(The parts I most connected with I have put in bold type.)
“Judd and April are very thankful for all the support and prayers — and they say they feel them,” Bishop Jim Arends told another bishop on the other end of the telephone line Friday afternoon.
He was silent a few moments while the caller said something, then replied, “It is. I can’t imagine sadder.”
Arends had just gone over the details of the earthquake, how 25-year-old Ben Larson’s wife and cousin escaped the collapsed building in Haiti, how Ben didn’t, how they tried to get back up the mountain to find him, but how even rescue teams weren’t allowed into the area because it was so unstable, and how Ben, who was becoming a pastor, is presumed dead.
“I’ve been having a tough time,” Arends said after hanging up the phone and we continued our interview at the La Crosse Area Synod office. “I’m mixing my present and past tenses.”
He paused. Tears formed.
“I really don’t want Ben to be gone, and I don’t like using the past tense.”
What do you do with grief like this?
Ben’s mom, the Rev. April Ulring Larson, former bishop of La Crosse, once told me in an interview that you are “to sing your sadness at loss and yet sing your great joy of God for whom death is not the last word.”
Bishop Arends puts it like this:
“There are types of Christians who will say, ‘Well, he’s in heaven, be happy.’ That’s not our background. If Jesus would weep in the face of death, we acknowledge it’s OK to weep in the face of death.”
He went on.
“There are Christians who would say, ‘Paul wrote, ‘Do not grieve.’” That’s not what Paul wrote. Paul wrote, ‘Do not grieve as those who have no hope.’ We still grieve, but we trust that in some spiritual, powerful way, Ben has passed through death into the eternal care of the Lord he was serving.”
These are the words of people of faith. Not a wimpy faith that gives answers like everything happens for a reason. Not a thoughtless faith that assumes God is up in heaven so all is swell down here on earth. Not a perfect faith, either. But people of a graced faith, and a faith Ben loved.
To prepare for my interview with Arends, I pulled out an old interview I’d done with Ben dated Dec. 15, 2006.
As I began to read his words, my response, like the response of so many on this earth right now, was tears. But then the tears receded and by the end of it, I was nodding my head, pondering my own faith and feeling inspired by this young man who expressed his love so deeply.
Listen to Ben:
“It’s clear from almost everything Jesus does is he’s taking the out group and making them the center. I mean, that’s the Gospel in my mind. ... With his actions, he’s making people that have never felt like anyone feel like they’re important to him. So when we talk about Christianity, that’s what I want to talk about — outsiders having a place. And not just a small place, but a prominent place. And when I’m at church, that’s what I want my church to be.”
“I want to use Christianity not as a consumer-type thing we can own but something that’s volatile and God controls us more than we control God. I don’t think that’s compatible with our Western world. We like to be in control and faith is definitely not being in control.”
“I was allowed the opportunity to explore my faith, have doubts and try and find answers. ... I’m Lutheran because I choose to be and not because my parents are.”
“We’re here to help the needy, raise up the poor, fight oppression, fight hunger, all these things.”
“When I was little, I prayed for things that I wanted and it’s evolved to praying for things that I feared. ... It’s progressed more and more to thanks.”
I pondered some of these things just before writing this column. On my prayer bench I’d sat in silence to be with the people of this story. The sun shone bright even as I held my eyes closed and it reminded me of these people’s faith, of the way Lutherans seem to speak so well about hope when talking about death, of light when talking about darkness. As if to drive the point home, immediately after getting off the bench, I knocked my head on a dangling prism and rainbows swirled around the room.
Tears remain, of course, for so many in this region and on this earth. But as these Lutherans, who know the cross so well, teach us, there is more than suffering in life, more than suffering in Ben’s death.
“I don’t know if all things happen for a reason,” Arends said on Friday. “I do know that when things happen, God is there. I know that God is on top of a high hill in Haiti, weeping in pain. I know that God is on an airplane with a widow, weeping in pain. I know that God is in Duluth with a couple parents, weeping in pain, and yet promising to hold and keep and give whatever they need.”
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