Dear Church,
Three weeks ago, I almost broke. I’m sure it had been coming for some time, but I began to notice how heavy I was feeling, how distracted I was from moment to moment. I wasn’t sleeping well. My discipline was out the window. I knew I had to get a handle on what was going on inside myself, so I took a whole morning to do what I’m constantly recommending you all do - I sat with Jesus.
From a dream that woke me up suddenly the week prior, to a few prophetic words with friends, to some big questions bouncing around in my own skull, I came to Jesus and laid this big pile of pain and confusion at his feet and asked him to speak into it. I prayed, I journaled, and tried to sit still. And this is what I heard.
“Ryan, you’ve been in death management mode for months”.
I immediately got this vision of myself watching a funeral procession go by. I was standing on the sidewalk and observing the faces of the mourners as they marched toward the cemetery. The procession just kept going and going, with no end in sight. I was feeling something, but I kept it all at arms length.
Our Lord showed me that I have been witnessing to death for a long time now. Heartbreak in my personal life, quickly followed by the coronavirus epidemic with its thousands of literal dead, the existential death of “normal” in quarantine; the death of our ability to be the church as we’ve understood it so far, the deaths of Black people and our illusions of a post-racial America; the death from broken relationships and accusations swirling about in our community as everyone has been so on edge.
The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came over me;
I was overcome by distress and sorrow.
Then I called on the name of the Lord:
“Lord, save me!” (Psalm 116:3,4)
It is the tenderness of Jesus that he didn’t merely leave me in this forensic analysis of what I was feeling, but that he also began to speak to me about his desires to save me. He showed me that “death management mode” was still, in some way, a form of protecting myself and trying to control the narrative so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by heartbreak. But the way of Jesus is the way of the cross, whereby Jesus takes us by the hand and walks us through death in order to experience new life. It’s so radically counterintuitive. Dying in order to live? Giving up control and self and trusting God - really trusting - that He will do what He said He’ll do?
To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
“He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.”
When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:21-24)
Christians are people who have learned the art of dying well, because we trust resurrection life is on the other side. Saint Paul tells us we’ve got to die daily to our ego, our need to control and manage and perform. To put a good face on things. To pretend.
I have been on a rather painful process of getting off the sidelines in order to not merely watch the funeral pass by, but to participate. To mourn, to grieve, to sit in the pain and confusion, to feel it all with Jesus. I’m not through it yet (and, if we’re honest, are any of us? There’s that ego, convincing us we’re in control!), but I feel like there is at least new hope for resurrection on the other side. And I know, when it comes, it will be good.
Unless we feel, incarnationally, the darkness of the world now, we cannot honestly lay claim to the light. May you take time to bring all you pain and confusion to Jesus, lay it at his feet, and let him minister to you. Don’t expect him to take it away so you don’t have to deal with it; he loves you too much to do that. Let him instead take you by the hand and walk you through death so you can encounter new life on the other side.
Grace&Peace,
Ryan