There is something we say to console ourselves when
someone dies. It is a phrase I have heard over and over.
We say,“I know she is in a better place.” My friend, my
parent, my spouse has passed away, but it feels good to
think of one truth: “He is in a better place.”
By that, of course, we mean heaven; we are thinking about
what it must be like to be in a place where there is neither
sorrow nor sighing, neither sickness nor disease. In a better
place – one that is better by far than this earth, where
violence takes some, wars take many, diseases take more,
new scares like SARS intrude, and where eventually time
takes us all. We are comforted by thinking of those we love
as “in a better place”.
But my question to you today is, “Are you in a better place?”
“Are you in a better place than you were a month ago, six
months ago, a year ago, when you suffered your loss?” My
question is not about your physical location. My question is
about what sort of emotional and spiritual place you are in.
You suffered a loss; for some of you it was the loss of a
loved one. For others maybe the loss of a job. For still
others the loss of a significant relationship – a marriage that
broke up, a child that rebelled, a friend that grew cold. All
of these are huge losses that for a time disabled you and put
you down. Are you in a better place, now, after your loss?
Or it might be that your loss is more interior, something
inside your own mind and heart. You are aging, and you feel
that you are losing some of your powers; you don’t
remember things as you used to. You have been working at
your job for a long time, but it doesn’t mean much any longer;
it’s stale. You’ve lost.
Or you’ve lost out in the pecking order. You thought you had
good buddies at your school, but all of a sudden they are not
as interested in you as they once were. That’s a loss too. I
remember my daughter bursting into the house, when she
was eight or nine years old, and announcing that she had
figured out that some of the other little girls on the street only
wanted to play with her when she had a new toy. When the
toy got old, they weren’t interested in Karen any more. It
was a loss to discover that.
When you have experienced loss, how do you get into a
better place? Are you in a better spiritual place than you
were? How do you get there?
I don’t know how you picture the apostle Paul. You probably
have in your mind’s eye the image of a prolific preacher and
a profound professor of the Gospel. And you would be right,
but only half right. Because Paul, you see, was not only
preacher and teacher and missionary and author, he was
also a real human being. He had feelings and problems.
And in the course of all of those very human situations, I
believe he clued us about how to get to a better place when
we suffer loss.
I want to take you back to the beginning of what we know as
the second missionary journey. Paul had been in Jerusalem,
and life there had been good. His point of view was heard
and adopted by the Council of the church; he was riding
high. From Jerusalem Paul was sent to Antioch, along with a
delegation of others, to teach and build up the believers
there. Paul felt like he was in a very good place indeed.
But, feeling that the time had come to move on, Paul
proposed to Barnabas that they undertake another
missionary journey. That is when good things began; it is
also when some very bad things began. Paul was about to
experience some successes; but he was also about to suffer
some serious losses. Let me review these, in quick
succession:
First, Paul and Barnabas could not agree about whether to
take with them the young man Mark, who had flunked out on
a previous missionary journey. So, as a result of their
disagreement, Paul and Barnabas came to a parting of the
ways. They separated. Rather like a divorce or an
estrangement between family members. They just went their
separate ways. Paul felt that loss.
And then, as Paul and his new partner, Silas, went on their
way, they found they couldn’t do anything they had expected
to. They went to the places they intended to go, but – and
this is one of those things that is very mysterious, but here is
what the Scripture says – the Holy Spirit forbade them to
preach in Asia! They felt frustration, because what they had
set out to do just wouldn’t happen! You know what that
feels like. Rather like the other day, when I was trying to
resolve how we would handle a bill collector who said that
the church had not paid a statement that dated back nine
years. Every question I asked brought two more questions.
I was getting nowhere! Paul had an understanding of what
he was supposed to do, but it was not working out. He felt
loss. Yes, he caught a vision for a new place to go, but
nevertheless, grief over the frustration of not being able to do
what he set out to do.
Well, it continues. Paul and his companions sailed for
Greece and ended up in Philippi, where the first European
converts were made. What a time for rejoicing, over Lydia
and her family, new Christians! But what happened? Jail!
Clapped into prison. Loss again. Loss of freedom. You talk
about being in a better place?! I’ve had enough
conversations with ex-offenders to assure you that jail is not
that better place!
I could go on. After release from the Philippian jail, roughed
up in Thessalonica, run out of Berea, rejected and scoffed at
in Athens, Paul had had it, wouldn’t you think? Paul had had
some wonderful successes, yes, on this second missionary
journey, but he had also suffered serious losses. And I feel
sure it was getting to Paul; the best of us get depleted after a
while. If you suffer loss after defeat after disappointment,
you will be down. You just will. No reason to apologize for it
or to deny it. You will be down. You will be in difficult place.
