Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Good morning, everybody.
I'm really grateful for these moments that we get to share together in light of the deep brokenheartedness that we're experiencing, of course, as individuals, but as a church and even more as a city and a community, today will feel a bit different, as it should, as we mourn what we have lost and lament together.
There's not. I don't have a whole lot of hope in some wonderful, profound teaching or piece of music.
I think the greatest thing that we can experience today is the nearness that we have to each other.
So I want to encourage you, if you're willing and able, to take the moment for some long hugs following this and some brokenhearted conversation and emotion.
It's so important that we are simply connected together and that we are near one another as God draws near to us today.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: As the service starts and begins, you're welcome to find a posture of response that's right for you. If you want to sit the whole service, if you want to stand, if you want to kneel, there's no wrong way to be present in this space. And so. And so we encourage you to do that. We also know there are many families, both students and their families, from Silver Rail staff, teachers, faculty that are part of our church, maybe in the room right now. And to you, we want to say just how much your church loves you and supports you.
And we want to be here for you, not just today, but in the days and weeks and months and years ahead.
And so with that, if you'd like to, I'd invite you to stand as we pray. And we're going to just engage in prayer, lament in worship.
But we believe so strongly that in grief we don't grieve as those who have no hope, as the Apostle Paul said.
And so while today and these moments together are not moments of denial, they are moments of grief and togetherness that also looks with hope to Jesus. And so with that heart, would you pray with me, Lord Jesus?
We are mourning with our city and community, Lord Jesus, we as a church come together in this moment to turn our eyes towards Christ and pray for your mercy, pray for peace that passes, understand that doesn't make sense to rest, especially on those so deeply and personally affected by the violence of this week.
And may we as a church come together in this moment with this deep rooted intention to look to you and to offer ourselves in relationships and in this community as conduits of your peace in an impossibly dark and difficult moment. Lord Jesus, we do love you and we ask for your Holy Spirit to be present even now and here in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
Since Thursday, my messages, my emails have just been filled with so many people praying, praying for you, praying for us as a community.
Even this morning, just text after text from people we love, from all over, just saying, we're with you. We're praying for you. We believe God is close to you.
And in a weekend where, as we all know, this community has been shattered in so many ways, as Pastor Josh said, I don't think there's any better place than to come together with those that love each other to create a space especially for those in the room, those watching online who are present at Silver Rail teachers and faculty and first responders and students and their families that this might be a place of refuge and healing, however long that takes.
And in this moment, I know there's so many things that I feel, so many emotions and responses that we could have.
And some of those responses can leave me feeling a little bit guilty, feels a little bit like I want to accuse God of not doing enough.
And maybe you're the same that some of our responses to a tragedy of this scale and a devastation in our community this deep that we can oftentimes have a response of anger or frustration or questioning of our faith or of God. And I read Psalm 77 this week where the psalmist says this. The psalmist says, I cried out to God for help.
I cried out to God to hear me.
Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful and friends? I will tell you that I am grateful today that in Scripture we have full permission to ask the hard questions that we are given a model to bring every part of our hurt and our grieving and our wondering and our questioning to God that he can handle it and he welcomes it.
On Friday morning, we sat with one of many of our wonderful Silver Rail staff members, talking and praying and crying together.
And I was so struck by not only this conversation, but all the conversations we had with Silver Rail families and faculty of the yes. That our teachers say every single day. To loving and guarding and caring for our kids and saying yes to a sacrifice every single day, but especially on this hardest day, that heaven will only tell of that courage and that strength. Teachers, we love you. We are thankful for you, we honor you and we are praying for you.
But as we sat with Sharon and she shared with us her experience the day prior.
She said that in this incredibly painful aftermath and loss and with all these possible questions that come with what happened, she said this. She said, evan, we don't get the answers, but in this, we get to know the character and the heart of God.
And it made me think, what is the character and heart of God?
On days like this, if you've been here any length of time, you'll know. We preach a lot about the goodness and the mercy of God.
We talk often about the love of God that has been poured out so freely, so abundantly, without measure.
We talk a lot about the hope we have in Christ, not only for the life to come, not only in eternity, but somehow for here and now.
And I know how this week has felt for me, and maybe it's felt the same for you, how tempting it can be to say those messages of hope and peace and love and joy, all the things we talk about week after week, those have to be set aside on a day like Thursday.
We don't know if it'll hold up in the darkest places when we are asking God these questions that seem to not have answers. God, where were you? God, where are you now?
But I would remind us today as a church, as a community, that the gospel of Jesus was not announced to a world of peace.
God did not send his Son amongst those that were unmarked by pain, that avoided suffering, that were above loss or grief.
