Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message at the funeral service for Thomas William “Tommy” Thomson, an elder and patriarch of First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, on Saturday, February 3, 2024. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Jonathan Safran Foer and Scott Hoezee inform the message.
Oskar Schell is the lead character in the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”
The 9-year-old boy’s father has just been killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack, and Oskar is understandably heartbroken over losing his dad. So also we here, in our moment, in this place: Despairing and distraught, anxious and unsure about a future, that doesn’t necessarily look particularly bright.
In the days after the attack, Oskar is poking around his father’s closet and discovers a small key mysteriously hidden in a non-descript envelope labeled with the name “Black.” The discovery piques Oskar’s curiosity, and the boy begins a quest to find the lock that the key will open. Oskar is convinced that whatever he finds kept under lock and key will reveal something profoundly important about his dead father and perhaps somehow assuage his grief.
So, unescorted, all by himself, at the tender age of 9, Oskar sets out to visit every person in New York City with the name “Black.” He scours the phone book and maps out his route to accomplish his mission of confronting total strangers and asking them if they own the lock that fits the key.
Oskar’s boyishly willful determination surely triggers breathless, heart-pounding worry. How in the world could he engage in such dangerous travels all alone? And where on God’s green earth is his mother in all this?
In the end, after a tortuous set of plot twists and turns, Oskar learns that it wasn’t his father’s key after all.
It simply was a key, tucked in an envelope, and hidden in a vase that Oskar’s father had long-ago purchased at a rummage sale. Angry and upset that he searched for naught, Oskar destroys everything associated with his fruitless effort.
But that’s when Oskar discovers that his mother knew all about his unchaperoned travels from the get-go. In fact, she had contacted everyone in New York City with the name “Black” and told them what Oskar was doing. They all knew ahead of time that Oskar would be knocking at their doors, and thus they all were well prepared to offer him the fundamentals of hospitable reception.
Mother Schell gave her grieving son the freedom to conduct his search alone, but she was watching over him all along the way by going ahead of him and setting up his appointments. Oskar naively decided to go it alone, but his mother prepared the way to ensure his safety.
That kind of concerned-but-not-controlling overwatching is what this morning’s psalm proclaims true of the God who us our guardian and guide. Psalm 121 is fuel for a long, hard journey along unfamiliar, dangerous, and possibly even deadly roads. It is the psalm that I shared with Lynn and Tom in the hours before he died.
Listen to the Word that God has spoken. Listen even if you don’t understand.
I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come?
My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore. (Psalm 121)
When our children were younger, and my wife and I found ourselves cooped up with the three of them on long road trips or family vacations, we often sang songs together to pass the time and keep our littles occupied.
It was a mighty helpful gadget in the parental toolbox when they inevitably lost interest in the vast overstock of toys, books, Legos, and super-hero action figures, that seemingly filled every square inch of available space in our navy-blue Toyota minivan.
Old standards were the music of our journeys: “Old McDonald,” “B-I-N-G-O,” and several classic favorites from a group called “The Wiggles.” And when the kids got older, the endlessly irritating “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” appeared on our playlist whenever over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we went.
So also it was for the Old Testament people of God and their children, as they slogged through the hills of Judea en route to Jerusalem to celebrate the great feasts of Judaism. By no measure were they taking pleasant Sunday drives over smooth ribbons of highway in air-conditioned, surround-sound comfort. They were making spiritual pilgrimages aboard donkeys – or on their own two feet, traversing rocky and uneven paths both narrow and winding.
So, they didn’t simply sing pleasant little ditties to pass the time and ratchet down the endless frequency of the Are-We-There-Yet! whining. No, they sang songs rippling with spiritual muscle like Psalm 121 to teach their children something about God. For together, they were on a journey to the Temple, where they most-assuredly expected to experience the very real presence of the Lord God of Israel.
You and I also are navigating physical and spiritual journeys similarly fraught with personal threat and emotional challenge.
And all-the-while we wonder – especially at these particularly rocky mileposts of grief and loss – just exactly if and how our God is present in the messiness of our days, in the rokenness of our world, in the fear and loathing of our hearts and minds.
