Session Five

fIVE

WEDNESDAY | SEPTEMBER 7TH (LITURGY AND LIFE AND DEATH)

He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever…. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” -Isaiah 25:7-9

What Is Your Only Comfort in Life and Death?

THE POWER OF LITURGY IN THE DARKEST MOMENTS

JONATHAN GIBSON

It was a Monday morning, March 14, 2016. I had just come back from dropping my three-year-old son at nursery school. As I entered the house, the look on my wife’s face told me something was wrong. She had not felt the baby kick all morning. We headed off to the hospital, making light conversation between intermittent silence. I hoped that our little baby, now 39 weeks in the womb and due the next Sunday, was just having a deep sleep. After a 40-minute wait, the sonographer called us into the cubicle. As she put the doppler on Jackie’s womb, I prayed we would hear the comforting “thoomp-thoomp” sound fill the room. But there was nothing. “Sometimes it’s hard to get a heartbeat when they’re sleeping in an awkward position.” The sonographer moved the doppler around, more firmly this time, trying to wake our sleeping baby. Still nothing. The sonographer said an ultrasound machine would be more effective. As she left the cubicle, she drew the curtain behind her. Jackie and I both looked at each other and began to cry. We both knew, but we hoped and prayed that it wasn’t true. We sat in silence, tears streaming down our faces. The ultrasound scanner was wheeled in, but it didn’t work. A second scanner was brought in. It also didn’t work. The sonographer rebooted it, and finally, after a 20-minute wait, she began the scan. There she was— our beautiful baby girl. But then came the harrowing words, “I’m sorry, there is no heartbeat.” Our sweet Leila was dead. “No, no, no!” I cried, “It cannot be! It cannot be!” But it was.

As I sat there weeping, my hand on Jackie’s pregnant belly, the words of the hymn “I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art” came to my mind. Verse 2 says:

“Thou art the King of mercy and of grace, Reigning omnipotent in every place; So come, O King, and our whole being sway; Shine on us with the light of Thy pure day.”

In that moment the terrifying truth that God is sovereign and does as he pleases struck me like lightning; yet I was also reminded that God’s mysterious sovereignty is never without his mercy and grace. I also knew that God was good and only ever does good, even when we can’t see it. Verse 4 goes on:

“Thou hast the true and perfect gentleness, No harshness hast thou and no bitterness: Make us to taste the sweet grace found in Thee And ever stay in Thy sweet unity.”

That evening, our minister visited us and read Psalm 34. Verse 18 reads:

“The Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

It was just what Jackie and I needed to hear.

Four days later, our daughter Leila was stillborn. Our minister offered to visit us in the hospital and read Scripture and pray with us. We gladly accepted, but with one request: he also bring the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 1, and read them to us. Sitting in the quiet hospital room with us, our minister read a Psalm, prayed, and then he read Q&A 1 from the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only comfort in life and death?” As I held Leila in my arms—cold, floppy, lifeless—Jackie and I were reminded that we, and our daughter, belonged body and soul to our Savior Jesus Christ.

A Scripture reading, an old hymn, and a question and answer from a Reformed catechism: these were the things that ministered most to us in those darkest of days. But none of them were new to us; we had heard them before, many times—in church, in a liturgy.

This illustrates the power of liturgy in the darkest moments. A well-ordered liturgy delivered week after week, one that is soaked in the words of Scripture and the truths of the gospel, is powerful—so powerful it can remain with us well beyond the Lord’s Day and speak into the many vicissitudes of life. What we hear and read and sing and pray in church can, by God’s grace, be of help to us not just that day but also for some future day, however dark it may be. In God’s world nothing is wasted, especially what we experience in a worship service. This is so, because a good liturgy holds out the gospel to the worshiper; it holds out Christ to the worshiper—Christ, our hope in life and death. •