Biography
Walter Wangerin was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of a Lutheran Pastor and educator. Like his father, Walter is also a Lutheran minister and served for more than ten years at Grace Lutheran Church, an inner-city church in Evansville, Indiana. Walter has been a migrant worker, a radio announcer, a literature teacher — but he is best known for his wonderful books. The Book of the Dun Cow was the American Book Award winner and was selected by the New York Times as the best children’s book of the year. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Bless Me in Your Suffering" 
THEME: There are times in each of our lives when suffering or tragedy invade our days. No one can avoid it — it is part of our human experience. One of the great gifts given to persons who have developed their spiritual lives is an increased ability to cope with tragedy and suffering. They learn they can share their pain with God who cares and who eases their burdens. A really gifted speaker is now going to shed insight on how we can translate our personal pain into something unique, into a blessing for ourselves and others.

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you. Therefore,” said Jesus, “let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid.”

In just a little while I’m going to tell you about my grandfather in order to put some real tough, thick flesh on that peace that Jesus talked about which is distinguished from the peace of the world.

But because I find myself in St. Paul’s position every single time he wrote an epistle to the people whom he loved, I’m going to begin with his words. He said to the Romans, and to the Corinthians, and to the Ephesians, to those people where he was not, whom he could not see, but whom he loved so much that his spirit was with them, he said, “Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

He said that though he could not see them. But he said that because he said again and again that he was with them. He was with them because they both were inside the same God, and everybody who was in God was one with another, and even though the geography separated them, the spirit drew them together so he was with them even though he could not see them.

He said that also because he had been with them, and he had known them well enough that even if he wasn’t looking at them at that time, he knew what they were doing he knew what they were like. His memory and his love brought him very tightly to them.

And you see, I find myself a little bit in that position as well. For all of this television technology, I can’t see you. You can see me but I can’t see you. And yet I say to you, “Grace be unto you, and peace from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” I say it to you for the same reasons that Paul said it to the people to whom he wrote letters.

I say it because we are in the same God, and that one God binds us together no matter how far the geography is apart, one from another.

And I say it because I have seen you. And so I am with you even if I can’t see you now. in all my years of ministry, I have seen you or I’ve seen people like you. And that has made me to understand who you are.

I have seen your eyes and I have seen your lips. I have seen your feet. In every one of those things I have seen you yearn for peace.

I have seen your eyes when they have filled up with tears because of the physical hurt, because of physical pain. I saw those for years in my own parish, and I saw them in people like you, and I saw them in you.

I saw your lips when they grew thin, tighter and tighter because of the heart’s hurt that was inside of you, because of the wounds that people gave you.

And I saw your feet. I saw them when you took your shoes off and sat down and sighed because you were so tired, so weary, and you yearned for peace.

People, with all my heart when I say to you, “Grace be unto you and peace,” and I put those two words together — both “grace” and “peace” from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — with all my heart I pray that when you yearn for that peace, when you know the tears of the pain which is aging and suffering from disease, and which is the facing of death; when your lips grow very, very thin because the children in your family, or the spouse, or the parents, or neighbors are able to sin against you and to keep that sin going, because the world and its people are bitter and not necessarily kind to you, so you draw your lips tight so that you don’t respond in the same sinful way, and you yearn for peace. When you are tired because the world altogether is not kind for you, and it makes you work so hard — and in hardship — in order to make a living, in order to survive, and then when you pray for peace, I pray you that you do not pray for the world’s peace because there is a difference — its and God’s.

Well, the world’s peace is true for a little while, and then that “for a little while” is the problem, because then it turns into a lie. When you pray for the world’s peace, please understand this is what you are praying for. You’re praying that these three warfares that I’m talking about — the warfare with the body and all that the pain that it produces all the way down to death; and the warfare with other people and all that sin does to you; and the warfare with this world which forces you to labor until you are tired. When the world gives peace to these three things, what it wants is that they simply end. That’s its peace — that all these things stop. That for a little while you can stop crying because you stop hurting because you took an aspirin or you had a little bit of medicine. That maybe the people around you should stop hurting you, that they should stop using these words or making your life difficult at work or not receiving the blessings that you gave them so much. The world’s peace is that they stop hurting you for just a little while. And the world’s peace is that you take a vacation.

The world’s peace is true for a little while when these three warfares stop, but then it becomes alive because this is the greater truth and you know it: that all these things come again. You will be tired again, and someone will be nasty to you, and someone will pierce you. This is the way of people. And you will hurt. And you are old. And you will face death.

I pray that when you pray for peace, it is not the world’s peace that you pray for, but it is the peace which Jesus Christ promised. This is different. This is altogether different because it isn’t the lie that says that in this world suffering shall stop. What it is — see if I can say this so clearly that you don’t let go of it — it is that Jesus Christ took hold of this suffering which warfare causes, and transfigured it, so that it itself may bear blessing both to you and to the people who are around you.

