Sermon Tone Analysis
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I Am With You Always
For a project that I’ve been working on, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Great Commission and specifically what it means to make disciples.
And while the Great Commission is obviously an important topic to consider for any church, I’ve been struck not by the commission itself but by what follows it, the very last sentence of Matthew’s Gospel.
Matthew 28:20 (ESV)
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
When you feel the call to become a priest or a pastor, ideally you understand or come to understand that your life’s work is not going to be about you.
You’re going to spend the rest of your life talking about some one else.
You’re going to spend your life talking about God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
You’re going to spend the rest of your days pointing people to him, and that’s fine with me.
And that’s fine with me, because I am wholly aware of my own inadequacy.
I feel that inadequacy most strongly on days like today, on days like the day that I woke to see a message on my phone from Pat saying Barbara had lost her only son.
Barbara, I hope, knows that I love her.
I hope you know that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you or to help you, but on that morning, I felt wholly inadequate.
What do you say to someone who has lost a child?
What do you say to bring that person comfort, to try and make sense of what’s happened?
Barbara, I don’t know that I have any answers for you yet.
If anyone has been a part of our adult Sunday school lately, you’ve seen me wrestling with some of these questions in a very public way.
But that’s what I love about this vocation.
Because at the end of the day, however inadequate I may be and however limited my ability to make sense of your pain may be, my primary vocation, my primary responsibility, is to point away from myself and to point you to him.
And he promises that no matter how much life may hurt, no matter how much pain you may feel, no matter how much sorrow you may be enduring, he will always be with you, until the end of this age and into the next.
This is why I love having Romans 8 as one of the readings for this type of service because there Paul says very clearly that there is nothing.... NOTHING… in all of creation, that can separate you, Barbara, from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Let me read those words again:
And here’s the really beautiful thing.
When I sat with you the day Ewing passed away, I didn’t know what to say because I had never experienced what you just had.
I’ve never known the pain of losing a child.
But the God who loves you, the God who promises to be with you always, the God whose love for you is unshakeable and eternal and never ceasing, that God knows the pain of burying a child.
That God knows the pain that you feel.
That God knows the loss that you’ve suffered.
So, I’m going to do the only thing I’m really supposed to do.
I’m going to point you to him.
I’m going to lean on him in the hardest moments, to pray to him and reach out to him because he knows exactly what you’re going through, because he promises to always be with you, and because there is nothing in all of creation, even death itself, that can stop his love for you.
I Am With You Always
I know that you know what that kind of love feels like, because it’s the love a parent has for their child.
I don’t think I had any conception of what love really meant until Anna and Joshua were born.
Honor that love.
Remember the very best of Ewing.
Hold him in your heart, and every moment when it hurts because of how much you love him I want you to remember that your heavenly Father loves you even more.
And we love you too, and everyone in this room will be there for you whenever you need.
So, I know today is going to be a hard day.
Tomorrow will be hard too and there will be many hard days after that, but the God who now hold Ewing safely in his hands, the God who loves you with an unshakeable love, the God who knows the pain you feel because he too had to bury his child, that God will be with you always, and he loves you, and he loves Ewing (present tense), and one day, at the end of this age, what you have lost will be found, and the pain you feel will disappear forever.
That is the promise of our God, and he loves you, and he will be with you always.
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