Why?
Pastor Ben Valentine started his sermon as the memorial service was well underway.
Kim Eipe Mathew was being eulogized.
Friends and family all had already spoken.
Emerging clear through all of them, was a picture of this sparkling young man, at the pinnacle of his life, professional and private, one might say.
55 years old, New York investment banker, one time London bureau chief for Deutsche Bank,
Handsome like the Dickens,
Middle child of Lali, and the late Babu,
Husband of Christa, father of Andrew and Hannah,
brother, younger to Rano and older to Salim.
Grandson of one Eipechan, who I can attest to as the principal benefactor of Immanuel MarThoma church in Mepral, near Thiruvalla.
However, the most striking feature of this seemingly worldly-endowed man, an erudite Ivy League graduate, was simple. He was in possession of the devoutest of faiths. The enviable sort.
So the Pastor asked: why?
He said it’s a question we encounter from very young children, about unanswerable questions.
But the question never goes away. we never stop asking even as adults.
His own 4-year-old daughter has now started asking the same.
I can’t say he answered the question for me in any lasting way. But he satisfied that yearning of a sort, while we were sitting in that huge beautiful Presbyterian church, with splendid stained glass windows, the kind that make churches splendid.
This was not Kim’s parish church. The family was renting the space to accommodate the 300-strong attendees.
But it was Pastor Ben’s sermon that stuck.
Pastor Ben is the vicar of the Trinity Non-denominational Church in Darien CT, where Kim resided. The congregation doesn’t own a church building. They meet in a warehouse-like space in a strip mall or something.
Pastor Ben weaved his thoughts through succinctly, in 14 minutes to be exact. Not one word was needlessly used. Or without meaning.
So, Martha also asked the Lord, Why? ‘If you could just have been here …’. Only if.
Jesus, as any Sunday-schooler knows, when He heard about His friend Lazarus’ death, He wept. He closely identified with the two sisters’ pain. He felt their pain. He grieved with the family.
It is at this juncture that Jesus said to Martha, the most profoundest of His proclamations: ‘I Am The Resurrection And The Life’. Hope in the midst of grief.
In fact, he also wrestled with God at one time and asked, ‘Why? God’.
Jesus, when we question, ‘why He was not there?’, doesn’t necessarily erase our questions, or take away our suffering. He suffers with us so that we might become like Him.
He weeps with us. He’s close to the broken-hearted, even if we get close only to ask him, Why? Why not?
He left the dejected disciples with the Holy Spirit, which remains not as a teacher, not as an inspirer, not as a leader, but as a Comforter, In His absence.
Kim grew up attending the Grace Chapel in Lexington, while the family lived in Massachusetts. And his faith took roots there.
Through his education at Yale, and then the subsequent stints at top-of-the world financial markets, the furthermost places from a lowly life of faith, it is this faith that grounded him.
The bond traders, the bankers, and the Bible class partners who knew Kim and were there for him, presented testimony to this while speaking through sobs.
It was also abundantly clear that Pastor Ben was more than Kim’s pastor. He was with the family throughout the ordeal, in their suffering. He was a member of the family.
Towards the end of his life, on the last day Kim could actually speak, the pastor went to be with him. He prayed with Kim, while holding on to Kim’s hand tight. Then as he was about to take leave and let go of Kim’s hand, Kim grabbed it back in a tight grip, and said he wanted to pray. He prayed with the pastor and for the pastor.
in his physical weakness, even as his body was ravaged by that unforgiving disease known as Glioblastoma, Kim became a spiritual giant.
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say, other than that it was an uplifting experience.
In almost any religion, answers to suffering are vague at best.
I still don’t know why Kim was called. and I’ve gone back to asking, why? But I do know he is with God. And God is with us.
stay warm on this Saturday…
mercy
12.18.2019
mercy's musings 