Trudging from my father's pick-up truck to stand as we read words over his casket, I felt as if I were once again the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's classic play "Our Town." In fact, some of those who shared the stage with me in our high school production were buried right there; and I felt at times as if they were whispering to each other the words of the graveyard scene in Wilder's incredibly timeless play.

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" -Romans 10:14-15

      We buried my father this past month...in a driving, pouring rain...amidst a forest of headstones with names well-known to me. The sadness of a cemetery filled with classmates, friends and family members---many younger than me---was only slightly mitigated by the knowledge some of them were with Jesus. Trudging from my father's pick-up truck to stand as we read words over his casket, I felt as if I were once again the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's classic play "Our Town." In fact, some of those who shared the stage with me in our high school production were already buried right there.

      Learning I was a chaplain, some of those who greeted us at visitation and after the funeral started telling me about their own losses. They talked about the loneliness of living longer than their friends and loved ones. They weren't being insensitive, and they weren't seeking pity. They just found a common bond in the shared intimacy of loss, and it made them open up. Not surprising, almost every person mentioned technology and its inability to communicate the intangibles of humanity's deepest needs, including intimacy and physical presence.

      Perhaps because I was traveling to a funeral, I found the airports and airplanes to be more isolating than usual. With dreadful economic news blaring on overly-loud televisions and the images of devastating natural disasters burning themselves into our brains, the faces of the people aped the cemetery scene in "Our Town," where the dead converse in monotones, observing the emotions of the grieving with a dispassionate demeanor and saying in various ways..."the living just don't understand what's behind the curtain of death."

      Wilder got it right, of course: The living generally don't understand what lies behind the veil of death, in part because we Christians are feeling lonely and hopeless also. Not only are we failing to "give an answer" for the hope in us, we're no longer feeling that hope, either.

      We must bathe our hearts in the memories of the moments when God's love broke into the story of our lives. Then we must sheath our swords, take down our fences and show Jesus Christ to the people God places around us. Even when our rights get trampled in the process; and even when we face unfair and unwarrented attacks on our faith, we must respond with the grace and love Christ did when He redeemed us. God is the defender of truth; the righter of wrongs, and the ultimate judge. We have been freed from that painful yoke so we can be rescue workers digging through the rubble of broken lives and broken worlds to get the beleaguered to know God as a God of love---before they are forced to face Him as God the Avenger and Judge.