Romans 8:31-39 David Orendorff

Parents will remember, and others can certainly imagine, how tired of diapers you get. So that when our babies are at the age of toilet training, we strongly encourage them, paying attention to every sign, and asking frequently, “Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I have several toilet training stories which I have been forbidden to tell.

However, an anonymous young couple had a child of toilet age. Dad was at the kitchen table paying bills when the child made some suspicious movements. Quickly, dad took his child into the bathroom and got him situated, as we say.

The bathroom was just off the kitchen and like many older homes had apparently been converted from a closet. There were no windows and the light switch was outside the door. Inadvertently, as he left the bathroom dad closed the door and turned out the light. I’ve done such to my children and my children have done such to me (not always inadvertently).

After a time, a little and somewhat frightened voice came from the dark, “Where did I go?”

Where did I go indeed? When we are going about the business of our lives, when things seem all in order and right, and suddenly the lights go out, where did we go? We have been lost in the dark. Dad immediately returned to the bathroom, turned on the light, opened the door and comforted his son.

Paul is convinced that when it all goes dark and we wonder where we went God always returns with an open door and a bright light. He writes;

that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”1 Romans 8:38-39

I have a true story of darkness and lostness that may make some of you cry. So be forewarned. While in Helena, Montana I was fortunate to be the pastor of a remarkable woman who has asked to remain anonymous. She, like God, had a son. He was thirteen and it was near Christmas when, for an unknown reason, he lost all hope and shot himself. She is the one who found him dead. The lights went out. She had no idea where she had gone, but she knew it was dark and desperate. She wrote in a newsletter for grieving parents:

My first reaction, once the numbness wore off, was “It’s my fault. If only I hadn’t gone to the party, if only I’d given him the Christmas money he’d been asking for, even as we walked out the door, if only, if only.”

She asked herself, “How could I let my baby die?” Now, how could she live? And if she did live would she ever laugh again?

Then Jesus entered her darkness in the light of her Christian community, the body of Christ. She learned to not only laugh, she also learned to touch the souls of others like herself with a healing grace.

For a long time she edited the newsletter for a Chapter of Caring Parents, a group of family and friends who have lost a child. She tells her story and shows in her life that there is life after death. She sings in the choir. She loves her surviving daughter. With pain she celebrates Christmas. With patient grace she waits for the day when she will again be with her son.

Recently she wrote me:

Even though I didn’t expressly blame God for causing (my son’s) death, I did wonder how He could allow it. (My son) was just a child…

I’ve come to believe that even though God didn’t actively participate in (my son’s) death, He did, for reasons I’ll probably never know, allow it. I also believe that He was there to take care of (my son) afterwards, that (he) is in Heaven and we don’t have to worry about him - he’s just fine. As (my daughter) put it, “he’s our Angel with Wings.”

I also believe that even though I didn’t actively turn to God when (my son) died, He was there nevertheless, carrying me when I had no reserves of my own, helping me in those horrible first days, weeks and months until I could begin to function (on) my own. I know He is still here taking care of me, helping me to see the positive side of life, reminding me of the happy times with (my son) instead of just reliving his death, allowing me to see beauty in living, in my family, and in my memories… .”

When the darkness comes and we wonder “Where have I gone?” Jesus comes to us like a loving father or mother to turn on the light, open the door and hold us in grief and joy.

There is a 15th-century Russian Easter icon (see end of sermon for the reproduction) whose theme is Jesus’ decent into hell, an intentional descent into the darkest of bathrooms, into the pit of meaningless, into the center of “Where did I go?” Jim Forest describes the icon this way:

Beneath his feet, falling into a pit of darkness, are the broken gates of hell…

The gates that seemed capable of imprisoning the dead throughout eternity are, through Christ’s death on the cross, reduced to ruins. All others who have died have come to the land of death as captives, but Christ - in a golden robe and surrounded by a mandorla, a symbol of glory and radiant truth - comes as conqueror and rescuer…

The principal figures to the left and right of Christ being raised from their tombs are the parents of the human race, Adam and Eve, while behind them are gathered kings, prophets, and the righteous of Israel…”2 Jim Forest, Praying with Icons, Orbis Books, 1996

Then Forest writes:

For me, the icon of Christ’s descent into hell is linked with a prayer not to live a fear-centered life. We live in what is often a terrifying world.

Being fearful seems to be a pretty reasonable state to be in: fear of violent crime, fear of job loss, fear of illness, fear for the well-being of people we love, fear of the collapse of our pollution-burdened environment, fear of war, and finally, fear of death… .

We can easily get ourselves into a paralyzing state of fear that is, truly, hellish. The icon reminds us that Christ can enter not just some other hell but the hell we happen to be in, grab us by the hands, and lift us out of our tombs.”

However the light got turned out, wherever we went, whatever is happening to us, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, absolutely nothing. I say again, when the darkness comes and we wonder “Where have I gone?”, Jesus (in spirit, in friend or stranger, in our church) comes to us like a loving father or mother to turn on the light, open the door and hold us in grief and joy.

Shalom and Amen.

[1] Romans 8:38-39

[2] Jim Forest, Praying with Icons, Orbis Books, 1996.