No movie has touched my life more dramatically than Good Will Hunting. It appeared on the screen in a season of my life in which alcohol and anger were seeping from my own father wounds, and during a time when the direction of my life and the purpose of my story were clouded in self-doubt, insecurity and confusion. Today, I mourn with the rest of the world as we contemplate the legacy of Robin Williams, who despite assuring us all that "It is not your fault," has taken his own life. As is often the case in suicide, the true rationale for such a final, and drastic measure, passes on with the victim. Even when a reason is given, it fails to tell the entire story. In fact, my first months of ministry found me picking up the pieces with a family in the wake of suicide. Their own questions mirrored the same “why?” that seems to just hang in the air like a thick smoke inside my mind to this day.
 
   Statistically, my work with college students places me in direct contact with a demographic that is more likely to end their lives prematurely than nearly any other. I say “nearly”, because the reality is that suicides that occur among those 18-24 is actually eclipsed by only one other age group, those above 65. Of this shocking trend M. Robert Mullholland, Jr. writes:

“I believe one of the underlying realities behind the epidemic of suicide among adolescents and senior citizens is that we are a culture that values people primarily for what they do.” 

   Teenagers and the retired are most vulnerable to despair and lack of identity in such a culture, he argues. Robin Williams, at age 63, could certainly fit into this demographic. And while this may very well be a legitimate diagnosis of the problem, it is certainly not the only one. My contact with those who have attempted suicide leads me to believe that many considered suicide because, quite frankly, life has become unbearable. I see the connection in the two age groups to be more along the lines of their place in history. Those older than 65 have fought long enough and are ready to move on. The young adults simply look at the potential of another 60+ years of hell in front of them and opt out early. When I look at the world outside my window and the one unfolding on the screen in front of me, I sympathize with their conclusion. This is not cynical, nihilistic surrender, it is empathy instead of judgment, and it is refusing to call it daytime when it is night.

   My personal conviction is that those who are considering suicide do not need sermons (formal or informal) exhorting them to cheer up, look on the bright-side, or reminders that things are not so bad after all, or be told one more time how much they are loved and appreciated…no matter how well intentioned. What I want to suggest instead is that, especially as followers of Jesus Christ, we need to be willing to sit in the darkness with others and refuse to call it anything less. A girl who is rapped by her uncle, a boy who has struggled his whole life with homosexual urges, the child who grows up in the foster care system, the man whose drunk father beat him daily and the women whose parents were killed by a drunk driver. Their pain is real and their tragedy has marked every aspect of their story. 

   What I often fear drives some to take their lives is that the world around them doesn’t want to hear their story. Our culture is unkind to those who are broken messes. Those who feel all alone in their struggle often wake to find one day that the world around them really has moved on without them. Theirs is not a winning story of overcoming and unstoppable victory against all odds. To all of you who are considering suicide today I want to remind you that Jesus came for the sick who know they needed a doctor (Matt. 9:12). He had little patience for those who thought they were already healthy.

   Your stories of pain and abandonment and crushing loss are all living reminders that the world we live in is broken and in need of the rescue that only Jesus can give. And we need you. We need your bravery and your honesty. We need truth tellers who have stared at the darkness of their own lives and are not afraid of the darkness lurking in the stories of everyone they meet. Truly, if this can’t start among those who know they are unconditionally loved, things may be truly worse than any of us imagine. That is why we need you to stay among us. Not because things are not as bad as you think, but because you know how bad they really are. We need people who are not afraid to take off their masks and let the world know, as Frederick Beuchner suggests, that our secrets are what we share most in common. Robin, I wish we all still had time for you to talk to Sean. You will be greatly missed.

In May of 2012 Zach Sobiech was told that cancer had spread into his pelvis and lungs. He was told there was nothing more to be done. He was told he had just months to live. So Zach Sobiek, at age 17, wrote a song to say goodbye.

