For Lauren…and Tim

December 16, 2001 (Third Sunday of Advent)

by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland

- Isaiah 35:1-10
- Psalm 146:4-9
- James 5:7-10
- Matthew 11:2-11

(From The Lectionary Page)

There is a story I have been wanting to tell you all for three months now. National tragedies and uncooperative lessons have gotten in the way, but this story has been waiting patiently inside my head all the while. Isaiah’s image of a highway -- a Holy Way where God’s people can walk -- will serve for an appropriate lesson, and the recent death of Timothy Bennett demands my attention; demands that I tell this story.

It is the story of the Triathlon I ran last September, and the experiences I had leading up to that event. And this is where Isaiah comes in. The prophet begins with a profusion of images: deserts rejoicing and dry land becoming glad; weak hands strengthened and weak knees made firm; the deaf made to hear, the speechless to sing, and the lame to leap up. Then he tells of a highway. A Holy Way where the people of God are safe to walk. This is the image that I find a connection with in the Triathlon I ran. For as Isaiah says that no traveler, not even a fool, shall go astray; so was the course I and three thousand others traveled that Sunday morning. We swam in the dangerous Pacific Ocean, but there were many lifeguards to show us the way and support those who became too tired. We rode through downtown LA, but the streets were blocked off and no cars competed with our bicycles for space on the six lane roads. We ran on rough dirt trails and climbed a steep hill, but Los Angeles Police Officers on mountain bikes showed us the way, and cheered us on.

But I am getting ahead of myself. For it is not the race itself that makes my story one worth telling. It is the reason I ran it, and the people I ran it for, that matter. Last summer I was part of a team, sponsored by the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, who trained and ran this triathlon in order to raise money on behalf of people sick with blood related cancers. Many of you already know this, for you were generous contributors to my work. I raised $3,300.00. Our team from Kansas City raised more than $25,000.00. All 300 Leukemia Society members who made it to LA combined to raise more than one million dollars.

But even the money raised, and the good it will do, is not the point of this story. Each team of triathletes throughout the country is matched with a patient whom their efforts are given in honor of. Our team’s honored patient was Lauren. Lauren was 12 years old, and had suffered from Leukemia all her short life. She was very quiet and shy, and not particularly healthy last summer, even for someone with Leukemia. Honored patients normally come to team training sessions, handing out water and cheering on their athletes. Then they get a free trip to the race site, and cheer us on from there. Lauren only made it to one of our practice sessions, and she died exactly one week before we were to leave for LA.

I had a dream the next night. I was pushing a shopping cart along a path through the woods. Riding in the child seat of the cart was a young girl. In my dream she looked like one of the kids from this church. She is small and blonde, usually smiling, but capable of a very serious expression. I don’t know her name. At least, the real girl who goes to this church: I don’t know her name. In the dream, I knew; in the way you just know things in dreams. Her name was Lauren.

I pushed the cart along the path, neither of us saying anything. It felt peaceful and calm, but I knew something would happen. I felt some kind of detached anxiety or third person awareness of impending disaster. The path began to parallel a stream: not wide, but deep and muddy and swift-moving.

Finally, the path turned sharply and went over a wooden bridge. I paused to rest and took my hands off the cart. The path to the bridge was slightly downhill and the cart began to roll away from me and onto the bridge. I wasn’t worried, and neither was Lauren, because the cart was moving so slowly and there was a railing on the bridge to prevent her from falling.

I guess neither of us noticed the gap in the railing, because neither of us made a sound as the cart with Lauren in it rolled off the side of the bridge and into the dark water. I ran to the other side of the bridge and climbed onto the railing, waiting for her to be carried under the bridge by the current. I don’t know how long I crouched there, poised to jump, waiting for her to appear. She never did. I just stared at the swirling, churning waters, my thoughts spinning no less chaotically, paralyzed as you can only be in a dream.

I woke from the dream slowly, laying in bed feeling terribly sad without knowing why. As the details came floating back to me I began to understand. I am not a psychologist and no expert on the interpretation of dreams. But I am a priest, and supposedly an expert on God, and on the relationship between the Creator and the Created. No amount of expertise, however -- no amount of time spent contemplating a divine Creator -- has ever been of much help in times like these. There are no spiritual truths I have ever encountered that can take away the very particular and special kind of grief reserved for those who bear witness to the death of one so young.

I’ve done this once before. A few years ago, David, one of the kids who had been in my youth group in Spokane was killed in an avalanche. I knew him pretty well, so it felt very different than Lauren’s death did. I never even met Lauren face to face; the one time she came to our practice I was out of town. That’s why my dream had to give her another face. With David it was terrible. With Lauren it was just tragic. I felt as I had on that dream bridge. Frustrated, confused, waiting for something, wanting to help but knowing it was too late. However hard I ran, however fast I swam, however sleek my bike, and no matter how much money I raised, I could not help Lauren anymore. And maybe I never could. One of the things God has been at pains to teach me is that we are powerless in the face of death.

And now I have had to do it again. We have all had to do it, for less than two weeks ago Tim Bennett was killed in a sailing accident, and another one too young has left us. Once again I crouch on the railing of that bridge, this time with each of you there beside me. How could my dream of three months ago have known that we would once again be looking into rough water, searching for someone we loved, wanting to help. Just coincidence I guess. Or maybe not.

And if God has taught me that we are powerless in the face of death, then God has also taught me that we are not powerless in the face of life. While we can no longer see David, or Lauren, or Tim, I think we would be wrong to conclude that they can no longer, in some way beyond our understanding, still see us. Our very desire to help can heal even when it cannot cure. And healing is so much more powerful. Because while we can no longer cure, we can still heal.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus is asked. It’s a wishy-washy question, and Jesus gives the questioner a wishy-washy answer. Then he says to the crowd…no. Then he says to us, “What did you think you were looking at, your children? What were you expecting to see, mere kids? What then did you think you would find, prophets? Yes, I tell you, they were prophets. These children were messengers, sent to you that you, and they, might prepare the way of God. For even the greatest of you who remain are less than the least one who lives with them this day in Heaven.” And so we are called to prepare the way of God, to make a highway safe for God’s people, and to remember the prophets we have known in our lives, especially the ones whose lives were so short, and whose witnesses are so strong.