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[Music] A Song in Shadow. Your message for the moment with Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] The scripture reading of the evening is found at two points in the Old Testament.

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I shall read first from the second book of Samuel, the twelfth chapter, beginning the reading at the verse which is numbered nineteen. David has earnestly been in prayer for the life of his young son, and it is following his prayer and the death of the son that this narrative begins.

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But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David perceived that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, "Is the child dead?" They said, "He is dead."

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Then David arose from the earth and washed, and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. He then went to his own house, and when he asked, they set food before him, and he ate. Then his servants said to him, "What is this thing that you have done?

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You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food." David said, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me that the child may live?'

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But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." The second reading is from the book of Psalms.

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The psalm which is numbered 23, a psalm of David. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;

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he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me.

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Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup overflows.

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Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever." And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding.

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Will you pray with me? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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Across the twenty years of my ministry, I have learned many things. One of the things I have learned is this, that the 23rd Psalm is the most beloved passage of Scripture.

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I have been asked to read it in more hospital rooms than I can recall. I have been asked to share it in more chambers for shut-ins in private homes than I can begin to remember. And I believe I have read it at every funeral I have ever conducted

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across two decades of ministry. I don't believe there is any passage of Scripture which is beloved by as many as the Shepherd's Psalm. And I think this is true because there are perhaps no other verses in Scripture

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which speak with the quiet confidence, the certainty, the sureness, the utter trustfulness and faithfulness of these words of the old King David.

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He had known in his life, you see, times when his body and soul cried out for water, and God had given him water. He had known times when he was surrounded by the most bitter of enemies,

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and in the midst of those enemies, God had given him friends and a table for strengthening. And as he came to the end of his life,

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reviewing all the stony paths on which he'd walked until, guided by his good Shepherd's rod and staff, he'd walked again in the paths of righteousness, as he looked back over it all,

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he was sure that God was his Shepherd and that he would dwell in his house forevermore. So David sang his song, and ten thousand times ten thousand have sung it since.

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It's the most beautiful song to be sung in the shadows. About two months ago now, on a Wednesday morning at about 6 a.m., the telephone rang.

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I answered. It was my brother. "Bruce," he said, "I have some bad news.

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We lost our dad this morning." Dad had suffered a mild heart attack some ten weeks before. His recovery had been excellent. The doctor's reports were most encouraging.

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They had told us that no significant damage was done to his heart, whatever. We were very, very much looking forward to that which was to be. Christmas plans were already full speed ahead. And then in less than two minutes, it was all over.

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My mother noted a change in his breathing, jumped to his side, but he was already gone. The spark of life was there for a moment or two more,

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but he was already gone. And as he went, our family turned into the valley of the shadow of death. We had been in that valley at other times,

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but always as a family. This was the first time we entered it without Dad. Now, it seems to me that grief is more a process than it is a state. That is, you can write a history of it

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better than you can draw a map of it. Sometimes it seems to me like a long, winding valley. And as you walk the valley, you come to bend after bend. And as you round each bend, you are surprised.

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And quite often, the nature of the surprise is that what you see before you seems to be exactly what you have seen before. That is, again and again, you think, "I'm right back where I started from."

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That's not really the case. You are making progress, but the way is so long, and the path is so difficult,

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and the surprises sometimes so sad that there are moments when if it weren't for the song you had to sing, I don't think you'd make it.

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That song, of course, is the song for "Shadowed Places," the 23rd Psalm. I suppose that some of you will think it very strange that I should be talking to you, so young,

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about death and about dealing with dying. But the fact of the matter is that five times in this academic year, I have been called upon to minister to students in this college

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who have lost their father or their mother or their brother or their sister very suddenly. It only takes two minutes, you see. We're all just a heartbeat from heaven.

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So I thought that while I and my loved ones were still in the valley, it might be good to share with you some of the things about the valley and the song for the shadows that we've discovered.

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It's interesting, as you read the life of David in Scripture, there are four times when you find him dealing with death. The first is with the death of Saul, his king. The second is with the death of Jonathan, his friend.

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The third is with the death of his little child, unnamed. And the last is with the death of his oldest son, Absalom. Now I'm particularly concerned tonight with David's experience when his little baby boy died,

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that passage of Scripture which I read just a moment ago. In the middle of that passage, a very beautiful truth is announced by the king. He is in agony of prayer before his child dies. And then the child is taken away, and immediately he rises,

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refreshes himself, goes into the temple to pray, then returns home for food and strengthening. And his friends come to him and say to him, "How is it that now you no longer grieve? You are no longer in an agony of despair?"

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And David responds, "I cannot bring him back again. I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." Now I submit that when you hear that word of David, in the light of his expression of confidence in the 23rd Psalm,

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that all of God's children who love him and are loved by him will dwell in his house forever and forever. But what David is saying to his friends is this, "My little one has gone to be with the God who loves him.

