Just the Way You Are (Suitcase Adventures, pt. 2)

My final update from my final days of staycation (boo!) is coming soon, but first I thought I would post my sermon from this morning. I preached this at Baldwin Memorial UMC, the church where my mentor in the ordination process is pastor. This sermon also serves as the long-awaited sequel to my first Suitcase Adventures post: the story of my experience at this year's grief camp.

If you read this and want to learn more about volunteering for the camp (and I hope you will!), you can find more information on the website of the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing.


Romans 8:26-39

26Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

29For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

31What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Just the Way You Are:
Romans 8: 26-39

Before I ever set foot inside this church, I used it as a landmark. Before I knew this church as the home of my candidacy mentor, I knew it as the place where I turn to get to Arlington Echo. This “old stone church with a cemetery” is mentioned on the printed directions I use each summer to find my way to a very special camp.

For two years now, I’ve been a volunteer at Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC, a weekend camp for children and teenagers who have lost loved ones to death. The camp is a program of the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing, a grief counseling center where I once served as an intern. Every summer, Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC brings together 50 kids from all over Maryland, DC, and Virginia. The campers come from many different neighborhoods and backgrounds, but they all share the common experience of grief. This is also true of the 75 adult volunteers who work with the children. Adults of all ages, professions, and backgrounds choose to volunteer at camp, but we also share the experience of loss. In fact, you must have lost a loved one to death in order to be a camp volunteer. I volunteer at Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC in memory of my two grandmothers.

Camp only lasts for one weekend a year, but what happens during that short time makes a lasting difference. The children are divided into “grief groups” by age, and each child is paired with an adult buddy who accompanies them throughout the weekend. All weekend, the children and adults share memories of their loved ones, talk about difficult feelings, and offer one another support and encouragement. We also laugh and have fun together, enjoying traditional camp activities like swimming and canoeing. We eat together in the camp cafeteria and sleep on bunks in the same cabins. In a remarkably short time, our grief groups become little families and the camp becomes one big family. Year after year, this camp brings forth new life from loss.

My experiences at Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC have been so powerful that I can’t help but remember them every time I come to this church. I also remember them when I read today’s text from Romans. Paul’s powerful words at the end of this text are very familiar to me: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is my pastor’s favorite passage of scripture, and he often reads it at funerals. I remember hearing it at one of my grandmother’s funerals, and it was a great comfort to me.

I understand why my pastor chooses this text for funerals, and yet I also find it a bit odd. Both in my personal life and in my work, I’ve spent a lot of time with grieving people, and I’ve noticed that people often feel very separate from God after a loss. Of all our human experiences, grief seems to be the one that makes us the most lonely, sad, angry, and scared. I imagine that some people in the midst of grief are upset by Paul’s words. To some, these comforting words must sound hollow, or even like a slap in the face. Paul assures us that death can not separate us from the love of God, but it sure can make us feel separate. It can make us feel lonely, abandoned, and lost. Even if we believe with all our hearts that the one we lost is with God, its hard not to feel left behind and deserted.

Its natural to feel lost and lonely when we lose someone we love, but expressing those feelings can be hard. When we’re grieving, people often try to help by saying hopeful, comforting things. Our friends and family mean well when they say these things, but bright and positive words can actually make us feel more alone if our true feelings are dark and difficult. What’s more, our friends and family may not want to listen to our painful thoughts and feelings. Death and grief are such difficult experiences that people go to great lengths to avoid thinking and talking about them. This is perfectly understandable, but it can be very isolating for those who are grieving.

Many of the kids who come to Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC are feeling isolated and separated. Some campers have lost the person they trusted most and don’t know who to turn to in their grief. Some feel they have to be strong for surviving family members and keep their feelings to themselves. Many are cared for by relatives who are also grieving, and may not have any emotional energy to spare for them. Some campers have tried to voice their painful feelings, but found that nobody really listens to them. Seeing a child in pain is so difficult that we adults often rush to comfort them, without giving them a chance to really express themselves.

