Preacher, Jane Esdale

"Breaking Up is Hard to Do"

July 11, 2004

Psalm 139

Romans 8

 

Just recently I have decided that I am old.

Now, before any of you try to persuade me that I am "only as old as I feel," let me say very quickly that I DO NOT FEEL OLD. Except at the end of days when I have shuffled 30 or 40 wedding gowns from the display racks to the dressing rooms and back to the racks again! On those days I feel as old as I actually am. However, I decided recently that I am old, and not middle aged anymore, because – let’s face it – few of us will live to be 114. I most definitely will be amazed even to approach that ripe old age! Not to mention that I’ve already dated myself by sharing music from "my" generation before the service began.

What I’m getting at this morning, is that by the time 99.9% of us have reached our middle years, we have experienced break-ups and endings of all kinds: pets die, the company we work for gets bought out – or closes its doors. Best buddies from childhood and youth lose touch. Important relationships end. Dear friends accept jobs in distant states or countries. Kids move out. Significant relatives die, sometimes before they should.

These endings are part of life and these endings are hard. When a connection dissolves, especially at someone else’s initiation, we can’t help experiencing deep loss, even a sense of being deserted. Left to fend for ourselves, feelings of injustice, anger and hurt may surface. We consider ourselves alone.

Long before I had reached middle age I had experienced Neal Sedaka’s song in many variations. I knew that breaking up IS hard to do, even if it was best. And I’ll bet that you also knew the same truth at an early age.

* * * * *

Today, July 11, is the 21^st anniversary of my father’s death. I share that with you, not because I want you to express sympathy, but because the date is unforgettable to me. Twenty-one years ago, at the time of my father’s death, I was interning as a chaplain at the State Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina. William Esdale died on a Monday night in a hospital in suburban Detroit, three weeks following a massive heart attack that would have killed a lesser man almost immediately. I had left the training program for five days right after he was hospitalized, returning to Columbia when he seemed more stable. I had to finish the 3-month internship as part of my seminary education.

I remember the time so well, because I had been assigned to lead Sunday worship in the hospital chapel the day before his death, only the second or third sermon I had ever preached. Despite my father’s worsening condition, I got through it and only one man walked out in the middle.

But at the State Hospital sometimes folks talked back during the preaching, sometimes they went out for a cigarette and then came back inside, so I didn’t think too much about it. Until the next day when I saw "Joe" walking on the grounds. "Joe" was a resident of the one of the wards to which I had been assigned, so he recognized me. He said, "Say, do you know that lady preacher who preached yesterday?"

"Why, yes, ‘Joe.’ It was me. I noticed that you left."

I’ll never know if he made the connection that I had been the "lady preacher" in the pulpit when he continued, "Well, I didn’t like it one bit. Had to leave. Couldn’t understand a word she said!" Humbled, I nodded. "Must have been my northern accent, I guess." And I’ve been trying to make myself understood ever since that day!

* * * * *

These two occurrences, my father’s death and my internship at the state hospital in Columbia are linked to the scriptures and sermon title I chose for today. I want to say that I do not believe in a God who is a master puppeteer, a God who pulls all the strings to make events happen – or not happen. In my way of thinking, that God could not be all-loving.

Psalm 139 speaks to me of a wondrous and magnificent creator whose capacity to love and comfort all of us under any circumstances is beyond my capacity to understand. "If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast" (Ps. 139:9-10). Psalm 139 is one particular passage I can read again and again and feel God’s love for me. I do believe that God is within me and within every one of us created in God’s image. But during times of loneliness, fear and despair, this image of an enormous, loving Being who follows me and takes my hand, comforts me beyond any other concept of what God may be like.

In much the same way, the scripture from Romans 8 offers a connection for us that extends far beyond our most intimate human relationships.

Please indulge me while I share one more story from my father’s illness. When I flew to Detroit two days following his heart attack, I wore a clerical collar because I had determined that NO ONE was going to keep me out of the Coronary Care Unit once I got to the hospital. No one but my mother, of course, who said that we had only 15 or 20 minutes to wait until it was time to see him again. When I finally got to go to his bedside, his nurse was there. She asked me who I was and when I told her my name she said, "Oh. You’re the daughter who’s going to be a bishop." I was dumbfounded and tried to explain that I was in seminary, but as a Baptist, we didn’t HAVE bishops. She responded, "Well, after you called me this morning to talk with me about your father’s condition, he told me that you were the daughter who was going to be a bishop!"

What love. Never, in 69 years of his life, did my father say "I love you" to me. Our relationship often had been stormy. After his death it took many years of reflection to see all the ways in which he really did love me and all of us kids. The scripture I got to choose for his memorial service was the section of Romans 8 that I read earlier. "For I am convinced 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." I knew that, despite his death, we would forever be connected to our dad through the love of God.

* * * * *

Paul wrote to the church in Rome where Christians were being persecuted in tortuous ways, ways that make even the recent heinous beheadings of innocent people seem less gruesome. The people of Rome desperately needed a word of hope if they were to remain faithful – a word that told them they did not suffer alone. God’s love was not an emotion – a warm feeling. God’s love was the ongoing action of the One who gave Jesus to the world. God’s Spirit had broken into the world in order that they might begin life anew. This was Paul’s message of hope given to the church.

In the midst of living imperfectly, in the midst of endings, of losses – may we also proclaim that despite disappointments, despite heartbreaks, God never leaves us alone. God who knit us together in our mother’s womb promises to be with us. God, who loves us beyond our capacity to comprehend, stands beside us.

We may feel God in the warm soil beneath our toes or in the beauty of a blue sky or a breeze off the Carolina coast. In the laughter of a child. In our best friend. We may experience God through the affection and regard of others. Sometimes we do not have any physical awareness of God. But I believe – even when I doubt it – God is with us and will never leave us comfortless. So be it. Amen.

 

print in pdf