Serving the Word

by Pastor Wade

Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves [those] of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task [serving food and the physical needs of the community], while we for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the Word.” Acts 6:3-4

I just finished having coffee with the Emerson family in our church dining room. Actually it was a lot more than coffee…

I just finished having coffee with the Emerson family in our church dining room. Actually it was a lot more than coffee. We had scalloped potatoes and salad and cupcakes and rolls and coffee (lemonade for those not inclined to coffee). You might imagine why. We had just finished a funeral worship in the sanctuary – and a rather difficult one at that. I’m not sure that any funeral is exactly “easy,” but sometimes when a member of the faith community has lived long and faithfully and has not only professed their faith but also their “readiness” to go home, it is relatively easy to gather and give thanks to God for them and for God’s promises.
There are other times when it is much harder, however…when cancer comes early, or heart attack, or car crash. This are extremely painful goodbyes. And the Lord who knows our hearts knows this. Today’s funeral was one like that only among the harder we ever gather for. This was a self-inflicted death, a suicide. Suicide is so hard to wrap our arms around and understand. It leaves families with such overwhelming feelings of not only grief, but also guilt and anger and emptiness and whole boatloads of unanswered questions. Some of those questions can never be satisfactorily answered this side of heaven, but I do hope that as believers we never question God’s love or the power of God’s forgiveness for this person who has left us so tragically.
I remember growing up with the sense that somehow suicide was “the unforgivable sin” and heard tell of family members being buried outside the church yard because they had died outside the love of God. I guess it was assumed “unforgivable” because when we take our own life we do not have opportunity afterwards to ask God’s forgiveness for the act, which we know is wrong. If that were true, then any un-confessed sin would be “unforgivable” and we all would be in deep trouble. I rather understand the unforgivable sin as “the sin against the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 12:31-32) which is outright unbelief. Ironically, can happen as a bizarre misdirected act of desperate faith, as in “I can’t take it any more; I will force God’s hand; I will throw myself on the mercy of God.” Is this what God wants? No. God wants us to trust and live. But sometimes the disease, the despair, the depression is so deep that folks despair even of life. They sin. But God forgives sin…past, present and future sin…even the sin of suicide. Thanks be to God.
So we gathered here to hear those words of promise in the midst of things we do not fully understand, to be wrapped in the arms of a God who knows our hurt and sends not only the Holy Spirit, but also a community armed with scalloped potatoes and cupcakes to assure us that God has not abandoned us or those we love and that God loves us still. I can speak those words of promise, but thanks be to you who live the words and who bring the cakes and salads and who wash the dishes and serve the coffee and who let the grieving know that not only are you there for them, but most importantly so is Jesus.

Thanks for being the love of Christ,

Pastor Wade

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