So, again, the question: how do you get to a better place?
Paul next went from Athens to Corinth. And I believe that it
was in Corinth that he reached a turning point. I believe that
it was in Corinth that Paul went through a grieving process
that allowed him to get on with his life. Let’s look, step by
step, at what Paul did in Corinth that took him to a better
place.
I
First, notice that Paul turned away from unproductive habits
and went instead to something that worked. Paul quit
pursuing tired, worn-out, familiar patterns of behavior, and
went with something that gave him fulfillment. In Corinth,
just as in Thessalonica and Berea, Paul went to the Jewish
synagogue to preach Christ. In Corinth, just as in
Thessalonica and Berea, the folks at the synagogue got
upset, shouted him down, and threatened to beat him to a
pulp. But here in Corinth Paul did something new! In
Corinth, instead of continuing the fight, as he had done in
those other places, here Paul just brushed off the protestors,
left the synagogue, and went next door to Titius Justus’
house to preach to the people that would listen.
In other words, Paul finally figured out that what he had been
doing was not productive. It led only to more loss, and so he
went with something fulfilling, something that would work.
He would go to a whole new audience and forget about those
who only made his life miserable.
They say that the definition of stupidity is continuing to do the
same thing over and over, but expecting a different result.
The other day I was getting out of my car, and across the
street I heard a low growl. It was somebody trying to start
his car from a low battery. All he could get was a little, weak
growl. But he kept on turning that key, over and over, trying
to coax something out of that dead battery. It’s not going to
happen. Not going to get life out of something that is not
working. But we try! We keep on trying the same old same
old, even though it is not working.
I have seen folks whose grief over someone they lost took
the form of capturing that person’s room as a shrine. Every
picture, every furnishing, even their clothes, untouched,
sometimes for years, as though having all of their things
there would bring them back. And of course it does not. It
only prolongs the agony. You cannot just keep on doing
what you used to do and expect that it will help you over your
loss.
But I have also seen people who experience loss as a
liberating experience. I have seen people who felt free, for
the first time, to travel, to participate in things they enjoy,
even to have new friends, because their old relationships
were so confining. Did you notice that Paul picked up some
new friends in Corinth? This couple, Aquila and Priscilla,
who themselves had suffered loss – they had been kicked
out of Rome – this couple knew what it was to lose. They
became Paul’s companions for the journey. They became a
part of Paul’s opportunity for a new direction. There’s a
whole sermon there about the value of support groups like
our “Healing Beyond Loss” ministry! We need to drop old
ways that don’t work and go with something or someone that
is fulfilling.
When you lose something, you may also gain. It just takes
the insight and the courage to do what Paul did: when he
admitted to himself that this thing of facing conflict
everywhere was not working, he turned away from that
unproductive pattern, and found something that did work.
He turned to something and someone fulfilling.
II
But now notice, next, that when Paul turned from these old
unproductive patterns into things that worked, the day came
when he felt he needed to do some re-evaluating. So he
disengaged himself and went exploring. Paul found that after
a while, he was ready to back off from his work, however
productive it was, and just evaluate his personal stance.
The text tells us that after Paul had stayed in Corinth for a
while, he sailed for Syria and then went slowly on his way
home, stopping off here and there, just to feel his way. He
went to Ephesus for discussions, and, even though they
asked him to stay longer, he went on. He went to Cenchreae
and got a haircut – kind of the equivalent of ladies deciding
that a new dress or a new hat will make you feel better! And
then Paul went back to Jerusalem and to Antioch – you’ve
heard of those places! He went back to the key places in his
experience. He went to the places where he felt most at
home. He went where he knew there were those who
accepted him and loved him. He went to the places where
he first knew the Lord, just to get in touch with his own heart
again.
Sometimes, brothers and sisters, it is important just to get
down to basics, down to the things we know and love.
Sometimes it is important, if we are going to stay on even
keel, to retreat from the overwhelming clutter and go to
something simpler. Sometimes we have to pull back and
evaluate how we are living our lives, and go to those who
cherish us unconditionally, so that we can be healed.
Several years after my father died, my mother continued to
live alone in their retirement apartment. My brother was in
Texas, and, as you know, I live in Maryland. Both of us a
long way from her in Kentucky. Now my mother was one of
the most settled creatures you will ever meet. She had lived
in the same neighborhood in Louisville from the time she was
nine years old, all the way through marriage and raising her
family and retirement. She had never lived anywhere else,
and had been a member of the same church since childhood.