This is the thing that he did. Instead of cutting off what the world is, Jesus Christ entered into the world himself, and he suffered the sufferings that you yourself suffered. He knew the tiredness and slept on the boards in the back of the boat. He knew the cutting of other people in their sins. Don’t you understand — he entered into the same kind of suffering that you have been in as well. He came into that warfare and he suffered their sins all the way to the warfare of physical death.

He died on that cross. Now this is how his peace touches suffering. It means that he himself entered into the suffering in such a way that it could transfigure it also for you. When you suffer, as you will — we will not lie — Christ will not lie — when you suffer, as you will, you may begin to recognize that that same Lord Jesus Christ is with you in the midst of it, not apart from it.

When the world suffers, don’t you know, it divides itself from you because it goes lonely in its suffering. When you suffer, the world divides itself from you because your suffering makes riskiness for it that it can’t stand. But when you suffer, Jesus Christ enters into that suffering with you.

“Don’t let your heart be troubled,” because you’re not alone in that thing. And when he enters into that suffering he draws into it also the love of God. “Neither be afraid.”

Do you understand that in this suffering you can be whole, and that whole is shalom and that shalom is peace? Not the cessation of these things but the changing of them. That your heart may be whole in it because it is a heart that is bound unto the Lord.

Now, if Christ has brought love into your suffering, because he has brought himself into your suffering, if he has made at least your heart whole no matter what the people are doing, no matter what the world is doing, no matter what your body is doing, then listen to me. Then you yourself may become a blessing unto the people around you out of your suffering. You may become the same kind of blessing that Christ was when he was on a cross and did not curse, but blessed. This is the peace that Christ offers, the peace that transfigures our suffering into blessings as the Lamb of God does unto the people who are around us. “Oh my father, bless me in your suffering.”

I told you that I was going to tell you about my grandfather. I’m going to put some tough flesh on this kind of peace that Christ gives, this kind of peace that doesn’t have you so swallowed up in your suffering that you can be nothing to the people who love you and are near. But out of that, out of that wisdom, and out of that drama or that pain, you can become significant unto them.

See my grandpa. Look at him. Because when I was six years old, I loved him. In fact, I have been loving him all those six years. We lived in Chicago on Overhill Street. My grandfather and his wife (my grandmother), and some of my aunts lived in St. Louis. Grandpa had a mustache bigger than the one that I have on right now, and it was white. Grandpa was tall (six feet four), and rangy-boned, and he was in charge of Concordia Cemetery in the dead center of St. Louis. And I used to visit him when I was small. And I loved him because he did important and adult things to me. Even when I was tiny, he dealt with me like an adult. Grandpa told me the truth. Whenever we traveled through the cemetery, he told me the truth about what happens when people die. He told me that their fingernails grow, and that their hair keeps on growing. And I didn’t know that anybody else knew this truth. You see, my grandpa loved me. He didn’t hide things from me.

Grandpa told the truth. I’m not sure that you have known these things, but I learned them at the age of four: that when people are cremated (this is a heavy thing now), “They sit up and scream,” grandpa said.

Well, he said that the reason they did that is because the air expanded in their lungs, but it was a wondrous truth to me who was a child at that time and my grandpa loved me and I loved him.

Six feet four I said. That means that when Grandfather (old Bill Stork) was young, he was called to the places where people would get rambunctious with booze. And Bill Stork would come in there and grab them, one hand on the collar and one hand around the belt, and literally carry them out of those bars and across the street. And he told me he used to toss them into the cemetery because he believed that if they woke up next to a tombstone, they might not be doing the same thing tomorrow.

Old Bill Stork — he loved me and I loved him.

He could spit tobacco. He would lean back in his office with the great oak desk, put his hands behind his head, let that mustache droop in front of his mouth, and that I supposed was to put a little difficulty to the shot, and shoot tobacco all the way to a spittoon which was beside the wall, and I was thrilled! I loved my grandfather, and my grandf ather loved me.

And then one day my mother, while we were still in Chicago, said that it was time to visit Grandpa and that things were changing. I knew that things were changing even before Mom told me that because I saw her eyes, and I saw that they were not laughing, and she was not joyful over this visit to her father. And she said to me a word I had not heard or understood before. Mom said, “Grandpa is dying. We’re going to go see him once before he dies.”

I didn’t understand what the word dying meant but I knew that it had to be enormous. I knew that it had to be huge because I had never seen my mother so quiet and so sunken in herself before.

We got in the car and we drove from Chicago down to St. Louis and it was a silent drive, which was unusual both for my father and for my mother, and for me. Something enormous was happening. I knew this but I didn’t know what. And I didn’t know what you do when you don’t know what this thing is, which is so enormous, happening.