One of the main purposes of Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC is to give grieving children a place where they can express all of their feelings. Camp follows the same basic schedule every year, and the first night is always about getting to know each other and getting comfortable opening up. In one of the first camp activities, all of the kids and volunteers gather in a big circle. The grief group leaders go around the circle and hand everyone a can of seltzer to shake up. As everyone shakes their cans, a counselor stands in the middle of the circle talks about what happens when we bottle up our feelings. When we try to hold our feelings inside, the pressure of those feelings builds up and up until finally we just explode. When the counselor says the word “explode,” everyone pops open their cans. Within seconds, the circle becomes a free-for-all of laughing kids and adults, spraying seltzer all over each other. It’s a lot of fun, and it also gets across an important message: camp is a place where its okay to let everything out.

Church should be that kind of place too- a place where we can bring our whole selves, in good times and in bad. I visited Baldwin a few weeks ago, and one of the things that really impressed me was the amount of time you take with joys and concerns. In many churches, the prayers of the people are limited to a few seconds where people whisper the names of those they wish to pray for. Here at Baldwin, you really take the time to share and listen to each other. I think that’s exactly as it should be. Church isn’t meant to be a place where we come as individuals, have our own individual experiences, and then return to our individual lives. Church is meant to be an intimate community- a family, where we share our whole selves with God and one another. There should be no experience, thought, or feeling that we can’t share with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sharing our joys and concerns breaks our isolation, and draws us closer to God and one another.

At Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC, the second day is all about sharing. In the grief groups, the children and adults share the stories of their loved ones: what they were like, how they died, what we miss most about them. In the middle of the day, everyone decorates a small boat in memory of their loved one. Then, right around sunset, we have a memorial where everyone releases their boats as the names of their loved ones are read out loud. For me, this is both the most painful and the most hopeful part of the weekend. I find it incredibly difficult to look at all those little children and hear the names of the people they lost: mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents- all people who should have been in their lives for much, much longer. Yet, at the same time, I find it incredibly hopeful to look around at the 75 adults and know that we all chose to share our losses so that these children won’t feel alone.

During this year’s boat launch, I was standing next to a girl of about 7 while we watched a group of adult volunteers release their boats. Many of the volunteers were crying, including one of the men. The little girl was shocked. She said “Look- grown-ups are crying! A man is crying!” “Yes,” I told her, “That’s okay. Grown-ups cry too sometimes.” That one tiny moment, watching that little girl learn that its okay to cry, made the whole camp worthwhile for me.

Unfortunately, when I look at the church today, I sometimes think we’ve forgotten this simple lesson- that its okay to cry. Or to be angry. Or to feel lost and lonely. Take a look in the Christian section of Barnes and Noble, listen to Christian radio, or watch one of today’s TV preachers and you’ll hear an awful lot about being positive: having positive thinking, using positive language, supporting positive values. Today’s pastors are encouraged to grow their churches by having upbeat services, focused on praise and joy. I understand why people want to hear a positive message in a world that seems so negative. Still, I worry that all of this emphasis on the positive sends the message that our negative feelings don’t belong in church. In today’s churches, we hear plenty of hymns and prayers about love, joy, and gratitude. How often do we hear about sadness, loneliness, and anger? We need God and our church family the most when we’re struggling and in pain. Yet, some would have us believe that church is only a place for joy.

Paul knew differently. In today’s text, he quotes Psalm 44: “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” Psalm 44 is a lament from a community who lost a great battle. They believe that God abandoned them, even though they served him faithfully. In their psalm, they freely voice their anger with God. In another verse, they ask “Why do you hide your face? Why do your forget our affliction and oppression?” Psalm 44 is hardly unique. If you read through the psalms, you’ll find plenty about joy and praise, but you’ll also find many about anger and grief. And its not just the psalms- the Hebrew Bible is full of people who take their pain, anger, and loneliness to God. Look at Job, or Lamentations, or the prophets- all of these books are full of people crying out to God with their whole selves: the good, the bad, and everything in between. Jesus does the same. In the Gospels, we see him weep over the body of Lazarus, lash out in anger at the money-changers in the temple, and cry out to God from the cross.

