Matthew 5:1-12 Tommie was a beautiful and vivacious 23-year-old. But on this particular day, she didn't feel beautiful or vivacious. She held in her hand a letter from the man that she was in love with and had planned to marry. It was a very carefully worded letter and it told her his affections were no longer there. He was advising her that the relationship was terminated and they both should go their own ways. She was devastated. She told me she had never been through anything like this before. She had always been the one to end a relationship. I then heard a deeply pained woman exclaim, "Arthur, this really hurts. It feels so bad." I had been there before myself and I had some idea what she was feeling. I was riding in a funeral car with a woman named Carrie. I had just conducted her husband's funeral. We were approaching the massive gates of Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery. As the car entered the cemetery grounds, she pointed out the window to all the gravestones. "Arthur," she said, "every one of them represents a broken heart." Since then, hardly have I ever gone into a cemetery without thinking of those words. One afternoon the telephone rang. It was from a good friend, someone I had known for many years. Whenever we talked his voice was strong and upbeat but this day it was shaky and weak. "My boss just came into my office and told me that my job was being terminated. I just got fired. He told me to clean out my desk and turn in my keys. I gave twenty great years to this company. I had no idea they were even thinking of letting me go. What is a fifty-year-old man with a mortgage and kids in college supposed to do now? Who is going to hire him?" He was devastated. No doubt there are people here today who have experienced one or even all of what these three people experienced. In your own journey you have had numerous hurts and you certainly know what pain is like. You know what it is to be human and vulnerable to all kinds of loss and pain. It is a given that in each life journey there will be a number of moments which are tragic and painful. After we have been through a few of these bad times, we begin to learn that what happens to us is not the most important factor; it is what we do with what happens to us. The other day in a conversation with a woman, I asked her if she had much pain in her life. She told me, "Yes, many, many times." "How did you get through it?" I asked. "I would take one step after another," she said. "I would take one day at a time. In some ways, time becomes a healer as I take these steps forward." I know that sometimes people deal with pain in a less successful way. The pain is so great, so terrifying, that they have to hide from it and they drink or take drugs. Even while they are doing this, they know it will not really help, that sooner or later they will have to face the pain. But they feel they need immediate relief and they use alcohol or drugs to find it. Of course they learn they were right all along--these things really don't take the problem away. The pain people are trying to avoid still has to be faced, as well as all the complications the drugs and alcohol brought into their lives. Then there are those times when something happens that is so hurtful that people get angry and lash out at others. Often we even lash out at God. "Why did You do this to me? What have I done to deserve this? What kind of a God are You? If You are a God of love, why are You allowing this to happen?" We rail at God or we blame and complain at others. Anger is a normal human reaction. But the big question is, do we process our way through it or do we allow it to build into resentment and bitterness and a desire for revenge? When that happens, life can get very ugly. Whatever else we do when confronted with emotional pain, we usually will also look for distractions. We stay busy. We get involved with other things. We do whatever we can just not to feel the pain so much. This will help for a while. But we are always running just ahead of the pain. Sooner or later we need to deal with it. How can we deal with the deep pains we have? I think we are most fortunate and profoundly blessed to have the Christian faith and the presence of the healing Christ. At its very core, Christianity is about empathy, compassion and caring. Christianity is a religion of deeply caring. Not all Christians make it so, but it is the essence of Christianity nevertheless. The prophet Isaiah, in writing about the Messiah, described Him as a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief. I once heard someone say, "Whatever tragedy or sorrow happens to us, Jesus has been there ahead of us." A man of sorrow, acquainted with grief. Jesus extends His hands and says, "Come unto me, all of you who are broken, and burdened, and I will give you rest." I often think of that 19th century hymn called "The Garden." I wish the sophisticated people who compile hymnbooks today would include this old hymn, because it beautifully describes Jesus and what He can do for us. I come to the garden alone While the dew is still on the roses-- And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own; And the joy we share as we tarry there, None other has ever known. The healing Christ, acquainted with grief. Have you ever wanted just to go up to Jesus and embrace Him, and say, "Hold me, hold me"? Recently, I conducted a memorial service for Allan Reed, a former member of Marble Church. An accomplished pianist, he was also a piano teacher. For the first fifteen or twenty years that I knew him, he dedicated his life to working with gang members down on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as mentor and guide. Allan was a gentle man, but very strong in commitment. Many of those whose lives he touched and changed so long ago came to his memorial service as people successful in life. At a memorial service for a man who had done so much good in his life, as you can imagine, there were many heartfelt and touching tributes. But the story most moving to me was told by his older son, Charles. "When I was seventeen, and on the high school basketball team," he said, "I was injured during a game. I was lying on the court, unable to walk. My dad came down out of the stands to see if I was all right. He tried to help me get up