THE BROKEN HEARTED

On Tuesday, December 6, 2011, Antoinette and I walked past St. James’s Church, Spanish Place, next to our hotel in the West End of London, and noticed that there would be a performance of Handel’s Messiah that evening, by the choir of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School and the Belgravia Chamber Orchestra. St. James, Spanish Place is one of my favorite churches in London, where I often drop in for prayer. Since we had never heard a performance of Messiah by a school we decided to attend. The sanctuary was almost filled with families and friends of the participants. The concert was being given in aid of the school choir’s tour to California. There were 168 schoolchildren in the choir, twenty in the orchestra, and four soloists. What was extraordinary was to hear these young voices singing the Old and New Testament texts, by which Charles Jennens, who wrote the libretto for Handel, sought to illustrate the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah in the events related in the Gospels.

The juxtaposition of the young choir with the painful words describing the passion of Christ was poignant. It reminded me of all suffering, especially the suffering of the children. The tenor soloist sang:

“Thy rebuke hath broken his heart, he is full of heaviness: he looked for some to have pity on him, but there was no man, neither found he any, to comfort him.” (Psalm 69:20)

“Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.” (Lamentations 1:12)

“He was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgressions of thy people was he stricken.” (Isaiah 53:8)

Dr. Diane Komp is a pediatric oncologist who taught and practiced at the Yale University School of Medicine. When she started her career as a pediatric cancer specialist, she described herself as somewhere between agnostic and atheist. But through her experiences at the bedside of many dying children, she returned to belief in God and recognized the reality of God’s love. Her teacher advised her not to attempt to deal with feelings, but simply to do the work and concentrate on that. She learned from him to keep her feelings about patients as numb as possible. One of the side effects of this approach was that her faith began to slip away with every passing child. “Over the years I have come to the conclusion that dramatic conversion to disbelief is rare. More often, faith dies from disuse atrophy, a failure to be exercised.”

She treated Anna for leukemia over five years, but the end came at age seven.

“Before Anna died, she mustered the final energy to sit up in her hospital bed and say: ‘The angels – they’re so beautiful! Mommy, can you see them? Do you hear their singing? I’ve never heard such beautiful singing!’ Then she laid back on her pillow and died. Her parents reacted as if they had been given the most precious gift in the world.”

The hospital chaplain, who was more comfortable with the psychological than with the spiritual, couldn’t deal with it and beat a hasty retreat. Dr. Komp found that children brought her back to the life of faith. Because of these children, her life has been changed, and she has seen other lives changed. She wrote a book as a witness to these children and their parents – A Window To Heaven: When Children See Life In Death.

David Biebel’s first-born son, died in early childhood from a bizarre neurological disease, and his second son is afflicted with the same rare syndrome. In a poem entitled “Lament” this evangelical pastor asks,

Destroy! Destroy! Our little boy,

What sad, demented mind, unkind

Would dare?

GOD?

When his second son was diagnosed with the same illness, he dared to articulate what he was actually feeling: ‘If that’s the way it’s going to be, then God can go to hell!’

They were honest words, but they tasted like blasphemy on his tongue. As he drove to his parents’ home that night to tell them that Christopher too was afflicted with the illness that took Jonathan’s life, he realized the ironic truth of his ‘blasphemous’ words and with that realization came God’s comfort. On Good Friday, at the place of the skull, God did go to hell. As David sobbed, he sensed God’s message to him:

“I understand, my son. I’ve been there already. I’ve felt your pain and carried your sorrows. I know your words arose from grief beyond control and I love you still and always will.” (David B. Biebel, If God is So Good, Why Do I hurt So Bad? p.18)

God’s heart is broken on the Cross. He entered into the heaviness, the comfortlessness of human sorrow. He was stricken for and with us. He entered into the deepest of our pain. When King Nebuchadnezzar looked into the burning fiery furnace where he had thrown Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego for not worshipping his image he asked: “Were there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire? Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound, and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.” (Daniel 3:24,25)

Dr. Komp writes,

“Those in the fiery furnace find One who walks with them. Those who walk through the valley of the shadow of death do not walk alone. God, the Parent who so loved the world, became a co-sufferer with all parents… through the gift and death of his beloved Son.”

We affirm in the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended into hell.” God in Christ took our humanity into the depths of despair so that he could endure the worst of suffering and sin on our behalf. “He was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgressions of thy people was he stricken.”

One of my most cherished books is The Cross: Selected Writings and Images, by Max Lucado who inscribed it “For Ted. With highest regards and deepest respects. Signed Max Lucado, Easter 1998. Max used to preach for me at Christ Church, San Antonio every Good Friday and gave it to me that year. He writes,

“God on a cross. Humanity at its worst. Divinity at its best….. God isn’t stumped by an evil world. He doesn’t gasp in amazement at the dearth of our faith or the depth of our failures. He knows the condition of the world… and loves it just the same. For when we find a place where God would never be (like on a cross), we look again and there he is, in the flesh.

God on a cross? The creator of the universe sacrificing himself for his creation? How could this be? Who is this Jesus?

He was – and is, a God with tears. A creator with a heart. Bloodstained royalty. A god who became earth’s mockery to save his children.

How absurd to think that such nobility would go to such poverty to share such a treasure with such thankless souls. How incredible to know that God himself died on a cross for his children. But he did. Incredible. Yes, incredibly, he did……

Could it be that his heart was broken for all the people who cast despairing eyes toward the dark heavens and cry the same ‘Why?’ Could it be that his heart was broken for the hurting? Could his desire to take on their pain have propelled him to the cross? If he could, wouldn’t he have run to the cross on behalf of all the pain in the world?

I imagine him, bending close to those who hurt. I imagine him listening. I picture his eyes misting and a pierced hand brushing away a tear. And although he may offer no answer, although he may solve no dilemma, although the question may freeze painfully in midair, he who also was once alone, understands.” (Max Lucado, The Cross,11,43)

(Excerpted from Ted Schroder, SOUL FOOD, Volume 3, 271-275)