We got to the cemetery where they lived and we walked in the back door of the house. And I saw that they had moved Grandpa from his bedroom. They had put him on a cot in the hallway. And Grandpa was not the same. Six foot four I suppose he was, but his body had changed and he was pale white, and it seemed to me he had lost most of his hair, and it looked like his mustache was yellow, and his cheeks were sunken.

They didn’t let me walk to him right away. They took all of the children and they put us in the living room. The house was hushed. I had never heard such a hush. This is not the hush of not talking. This is the hush of waiting. This is the hush of not breathing. This is the hush of holding the spirit back. And I was a child six years old, and I did not know what to do with such a hush. I said, “This is dying? What do you do with dying?”

They put us in the living room, the children and I. And we waited. But my grandfather loved me and he called us one by one to the place where he was lying on that cot. So they came for me, and my mom said, “He wants to see you.”

And I was terrified. Because I didn’t know what dying is and I didn’t know what you do with dying. I walked through the hall to the place where Grandpa was lying down and it looked to me as though his eyelids were made out of paper and they were drooped half-way over his eyeballs, and his mustache was huge, and there was no flesh on his body any more. He was under a single sheet, and he was a big-boned man. But so thin.

And I stood ten feet away from him. I stood back. And I didn’t move. And I didn’t talk. I simply looked him in the eye and waited because I didn’t know what to do.

Grandpa turned his head my way. And when his eyes widened just a little bit, then I knew that he had seen me and that he knew that I was there. And then Grandpa told me what you do. In his suffering, he taught me what to do at six years old. Lying on his back, Grandpa took a huge hand on a narrow arm, and he put it out to me and he nodded, and he smiled. And I understood immediately what Grandpa was telling me to do. He was saying: Six years old, come here. He was saying: Let’s shake hands.

So I walked over to Grandpa. This is what you do when somebody dies. We shook hands — once, twice. And suddenly, whatever death was, it was smaller than us. It was smaller than me. And it was smaller than Grandpa. And it was smaller than the thing that embraced us both, and that thing was God.

We drove home from there. I think it was several weeks later, I was sitting in the kitchen and the telephone rang in the dining room. Our telephone was on the dining room wall, affixed to it. My mother answered it. I was sitting at the table and could see her through a hallway. She talked on it, and I knew what that phone call was about from the first ring. She hardly said any words at all, and when she was done listening to the telephone, she put the phone on its cradle, and she put her head against the phone. She started crying, and I knew Grandpa was dead. This was her father.

But Grandpa had taught me what you do when somebody dies. Six years old Grandpa had blessed me out of his suffering. Please understand that. So six years old stood up at the kitchen table, and I don’t know how tall I was at that time, but I think it was about ten feet!

And I walked from that kitchen into the hall where my mother was standing with her head against the wall and weeping and weeping. I have seen eyes fill up with tears, but at six years old I knew what to do. I grabbed hold of my mother’s skirt and I pulled at it once, twice, giving little tiny tugs so she would know I was there and waiting until she would look down, and my mother looked down on me with her eyes red and with all the tears running down her face. But that was all right. Those tears were all right. Because I know what you do. I stuck my hand out. Took her hand and I shook it — once, twice. So Mom could come down on my shoulder, don’t you know. And she could cry on me.

And we two could be bigger than this thing which is what? — dying. “Peace I leave with you.” Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives, give I unto you.”

And what he meant by that peace was that the suffering doesn’t stop, and the world doesn’t suddenly stop dying. Grandpas don’t stop dying. Their daughters don’t stop crying at those deaths. And their grandchildren don’t walk away and never see death again. These things continue in this world until it comes to an end.

What he did mean is that in the midst of that kind of a suffering, there may be a wholeness of heart, because that same Lord Jesus who himself died and rose again dwells in that heart. When the heart is whole, then the heart is healthy even if the body is suffering.

That’s where my grandpa was. And if the heart is healthy, then it can reach out of its own suffering and find those people who are around there whom it loves, whom I love, whom you love. It can take hold of their hand in a thousand ways, and even from the suffering — because then I think there is a certain power or wisdom given — and even from the suffering shake hands, and bless, and bless.

Oh, bless me, Grandfather, out of your suffering. This is the peace that Jesus gives. This is true all of the time. This doesn’t suddenly cease to be true. This is the kind of peace that if the warfare you are having is with other people, it learns how to forgive first and not wait for them to make first moves.

This is the kind of peace that even though the world becomes a hardship, may itself, may yourself, be light and lively and healthy and whole in the midst of that hardship, that blessing shower from you on the people who are around you. This is the peace of Jesus.

Oh dear people I am with you because I have seen you over and over again. I am with you because we are bound up in the same God whose heart is so great that it binds us both. I am with you as my grandpa was with me.

I shake your hands — once, twice.

And I say, “Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” And like St. Paul I say, “Amen,” and you say, “Amen.”