Ed was one of a kind – a single man with a southern
Be Not Afraid Faith
Chapter 13
Faith
Ed was one of a kind – a single man with a southern drawl, a big heart, and an apartment full of canaries. Formerly an executive for a large Georgia trucking company, he began attending my church when he was already in his fifties. Unpretentious and spontaneous, he had the faith of a child. He was quirky and fun-loving, too, often signing notes and letters with "Edwin Glover Buxton, L.B." – the L.B. meaning "lowly brother."
Ed always said exactly what he thought, when he thought it, and spending time with him meant receiving a running commentary on life – sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. He never married and rarely mentioned his family, yet he loved people, and his apartment was always full of teenagers shooting the breeze and listening to country-western songs like "Achy-Breaky Heart," his favorite.
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Ed suffered from degenerative heart disease for years, and as he grew older, he grew increasingly aware that he could "go" (as he put it) at any time. Once he told a nurse who had come to visit him that he was
looking forward to meeting God: "I mean, it will be awesome and fearsome, but God and I know each other. He knows about my sinful past. And, you know, he also knows I'm sorry for it." But he was far from pious. Greg, one of the teens who used to hang around Ed's apartment, says he even wanted his funeral to be fun, and told him that when they carried his casket to the cemetery, they should bump into a few trees on the way, for good measure.
One day Ed asked me to come to his apartment. When I arrived he told me there were several things weighing on him, and that he wanted to unburden his conscience. He had nothing heavy to reveal, but after I listened to him and assured him of God's forgiveness, he embraced me and said that this was one of the most wonderful moments of his life. "Now I can meet eternity with joy."
Ed passed away peacefully a few days later. This note was in his pocket: "Around 7:30 p.m. I was sitting here, about to have supper, and I felt a tremendous sorrow for having offended God and sinned against him, a feeling greater than I have ever had before. It could be
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that I am approaching eternity, so I wanted people to know about this. – Ed."
I held Ed's memorial service, and during it several people rose to speak about his impact on their lives.
The voices came from all corners, from teens to elderly people. But the testimony was the same: because of Ed's sincerity and his lack of religious words, his faith had touched them like that of few others and was instrumental in helping them find a basis for their own faith.
Merrill could not have been more different from Ed in terms of his background and personality. But he was like Ed in the solace he found in his faith.
A fellow pastor who worked with me for two decades, Merrill brought an extensive knowledge of the Old and New Testaments to his calling; in addition, he conducted two choirs, counseled couples and high school students, taught Sunday school, and served the church in many other ways.
One day in 1986, Merrill (then fifty-seven) began to have severe nausea and vomiting. Within a few days he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Visits to several specialists confirmed his worst fears – that neither surgery, radiation, nor chemotherapy would be of help. Remarkably, this didn't depress him in the least, but only emboldened him. He even reassured his wife and
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children that his illness and certain death were going to bring them closer – not separate or defeat them.
Merrill stood helpless before his disease, medically speaking. But he had faith, and it was unshakable. He
wrote at the time:
My future is uncertain. The joy is knowing that it is
completely in God's hands. All I have to do is thank him.
If I have not much longer to live, then that is God's will
and it should mean something. My task is to find out
what it means; I have no complaints, only thanks! If it is
God's pleasure to give me a chance to start over again,
that's wonderful. If it is not his pleasure and he has
other tasks for me, I accept that. Faith doesn't depend
on me having my way; faith depends on God having his
way. This must be my highest joy and delight. Otherwise
how can I pray, "Thy will be done"?
About a year before Merrill died, friends sent him information on a homeopathic therapy course available in Mexico. Merrill thanked his friends, and told them that he had "no doubts as to the efficacy of the method…But I have nonetheless decided not to pursue the therapy." He then went on to explain that for him, the joy of being dependent on God outweighed the possible benefits of prolonged life: "My decision
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may seem mad to you, but I am unalterably firm in it. I joyfully place myself at the mercy of God, and praise him for carrying out his will on my body…"
Admirable as it is, such conviction is not granted
to everyone. In fact, there are plenty of people for whom the idea of faith as a weapon against illness is incomprehensible, if not foolhardy. As Merrill would have been the first to point out, such a view doesn't alter God's power or rob him of it. But it does present a challenge. What should one do when a dying person has no belief in redemption or in life after death, and sees no reason to prepare to meet God? What about someone who, like the agnostic eighty-year-old father of a friend, says he can't think of anything more tedious than everlasting life, and mutters about the uselessness of the "F-word," as he calls faith?
As I see it, there is little point in discussing such issues. "Religious" questions tend to divide people just as often as they bring them together, and in any case I feel it is far more important to surround a terminally ill person with compassion than to bring him around to your point of view. Beyond that, there is nothing to stop us from interceding for someone else – whether someone who has lost faith, or someone who never had it. Author Bruce Epperly writes:
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When our usual sense of independence and omnipotence
crumbles, we must allow others to carry our burdens and
shoulder our responsibilities. Sometimes we must even
depend upon the generosity and commitment of others
for our faith in God…In the gospel story of the paralyzed
man, we hear nothing about his faith. We do not even
hear the exact nature of his ailment, other than the fact
that he had to depend on the efforts of others in order to
see Jesus. But we do hear of the great faith of his friends
as the catalyst of his healing.