And in fact, if you read the story of Jesus, you'll find that one of the key reasons so many of the religious elite couldn't recognize Jesus as the Messiah is because it did not compute.
The Messiah would come to live among the hurting and broken, and in the end, to be hurt and broken himself amongst them.
And if the message of the gospel that we preach is a story of rescue, the way that Christ has rescued humanity is not by hovering above the pain of a broken world, but it's by entering into it, into death itself.
And I've felt this suspicion for many years as our church family has walked through seasons of trouble and pain and loss and suffering. And now this. As we mourn with our city and community.
I have this suspicion that maybe more than anything else, that the Christian faith points to.
It points to how Christ meets us in suffering, how Jesus comes on the worst day and he holds us in his hands and he holds us up when we don't have any strength. And that's the cross where Jesus fully submits to the terror of violence and the pain of death willingly. So that for all time and in all places, a suffering humanity would know that he is not far, but that he has suffered too, that God weeps to.
And so on this weekend, just a couple days that have left our community shattered and shocked.
As people of faith, I believe with all my heart that the message that we hold onto, of hope and goodness and mercy that we so happily profess on the best days was actually given to us for this day.
When we ask the questions, does God care? Is he faithful? And can light really shine in the darkness?
The hope we hold onto is for this day.
And maybe you're like me, where in these moments and impossibly difficult conversations, and when there are no easy answers, the most important thing we can do is avoid cliche.
I can't think of anything worse in the face of devastating loss than cliched answers or trite answers to these impossibly difficult moments.
And yet I'm reminded this week of a really old quote I can't shake was written in the shadow of the Black Death that swept through Europe in the 1300s, and in her city that was devastated by the plague. Some estimates say upwards of 75% of the city of Norwich was wiped out by the plague. And it's in the shadow of that devastation that Julian of Norwich wrote these impossibly beautiful words centuries ago.
Here's what she wrote. She wrote, all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
And she wrote these words not as a denial of suffering or pain, but as hope's protest in the face of despair.
Friends, you are loved more than you know.
You carry hope born for days of despair, and you are light in a city that this week saw darkness close up.
So as one of your pastors to my church that I love, I would ask you this. Don't opt out.
Our friends and our neighbors need us maybe on these days more than ever before.
Don't look away from the pain. Don't look away as the days turn into weeks and months and years of healing that will take a long time.
And more than anything else, don't be afraid, because perfect love drives out fear.
1 John 4:18 gives us this hope.
The Apostle John writes, there is no fear in love. Perfect love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror.
Just a minute. Ben's going to come up and share as well. But before he does, Aaron and Anna are going to sing what I would call today a protest song of hope.
And here's some of the lyrics that they're about. To sing over us. Take this mountain wait Take these ocean tears hold me through the trial Come like hope again.
Even when the fight seems lost, I'll praise you. And even when it hurts like hell, I'll praise you.
So, Lord Jesus, with a heart of protest against darkness, we invite the light of the world to be ever present.
That you would.
That you would surprise us with the hope of Jesus, the one who is not far from us in suffering, the one who is not distant in the darkest valley.
As Pastor Lindsay read us from Psalms 23, that today as we are walking in this valley, somehow against all reason, we do so without fear because you are with us and you comfort us and you prepare a table here and now.
And as the psalmist continued to say, your ways, God, are holy. What God is as great as our God. You are the God who performs miracles. With your mighty arm you redeem your people. And so God of strength and power, come close with your peace to hurting hearts today in Jesus name.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Like I'm sure all of us have been trying to find words for something that feels impossible to put into words.
You know, sadness and confusion and fear have been with me, but mostly anger.
And I find it frustrating that there doesn't seem to be much that we can say or we can sing that can actually hold us in these moments.
And the anger comes because this is not fair, you know, even as we just sing. And I love the song, and it's good for my soul to hear it. We sing.
God, you're all I want. And I'm going, no, I can think of a few more things.
I want a return to innocence.
I want police officers and first responders to never have to see that image in their head again. I want teachers to not have to teach how to lock down classrooms.
We want our children and our friends back.
And so I'm angry, and maybe you are too.
But I want to set you free from this kind of churchy responsibility that we have to find answers today. And man, believe me, I want answers so bad.
I would love to explain things and have them make sense and give you something hopeful on a platter that we can all understand and take in.
And while maybe you will find some of that today, I'm choosing to stand in faith that maybe the best thing that we can do is to resist the temptation to explain something that can't be explained.
And in this moment, we can stop and we can do our best to look at Jesus.
Because in John, chapter 11, Jesus receives word that his good friend Lazarus is sick. And by the time Jesus arrives, Lazarus has died. And then when Jesus encounters Mary, the sister of Lazarus, she falls at his feet and she's overwhelmed by grief.
