Hello,
I can’t tell you the number of times when I have been with someone upon
whom the world has crashed down, and as they begin to cry they have said, “I’m
sorry.”
My usual response to them is, “That’s fine,” and often I will follow in
saying, “Sad things are sad.”
As you know, I am an ESPN watcher, especially the morning show, “Mike
and Mike”. This past week has been
ESPN annual focus on the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. Jimmy V was a basketball coach for
South Carolina University a couple of decades ago when he was stricken with
cancer and his life came to an abrupt and far too early end. A couple of months before his death he,
along with ESPN, inaugurated a foundation to battle cancer, and at its
inauguration he delivered a speech that poignantly spoke about his battle with
cancer and his hopes that he might be part of an ultimate cure. “Don’t give up, never give up,” is the
motto of his foundation a motto that has rung in my heart as I tackle the struggles
of my life, albeit thus far not cancer.
As Mike and Mike promoted the foundation’s cause and asked for money,
they showed clips of several sports figures who had battled cancer personally
or with one whom they loved. In
those clips a common theme carried through: the inner strength that they
admired in those who fought the disease with stoic dignity. “Up to the very end, you would have
never known he had cancer.”
Indeed, there is an admirable dignity in those who line up against
cancer like an offensive lineman and say to cancer (or any of life’s tacklers),
“Look out! I’m coming your
way!” But I wonder if this
admiration has wandered a bit far to the point that it has become a sign of
weakness to let people, especially the ones whom one deeply loves, see the toil
and the pain that are also eating away at life. Tom Hanks, playing the manager of a woman’s baseball league
during WWII said to one of his distraught, crying players, “There’s no crying
in baseball!” It almost seems that
his words have carried outside of baseball into life and people hear, “There’s
no crying in life!”
Also this past week an award for perseverance was given to Stuart Scott,
one of ESPN’s own who is in a life and death battle with cancer, and in his
acceptance speech he offered an insight quite different from the “stiff upper
lip” messages that had dominated the discussion. Unknown to the audience, he had just gotten out of the
hospital before the award ceremony, a hospital stay that had pulled him with vacuum
force into a black hole, and with that experience fresh in his life he amended
the Jimmy V motto by saying, “Fight.
Fight like hell. But when
you can’t fight any more, lay down and let someone else fight for you.”
With 30+ years of ministry behind me, I have found myself less drawn to
tell people how they should live their lives (I have decided that in the area
of moral decisions I would rather help draw people closer to God and let that
relationship shape and mold their decisions), and increasingly drawn to people
in their pain and fight with and for them. I strive for the church that I pastor to be a hospital for
the hurting…a place where it is okay to cry, a place where no one will shame
you for the mess that you have made of your life, a place where the hopeless
prognoses of the world are countered with the absolute hope of the cross and
resurrection, a place where forgiveness overwhelms fault, a place where when
you can’t fight anymore you can lie down and let someone else fight for
you….let Jesus fight for you….a place where healing is so profound that that
healing becomes a fountain of grace and hope to the world.
Sometimes it may appear that the church is a hotel for the holy, a place
where crying is not allowed, a place where the broken don’t belong, a place for
“stiff upper lipped people”.
Well…as I read the Bible and see Jesus in action, it sure doesn’t seem
to me that Jesus was in the hotel and resort business. He was in the hope and healing
business, and his motto was,
‘Come to me, all you that are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn
from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ Matthew 11:28
The truth is that sad things are sad, but a greater truth is this:…Jesus
is lord even of the sad! Have a
great week!
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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