The song now has more than 2 million hits on YouTube. You can hear the song and watch the video Zach produced here

Have you ever wondered, out loud, or even in the silence of your own thoughts, what your own reaction might be if given just a few months to live. Would you try to meet someone famous, travel, or give away all of your possessions? Would you spend it with family, with friends, or mending bridges you burned long ago?  Would you spend it in silence and reflection or would you live as loud as you possibly could, pushing the very last breath out of your system? Would you spend it adding up all your regrets, or subtracting them?  Would you do everything you could to hold on to life, or would you freely let it slip away?

Zach’s story helped me to ponder afresh again today why it is that so many of us wait until the very last moment of life, often literally, before we are willing to do the things we have always wanted to. The things that are most important to us.  

It isn’t at all dissimilar to me the way in which people spend thousands of dollars on their house so that they can sell it, only to find that once all the remodeling is over, they finally have the house that they always wanted.  And if they had spent the money years earlier, they would have had time to actually enjoy the house they are now handing over to someone else. 

I have heard so many tales about people who have used their final breaths to reconcile with distant parents, forgive age-old grudges, or tell a companion how much they truly have always loved them. And then they die without the benefit of ever being able to experience the profound changes those conversations could have had if they occurred on this side of life.

Consider today what you might do if you only had a month to live. And commit to doing it soon. For in the end, we all will face a time when we have but a month to live, and without knowing it, perhaps, some of us are already living in that month. Don’t waste it. 

This week America mourns the loss of a dear British friend of ours. While there are a number of impatient folks who heard the news much earlier than the rest of us, for many, Sunday night brought the final moments of Sybil Grantham’s young life into our living room. If you are part of the small minority of people in our world today that have not been living for the past three years on the grounds of an estate known as Downton Abbey, this blog will mean very little to you. For the rest of the world, it will serve as a much-needed opportunity to move together through the next stage of our communal grief. If there was any identifiable Christ figure in the Downton Abbey series, indeed it was Sybil. Throwing off the shackles of aristocracy, and refusing the silver spoon dangled before her mouth daily, we watched Sybil fight for the rights of women, wear pants in an age of dinner dresses, and volunteer as a nurse during the war. Of the entire Grantham clan, she was the most comfortable among the staff that waited on them hand-and-foot, treating them as equals, as fellow humans. In the end, she made the ultimate commitment to associate with the “common folk” by marrying the families’ chauffeur and sacrificing her very life in the process of giving birth to their daughter. In one of her final conversations, the produces of Downton offered us a rare glimpse into the spiritual life of Sybil as she shared with her older sister Mary, “I do believe in God, but all the rest of it, Vicars, feast days, and deadly sins I don’t care about all of that. I don’t know if a vicar knows anything more about God than I do.” Those that have come to know Sybil would have expected nothing less. Her words, indeed her very life, speak to a desire for authentic faith and an authentic life. A faith that recognizes that we have not just been saved, but we have been saved for something. Her words reminded me of the famous Priest, counselor, author and educator Henri Nouwen who once wrote, “The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there.“ Nouwen, who walked away from a lucrative career in the halls of the Ivy League to spend his final days caring for a mentally and physically disabled young man, reminds us what we loved most about Sybil. Her position of power and influence was a post from which she recognized her ability to give, rather than to take, to serve, rather than be served, free rather than oppress. Sybil, while we will miss you dearly, thank you for helping to put flesh on the reality that we are called to be people of incarnational ministry. Thanks for helping us all understand what it means for us to be a peculiar kind of people who follow a God who put on flesh and “dwelled among us.” I speak for many when I confess that you helped me to understand the gospel with greater clarity, and what it means for the world that the Lord upstairs not only knows our name, but was willing to come down and dine with those of us working in the kitchen. And that he came not only to share a meal, but to share with us the infinitely amazing news that he has prepared a room for us in the estate, declaring to us with the same warmth and generosity we caught so often in your eyes, “I no longer call you servants, but friends.” (John 15:15) Farewell Sybil. Thank you.