By Reverend Laurie DeMott

And it is a sad time in the church. On Wednesday night, Barrett Potter died and Thursday morning I received a call that Gray Multer had died. Both Gray and Barrett had been struggling with illness for some time and yet death is never easy for those left behind no matter how prepared we think we may be.

And to add a final note of gloom to this weekend, it’s been raining. Wind has knocked the leaves off the trees and the rain has turned them into a soggy mess on the lawns, stripping away the last vestiges of autumn glory.

What a dismal picture. And yet, in the midst of this bleak scene, the Bible urges us to “serve the Lord with gladness and come into God’s presence with singing!” God’s got to be kidding.

How many times in our lives has the church’s proclamation of “good news to all people” felt at odds with the reality that we are experiencing every day? Anne Lamott tells the story of a woman at her church who, she writes, “was very old, from the South, tiny and black, who dressed in ersatz Coco Chanel outfits, polyester sweater sets, Dacron pillbox hats. They must have come from Mervyn's and Montgomery Ward because she didn't have any money. She was always cheerful -- until she turned eighty and started going blind. She had a great deal of religious faith, and everyone assumed that she would adjust and find meaning in her loss -- meaning and then acceptance and then joy -- and we all wanted this because, let's face it, it's so inspiring and such a relief when people find a way to bear the unbearable.... But this woman would have none of it. She went into a deep depression and eventually left the church... It must have been too annoying for everyone to be trying to manipulate her into being a better sport than she was capable of being. I always thought that was heroic of her,” Lamott writes, “that it spoke of such integrity to refuse to pretend that you're doing well just to help other people deal with the fact that sometimes we face an impossible loss.”

To preach a gospel of joy and peace to this woman at a time when her world was falling apart would have been to preach a gospel of escapism. The gospel of escapism says, “During hard times, just run to the church, close the doors, and God will take care of everything.” The gospel of escapism tells us, “God protects God’s own and whatever hardship you are experiencing now is just a test to make sure that you are deserving of the reward yet to come.” The gospel of escapism preaches that we should serve the Lord with gladness even when we are down, even when we are suffering, even when everything around us has collapsed because there will be “pie in the sky by and by” and today’s pain is but an illusion.

The gospel of escapism is the gospel that Job’s friends preached to him and that Job found terribly unsatisfying, because too often the gospel of escapism is preached by those who frankly have little to escape from. The rich tell the poor to have faith in God’s providence; the healthy tell the sick that it is all part of God’s plan; the comfortable tell the suffering to come into God’s presence with singing because “isn’t our God just an awesome God who deserves our praise?”

Those who have suffered know that faith will not magically protect us from all trouble. Instead of a gospel of escapism, I like the gospel preached by the priest whose parish was in a heavily Catholic yet quite rough neighborhood. When asked, “Is it true that in this neighborhood, if you carry a cross, you never have to worry?” the priest replied, “Yes... but of course, it all depends on how fast you carry it!”

Christ didn’t preach a gospel of escape from the world but preached a gospel of immersion in the world, walking side by side with the poor, sitting with sinners, touching the rotting bodies of lepers, and taking on our sufferings in the fullness of the cross. I wonder what would have happened to that elderly woman in Anne Lamott’s church if people had not tried to comfort her but instead had simply sat with her in lament at her profound loss. Remember that the Bible tells us that before Jesus assured Mary and Martha that their brother Lazarus’ would be resurrected to new life, first he wept.

I believe that if we use this verse from Psalm 100 – “Serve the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing” – as a pill to be given to people in the midst of sorrow, we risk prescribing a placebo that will do nothing to cure their inner turmoil. When trouble strikes, the best healing we can offer is instead to follow the example of Jesus and to weep with them, to sit quietly at the foot of their cross.

But if this verse is not a cure for what ails us, then how are we to see it? What are we to do with this command to come into God’s presence with singing?

I believe that, while it is true that easy prescriptions of faith are inappropriate to be delivered in times of profound sorrow, I also believe that our ability to come through the shadow of the cross to arrive at the healing on the other side will be strengthened by the preparation of heart and spirit that we have undergone before tragedy strikes. There are many psalms that are laments to be prayed in the midst of grief but Psalm 100 is not one of them. Here instead is a psalm for the days that come before. Psalm 100 is a prescription for a preventative to be taken in the course of our more ordinary days in order to ensure that we have taken the time to tone up our hearts and bulk up our spirts.

There is a story about a man who told his friends, “I never get hungry, I never get thirsty and I never get tired.” Someone asked him, “How can you do that? How can you not ever get hungry or thirsty or tired?” He said, “It’s simple. I eat before I get hungry, I drink before I get thirsty and I sleep before I get tired.”

It is such a simple yet honest formula for well-being. Much of what ails us could often have been prevented by just taking a little better care of ourselves on a regular basis and following some simple rules for living. Truckloads of self-help books have been written describing how best to implement a plan for a healthier lifestyle and yet it always comes back to the same basics: eat more vegetables, exercise regularly, wash your hands, and get enough sleep. Eating your peas and walking a half an hour a day may not prevent you from falling and breaking a hip but it will sure make it more likely that you will heal more quickly when you do.

The Psalmist knows that our spiritual selves are like our physical selves. Our relationship with God is not something that can develop without daily attention and if we wait until tragedy strikes to pray, we will find ourselves ill at ease because we are trying to converse with a God who is a stranger to us. Proclaiming God’s love during the good times by singing our praises and expressing our joy in that relationship will ensure that when the bad times do come, we will have enough confidence in that love that we can trust God with our anger and hurt as well as our praise. God will not be a stranger but a friend, who we know will have the patience to sit by our sides for as long as it takes until we are ready to rejoin the community of the faithful.

And so today we sing our praises and proclaim our joy so that every day we will strengthen our spirits for whatever may lie before us.