25] God was proven right through the prophets. But right in the middle of all of this prediction of difficulty is this book Lamentations, in which poetically, they talk about sitting in these difficult moments of where is God right now? And if your God is the God who fixes things for your life, makes everything better, makes everything work out in the end. I'm gonna venture to say that that is a God that Americans made up.
[00:17:08] That's not the God of Scripture.
[00:17:14] Everything doesn't work out except until the resurrection.
[00:17:20] But the author here is saying, says in lamentations, we'll start in verse 17. He says, I have been deprived of peace.
[00:17:31] I have forgotten what prosperity is.
[00:17:37] So I say my splendor is gone. And all that I had hoped from the Lord. So everything that I'd hoped for from the Lord, that's gone. I remember my afflictions and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. There's no way to explain bitterness and gall better than just remembering those moments in your life that you would rather not remember and it just causing a physical taste in your mouth.
[00:18:09] It's a bitter taste.
[00:18:13] And to be in that place where all that you can remember, all that you can have in your mind is just what an awful experience this has been.
[00:18:27] I remember my affliction.
[00:18:31] I well remember them.
[00:18:34] And my soul is downcast within me. Now, as Americans, we sometimes want to jump in front of these people and say, listen, this is not the way Jesus would have you respond.
[00:18:47] Jesus wants you to be happy and successful and, you know, and healthy and. No, no, this is. He's writing his true feelings. The reason we are called a hypocrite sometimes is not because we sin, it's because we pretend we don't.
[00:19:07] It's not because we have sad emotions. It's because we pretend we don't.
[00:19:14] It's a false projection of ourselves.
[00:19:19] You are a complete human being. You are sad, you are excited, you are joyful, you are downcast, you are lonely, you are afraid. You are a complete human being. You feel all of those things and when you feel them, they are feelings that God blessed you with.
[00:19:42] Grief is a gift.
[00:19:49] I go through those stages of grief and I feel the way I'm supposed to feel.
[00:20:00] The only feeling you are not supposed to feel is the feeling that you shouldn't be feeling what you're feeling.
[00:20:12] Write that down and just read it later. But it makes sense, I promise. The only feeling that you're not supposed to feel is the feeling that you shouldn't be feeling what you're feeling.
[00:20:23] I'm sad. Be sad.
[00:20:26] I'm angry that this happened. Be angry.
[00:20:31] Don't fix it.
[00:20:35] I remember well those times and my soul is downcast within me.
[00:20:43] Yet I call this to mind and therefore I notice not fix it, but have hope.
[00:20:56] Hope is not a correction of the current circumstances.
[00:21:01] It's a faith in what God can do in the future.
[00:21:08] I have hope. Because of the Lord's great love.
[00:21:14] We are not consumed. For his compassions never fail.
[00:21:20] His mercies are unending.
[00:21:24] They are new every morning.
[00:21:29] Great is your faithfulness. I mean, my goodness. God's mercies are new every morning.
[00:21:39] Great is his trustworthiness.
[00:21:44] God can be trusted to renew mercies.
[00:21:50] I don't know if you feel like mercy needs to be a renewable resource in your life, but I do.
[00:21:59] God's mercy is new every morning.
[00:22:02] Hot, fresh mercy from the bakery of God's love every morning.
[00:22:12] So I say to myself, the Lord is my portion and I will wait for him.
[00:22:26] What I need right now is the Lord.
[00:22:33] Notice I don't need the Lord right now to fix it. I don't need the Lord right now to make it better. I don't need the Lord right now to make it go away or make me forget it or make me like just. All I need is the presence of God.
[00:22:54] The Lord is my portion.
[00:22:57] I will sit and wait for him.
[00:23:00] The Lord is good to those who hope in him, to the one who seeks him.
[00:23:10] It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.
[00:23:19] Wayne asked us to have a moment of reflection.
[00:23:24] It's tough to sit silently, to sit quietly.
