First published in the Baptist Times - OUTSIDE EDGE column - 8 October 2010
One problem with spreading the Good News is that sometimes it’s hard to find any good news in a person’s situation, and forcing it isn’t helpful.
When my father died, one of our older church members greeted me as I crept through the door on Sunday morning, with: ‘Alleluia! The Lord is risen!’
Seven weeks later my mother died. The same man met me, took one look at my face and walked the other way.
People didn’t know what to say. They wanted to be positive, even triumphal, and combed the unpromising facts for a positive slant.
Had my parents been Christians? Sometimes yes. Sometimes not. Like the rest of us. Only Christ knows who the Christians are, I suspect.
They must have been a devoted couple, dying within weeks of each other? No - divorced: hadn’t spoken for 40 years.
Had they died peacefully? I didn’t want to upset anybody. Their deaths may have been peaceful, at the end - who knows?
My mother, who had Alzheimer’s, faded gradually, like an old photo. She was brave, not just at the last but in the preceding years when she ‘didn’t know what things were any more’ and ‘needed a new brain.’ She wasn’t sure who we were but seemed to like us, most of the time.
She may well have had a triumphal Alleluia-type resurrection but I’m more inclined to imagine a quiet hand outstretched to her through the clearing mists of confusion, and the dawning recognition of a long-forgotten face.
My father’s mists of confusion were due to Johnny Walker’s. This fact deprived church members of the means to reassure me. The Lord was risen, but this whisky-infused man who had left his family destitute and, as one of his last acts, tried to circumvent his nation’s inheritance laws by adopting his Brazilian charlady - was he risen? If not, what could people say, to restore me to a proper Christian rejoicing?
One lady, a retired headmistress, met me halfway down the aisle as I left the church in mists of my own confusion, took my hands and said simply, ‘I hear both your parents died. How are you feeling?’
‘Partly relieved,’ I said, startled into honesty. ‘I didn’t realise how responsible I’d felt for them, all their lives. I never knew what either of them would do next.’ Her response was perfect. She nodded.
I had doubts, later on, about my father’s death. I know nobody earns eternity and we’re saved by sheer undeserved grace, but still … I had loved and forgiven my dad. Had the Jesus who died for sinners and said those whose sins we forgive on earth are forgiven in heaven forgiven him as well?
Still doubting, and praying for courage to leave the house the following Sunday, I heard, ‘As far as the East is from the West, I will remove your transgressions.’
I went to church, where the scripture reading was, ‘As far as the East is from the West, I will remove your transgressions.’
Later that week, I attended a mid-week service in a church of another denomination. The reading, in a different translation, was, ‘As far as East is from West, I have removed your transgressions.’
The next time I found myself wondering, ‘Lord, can you really, truly, have saved my dad?’ the translation was different again: ‘I’ve told you in the Baptist church, the Catholic church and your own kitchen. You want it written across the sky by the Red Arrows?!’
In the face of death, uncompromising and discomfiting, our fixed ideas about life, death and resurrection, judgement, sin and redemption, may fail to fit the context. Even faith may find nothing to say. But God will find a way to speak through the grief, confusion and conflict - if we don’t try to silence his good news with Alleluias.
Clare Nonhebel’s new book ‘Finding Oasis,’ publ. Authentic Media, is on sale in bookshops or online
