When Words Fail

This Memorial Day weekend, I am clinging to God’s promise that death, evil and war are not the final word.  Jesus is, who was given up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Romans 4:25). 

Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.  It is sunken.  You must walk down a ramp to the memorial so that the viewer is below ground, as the dead are.  The names of the fallen soldiers are etched into reflective black stone so that you see your own reflection as you read their names.  It is a humbling, sobering reality that none of us lives up to.  The world for which they gave their lives is still in great need of peace.  While wars have been won, and evil exposed, our problem still rages on.  Each generation generates it and faces it.  We live in a world reflected in black.

We honor our soldiers this weekend and assure them that their sacrifice is beautiful and precious and honored.  They fought for us and we are grateful.  It is not their fault that the world is still reflected in black.  The problem is beyond the scope of any of us.  Maya Lin put us all in the place where we truly are – especially if you are a Christian – in the black crying out for mercy.

“Let the groans of the prisoners come before you;

According to your great power, preserve those doomed to die!” 

(Psalm 79:11)

I relate to this song of lament by Asaph in the Bible.  We are prisoners of sin, repeating fear and violence and hate every generation. 

I am heartbroken and maddened by the shooting this week at Robb Elementary in Texas. 

This is also an anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by the police sworn to protect him.  The recent shooting in Buffalo keeps this wound of racism open.

There are families torn apart by the war in Ukraine each day.

And this is the anniversary of my father’s death by brain cancer two years ago.

We live in a black reflection.  Words fail.

Mark Rothko, Red, Black, Red (1968), oil on canvas

When words fail and grief throbs, and all we see is black, I think of paintings by Mark Rothko.  He stripped everything away except color.  He repeated over and over the rectangle on which he painted as if to echo it in one stroke and rebel against it in the next stroke.  He simplified painting to focus on one thing.  And yet he painted the one color in layers and layers, almost obsessively, so that it seems boundless.  He questioned and grieved the world in which he lived – his rectangle.  I see it in this painting, Red, Black, Red (1968), in the red rectangle with jagged borders uncomfortably squished in a vertical black rectangle.  It barely fits.  The red suits my anger, the black my grief.  Tragically, he ended up taking his own life.  The evil he saw stole his hope.  I pray he met Jesus at some point.  Jesus alone could face what Mark Rothko painted, what the Vietnam Memorial reflects, what the dead in the ground suffered—he could face it and overcome.  I see this painting, Red, Black, Red, as a prayer cried by a prisoner.  It is my prayer too.  Though my heart is heavy, I know it is answered.

Though it was midday, the sky turned black as Jesus hung on the cross from noon to three (Mark 15:33).  At 3pm he cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:35).    He took all our black into his own body, his own wounds.  God laid on him his full wrath against sin and evil.  Jesus faced it all alone.  As Jesus died, he cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30).  He had finished the war on sin and won our forgiveness.  We didn’t “deserve” his sacrifice; he did it because he loved us that much.  We are that worth it to him.  His one sacrifice ransomed prisoners from sin, death, and deserving.  His tomb could not hold him.  Jesus is alive today.  He is alive on the battlefield, in the police car, in the schoolroom, and in the hospice center.  He hates the black more than we do. He comforts in the grief and brings life from the dead.  Because of what he did we are never, ever alone in the black.  He is here with you and me.  I hear him promise us:

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”  (John 16:33). 

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