My father used to say that if a loved one lacks hope and faith, have hope and faith for him. Everyone goes through periods of spiritual dryness at one time or another, even the most "religious" people. They may feel strong in their beliefs today, but that doesn't mean that they won't be tempted and tested tomorrow.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whom the Vatican is currently considering for sainthood, made headlines not long ago when it was revealed that she not only had to struggle to hold onto her faith, but sometimes felt completely bereft. In a recently released letter, she wrote, "I am told God lives in me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul." In another letter she confessed, "I can't tell you how dark it is in my
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soul – how painful, how terrible. I feel like refusing God…I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, but there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives. Love – the word – it brings
nothing."
Clearly, faith is not a trust fund that can be drawn on year after year. It is more like an elusive grail that must be sought and re-won again and again. This is especially so during times of illness or death, when uncertainty about the future, separation, loss, and grief bring on unavoidable temptations – and involuntary change.
This should not dishearten or depress us. In my experience, the battle for faith is the battle that gives life meaning, and the more intensely it is fought, the greater its rewards. Without faith, existence becomes a vacuum that is quickly filled by superficiality, conformity, boredom, and even despair. With it comes strength for each new day.
To someone whose view of religion has been colored by conventional church life, this idea – that faith can be a vital life-force, and not just an obligation or a comforting tradition – may seem unlikely. But it is hard to argue with those who have experienced it as such. Malcolm Muggeridge, England's famed agnostic TV commentator, sought faith for most of his life. At one point, while working as a reporter in Africa, he grew so despondent over his failure to find it that one
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night he swam out into the sea, intending to drown himself. But at the last moment something held him back. Somehow, from somewhere deep inside, a new sense of purpose and a new desire to live welled up.
Muggeridge later explained:
It is precisely when every earthly hope has been
explored and found wanting, when every recourse this
world offers, moral as well as material, has been drawn
on and expended with no effect…when in the gathering
darkness every glimmer of light has finally flickered
out – it is then that Christ's hand reaches out, sure and
firm.
Kathleen, a retired teacher, found similar strength from her faith as she approached death. Wracked by severe chest pains and shortness of breath, she went downhill gradually, over many weeks. Family members wrung their hands, but she remained calm and reminded them that Christ would not place more on her than she could bear. "He has promised us that," she said emphatically.
For us, as for Kathleen, faith can give more than the hope of a better world on the other side of death. It need not be limited to pie in the sky. By transforming our view of the present world, it can lead us from
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desperation to courage, and from resignation to resolve. But this can happen only if we allow it to. To paraphrase Mennonite author Clarence Bauman, faith is useless if it is only a matter of halfheartedly singing old hymns
and "perpetuating the hope of apocalyptic bliss beyond this sinful vale of tears." But if faith impels us to invest more heavily in the fullness of life, he says, it will open the door to new possibilities of joy and triumph here, in this world – the present world that God created and loves, and for whom Jesus lived and died.
I experienced this triumph at the death of my uncle Herman. My father's youngest brother, this tall, gaunt man once dreamed of becoming a doctor, until World War II interrupted his studies, and sent him first to Switzerland, then England, then South America, and finally the United States, working as a farmer, a teacher, and a minister. Through it all he smoked compulsively, and by the time he was fifty he had developed emphysema.
In August 1972, at the age of fifty-seven, Herman was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. During the next four months, he needed oxygen almost continually. At times his suffering was so intense that he longed to die in his sleep. As he told me one morning after a particularly hard night, "It's hard to be suspended between life and death like this." He spoke often of eternity, and wondered what it would be like.
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Surprisingly, he was nonetheless lively and spirited most of the time.
Looking back, it seems that in being forced by his cancer to take stock of his life, Herman was able to see
the pitfalls of complacency with unusual clarity – and to recapture the enthusiasm he was known for in his younger years. And he did not keep the insights this gave him to himself, but challenged everyone he knew to rediscover their own "first love" for God.
A week or so before Christmas, on a Sunday morning, Herman's nurses woke him and gave him a bath. Afterward his wife, Gertrude, joined him in the sitting room. Suddenly, he removed his oxygen mask, and a radiant look of joy and peace transfixed his face. Sensing that the end was near, Gertrude called the rest of the family, including my father and me. Minutes later Herman stretched out both arms, clasped his wife's hands, and looked at her – a last, long, loving look. Then he was gone.
Remembering that morning, my father later said, "There was something victorious in my brother's face, and I believe it was the joy of accepting God's will and knowing that it was God's hour for him." I myself have never seen anyone face death so confidently.