by Rev. Gregory J. Gerendas, Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church, AALC, Lake Dallas, Texas
Text: Psalm 90:12
From our earliest days in school, we study math, the most basic component of which is addition. Remember the drill? One plus one is two, two plus two is four, etc., ad nauseam. “Not bad,” we might have thought to ourselves. “I can handle that!” And we did, until we were introduced to multiplication, long division, and those dreaded “word problems.” All of a sudden, things didn’t seem to add up.
Of course, somewhat later, we begin to learn that life is like that: things often don’t add up. Frequently, life doesn’t seem to make sense, particularly when our days are darkened by suffering and affliction: the four-year-old is diagnosed with terminal leukemia; the 49-year-old is struck down by an unexpected heart attack; the 29-year-old is devastated by the discovery of ovarian cancer; the 60-year-old husband helplessly watches Lou Gehrig’s disease destroy his wife’s body; or the 70-year old woman tries to comfort her husband who slowly loses his mind and life to Alzheimer’s disease.
On this Sanctity of Life Sunday, our concern is for those whose days have been darkened by affliction in any way and especially for those facing tough situations, life and death decisions: the infirm, those enduring chronic pain or those whose worst fears have been confirmed when they heard the words, “it’s terminal.”
In light of our text, Psalm 90:12, we take that concern and our afflictions to the place where God has dealt with human need at its deepest level, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, from which we pray God will supply us with what we need to deal with affliction today.
There is no way to minimize pain and suffering today or in any age. But today, what we’re hearing from the secular world, particularly from the medical community and a whole new group of self-appointed experts who call themselves “bioethicists,” elevates pain and suffering exponentially. Their analysis poses the shocking question, “When is it no longer economically feasible to keep a patient alive?”
Here’s a mathematical dilemma. It’s the false assumption that there must be some point in time when the decision as to whether or not to treat pain and suffering can be arrived at on the basis of economics, measured in the utilitarian terms of “quality of life,” “death with dignity,” and “compassionate care.”
Take one of the cases mentioned by Attorney Wesley J. Smith in his book The Culture of Death, for example. This is the case of a man whose teenage son suffered brain damage in a car accident and became comatose. According to Smith, it wasn’t until the threat of legal action that the attending physician treated the teenager, even though the doctor’s first prognosis was that the boy’s life was over—no need to bother with any treatment. By the way, the boy did come out of the coma and is now undergoing rehabilitation.
How did we get to the point where that’s the way we would deal with human suffering? The answer is we have sown the wind in the legalization of abortion-on-demand and reaped the whirlwind when it comes to treating those who are in need. In other words, it’s the world’s “logical” extension of Roe v. Wade, a decision the courts arrived at on the basis of a previously-unheard-of doctrine called “the right to privacy.” What Roe v. Wade actually resulted in is not only previously unheard of, it’s unthinkable, that, as a matter of law, human life, both inside and outside the womb, has no intrinsic value. And whatever value life might have must be determined on utilitarian grounds.
Why, even the marketing of this “logic” follows the same pattern used by those who are pro-abortion. So just as the word “fetus” became the marketing tool which would make it easier to murder the unborn, the term “quality of life” has become the justification for withholding care, discontinuing food and water, and suggesting that assisted suicide is a more viable and humane way to end pain and suffering, a decision to be reached, by the way, when a patient (either voluntarily or involuntarily) and/or a doctor decide it’s time for life to be ended.
Today we stand in the shadow of Roe v. Wade. Millions of lives have been sacrificed. But all too easily, that number is just another statistic for far too many of us, that is until it’s our daughter or our friend who tells us, “I’ve just had an abortion.” Is that what it’s going to take to get our attention when it comes to this method of dealing with pain and suffering? If that’s the case, none of this will sink in until it’s our doctor telling us of a loved one, “We might as well disconnect the feeding tube; the patient will not come out of the coma and will never function again.” Is this the way to deal with pain and suffering, waiting until it stares us right in the face, or is now the time?
To be sure, our days will be darkened by suffering and affliction. That’s the norm, not the exception. Even Jesus Himself tells us that in this world we will have trouble (John 16:33). So when it comes, how do we deal with it?
We as God’s people deal with affliction the same way Moses dealt with it, as it’s recorded for us in Psalm 90. As did Moses, we pray, Lord, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
No doubt we are familiar with Moses, the one whom the Bible calls, “the servant of God.” Surely we have heard many times over the story of the Exodus and the 40 years Israel would wander through the wilderness toward the Promised Land. That would have been a period of time replete with affliction, to say the least. So how did Moses deal with that affliction throughout this journey?
Moses prayed. In fact, according to Psalm 90, he prayed to the one, true God who is eternal, “from everlasting to everlasting.” He is the God who steps into time to be “our dwelling place throughout all generations.” It is to this God that Moses prays in verse 12, “teach us …,” because God alone is able to teach what His children need to learn.
In contrast to the eternal nature of God, Moses in this prayer also recognizes human mortality. He confesses that life is limited to a “span” of 70 years, maybe 80 for the more robust. That is the best mankind can pridefully [ed. note: the word “span” is literally “pride” in Hebrew] point to, because mankind is destined to return to the dust from whence it first came.