Yes, God has delivered us from evil’s bondage through the parted Red Sea of Christ’s blood.
Yes, God has led us into the Promised Land by the power and light of the Holy Spirit of God in Christ.
Yes, we have been abundantly blessed by heavenly ways and means beyond measure.
But yet, God, at times, still feels distant – allowing tragedy, or dis-ease, or death to strike for heavenly reasons unknown. We surely believe in God but also surely don’t experience the divine presence as fully or as often as we should, could and want. We walk by faith, not by sight, and our journey into God’s presence is neither short, nor easy, nor safe.
So, as we follow behind God’s Old Testament people on a likewise long and arduous pilgrimage, we, too, sing their songs, which intend to lift, sustain and nourish along life’s way.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where does come my help?”
Well, the constant refrain of Psalm 121 suggests that God watches over you and me.
As we travel through this world on our way to face-to-face encounters with our Maker and Redeemer, we can count on this: God watches over you – not from a distance but as a constant friend, arm in arm, joined at the hip. “Thanks for keeping me going” forever rises among our ever-constant prayers. Psalm 121 assures that the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob remains our ultimate help: “The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will watch over your life.”
Still, those lyric words might stick in your throat, because, of course, all of us have experienced harm in this life. We all bear scars from the multiple wounds of just living. Then, however merciful, death befalls, and you surely hope that God’s promises don’t ring hollow.
Maybe a better translation of the word “life” is “soul.” Which puts the real spiritual meat on the bones of Psalm 121: “The Lord will you from all evil, forever watching over your soul.”
That’s why, even in the valley of the shadow of death, you have absolutely no reason to cower in fear of evil or its always-lingering consequences.
Just remember that, in order for there to be shadow, there first must be Light. For us, God’s constant gaze glimmers like sunbeams on freshly fallen crystal snow, so evil cannot and will not prevent your soul from meeting God face to face – in this world or the next.
Sometimes when he watches over us, the Lord gets directly involved and actually fights our battles for us. Those moments are what we call miracles.
Sometimes when he watches over us, the Lord partners with us, so that we fight along with him in the sense of cooperating with God as co-creators.
And other times when he watches over us, the Lord actually is overwatching, and we relish a sense of assurance that we fight not the fight alone. It might not feel or seem like God is watching over the heat of our battles, but indeed God is overwatching us, surveying the whole terrain of our lives, and standing ever ready to provide effective help whenever, wherever, and however we need it most.
Horatio Spafford knew something of life’s unexpected and painful challenges.
A successful lawyer and real estate investor, Mr. Spafford lost his fortune in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Soon after, scarlet fever claimed the earthly life of his cherished 4-year-old boy.
Thinking time away would do his family some good, he boarded his wife and four daughters aboard ship for England, planning to join them after he tended to some final business matters in the Windy City.
However, while far out at sea, the ship carrying Mr. Spafford’s family wrecked in a terrible collision and sunk like a rock. More than 200 souls were lost, including all four of Horatio Spafford’s precious daughters. His wife, Anna, survived. Upon arriving in England, she sent her husband a straight-to-the-point telegram: “Saved alone. What shall I do?”
Mr. Spafford immediately set sail for England.
At one point during his voyage, the captain of the ship, aware of the tragedy that had struck the Spafford family, summoned Horatio to the ship’s bridge to share word that they were now passing over the spot of the fatal wreck.
Mr. Spafford, naturally, thought about his lost daughters. And his grieving wife, still a half-ocean distant. But then, words of comfort and hope filled his heart and mind. He later wrote them down, and they’ve since become a well-beloved hymn:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll –
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul.
Perhaps we cannot always say that everything is well in all aspects of our lives.
There’ll always be storms to face, and sometimes there’ll be tragedies. That’s surely the case for me, anyway.
But with faith in a loving God and with trust in divine help, we can confidently say, even when eyes well with tears, that “it is well with my soul.”
Ancient words, ever true.