When Someone You Love Dies

10-7-15

Lexington UMC                                  “When Someone You Love Dies”

John 11: 1-37

Everyone should have a piece of red yarn at your place.  Get the person next to you to help you tie the red yarn on your wrist.

I read a story about a woman who became very sick.  She had to go in the hospital, and after a while the doctors said her condition was terminal, and they and they sent her home, where she was confined to her bed.  This woman had an eight-year-old daughter who was not aware of how sick her mother was…didn’t know that she was going to die.

But one day the little girl was standing outside the bedroom door when the doctor came by (this was during the days when doctors made house calls).  She overheard the doctor say these words to her daddy.  “I have to be honest with you.  It won’t be much longer now.  In fact, before the last leaves have gone from that tree outside her window, she will die.”  The little girl heard all of this, but her daddy didn’t know she heard it.

A little while later, the father was sitting at the table drinking coffee and he wondered where his daughter was.  After looking all over, he saw her out in the yard.  She was picking up the leaves that had begun to fall.  She was using pieces of red yarn to tie the leaves back onto the tree limbs.

Now look at your red yarn.  This is a reminder to all of us, that we all have people in our lives right now that we are not ready to let go of.  We do, don’t we?  And it is to remind us of all have had people we love that have died… and we weren’t read to say goodbye to them…were we?  That’s what we are talking about this evening…  about when someone we love dies.

Everybody hold up your red yarn.  This is something we all know about.  And did you know that Jesus knew about it, too?  Let’s read about it in John chapter 11.  The scripture passage is printed on the sheet in front of you.  I’m reading from the New Living Translation.  <Read John 11: 1-37>

I.               When someone we love dies, we are tempted to focus on what we do not know.

What I mean by that is that we are tempted to focus on all the questions that newspaper reporters focus on when they are writing a story.  You know those questions?

Who?  When? Where?  Why? How?

All these questions we are tempted to focus on…and we don’t know the answers to them. 

·      We don’t know who.  Not really.  One person we think is young and healthy, and next thing you know, they die unexpectedly.  Another person we think is old and sickly, and they live on and on.  Right?

·      When?  According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s website, a person dies every 12 seconds.  But we don’t know when our time will come – nor when our loved ones’ time will come.

·      Where?  We don’t know where we will die, do we?

·      How?  Mostly we don’t know, unless we have a terminal illness.  Even then, we are sometimes surprised.

And then there is the big…BIG…question.  The “why?” question…  Why did the other person die and not me?  Why did they have to die so young?  Why didn’t God do something?

The “why” question was what Mary and Martha wanted to know from Jesus.  They both said, “Lord if you had been here…what?...my brother wouldn’t have died.”  Implied in that was…Why, Lord?  Why weren’t you here?  Why didn’t you do something?

Yesterday, Emily Kate turned 17.  It made me remember when I was 17.  You remember being 17?  The big thing I remember about being 17 is that that was the year when my dad died.  And the question I wanted to know was why?  Why, Lord?  Lord did my dad have to die so young?  Y’all ever feel that way?

Now – of course there is a medical explanation to our why question.  There is even a philosophical answer.  None of that satisfies, though.  We want to KNOW…and we don’t…and if we get stuck in the Who? When? Where?  Why? How? cycle we will be miserable. 

II.             Instead, let’s focus on what we do know.

Here are some things we do know about death and dying:

1.     Death is a part of life.  We all die.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Now, Ben Franklin was smart and all, but I am a little more convinced when I read this truth in God’s Word, aren’t you? 

Heb. 9: 27

James 4: 13-14

1 Peter 1: 24-25

2.     Our spirits are eternal.

We were created in the image of God.  God is spirit, and God is eternal.  Therefore we are spirit, and we are eternal.  There are many Scriptural references that point to this.  Let’s just look one from 1 Cor. 15:

1 Cor. 15: 51-57

3.  Grief is a natural part of human life.

John 11: 35 says, “Jesus wept.”  Why did Jesus weep?  He wept because he was fully human, and grief is a part of life.  It hurts when someone we love dies.  It hurts to see others around us grieving.  One of my favorite characters in the movie Steel Magnolias is Dolly Parton’s character, Truvy.  Truvy says, “I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence.”

4.     Even though we grieve, we grieve with hope.

Christians are people of hope.  We are resurrection people!  It is one of the foundational beliefs of our faith.

1 Cor. 15: 13-20

1 Thess. 4: 13-18

5.     When we die we go into the presence of the Lord.

We don’t know the particulars of what happens when a person dies.  I know that there are books out there…  Heaven is For Real…  Ninety Minutes in Heaven…  I’ve read those and I like them.  But what my faith rests on comes from this book – the Bible.

2 Cor. 5: 6-8

Luke 23: 42-43

6.     We will see our loved ones again.

Yellow ribbon…  Now get the person next to you to help you tie on your yellow yarn.  Wearing a yellow ribbon to remember a loved one that is far away has been a custom for hundreds of years.  Nobody really knows where it started.  I remember in the 70’s when Tony Orlando did a song, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.”  It was a song about forgiveness…a guy getting out of prison and all.  But it goes way, way back before that.  There was a popular marching song for the US military – I don’t know if they still use it.  I know it goes as far back as 1917.  It goes,

'Round her neck she wears a yeller ribbon,

She wears it in winter and the summer so they say,

If you ask her "Why the decoration?"

She'll say "It's fur my loved one who is fur, fur away.

Now if it is fur her feller…it’s a promise to be true until they meet again, right?  But it’s a symbol that in general says, “I will hold you in my heart until we meet again.  I won’t forget.”  That’s what we all could say today about those we love.  That’s what this yellow yarn is for tonight.  To remember.  And to know that we will see them again…

Do I believe we will know each other on the other side?  Sure do!  I Cor. 13: 12…

III.           Where is God when it hurts?

From yesterday’s Upper Room…  The Scripture is Is. 66: 13…  “The Lord says, ‘As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.’”

The story is about a man named Gary Story, from Kentucky, who had to tell his six-year-old daughter that the parents of her best friend were divorcing.  His daughter began to cry, and they tried to comfort her…not knowing what to do, Gary took his daughter in his arms and carried her outside.  Eventually she rested her head on her dad’s shoulder and they just stood there looking at the moon together.

Fast forward 30 years – and Gary’s daughter is now a foster parent of a child who would cry at night because he missed his mother.  She remembered what her dad did for her, and she took the little boy in her arms, and took him outside, and they looked at the moon together.  After a while, he stopped crying.

Gary closes with these words, and this is how we will close tonight. 

“I think of those times in our lives when God touches us with love and grace in moments of hurt and uncertainty.  Those memories bring comfort and peace…”