Prophetic Burden

I have been hanging out in a weird place:

“The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners ."

So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.

Then the people asked me, "Won't you tell us what these things have to do with us?"

So I said to them, "The word of the LORD came to me: Say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to desecrate my sanctuary—the stronghold in which you take pride, the delight of your eyes, the object of your affection. The sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword. And you will do as I have done. You will not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners . You will keep your turbans on your heads and your sandals on your feet. You will not mourn or weep but will waste away because of ^[a] your sins and groan among yourselves. Ezekiel will be a sign to you; you will do just as he has done. When this happens, you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.'

"And you, son of man, on the day I take away their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes, their heart's desire, and their sons and daughters as well- 26 on that day a fugitive will come to tell you the news. At that time your mouth will be opened; you will speak with him and will no longer be silent. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD." Ezekiel 24:15-27

Back in the dark days of the late spring, early summer of 2006, when Melissa was undergoing the bone marrow transplant, I was reading Ezekiel a lot. Part of that came because I was teaching Disciple 4 Bible Study, and Ezekiel was part of the reading. The class was really wrestling with what to do about this prophet. As I was studying and preparing classes, I kept coming back to something: more than any of the other prophets, Ezekiel himself is the prophecy.

That really resonated with the two of us, because Melissa was sold out to whatever came from this process. No matter what, she wanted to be a witness. So if she did well and could say, “This is awesome,” how wonderful. But if things were difficult, she would testify to God’s power in the worst times. And maybe she would strengthen somebody else for the journey.

She was ok with that, I was not. I knew, figured, understood, whatever, that no matter what the outcome of this, there would be much walking with God, much to say, to learn, to pass on. I have often said that this life is war, and success in war depends on there being some veterans who survive long enough to teach the new guys how to survive long enough to fight back. I did not want to be that guy. Melissa didn’t mind.

So I would read Ezekiel. And when things would get tough—when the radiation was at the peak of its destructive power and her mouth and guts were were shedding like snake skin; or when her liver was swollen, because radiation is like a million punches becoming one; or when huge waves of anxiety would hit because of the massive doses of steroids, I’d be reading Ezekiel, aggravated because I say too much some times, am too transparent, and yet God uses that to help others. I’d get really mad when I felt like she was going thru something that prayer would get her thru and she might tell someone or say something about it… I did not want there to be anything to witness to…

And then there was my own message, what I have been preaching to one degree or another for a few years, that there is a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is tied to your external factors, things that are mutable, perishable, and utterly untrustworthy. But joy is tied to the inner condition of the heart, to faith in God. So I can have all things, but totally lack joy—and what a wreck of a human being is the spoiled brat who has it all and still manages to screw up life!! Or I can be stripped bare but still have joy because of the love of God in my heart.

So between my message of joy and not wanting there to be anything to witness, I would walk around outside, taking a break from being in the room and say to God, “Enough! I get it!...”

And so now: I am not really left wondering what this is about, or what it all means, or what is supposed to happen. It’s not just that Melissa and I talked about a future without her in it. It was that we talked about such things in light of the work of God in our life, especially her life.

It’s pretty plain, this thing I have come to call the prophetic burden: speak plainly about what God has done in our lives, making special reference to a plain fact of faith: none of what we believe depends on getting what we want, but on faith. It simply has turned out that the Word I get is about endurance in prayer and perseverance in faith in spite of bad news, in spite of tough times. I wish I had a different message. I wish I had a pleasant word, a nostalgic word. I wish I got to be one of the pastors who is a “leader.”

Instead, I preach as one refined in fire, and not like gold or silver, or even some alloying process to make steel. More like rock that fell into some form as God saw fit. Nothing special, they’re all over the place, except most stones don’t speak.

And what do I say? For the moment, that is plain, and has been plain for a few months now. One day Tim Jones and I had some prayer, and we came out of that prayer in serious agreement that what the Lord wanted was for me to preach about how we are getting through all this with our faith intact. I sat down and prayed some more and fleshed out 7 sermons about hope. They all made sense. Basic hard-core pastoral theology. They were on the docket.

And then, Melissa died. There was a temptation to lay off for a while, to sit back and lick my wounds. That may come in fits and starts. But I began to remember what Melissa would have expected of me—to get right back at it, to charge hard, to bring some to their knees, to lift others from their pits, to convict some of sin, to assure others of forgiveness, to be beloved by some, disliked by others (it happens, actually. Sweet as I am, it still happens.) I began to hear from God almost immediately about Ezekiel, to remember that where I am and where we had been is not so much the subject of preaching as the sign of the faithfulness of God.

In the middle of all this, I actually thanked God for being present, and for letting me mourn for my wife, unlike Ezekiel.

So I sat back down in prayer, to take a look at the sermons. I wondered: are they still the same? Does anything change? I was ready to preach them, I worked on them, in the hope that Melissa was going to be ok, that all kinds of plans were going to work out. And now?

I looked hard at them and marvel at God who seems to have negotiated a future. If Melissa were still here, these sermons would be ok, good reminders of God’s faithfulness. So I won’t change anything about them, because now that she is not here, there’s no doubt but that He means His Word, and I mean it, too. I wonder at God, to lay something on my heart, no matter what. So I won’t change them; not the word about all things working to the good, not the sermon I will preach on healing. It is not dependent on getting what we want. It depends on the faithfulness of the One who spoke the Word from which we preach. As Harold Dorsey told me at the visitation, “God is a very present help in the time of trouble. If that’s not true now, son, it never was.”

Finally, I am not surprised by all this. Not only not surprised, but also strengthened. The Word, even the obscure and difficult parts of The Prophets, is full of power. And then there is the mystical truth that the fundamental condition of poverty is being on display—whether it is the physically poor who can not dress right to hide their condition, or the spiritually poor who, like Christ on the Cross, are something of a spectacle in times that seek ease and happiness as opposed to peace and joy.

Poverty sticks out, and this is its crushing force. In the long hospitalization in February, I think Melissa was at her lowest moments emotionally. So much poking and prodding, so much intestinal pain and problems, so many interns checking out the weird case, so much alternating anxious despondency and frenetic thinking because of the massive doses of steroids. One morning, she was having a lot of trouble breathing. Her mom and a nurse were helping her sit up straight. She was getting ready for an unpleasant test. That was the day when I was afraid my words were trite, coming from me. I said quietly to her, “Jesus was powerless, disgraced, and humiliated,” something like that. She said later that helped her very much. She was very much on display, under a gaze, I think Lacan would say. Scopophilia, C.S. Lewis called it.

I wonder, too, at the power of prophecy. About 5 years ago, at an Easter Sunrise Service at Dunaway, in anticipation of celebrating the Resurrection, I kept us at Holy Saturday. I had been reading the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom) that week. Part of what I distilled from them was that the pastor’s job, among other things, is to prepare people to die. To do otherwise is to avoid the reality of earthly life and the deep consolation of the faith.

I suppose you can’t help feeling weird in the wake of a death. People are attentive, tentative, because you want to say something, but what can you say? You wonder, “Will he fall apart?” “What about the boys?” So it is a time of spiritual poverty, of not feeling right about anything. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those that mourn, for they will be comforted--” by Him, but by others as well.

If there is to be a time where who we are is on display, then let us be fools for Christ, mourning with great hope and joy. And may it be that who we are in Christ is plain to everyone, and our lives be signs of God’s faithfulness. If Ezekiel is something of a guide, and there is any example I may give, then let it be, that armed with the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, you, too, find peace in the dark night of the soul.