Biography
The Rev. John Thomas, from Cleveland, Ohio, is General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. John is a former pastor and served for several years as his denomination's director of ecumenical concerns. Under John's leadership as President, the United Church of Christ is deeply involved in the work of justice, peace, and building community. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date.]

"When Hope Unborn Has Died"
Some years ago while serving as a parish pastor, I took a regular monthly turn as a volunteer chaplain at our local hospital. One early morning I was called to the maternity ward where a very young couple sat in shock, their premature baby born dead just an hour earlier. In a place normally filled with a sense of urgency, expectation and the mystery and joy and wonder of family transformation, this couple sat in stony, isolated silence, hardly connecting with each other, let alone me. It was very important for the mother to hold the tiny body of her dead child in her arms, to touch and caress. We talked, and prayed, and sat in silence. I led a brief service of blessing and naming, a way to acknowledge God's presence and compassion, a way to acknowledge the reality of the life that had been growing inside her and the reality of loss she was experiencing. But her husband hardly spoke, sat away from his wife, and was not able to bring himself to hold the infant wrapped in a blanket. It was as if a great chasm had been opened up between these two distraught parents, multiplying and deepening the losses each were feeling that night. I yearned for him to hold his wife, to hold his baby, to share her tears, and I wondered what the future held for the love that had once drawn them together. Never more haunting than on that night was the poignant phrase from the old African-American hymn that speaks of the time "when hope unborn has died."

We often think of grief as the loss of something or someone that has been important to us in the past. But the sharpest pain of grief comes, I believe, in the moments when we suddenly find ourselves confronting a vastly altered future, when our dearest hopes are undone by stillbirths of many kinds, when the hopes that have been nurtured with such expectation and promise in the wombs of our spirits die even before they take their first breath. It is not so much the loss of a rich past as it is the prospect of a barren future that causes us our most profound grief. Think of Naomi in the Book of Ruth, after the death of her sons, telling her two foreign daughters-in-law to return to their homes, convinced that there is to be no family in her future. Think of the distraught David upon hearing of the death of Absalom, the son who had betrayed him,"0 Absalom my son, my son. Would that I had died rather than you." Think of Job, left literally with nothing, facing a future filled only with friendly and futile explanations for his loss. Think of the parable's father, waiting day after day for the son who had left him to go off and make his own life in a far country, scanning the horizon for a glimpse of the beloved but lost prodigal. Think of Martha lashing out at Jesus following the death of Lazarus, "If you had been here he would not have died!" Think of Mary Magdalene at the tomb, weeping. "They have taken away my Lord, and I don't know where to find him." Think of the mothers of Jerusalem, mourning the children slaughtered by Herod, weeping like Rachel, "because they are no more." Grief is the name for our lives when hope unborn has died.

These Biblical stories resonate with us because they name the reality of our own experience of grief. A parent's hopes for a child dashed because of drugs, or mental illness. A teenager's hope for fulfilment destroyed by a parent's indifference, or a peer's rejection. A lover's hope for lifelong companionship dashed because of betrayal or abuse. A promising career cut short by economic downturns. Efforts for justice or peace obliterated by the relentlessness of violence and the resurgence of racism and greed. Its not just cancer and heart disease that litter the landscape of our lives with grief, but all those things that empty the future of its promise. A recent newspaper photograph showed a classroom of students in Africa, sitting at their desks, expectant, polite. But there was no teacher at the desk in front of them. He was one of thousands of teachers struck down by the AIDS epidemic in Central and Southern Africa. When hope unborn has died. Do you remember the mournful song in the musical, Les Mis, sung after the revolution has been crushed? A lone actor surveys the now vacant café where just the night before a crowd of students had proclaimed their youthful and exuberant hope for liberty: "There's a grief that can't be spoken. There's a pain goes on and on. Empty chairs and empty tables. All my friends, are dead and gone."