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I too shall someday go to be with the God who loves me. We will be together in the midst of that love." And knowing that, I do not give myself to despair. "Yet I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

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but though I am here, I fear no evil, for God, thou art with me." It's interesting to notice that in the early verses of the Psalm, David always speaks of God in the third person. "He leads me in the paths of righteousness.

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He restores my soul." But suddenly, at that moment which is the most difficult for anyone to face, when they are in the valley of the shadow of death, then God is no longer spoken of in the third person.

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God is there. "Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." You see, the theme of the Psalm,

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and what makes it so wonderful in the time of shadow is this, that you have had to give up one you love, but you have given that one you love up to one who loves him beyond any love you could ever give to him.

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You have given him to one who so loves you, that in his time and his providence, you and the one you've lost a while will be together again, in the midst of that love, and for all eternity.

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It helps so much to remember that, when you're in the valley. Two days after we laid away my father's ashes, I was called upon to lead the Christmas Eve candlelight service in this chapel,

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and I was very much afraid of doing it. A lot of time and planning had gone into the service, and I was afraid that when I came into this place and allowed myself to be caught up in the beauty of the hour,

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that I would lose control of my emotions. You see, my father was very much a Christmas kind of person. He was always the first one to get the Christmas spirit. He always had the most Christmas secrets.

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He was the one who gave the biggest surprises on Christmas Day. He was the first one downstairs on Christmas morning. He even wrote letters to friends of our family's children and signed them Santa Claus.

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He was very much a Christmas kind of person. And I didn't know whether I could look at all of you and remember all of that, and preach. But as I thought more and more about the service,

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it came home to me that the great hope and confidence which I had in the valley was that God is love, and the beginning of the most perfect expression of that love was Christmas, when God in flesh came to us in the person of his own Son.

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And holding on to that, remembering that my father was knowing the most phenomenal Christmas he had ever experienced, I came. And every candle brought light to my darkness,

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and every carol brought music to my heart, and the looks on your faces touched me in ways I cannot begin to describe. And most of all, the preaching of the Word, reminding myself that I'd given my dad to a God who loved him more than I could,

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made all the difference. People often say after they've known bereavement that the most difficult thing for them to do is to go back to church, but you'll notice that's the first thing David did after his son had died.

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The first thing he did was to go into the house of the Lord and praise God. We all need to get there where the songs will melt us, and the love of friends about us will somehow touch us, and the tears may flow,

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but there's a healing in all of that that has to be. If you're ever in Denmark, you will go to Copenhagen, and you will find there the great Protestant cathedral, and in that cathedral the statue of Christ,

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carved about a hundred years ago by Bertel Thorvaldsen, the great Danish sculptor. It was commissioned by the king of Denmark. Now, Thorvaldsen's idea was to create a statue of Christ which was regnant and powerful,

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a tall Christ with shoulders thrown back and head erect and arms extended, a commanding Christ, a regnant Christ, and it was this that he modeled from clay. But he was then called out of town on business,

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and the sea mist, which permeates all of Denmark always, filters its way into his studio and melted the statue so that the extended arms fell, and the erect head dropped low, and the shoulders that were back drooped.

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When Thorvaldsen returned and saw what had happened, he thought at first that the sculpture was ruined. But then it suddenly dawned on him that the representation of Christ, which he saw before him, was in reality far more powerful than that one he had originally conceived,

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and so he took a carving implement and he cut into the base of the statue these words, "Come unto me." And if you go into that great church in Copenhagen today, you will see the marble sculpture, Christus Consolator, the Consoling Christ.

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And you will stand before it, and you will discover what I and my loved ones have discovered in the valley, that the place where you experience the love of God most tenderly is not in your moments of victory, not in your hours of triumph, not in the times when you win,

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but precisely in those times when you're broken and you lose. Then he stands before you with his head bowed like yours, and his shoulders so bent you know he carries upon them the weight of the whole world, but his hands are extended to you and he says,

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"Come unto me, and I will take your burden too." That's what the good shepherd does in the valley. He's always with the sheep, but especially in the valley. And I'd like to share another thought with you.

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It's interesting when you read this little experience of David and the death of his son, that David's friends were always with him. They were with him when he prayed, they were with him when he refreshed himself, they fed him, they cared for him, they ministered to him.

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And one of the things that we've discovered in the valley is that the love of God is oft times made known to you through the presence of your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. It's time that heals the wounds,

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but it's the love of others that prevents scar tissue from forming. Some people came and just sat with us, not knowing what to say. I remember very early in my ministry being called to a home where the son had been killed in Vietnam.

