It was in my Ardeer days and it was getting near the turn of the year. I was contacted by a local funeral director. Was I free to conduct a funeral on Hogmanay? There were few details about the deceased. Although he had family there had been no meaningful contact for many years. He had been found dead in his home. The Social Work Department were responsible for all the arrangements. It would be one service at the local cemetery.The day when it arrived was cold and grey. The only people present at the grave-side were social workers who took the cords and lowered the coffin into the grave, and a young couple who were neighbours of the deceased. The service over I asked the funeral director if any more details had come to light about this man and the circumstances of his death. With a pained expression not far from anger Ian said: ‘How can you expect a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold. Hypothermia.’
So many things went through my mind as I made my way home from that cemetery. A lonely death in the cold. How can that happen in a generally warm-hearted community? There may be reasons why people become detached from their families and become socially isolated but does anyone deserve an end of life like this?
It comes back to me now after all these years when I hear so much talk about fuel costs and the dangers many people will be facing in this coming Winter. It is anticipated that heating an average house will become so much of a financial burden for some that the choice will have to be made whether to heat or eat. This in twenty-first century Western society.
Getting back to the words of the funeral director. They come from Alexander Solzhenitzyn’s novel ‘One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich’ which tells of one man’s experience of a Soviet labour camp in the early 1950s. Among many hardships the prisoners have to endure fierce cold. The words which are spoken by a prisoner are essentially about compassion or rather the lack of it. True compassion is when we can meaningfully identify with someone’s suffering and thereby seek to alleviate it. And very often that can only happen when we ourselves experience the pain or deprivation of the other.
In my time in the parish ministry I had known so many people who had received a cancer diagnosis and who went through demanding treatment. I felt deeply for them but I cannot say that I really understood until I went through the same experience. Until I was diagnosed I had no experience as a patient and had never spent a single night in hospital. I would plead that I was not unsympathetic to cancer sufferers. There were times when I wept with them. But that is not the same as understanding. Some people may have that gift without the experience but some of us need the shock of the experience.
I have often wondered how much of a shock it was for Jesus, the eternal Son of God, to take on a human personality, body, mind and spirit. I once heard Donald Macleod speaking of Jesus’ terror in Gethsemene as he contemplated appearing before God as the sin of the world and receiving His judgement. He could have no conception as to what that would be like and explains that heart rending cry on the cross: ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ In that moment Jesus experienced His Father turning His face away. Jesus no longer felt the Father near.
There is much that in the end we must consign to the category of ‘mystery’. But however dark that moment of abandonment on the cross, it brings Jesus closer to us. I have often given thought to Hebrews 4: 14-16. Jesus shown to be sympathetic to our weaknesses, who has been tempted or tested in every way, ‘just as we are’. The cross shows us that He even understands the loss of God, to feel abandoned, to have the eternal communion between Father and Son disrupted. But in that very cry - ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ - he shows us the way through these times. These words come from Psalm 21. The Psalms are the heart’s response to God in the varying circumstances of life not least the darkest and most challenging. In His worst of experiences Jesus still turns His heart to God. He is still connected to the ancient Scriptures. The question why is on his lips but He is still crying to God.
So we can say that with the true understanding Jesus brings to the human condition He also shows us that the way through our worst of times is to persevere with prayer and the Word. ‘How can you expect a man who is warm to understand a man who is cold?’ We have a Saviour who understands completely and has passed through the darkest valley into the light and peace of His Father’s presence which is His will for those He died for.