[00:23:33] Sometimes when we sit silently and sit quietly, we get rid of the busyness that exists in our world and we just remember the things we try not to think about.
[00:23:51] But what I want to do is sit in the presence of those things and God.
[00:24:01] Not a God who fixes or corrects or explains away, but we serve a God who sits with us in our grief.
[00:24:14] I think about Jesus in the garden on his knees, probably face down, saying, God, if this is the way, I'll do it. But if there's any other way, that'd be great. Let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.
[00:24:47] That the God became man and was hoping for another solution.
[00:24:59] But Jesus being God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing and submitted to death. Not just death, but death on a cross, knowing full well that God was with him along the way.
[00:25:23] We might need to give up God fixing and realize that the presence of God is all we need.
[00:25:36] Presence through pain, not to fix pain.
[00:25:41] Presence through God in grief, not to make it go away and make the happiness show up.
[00:25:53] Your body does some weird things when you're sad, doesn't it?
[00:26:02] You notice like you lose somebody or something's going on and you're like, I need to nap.
[00:26:08] Hallelujah take a holy nap.
[00:26:17] Sad. You get angry, you deny it, try to fix it.
[00:26:24] That's all a part of it, but it's not the main point.
[00:26:29] It's all a part of it, but there's no. Also, those of you who've gone through it know, gone through the stages of grief know they don't go in order and they don't wait their turn.
[00:26:43] There's just no, like, time where, like, well, I guess the calendar says denial, but I don't see it.
[00:26:54] There's no official time.
[00:26:57] Well, how long am I going to be sad?
[00:27:01] Probably a little forever.
[00:27:06] The last stage of grief is acceptance, not escape.
[00:27:14] And God's role in that is that he gifted us those things.
[00:27:20] He gifted us sadness.
[00:27:25] God gifted us that way of going through difficulty.
[00:27:33] You dream about hurt.
[00:27:40] You know, it's been shown that women who have dreams about murdering their ex husband forgive their ex husband faster and move on quicker.
[00:27:58] So if you have a dream about murdering someone you don't like, that's God giving you a counseling session.
[00:28:11] But all glory to God for all of this stuff. But what I'm saying is we have a good God who sits with us.
[00:28:21] We have a good God who shows up and sits down. And for the God who knows everything, it is a gift that he sits silently with us.
[00:28:35] That that's good.
[00:28:39] Death is bad, illness is bad. All of that's awful.
[00:28:43] Poverty and hunger and division, it's all awful.
[00:28:50] And God doesn't come skipping through with a basket of happiness, hoping that maybe we'll get over it. He sits with us and knows we won't.
[00:29:03] And that's the beauty of our Lord.
[00:29:06] That's the salvation he offers.
[00:29:10] A God who walks in the garden wondering where his shamed creation is, hoping to see them again.
[00:29:22] A God who weeps over Israel's unfaithfulness. Jesus who cries at death, knowing full well life is coming.
[00:29:40] We serve in the middle of a broken world.
[00:29:46] A good God, not a trite God, not a God who fixes things. A good God.
[00:29:58] And a good God sits and is present.
[00:30:03] I am so thankful to have that good God.
[00:30:11] So we as a people will go to that God with our difficulty, with our doubt, with our shame, with our grief. We will go to God because thankfully, that's not a long journey.
[00:30:31] Because God is anxious to show up at our side.
[00:30:36] And we will sit quietly and wait for the salvation of God.
[00:30:42] His mercies are new every morning and his faithfulness is big sometimes. We're about to sing Great is Thy Faithfulness.
[00:31:00] We don't mean just like, that's awesome. We mean there's this large trustworthiness we have, and it comes from God.
[00:31:13] And God can be counted on in any situation.
[00:31:19] God can be counted on not to fix it, but to be with us through it.
[00:31:29] We can press on through difficulty and doubt, through shame and grief, because we have a God who is good, he is faithful and his mercies are new every morning let's stand and sing together.