Over and over again, our scriptures remind us that we can and should take all of our emotions to God. Even when we feel the most separate from God, God longs to hear from us. It doesn’t even matter if we don’t know what to say; Paul promises that the Holy Spirit will intercede “with sighs too deep for words.”

At Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC, we see many children who feel isolated in their feelings of sadness and anger. As adults, we try to break through that isolation by helping them express themselves and sharing our own experiences of loss. But there are other isolating feelings I haven’t talked about yet: guilt and shame. In my experiences with grieving people, both children and adults, I’ve noticed that many people feel guilty. Children, who are too young to understand how death works, often feel like they did something to cause the death. Adults wonder if they could have done something to save their loved one. Many grieving people feel damaged, like they must be bad people because bad things have happened to them.

When I interned at the Wendt Center, I noticed that many of my grief counseling clients needed to confess something. In our first few sessions, they would voice their sadness and anger. Talking about those feelings would help, but afterward I would start to see signs that something else was bothering them. I had many sessions with clients who were clearly holding something back. Eventually, if we built a close enough relationship, the confession would come. My clients would share feelings of responsibility for their losses. They would share remorse for things they said or didn’t say to their lost loved ones. Some would tell me about the worst things they had ever done in their lives, wondering aloud if they were being punished.

If I really listened to their confessions, allowed them to share the full burden of their guilt, and still accepted them, I would start to see real transformation. In order break their isolation and move forward, my clients needed to share their whole selves with someone who cared. I was always happy to receive these confessions, just as I know God would be happy to receive them. Like sadness and anger, guilt and shame can make us feel separate from God, but they can’t take away God’s love.

At Camp Forget-Me-Not/Camp Erin DC, the last day is all about celebrating our time together and looking forward with hope. One of the Sunday activities is a performance by an all-male acapella group called REVERB. REVERB has a beautiful, uplifting sound and they do a great job choosing songs for the camp. This year, toward the end of their performance, REVERB announced that they had a special song to sing for the campers. Within a few notes, most of us recognized the song. It was “Just the Way You Are” by Bruno Mars. That song has been all over the radio this year, so most of the kids knew the words. I’m guessing that many of you know them too. It’s love song in which Bruno Mars tells his girlfriend “When I see your face/ there’s not a thing that I would change/ because you’re amazing/ just the way you are./ And when you smile/ the whole world stops and stares for awhile/ because you’re amazing/ just the way you are.”

The kids started singing along, and by the end of the first chorus, I had tears in my eyes. I looked around and saw many other adults crying, all over the room. I thought about why so many of us found that particular song so moving. Before that day, I thought of it as just another sappy, catchy love song. But when I heard those children sing it, it meant something totally different. The whole weekend, I had heard story after story of how much these kids had suffered. I knew that they were sad, confused, angry, and scared. I knew that many of them felt guilty, weird, and damaged. I had witnessed their pain, but I had also witnessed their resilience and their beautiful spirits. That song moved me so much because I want so badly for those kids to know that they are amazing, just the way they are. I think its what all of the camp volunteers want- to help these children know that they are good people who can have great lives, no matter what bad things have happened to them.

Bruno Mars is an unlikely prophet, but whenever I hear that song now, it makes me think about grace. I can’t think of a better definition of grace than the fact that God loves us just the way we are. Sometimes, painful experiences like grief make us feel like God is far away. Sometimes, feelings of anger, guilt, and shame make us think we can’t go to God. But Paul brings us the Good News that this simply isn’t true. We can and should take anything to God, because nothing can take away God’s love. God already knows us better than we know ourselves, and in God’s eyes, we’ll always be like those little children at camp- amazing, just the way we are. 

Amen.