Faith does not alter or undo the events of the past that have prompted our grief. No amount of prayer, no theological insight, no spiritual exercise would have let the parents I visited that awful night bring their baby home, watch him learn to walk, hit a baseball, learn to read, fall in love and have their grandchildren. Faith cannot change that reality. But faith does change the way we perceive the future as a place which may yet hold promise, as a time where other hopes may yet be conceived and given birth, as a journey of uncertainty but also of expectation that need not be taken alone. In his farewell words to the Disciples, Jesus tells them, "I will not leave you orphaned." Terrible things are in store. Crosses loom on the horizon. Pain and death will not be avoided. But "I will not leave you orphaned." Indeed, he goes on to tell them that if they remain faithful, God will come to them and will make a home with them." Faith, unlike cheap religion or popular spirituality does not respond to grief with empty piety and easy explanations, or try to seduce with cheap Pollyanna promises that cannot be sustained. Faith encourages us to face the reality of our grief with honesty and courage, to acknowledge that indeed hope unborn has died, but that in the end, God will not leave us orphaned, that in the words of St. Paul, "nothing, not things present nor even things to come, can separate us from the love of God."

A few days after that night in the hospital room I gathered with a small group at the cemetery to conduct a simple funeral for the little baby. I watched as the couple, so distant from each other three nights before, emerged from the car arm in arm, watched as the father, once so reluctant to touch his child, went to the hearse, picked up the little casket of their baby and carried it to the grave, watched as they held each other listening to my words. Perhaps on that gray morning, in the midst of grief, their new intimacy promised the conceiving of hope born not only of their renewed companionship, but also through the presence of One who had not, and will not leave them orphaned. May you who are facing barren futures, who have watched the death of hope in your own arms, and who struggle day to day with a profound grief, be gifted by companions who can help you see the future with new eyes, to sense the stirring of new hope deep within, and to recognize the enduring presence of a God who will not abandon you, of a love that will never let you go. Amen.

Interview with John Thomas
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: John, your compelling message touches the hearts of all of us as a metaphor. You begin with the illustration of the premature baby who has died. For those "still-births" of many kinds in our lives, as you look back on your journey, how have you dealt with those kinds of moments? Are there moments when you have experienced a "still-birth" personally?

John Thomas: There are certainly moments when one is afraid that that is about to happen. In my own experience, our second son was born with some very significant problems. In just a moment one goes from great excitement to horrendous anxiety. You face immediately the prospect of all of the expectations, all of the plans simply vanishing. And at that time it's simply important, I think, to cling to someone. That's what I found so compelling and disturbing about that night in the hospital: these two parents sitting almost in opposite corners of the room. So finding a way to slowly bring them together really was the key to the beginning of healing.

Talbot: So often that kind of sharp pain can separate, can't it?

Thomas: It drives us into isolation and, ironically, it's the isolation that imprisons us in our grief.

Talbot: But how does the reassurance which you amplify—that God does not leave us orphaned, that nothing can separate us from the love of God—get revealed to people who are at the bottom of the pit of despair and see no way out?

Thomas: Most of us have to find our own way. We saw how the labyrinth can be an opportunity to move into solitude—yet a solitude that is accompanied by others in their own journeys—and to finding the presence of God in the companionship of others. I think for most of us, however, it's the awareness not simply of a God whose love will not let us go, but of a friend whose love will not let us go, who will stand with us in the midst of all of our pain, anger, and grief; and unlike Job's friends, resist the temptation to offer explanations, but simply to be there with us.

Talbot: Just to be present.

Thomas: That's right. And to remind us that we need not move into this empty future without companionship.

Talbot: The title of your message, When Hope Unborn Has Died, comes from an African-American hymn. How did you discover that?

Thomas: It's a famous hymn. It's the "national anthem" of African-Americans: "Lift every voice and sing! It's a hymn that speaks of not only a personal tragedy, but the community's tragedy of a terrible struggle through the years of enslavement and the journey toward freedom. The experience, undoubtedly, of so many of those persons who saw their lives taken away from them.

Talbot: Thank you for giving us that gift of promise, John Thomas.