The hymns we have sung and the Scriptures we have read have one important word that is common to all of them. That word is "morning". "Morning", as in "good morning". "Morning" is an important Biblical image.
I am leading us to worship around the symbol of morning today because I want us to use it as a way of understanding how we can work through the experience of loss and of grief. "Morning" is an important Biblical image which will help us come to grips with something that sooner or later affects us all -- and that is the loss by death of someone we love. All of us will eventually have to confront this. And our God, I believe, speaks to us through the "morning" image to help us.
By the way, I planned this message long before I knew that we would have an earlier morning than usual, thanks to daylight savings time! Aren’t you impressed that Congress decided to help me out with my sermon?
"Morning”. Now let’s try something: "Good morning". I see and hear a variety of responses. Some of you are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; you are ready, and you shouted back, "Good morning". Others, however, since it is barely 11 :00 o’clock, will prop open one eye and murmur a blurred, "Goo mrn". You experience the morning of each day in quite a different way. A fair number of you would really prefer to answer, "What’s good about it?" But we have our own ways of responding to the new day.
Some manage, I am told, to get up every morning with both feet on the floor, with a gleam in their eyes, and with fire in their bellies. They seize each new day! "Let me at it!" Some are instantly awake, vibrant and alert, and say to each new morning, "I’ve been waiting for you." Isn’t that awful? Isn’t that intimidating? Thank goodness I am not married to one of those!
Others of us cannot quite believe that the sun has come up again, already, and that we really are expected actually to get out of the bed and get to that job ... now ... today ... within the next two hours! We have waited for the morning, but we are always a little disappointed that it got here. We experience morning in a different way.
I have the reputation, and it’s true, of being an early riser. For quite a few years I’ve set the alarm for 5 o’clock. The idea was to get some things accomplished in a disciplined way. My wife, however, says it’s crazy to get up that early because all I do is read the newspaper. And on a chilly day I think it’s crazy to get up that early just to get over here to the church by 8 o’clock; none of you want to hear from me at that hour!
If the truth be known, the only reason I can manage the morning at five is that I not only set the alarm clock; I also set the coffeemaker the night before, and can thus get going with the tank full of fresh caffeine!
Each one of us experiences morning in a different way. Each one of us brings to the mornings of our lives a different degree of patience, a different set of expectations, a different kind of hope.
Think for a moment about the way a baby experiences morning. You parents know about this. You finally get that little one settled down; you count it a real achievement when he no longer wants attention at two a.m. But when the sun comes up, up comes that insistent little voice, clamoring for attention, wanting, wanting, wanting. If it is true that babies are nothing but insatiable appetite at one end and total irresponsibility at the other end, at no time of the day is that more obvious than in the morning.
The smaller we are, the more insistent we are on having our needs met, right now, with no negotiations, thank you. Babies experience morning as a time for their needs to be fulfilled and their demands met.
Did you know that there are times when we need to be like new born babes in the morning, crying out for what we need to get by? There are times -- and there are many here today who have experienced them -- when the only way to get through the bleakness of despair and grief is to cry out for help and insist that it come ... that it come now. There are times when you and I have to have a baby’s kind of morning.
I think that’s a part of what is wrapped up in what Peter says when he enjoins us, "Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord." Clamor for what you need right now, just like a baby would.
But it is also true that in order to have all that God intends for you to have in the special kind of morning that He is preparing for you, you are going to have to wait. You are going to have to wait with hope and with faith and with discipline. You’ll have to do more than shout out for help; you’ll also have to wait for help.
That is what is implied by the Psalmist who penned the great psalm of grief, the 130th, when he reached down into the dark night of his soul and shrieked out, "Out of the depths I cry to thee, 0 Lord! Lord, hear my voice! Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! … I wait for the Lord, my soul waits ... more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning."
If you want to conquer grief, then, there are two steps to take. One is to cry out for help right away, right now, whenever you need it. And the other is to believe and wait, in faith, for a great new morning that God is preparing for His creation.
I
First, let me ask you to remember when you faced your most recent grief experience. Remember the first night after your loved one passed away. My guess is that you didn’t sleep very well that night ... you slept in fits and starts, your mind was cluttered up with grief and with shock ... you couldn’t help computing what you needed to do and who needed to be contacted and how were you going to handle all the problems, and so on and so on. Finally you fell asleep, only to wake up in the morning and have to spend a minute or two sorting out reality ... what happened last night? Is he really gone? Was it all a dream? You experienced that first morning of your grief as a kind of haze, a fog; you felt yourself alone in a strange and awkward way.
What did you do then? What was your first instinct? My guess is that it was to reach out for help. My hunch is that you found somebody, you called somebody, you asked for support. You claimed some kind of help.
I hope you cried out for God’s help. I hope you lifted your voice in anguish or complaint or whatever you felt and lifted it to God. I hope that like a newborn babe, you called out for pure spiritual milk … for basic support, for immediate attention. Because that is the way that growth comes; that is the way that our God delivers His help. I hope you felt an instinct to pray and a desire to hear the Scriptures; I hope you longed for the presence of the lord Himself.
Peter says, again, "Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” I hope you cried out to God for help.