All of that was home. But her friends began to die. Her
family had already left. As her health began to fail, my
brother invited her to come to live in his home in Texas. I
opposed that. I tried to talk her out of it. I said, “Mother, you
have lived in this same part of Louisville all of your life, and
you now have the longest membership of anybody at Deer
Park Baptist Church. This is home. I cannot see your being
happy in Fort Worth, where you know nobody except Bob
and his family.” She thought about that for several months,
but she finally concluded, “In the end, I would rather be with
those who love me than around others who have their own
lives to lead.” And that is what she did, spending her last
years in her son’s home. She evaluated her losses and went
where she knew she would be loved unconditionally.
I want this church to be unconditional love after loss. In this
church we can to love people as they need to be loved. If
you need to come and just sit and weep, there is somebody
here who will let you do that. If you need to come and
scream about how awful it is, some of us are prepared to
listen to that. And, frankly, even if you need to come and act
out anger and rage and frustration and whatever else on
your road to recovery, we will take that too. We are a place
where love grows. We are a permission-giving fellowship.
Everyone needs a time and a place to evaluate and wonder
what is next. Your loss might be the loss of a loved one; it
might be the end of a romantic relationship; it might be
termination from your job, or failure at school, or
incarceration. Whatever it is, it will involve the loss of self-
esteem. But if it’s loss, that’s all we need to know. Find
here, in the family of God, those who will sing with you,
“Where is the blessedness I knew, when first I knew the
Lord; where is the soul’s refreshing view of Jesus and His
word?” We will sing that lament with you because in this
community of faith there are many who have been honest,
many who have doubted God, many who have questioned
themselves, many who have floundered. But we, like Paul,
have gone back to Jerusalem and Antioch, where there were
those who loved us unconditionally, and brought us home
again. They brought us into a better place. I pray that this is
a better place for you today.
III
But now, as for Paul’s better place, prepare to be surprised.
As for what Paul discovered was a better place for him to be,
after all his losses, look out! Paul, at the beginning of his
journey, had left the region of Phrygia and Galatia, where he
had been forbidden to preach; and then, in quick succession,
lost a partner, lost his freedom, lost a major argument. Paul
suffered all these losses, but dealt with them, first, by turning
from unproductive ways to something fulfilling, and then,
second, by going to the places where he would experience
unconditional love. After all of that Paul came to a better
place. Where was it? What was its name? Listen to this
text: “He went from place to place through the region of
Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.”
Phrygia and Galatia, Galatia and Phrygia! He went right
back to the very places where the journey of loss and defeat
had begun! Where he lost out, now the places to which he
went again. But with a difference, with a profound
difference. This time Paul went not as a victim, but as a
victor; he went “strengthening the disciples.” This time Paul
went not as a disabled, defeated, doubting, discouraged
debtor; this time Paul went strengthening others as he went.
He had something to give, and he gave it. He had
replenished himself, and he was prepared to share himself
with others.
If you really want to be in a better place, that better place
very probably is your own address. If you truly want to be in
a better place, it may be that you are called to where you
already are. If your goal is a better place than where you are
now, that does not mean that you will have to go out and find
some new horizon. That may well mean that you are going
to go right back to the place where your defeat began, and
there demonstrate that death has no dominion over you.
If you have suffered the loss of a husband, your calling may
be to go to the new widow on the block, take your pain with
you, and comfort her. If you have been whipped by the local
bully, your calling is to kneel beside the next victim of his fists
and offer help and comfort. If you have lost your job, help
your neighbor to find one for herself! If you have money
problems, get together with your sister or brother who is also
bankrupt and share what you know. If you just can’t make it
any more, on your own, guess what? Your better place is to
get right back into the fight and help somebody else who is
suffering. Your calling is to use your loss to strengthen
others. Your Galatia, your Phrygia, where your defeats
began – they are that better place. Go there to strengthen
others.
Whenever I think of loss, I think of one of the most
unforgettable characters that has ever graced my life. When
I became your pastor, one of our leaders took me to see all
the members who were in nursing homes. One of the first
people I met was the longest surviving charter member of
this church, Mrs. Verna Royle. Mrs. Royle eventually spent
seventeen long years in a nursing home with a back that
would not hold her up. She would say to me, “I don’t know
why the Lord has kept me here so long. I can’t do anything
like what I used to do.” But when she finally went to what
you and I call a better place at the age of 106, she left that
nursing home an infinitely better place, for she had offered
her witness to every orderly, nurse, aide, and casual visitor
that came her way. Her Phrygia, her Galatia, defeat; but she
was strengthening the disciples, and it was a better place.
If you are looking for a better place, look no more. There is
no better place than turning from what no longer works to
what does work – and that is turning from the old paths of sin
and shame to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. That’s a
better place.
There is no better place than turning from the relentless
pursuit of doing it on your own to connecting with those who
love you unconditionally in the church of Jesus Christ. That’s
a better place.
There is no better place than using your healed heart and
giving yourself to the needs of others. Near the cross –
there is no better place.