but I couldn't put any pressure on my ankle. So he picked me up and, even though I weighed around 170 pounds, he carried me off the court. "I will cherish through my entire life the experience of my father picking me up and carrying me to safety." As I was listening to Charles' story, I was thinking that what his father had done is really what Jesus does. When we are in pain and cannot help ourselves, He picks us up and carries us over the difficult places. I once heard somebody say, "We like the mountaintop, but, let's face it, we spend most of our lives in the valley." This is true. We spend only a small part of our lives high on the mountain, feeling wonderful. Most of the time we are in a valley, sometimes not too deep and dark, sometimes so intense we feel we will never get through. One summer when I was walking through a valley--not a very bad one, but enough to bring loneliness and depression--a psychologist friend of mine came for a visit in my little cottage on a Maine island. He was a friend, not a counselor; I had never sought help from him for any of my personal problems. But after lunch we went out on the boat and I confessed that I was feeling lonely and depressed. I realized I had never before admitted to loneliness or to depression. My friend gave me some very sage advice. "Arthur," he said, "give each emotion its time. Allow it to be. When you are feeling lonely, don't pick up the telephone and call somebody to get rid of the pain for the moment. Live into the pain. Give it its time and one day you'll move through it and you'll never go back to it in the same way again." I followed his advice and it was extraordinarily healing. I had needed to grieve and to fully experience my feelings. In our culture we don't understand mourning very well and we don't give it its due. At the very beginning of the Beatitudes, Jesus said, "Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted." When we experience a deep hurt, we have to grieve. Yet what do people say to us? "Keep a stiff upper lip. You have to go on, you have got to be strong." Yes, you do have to go on with life, but also, you have to mourn.  You have to take the time to do the work of grief. I was raised in an Italian community, and as in many cultures around the world, people will mourn for at least a year when someone close has died. I remember the Italian widows in my community who would wear black for an entire year, through each of the seasons. It was a time to recognize the hurt, to grieve it and to move through it. I am indebted to my therapist, whom I see once a week. I went back to connect with him after 9/11, when I needed to explore my emotional reactions to the horrific trauma New York City suffered that day. I was still seeing him when my younger son died. It was summertime and I was in Maine, and not able to see him in his office. But he insisted that we talk at least once a week on the telephone, as he helped me learn how to deal with that terrible loss. "Arthur," he said, "I am not going to let you get distracted to avoid feeling pain, because you have a tendency to do that. I want you to live in the pain. I want you to feel everything. I want you to cry. I want you to express every emotion connected with your son's death." Over and over again during our conversations he brought me back to the grief and pain, and helped me work with them. With a loss like this, you do not ever get past the grief, but I did a lot of the work I needed to do. One of the things that I am coming to understand--and those of you who have lost children know exactly what I am talking about--is that some pain is permanent. It will always be with you and you never escape it or move past it. But it doesn't defeat you and it helps you to stay closer to God. When you are confronted with terrible grief and have lived your way through it, you discover that you have received a gift. It is the gift of being able to understand and give something to other people who have the same kind of pain. You are able to connect with them in a way that you could not have before, and that connection helps you with your own mourning process. This human connection, broken soul to broken soul, can help us in ways all the advice in the world cannot. Yet it takes courage to truly connect--you as you are and the other as he or she is. Henri Nouwen, the late Dutch priest, spoke in one his books, The Road to Daybreak, about his very dearest friend and how at one point their relationship became troubled because he was being very demanding. When his friend objected and pushed him away, he felt rejected and his self-esteem was hurt. Then, he had an insight which changed the nature not only of his friendship, but of his life journey as well. He realized he had been expecting his friend to be like Christ. Yet no human being can be the Christ. They can just do the best that they can. He realized he had to forgive his friend for not being the Christ for him. When I read that, I thought, "How many times have I done this to other people when I have been hurt, expecting them not to be just who they are, but to be bigger than life and to be the Christ?" So I knew I had to forgive those who had failed to be the Christ for me and realize they were human and doing the best they could. What a different world this would be if each of us, when we felt disappointed by others, could go through the same dynamic and forgive. Each time you are deeply wounded, you become a member of a unique and special society of people who have experienced this particular kind of hurt. You can help your own healing by reaching out to another. Put your hand on their shoulder, touch the back of their hand, look them in the eye and say, "I understand. I understand." The most effective healers are those who have been wounded themselves. Remember how Isaiah described Jesus: "The Messiah, a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief." No matter what we are going through, Jesus has been there ahead of us. Jesus says to us, "Come unto me, all you who are broken, heavy laden, and burdened with trouble, and I will give you rest." Let us pray. LORD, for the healing Christ, for His presence in our midst today, we give You thanks and we are blessed. Help us, Lord, as You give us solace, that in turn we will give solace to others. Amen.