But I hope, too, that you chose to ask for help from some of God’s people. Did you know that right around you, right here in this room, are men and women whose presence and whose love could have been of enormous power for you? Somehow, some of us choose to go it alone when we could have some help. Some of us choose to be private, we choose to pretend that we are self-sufficient, we choose to go it alone. Why do we do that? Why do we starve ourselves?
But there are times, I say, when we ought to come to the morning like a newborn babe, longing for pure spiritual milk, crying out for somebody to sustain us. We ought not to be too proud to do that. We cannot afford to be too private to claim that.
Let me be very explicit. When you are in grief, no matter the circumstance, no matter the time, let somebody at your church know about it. Let your church be church for you. If you find yourself in a situation when you are like a baby, crying out for something to support you in the morning, then cry out. Cry out to your pastor, cry out to your deacon. Tell us what your need is, and we will respond. Do not keep us guessing what your need is. Do not suffer in silence and think that the message will somehow trickle down to us. Cry out! Call us! Let us bring your long night’s journey into morning; let us feed you that pure spiritual milk that will grow you past today’s pain. We want to do that.
The first step in grieving is to cry out for help, like a baby in the morning.
II
But there is something else you can do and must do in order to cope with grief. And that is to wait. To wait. Just wait. But it is a special kind of waiting.
The ultimate answer to the grief and loss you feel is going to come out of faith in the great morning of glory which Christians believe God is preparing for His creation. You and I, in the final analysis, know that there is something more beyond this life. You and I are the Easter people, and we know that death is not the last answer. You and I believe, if we believe anything at all about the Christ who is alive, that our God’s last enemy is death, but that our God has won that battle and that death is destroyed. You and I believe that after this long night of sorrow, our God is preparing a new and bright morning of life.
If we don’t have that, we don’t have much of anything.
The trouble is that we have to wait for that. The trouble is that this is not here right now. We have to wait. And that can be tough.
The psalmist, in his grief, knew what it was to wait. But in his waiting he discovered hope and he felt the redemptive love of God. The psalmist discovered, I believe, that there is something redemptive in waiting, something powerful in just waiting, faithfully, expectantly, believing that what our God has promised He will finally do, no matter how long it takes.
This psalmist says it so powerfully and so emphatically: "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning ... and He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."
"More than watchmen wait for the morning" And how do watchmen wait for the morning? Watchmen up on the guard towers of the city wait by keeping their senses alert for the enemy; watchmen wait by sounding the alarm when something is wrong; and most of all, watchmen wait by simply doing their jobs and going about their duties, confident that morning will come.
Some of you are a little ashamed that it is taking so long for your grief to disappear. Some of you who have had reason to grieve may, in fact, not be finished yet. You are telling yourself, "I ought to be over this. I ought to be doing better than I am. I guess I’ll just have to grin and bear it." And that’s not true. That’s not so. You do not have to be ashamed of what you feel. Please do not be ashamed and do not deny your feelings. Instead, wait like watchmen for the morning, for you do know that in His own day, our God will redeem Israel.
Others of you may think that something is wrong with you because at the oddest moment a tear canes to your eye or a sob to your throat. But the truth is that no one can tell you how you ought to grieve and no one can do your waiting for you. Wait, wait like watchmen for the morning, for God will redeem Israel.
It was so very good for me a couple of weekends ago to spend some time with my younger brother. We got more uninterrupted reminiscence time together than we’ve had in a long while. And we started remembering our father, who died about eight years ago. We remembered his fears and his failings as well as his gifts; we remembered his frustrations as well as his accomplishments. We had a poignant time remembering how my mother’s family had blamed him for some of my mother’s illnesses. He knew they thought he wasn’t good enough for her. But then we had a rollicking good time remembering the day he built an overhead garage door; he got it all assembled and ready to work; he pulled on the start rope -- and like Jericho’s walls it all came a tumblin’ down! We remembered and we discovered that both of us had taken a long time to get over his death. It had been a little secret between us, brothers though we are. It felt good to share it with one another. It had been worth waiting for ... waiting for our grief to be redeemed. It was worth waiting for.
Oh, I want to tell you this morning that there is going to be a morning worth waiting for. You don’t need to be afraid of waiting for it. And that morning will be unlike any other morning you or I have ever seen.
That morning will be God’s great getting’ up morning. That morning will be the one on which our God will finish what He began at the empty tomb of Christ. On that morning the alarm clock will not be a buzz in your ear; it will be a trumpet sounding throughout all creation. Get up! Get up! Your long wait is over! It will be morning!
On that great getting’ up morning, those who have passed from life into death will complete the victory of our Christ, and they will live again. Oh, I don’t know what that will look like, I don’t know how to explain it. But I do know that it is my task to wait for it, to wait like watchmen wait for the morning. It is my task to be aware of the enemy that would destroy faith; it is my task to sound the alarm when there is somebody in danger out there. It is my task to be alert to what our God is doing. God’s great getting’ up morning ... and I’ll wait for it like watchmen wait for the morning.
On that great getting’ up morning, there’ll be a blaze of color and a brilliant light, for "night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever."
On that great getting’ up morning, fare you well. For now, like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. Cry to the Lord, insist that the Lord and His people hear your voice.
On that great getting’ up morning, fare you well. For now, wait for the Lord. Wait like watchmen wait for the morning. Wait with the rhythm and the pace that is right for you, but wait; wait in faith. Wait to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait and you will see, on that great getting’ up morning!
