This sermon was preached on Sunday, June 17 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, PA. The texts for this sermon were 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, Psalm 20, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17, and Mark 4:26-34.
Nine years ago today, a seventeen-year-old girl in the church I grew up in died by suicide. The tiny, poignant moments after Emma’s death forever redefined the meaning of church for me forever. They left behind slivers of memories that will stay with me the rest of my life. The roughness of the dilapidated couch I curled up in as teenagers from school filtered into our youth group barn. The way the pew shook as my mother sobbed beside me at Emma’s packed and overflowing funeral. The sound of my ministers’ voices as he transformed his grief into poetry and as she spoke of her vision of Emma enveloped in a great big bear hug from her late church mentor at the gates of heaven--when I glimpsed for the first time what looks like for clergy to grieve and hold everyone else’s grief all at once.
There are precious few things in this life more meaningless than a suicide or a loss of a child. If there is meaning to be found in such a tragedy, it is in the beauty and joy of the all-too-short life lived.
Yet in the past week or so, in the wake of the suicides of two celebrities, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, you may have read or heard of people trying uncover the reasons, some sort of meaning or lesson, in their deaths. It’s a natural response—to search for explanations for a death like that so we can make sure it never happens again.
I have seen how coming to find meaning in tragedy can transform a life, or save one. As a religious person, I am fully convinced of the power of meaning-making in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.
But as a hospital chaplain, I also encountered the shadow side of this urge. I saw how the task of searching for a silver lining can become another burden for the suffering shoulder. “I know that everything happens for a reason,” patients would say to me in a moment of honesty tinged with guilt. “But I just can’t right now.”
I heard how some patients’ well-intentioned family, friends, and even pastors had told them, “God does not give us more than we can handle.” I saw those words strangle my patients’ attempts to simply feel what they were feeling—anger, sadness, despair.
So many of my patients weren’t ready to be grateful or hopeful. Not yet. Not now. And yet some felt that they should be, that the chaplain was there to tell them their faith meant they had to be.
But if I was there to tell them anything, it was this:
There is no wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline or time limit to pain, no one path forward through sorrow. When it comes to grief, there is no should.
Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of God is like when someone scatters seed. The sower goes about his life, waking and sleeping, and all the while the seeds sprout and grow. The sower could not tell you how they grow, but grow they do, bit by bit. Somehow the sower knows when the grain is ready to be harvested. Perhaps, too, the sower could not tell you how she knows, but know she does.
We Christians, we’re trained to dig through the manure, taught to unearth the tiny mustard seed of good news and hold it up for all to see. But sometimes, sometimes, the harvest isn’t ready yet. For some of us, it may never be. Not in our lifetime. And in those times, maybe it’s best to leave the seeds in the ground, to struggle through our days, waking and sleeping, and trusting that the seeds are there, where we cannot see them. Someday, we just might look over our life and realize that a few of the seeds are ready to be harvested--even if we cannot now imagine how.
Here’s what I’ve come to know in my own life: if there were seeds planted nine years ago, they were planted, not by Emma’s death, but by the life-changing overflow of grief, pouring out into the world.
The grief of a mother and father who loved their child with a fierce, fierce love, and love her still. The grief of pastors who were there before the police, to gently close the eyes of a beloved child of God they helped to raise. The grief of a church mourning its own, and at the same time opening its doors wide to a whole town, sending its ministers into the high school corridors, sheltering teenagers in its branches.
Nine years ago today, a seventeen-year-old girl in the church I grew up in died by suicide. The tiny, poignant moments after Emma’s death forever redefined the meaning of church for me forever. They left behind slivers of memories that will stay with me the rest of my life. The roughness of the dilapidated couch I curled up in as teenagers from school filtered into our youth group barn. The way the pew shook as my mother sobbed beside me at Emma’s packed and overflowing funeral. The sound of my ministers’ voices as he transformed his grief into poetry and as she spoke of her vision of Emma enveloped in a great big bear hug from her late church mentor at the gates of heaven--when I glimpsed for the first time what looks like for clergy to grieve and hold everyone else’s grief all at once.
There are precious few things in this life more meaningless than a suicide or a loss of a child. If there is meaning to be found in such a tragedy, it is in the beauty and joy of the all-too-short life lived.
Yet in the past week or so, in the wake of the suicides of two celebrities, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, you may have read or heard of people trying uncover the reasons, some sort of meaning or lesson, in their deaths. It’s a natural response—to search for explanations for a death like that so we can make sure it never happens again.
I have seen how coming to find meaning in tragedy can transform a life, or save one. As a religious person, I am fully convinced of the power of meaning-making in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.
But as a hospital chaplain, I also encountered the shadow side of this urge. I saw how the task of searching for a silver lining can become another burden for the suffering shoulder. “I know that everything happens for a reason,” patients would say to me in a moment of honesty tinged with guilt. “But I just can’t right now.”