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I had never met the boy. I hardly knew the family, they had only recently joined our church. I did know that they were Christians. So when I went to the house there was nothing personal I could say,

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for there was nothing personal that I knew. And rehearsing to them all the promises of scripture and of the faith was unnecessary, for they were already written on their hearts. All I could do was sit with them,

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and at one point put my arms about them and cry with them and pray with them, and I went away feeling very inadequate. But you know, a few days later they called me, and then they wrote me a letter,

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and then they came to see me to express gratitude for what I had done. And all I'd done was to sit with them for a while. The most beautiful thing that was done for me by any student on this campus during the time of the deepest shadows

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was when one walked up to me and without saying a word put his arms around me and held me, and then stepped back and walked away. Others did other things.

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There were some who sent cards, and there were some who sent flowers, and there were some who wrote letters, and there was a fund started here at the college,

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and there was a fund started with the Heart Fund, and there was a fund started in the Folks Church, and we're deeply grateful for each and every one of those things. For there is a love in those things which strengthens and encourages you so much.

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When you're close to death, you see, you become for some people a kind of pariah. They look at you and they don't exactly know how to act. You can see as they walk up to you that they're thinking,

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"Should I say something about it or should I not?" And you really wish that they'd at least be open enough to try something, stumbling and awkward as it may be, to walk up and shake your hand and with red face mumble something and then walk on.

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If there was only some openness there, because that's the thing that you cry out for, that someone will just say, "You can be the way you feel with me."

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You want to cry, you see. And tears are good. The psalmist says, "My tears have been my meat day and night," and by that he means that in the act of weeping,

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he is nourished and strengthened. There is therapy and therapeutic value in tears, and we should not be afraid to weep, and what we look for is for people who will freely let us weep with them.

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"O ye tears, O ye tears, I am thankful that ye run. Though ye trickle in the darkness, ye shall glisten in the sun. You cannot have a rainbow if the rain refuse to fall, and the eyes that cannot cry are the saddest eyes of all."

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I was flying back from Moscow in the Soviet Union a couple of weeks ago, and it was a 12-hour flight, and we were about nine hours into it, and everybody had gotten tired of playing cards

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and telling the same jokes and remembering the same experiences and reading the paperbacks, which somehow seemed painfully uninteresting. And so most people fell asleep,

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at least in that part of the plane where I was. And I was sitting next to a man that I hardly knew. I don't know his name till this moment. I looked past his sleeping form out into 37,000 feet of nothingness,

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and suddenly something hit me. That's the way it always is, suddenly. Suddenly I remembered how the person who always enjoyed my trips, even, I think, more than I did, was my dad.

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He always had a thousand questions to ask about each trip and a thousand comments to make, and he could look at my very, very mediocre slides and find good things to say about them that even I myself could not discover.

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And suddenly I realized that I wouldn't be able to tell him anything about this trip. You know, as you get older, you somehow feel more independent of your parents,

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but you never get to the place where you don't look back over your shoulder to see if they're giving you a smile of encouragement and a wave that kind of sends you on

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and a round of applause that finds its way into your heart and lifts you. And there in that plane, 37,000 feet over nothing at all, I realized that when I looked back,

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he wouldn't be there anymore. And all I could do was weep. And I wished at that moment that I would have had somebody to cry with me.

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Because when you're in the valley, one of the most precious blessings of God is the friend who comes and says, "He is our shepherd, and we are his sheep.

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As we stay close to him, we stay close to each other." One last thing to share, and I shall do it quickly. What I've said to you so far, I expected to be true. That is, I expected in the valley

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that I would know the God of the psalm, and I expected in the valley that I would experience the blessing of friends in Christ. And what I expected came to be the case.

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But there was one thing I didn't expect, which has come upon me with great power, and that is this. I have become so grateful

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that my dad knew how much I loved him. You know, it's interesting that in the death experiences of David with Saul and with Jonathan and with his little son, there's a great power and strength in David,

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which you know is his because he believes the song he's singing. But when it comes to the experience where David endures the death of his oldest son, Absalom, the story is altogether different.

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David receives the word of Absalom's death, and he goes off alone into a little private room. And there he cries out, and the words testify to his agony. "Oh, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom,

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would God I had died for you, oh Absalom, my son, my son." There's nothing but despair there, no note of hope. And the reason that is so is because David was very guilty where Absalom was concerned.

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David knew that he had not been a good father to Absalom. David knew that he had been too permissive with Absalom. David knew that the tragic end to which Absalom came was largely his fault.

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And overcome with guilt, he had a special burden in his time of grief. But I was spared that because I had no guilt. I knew, my father knew, how much I loved him. You know, relationships are much like seeds.

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When we are young, we're given just a few seeds, as many as there are in our family. Now if a farmer has just five seeds, let us say, he plants those and he watches them very carefully

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and he nourishes them very tenderly and he guards them because he knows that as each one of those seeds comes to fruitfulness, it will bring within itself a hundred new seeds. And if he can bring up those five seeds, he will have five hundred seeds.