What Moses is really getting at here is the acknowledgment of our total dependence on God and His loving care for His people. Not that we deserve it mind you. What we do deserve is God’s wrath and punishment because we are sinful, fallen people who live in a sinful, fallen world. That is, SIN IS WHAT WE ARE, not just what we do (or fail to do). No room for any rank moralizing here. No suggestion that sin is merely the “bad stuff” we do, the little mistakes we make, or the failures we’re aware of, as if all we need to do is stop doing bad things and God will be happy with us. Yes, our sins are real, especially those niggling “secret sins” we think we have so craftily hidden away from everyone else, even God. But the problem of our sinfulness is far more pervasive than that and is in and of itself sufficient grounds for God’s anger. And repentance for our sinfulness and our sin is the response of those who are totally dependent on God.
It is out of this total dependence that Moses prays, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” To paraphrase, Moses prays, “Teach us, Lord, that every day is precious because it’s a gift from you, no matter how many days you have graciously allotted us, even if those days bring us affliction. You teach us, Lord, so that by your instruction, we would gain a heart of wisdom, a heart that continually discerns who you are and our total dependence on you whose presence is our dwelling place and the only light which can overcome the darkness affliction brings to our days.”
That, too, is our prayer, not only because God inspired Moses to include it in Psalm 90 but also because Psalm 90 and the entire Old Testament pointed to One greater than Moses, Jesus Christ. For In Christ, God literally stepped out of eternity into time, in the “fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4-5), to bring the light of God’s glory to earth where He would make His dwelling. As John 1:14 tells us, Jesus is “The Word who became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” Literally, Jesus became flesh and “tabernacled” among us. In other words, just as God was present in the tabernacle in the Old Testament, He became present by taking on humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus Moses knew where to find the God to whom he prayed, and so do we: in the place where He reveals His real presence, in Word and Sacrament, the means of grace.
In fact, it is because of Jesus’ work that we can pray. So we pray “in the name of Jesus,” that is, on the basis of Jesus’ work on our behalf, not just to have a phrase to tack on the end of our prayers. No, we pray “in the name of Jesus” because of all that Jesus suffered as our substitute. As Isaiah described it some 700 years before the Incarnation, Jesus is not just the servant of God, He’s the “Suffering Servant,” “a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering,” who would be “pierced for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” at Calvary where “the punishment that brought us peace,” the punishment that we deserve, “was upon Him.” And as proof that Jesus’ suffering on the cross was sufficient to pay for all sin, God would raise Him from the dead. Therefore, just as Moses interceded for the nation of Israel, Jesus “is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
In the midst of our suffering and affliction, even death, God draws us to the cross upon which Jesus was lifted up. There we find our Savior who knows what we are going through because He knows what suffering is all about. There we find the grace of God to supply us with the power to deal with affliction, the grace which is as sufficient for us as it was for St. Paul, because God’s power is made perfect in our weakness ( 2 Corinthians 12:9).
By that grace through faith we are saved. By that grace through faith God teaches us to number our days aright. By that grace through faith we pray in the name of Jesus. And by that same grace through faith God grants us a “heart of wisdom” to discern suffering and affliction. Even if our flesh should recoil at the thought of pain and suffering, so much so that we are tempted to take the world up on it’s remedy of curing pain by killing a patient, from this heart of wisdom we know that it would be sin to chose any option which robs God of His authority over any life He has redeemed. For we know that our lives are not our own; we have been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), the price of Jesus’ “holy precious blood” and “His innocent suffering and death” (Luther, The Apostles’ Creed, the Meaning to the Second Article).
In addition, as we pray for God to teach us to number our days, that we may gain this heart of wisdom, our prayer is also that God would use what He has given us to give away to others. Therefore our prayer is also that our suffering and affliction would be something God would use as a part of our witness. In other words, we can pray that just as Jesus was lifted up in His suffering and death on the cross to draw all men to Himself, God would give us the privilege of using our suffering to do that work of drawing people to Him for His glory.
Such was the case for a woman named Travis and her husband, Homer. Travis went to be with the Lord in February of 2000, at the age of 84. Homer predeceased her by some seven years; he was also 84. Their most favorite Bible passage was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
Homer was stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. For the last two and a half years of his life, he was bed-ridden, and Travis elected to care for him at home. In their small, very modest home, Travis continuously played cassette tapes, mostly Christian music and some of my sermon tapes. Throughout this entire time, Homer was never violent, as is so often the case with this disease. Of course, he became increasingly less aware of much of anything going on around him. Nevertheless, from hearing so many of my sermon tapes, whenever I would walk into his room, he would always recognize my voice. I’d say, “Homer, let’s pray.” And he would close his eyes because he knew what we were doing. In fact, he knew that right up to the end, when he died in my arms as we were praying.
I can’t minimize the importance of how God used Travis and Homer and enabled them to deal with this suffering. All through it, anyone who would enter their home could sense God’s presence and could see the peace it brought Homer as He supplied his every need. To this day so many years later, their witness continues to be something God uses for His glory, even now that Travis and Homer have been reunited in the joy of God’s glorious presence in heaven.
In order for us to have something to give away, we must gain something we don’t have—a heart of wisdom. Such a heart is what God promises as He teaches us to number our days. Yes, even when the days are darkened by affliction, that’s where God calls us to stand, on this and all of His promises as He has recorded them for us in His Holy Word. Therefore we pray, at all times, without ceasing, in all circumstances, especially in our affliction. For as Jesus Himself promises, “My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete” (John 16:23-24).
May God complete that joy in us for Jesus’ sake. Amen.