I heard how some patients’ well-intentioned family, friends, and even pastors had told them, “God does not give us more than we can handle.” I saw those words strangle my patients’ attempts to simply feel what they were feeling—anger, sadness, despair.
So many of my patients weren’t ready to be grateful or hopeful. Not yet. Not now. And yet some felt that they should be, that the chaplain was there to tell them their faith meant they had to be.
But if I was there to tell them anything, it was this:
There is no wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline or time limit to pain, no one path forward through sorrow. When it comes to grief, there is no should.
Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of God is like when someone scatters seed. The sower goes about his life, waking and sleeping, and all the while the seeds sprout and grow. The sower could not tell you how they grow, but grow they do, bit by bit. Somehow the sower knows when the grain is ready to be harvested. Perhaps, too, the sower could not tell you how she knows, but know she does.
We Christians, we’re trained to dig through the manure, taught to unearth the tiny mustard seed of good news and hold it up for all to see. But sometimes, sometimes, the harvest isn’t ready yet. For some of us, it may never be. Not in our lifetime. And in those times, maybe it’s best to leave the seeds in the ground, to struggle through our days, waking and sleeping, and trusting that the seeds are there, where we cannot see them. Someday, we just might look over our life and realize that a few of the seeds are ready to be harvested--even if we cannot now imagine how.
Here’s what I’ve come to know in my own life: if there were seeds planted nine years ago, they were planted, not by Emma’s death, but by the life-changing overflow of grief, pouring out into the world.
The grief of a mother and father who loved their child with a fierce, fierce love, and love her still. The grief of pastors who were there before the police, to gently close the eyes of a beloved child of God they helped to raise. The grief of a church mourning its own, and at the same time opening its doors wide to a whole town, sending its ministers into the high school corridors, sheltering teenagers in its branches.
Grief, writes Jamie Anderson, is really love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes and in that part of your chest that gets empty and hollow feeling...Grief is just love with no place to go.
And yet, sometimes, when grief is shared, when love is scattered by a caring community, that love does not go to waste. In God’s hands and in God’s time, some of that love finds places to burrow and take root.
The love that created Emma, the love created by Emma, that love is creating still. It’s growing from the scattered seeds of her parents’ tireless work in suicide prevention and mental illness awareness. In the yearly scholarship they award to a talented high school musician in Emma’s name. Growing in each and every single one of us who knew her and were shaped by her story.
We will never know how far afield love has flung its seeds. Just as we will never know the full yield of the harvest. Not until all is said and done.
For now, it is enough to let a tragedy stay a tragedy. For now. For as long as it takes.
And yet, sometimes, when grief is shared, when love is scattered by a caring community, that love does not go to waste. In God’s hands and in God’s time, some of that love finds places to burrow and take root.
The love that created Emma, the love created by Emma, that love is creating still. It’s growing from the scattered seeds of her parents’ tireless work in suicide prevention and mental illness awareness. In the yearly scholarship they award to a talented high school musician in Emma’s name. Growing in each and every single one of us who knew her and were shaped by her story.
We will never know how far afield love has flung its seeds. Just as we will never know the full yield of the harvest. Not until all is said and done.
For now, it is enough to let a tragedy stay a tragedy. For now. For as long as it takes.
It is always enough for you to stay a seed. To lie buried in the ground, waiting.
Just as it is enough to be a fragile sprout.
Enough to timidly hold out your branches for a small, weary bird seeking home.
Enough to look back only later, decades later, lifetimes later, and glimpse the hand of God at work.
And it is enough to never see it. It is enough to never understand how any of this could ever be a seed.
Seen or unseen, understood or beyond all understanding, the Kingdom of God is growing. Creating of itself. God from God. Love from love.
Contributions to the Emma Jane von Euler Music Scholarship Fund can be made by sending checks to:
The Emma Jane von Euler Music Scholarship
c/0 The High School Scholarship Foundation of Fairfield, Inc.
P.O. Box 682
Fairfield, CT 06824
Just as it is enough to be a fragile sprout.
Enough to timidly hold out your branches for a small, weary bird seeking home.
Enough to look back only later, decades later, lifetimes later, and glimpse the hand of God at work.
And it is enough to never see it. It is enough to never understand how any of this could ever be a seed.
Seen or unseen, understood or beyond all understanding, the Kingdom of God is growing. Creating of itself. God from God. Love from love.
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| Emma Jane von Euler (1992-2009) |
Contributions to the Emma Jane von Euler Music Scholarship Fund can be made by sending checks to:
The Emma Jane von Euler Music Scholarship
c/0 The High School Scholarship Foundation of Fairfield, Inc.
P.O. Box 682
Fairfield, CT 06824
This is so beautiful and so true. Thank you <3
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