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And when he has those five hundred seeds, he can spread them more widely. He can run more risks. He can begin to experiment and spread out in his productivity. It's just like that in relationships. We start off planting the seeds of love with our family.

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And we must be very careful and tender with those seeds, especially when we're very young, like you are right now. Because, you see, as those seeds bear fruit, we will be encouraged and enabled to plant a lot more seeds.

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And if those seeds do not bear fruit, then we will always be selfish with our love and withdrawn and separated, and like so many people are. Well, in the Valley, one of the ways in which God blessed me

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was by reminding me that in our family we planted our seeds well. Every decision I've ever made that was of any importance, I talked over with my dad. And because I talked them all over with him, I was free to disagree with him when I wanted to, and he never forced upon me his own will.

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When I was in California for seven years, there was not one week in which I failed to call my folks and talk with them. And when I would come back from places, I would sometimes in an exercise which was at the moment boring to me,

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still tell them of everything I had done, because it was very obvious that they enjoyed it all. And one of the reasons that I came back to Pennsylvania was because I knew that in the normal course of events it was not long before my parents would leave me.

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And I'm so grateful for the 16 months that I had with my dad before he was gone. And last summer my folks celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary, and of course the 50th one is supposed to be the big one. But my brother and I decided it was the first time the whole family had been together for a while,

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and so we'd throw a surprise party, and we rented a couple of rooms on top of a steel building in Pittsburgh, and got all the family and friends in, and that's the only time I ever saw my father so surprised that he had not a single word to say.

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And we gave them a television set. Oh, I am so grateful to God that we did that last summer. And every day he was in the hospital I called him, and I would search for crossword puzzles in every town I was,

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because dad liked to do them, so I found them in newspapers and bring them home. And I can say to you tonight that the last words I ever addressed to my father, five days before he died and with no inclination whatever that his death was soon to be, the last words I ever addressed to him were an expression of my love.

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And as my family privately and alone walked away from the little plot where we had laid away personally his ashes, and I buried them with my own hands, my mother said, "You know, if we had your father back right now for one minute, there is not one thing we could say to him that we have not said to him many times before."

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Young people, love while you have the chance. Don't miss every moment that is yours, for they are gone too soon, and all you will have after they are gone is memory.

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And memories aren't enough. They fall like those snowflakes out there on the reality that was, and pretty soon all you have left is a mound of memories which is ill-defined. What you have is not the one you loved and lost a while,

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but what you remember, your impressions and your images. If you could have him back just for ten seconds, everything would instantly snap back into focus again. But as soon as he was gone again,

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the flakes of memory would start to fall, and the picture would cloud over. So if all you are going to have in the end is memories, build good memories.

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I guess that's all I wanted to say. The week after Dad died, I got a letter from my very dear friend Jim Bigley, who is the minister of the Tower United Presbyterian Church here in town.

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It was a beautiful letter, expressed with the sensitivity and the sympathy and the wisdom that I've come to always expect from Jim. And in that letter was this sentence,

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"When a man loses his father, the barrier between himself and death has been broken. Thereafter, he has an unfiltered view of his own demise and direct access by succession to the grave."

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I guess it was thinking about that that led me to share this tonight. Not that I've tried to talk about the grave. I've been trying to talk about the valley. Not so much about death as about dealing with death.

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I've been called upon to say the saddest farewell it's ever been mine to say. What I want to testify to you is this, that the song is true, and that when you're in the valley,

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you can experience the Lord there, in person and in power with his own presence, and in the love and support of others, and in gratitude for God,

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and the way he's worked in your life, fashioning those memories which become so precious. Yes, our world is filled with the still, sad music of humanity. But the old rabbinic legend is right.

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That David hung above his head his harp, and in the night the midnight breezes played upon it with such beauty that he was forced to rise and wed to the music words. And those words are the song for shadow.

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There is not much out of the past that we can treasure. The implements of everyday life we put in museums, or we have temples in which sacrifices are no longer offered, and we have broken tombs to which mourners no longer come,

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and we have great palaces in which kings no longer reign. Everything in the past dies, fails, passes away. The only thing that lasts are words. And of words we have a million million of vast legacy

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left to us by seers and saints, prophets and priests and kings. But of all those words, in the moment when you are tried to the uttermost, in the moment when the depths of your soul is plumbed, in the moment when you walk deepest into the valley,

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then the words of an old Jewish king stand alone. "The Lord is my shepherd. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me."

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That's the song for the shadows. Let us pray. O God, we thank Thee for Thy presence in life and in death. We thank Thee for one another in life and in death.

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We thank Thee for the memories we make now while living and for the blessing they will bring when all we can do is remember and sing in the shadows. Let us bless these words from the valley for Jesus' sake.

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And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit the Comforter be and abide with you both now and forevermore. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen.

00:42:19.000 - 00:42:42.400

Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]