And John tells us that Jesus sees Mary weeping and the people around her weeping, and that he's then deeply moved.
And in one of the shortest or the shortest scripture and maybe most profound, we learn that Jesus wept.
What's difficult to believe and understand about this moment is that Jesus knows what's coming next. He knows that Lazarus will shortly be raised from the dead. And he knows that death will not have the final word. And yet he weeps.
And he doesn't rush Mary through her grief.
He doesn't offer a theological explanation for why her brother died. And he doesn't invite her into an opportunity to have more faith so that then she may see a miracle. Instead, he enters into her sorrow.
I think it's important for us to understand that about the character of God in this moment, that if Jesus can weep knowing that the resurrection is coming, that maybe, even though it might feel impossible to some of our hearts today, we can grieve while we believe in the hope of resurrection.
Because grief is not the opposite of faith. And sadness is not proof that your faith hasn't matured or that you've lost your trust.
Anger at what happened this last week is not evidence that you've spiritually gone off the path.
But instead, I would suggest that our grief is our deepest expression of love in this moment.
We grieve because life matters and children matter. And we grieve because every human carries this immeasurable worth as someone made in the image of God.
And when something like that that is so precious is taken from us, anger and grief are the appropriate responses.
And so I want you to know if you feel those things today, that you are welcome here and there's room for you.
There's no need for any of us to move past any of this too quickly because Jesus wept and slowed down, and so can we.
And in this we learn that God is not absent from our suffering.
And when we want to know what God is like in the face of that suffering, we get to look at Jesus.
And what we see in Jesus is not a God that stands at this distance from human pain. It's a God that moves towards it. We see repeatedly a God that touches lepers, who welcomes children, who sits with broken hearted and stays at the graveside of a friend, and ultimately a God who enters into human suffering through the cross.
Psalm 34:18 says, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Notice that it doesn't say God is close to those who have made sense their suffering.
It says he's close to the brokenhearted.
And that's important because that means we don't have to draw ourselves a conclusion that everything is okay today.
And so this morning we pray for the families who are grieving, the children who are frightened or injured, for the children returning to classrooms, and for first responders and medical workers that have witnessed things that no one should ever have to witness.
And we trust, even though it feels impossible to me in this moment, that God is near, that when we can't feel it, that this love is moving toward our suffering.
And this is how we get to respond as individuals and families, as the church, and as a city.
In Galatians, chapter 6, verse 2, the apostle Paul says this says, carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
I wonder if those words can take on a particular significance for us today, because right now there are people carrying burdens that they never, ever should have had to carry.
And as the church, we have an opportunity to embody this love of Christ in the middle of that suffering.
May we be a people that move toward suffering rather than away from it.
As we prepare to take communion together and offer these prayers and scriptures on cards, I want to leave you with one final thought, and that is In Revelation, chapter 21, John gives us a picture of the future God is bringing about.
A day where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, a day where there's no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
Now, in that our tears, it doesn't say. God says that they are unnecessary.
He doesn't tell us that our sorrow has been misplaced and we've misunderstood the greater picture all along.
Instead, he wipes our tears away as if to say, I know.
I know how much it hurt.
I know what you've lost and what you've carried, and I am making all things new.
This is the hope of our Christian faith today.
Our hope is not that everything happens for a reason or that everything is okay, but instead that evil and suffering and death do not get the final word.
Jesus does.
And his word is resurrection.
And while today we grieve and today we have questions, and today, and for many days and years to come, our hearts will be broken.
And that's right, by the way, we also believe in the middle of all those things, in a God that draws near to us as we are brokenhearted.
And so Sometimes when we find ourselves today that we have no words, that love is simply what we have left to offer.
And so let us find even the smallest hope in that and let us bear each other's burdens.
Today I'm gonna invite you to stand with me, and I'd like to do something that we don't always do.
I just want to feel a little extra connected today. So will you find at least one hand to hold as we pray together? And, you know, let's reach across the aisles. Let's hold hands together.
Father God, we don't pray and participate in faith today, believing that everything will eventually make sense to us.
But again, we pray and stand in faith today believing that evil and darkness do not get the last word.
And so, Lord Jesus, we receive your call to love one another in the middle of suffering.
And just as you have called us to be life and love and Jesus represented in our community, we pray that those words would be more than just a statement on a wall, that they would become a moment for us to become a community who carry one another, who. Who love our neighbors and protect and care for the vulnerable and show up when life is at its hardest and refuse to let darkness have the final word.
And so, Lord Jesus, today we grieve honestly in all of our lament, and we trust that you are near and we love each other with everything that we have.
In Jesus name, Amen.
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