H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian
12 September 2004
ALWAYS
Matthew 28:16-20
Jesus is sending his disciples out into the world, admittedly a dangerous world, and his final words
to them are, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That’s a pretty literal
rendering of Jesus’ words. By the “end of the age” Jesus means the end of the world, the uttermost
ending when the skies roll back and the stars plummet and all the world topples down.
I like the no-nonsense translation in the New Life Version, where Jesus says, “And I am with you
always, even to the end of the world.” It’s a powerful promise. The risen Christ says, “I’ll be with
you—in struggle, in grief, in loss, in pain, when there’s nothing left to stand on, nothing to count on,
when everything else falls down, I will be with you.”
How can we imagine this, how can we picture this Savior who will never desert us or forsake us?
It’s like the father whose son was buried in an earthquake. The year was 1988, and the place was
Armenia. That earthquake killed thirty thousand people in less than five minutes. Whole towns were
leveled, literally reduced to rubble, and because the quake truck in the middle of the day, many
people were caught in high-rise office buildings and children were in school.
One father rushed to his son’s school as quickly as he could get through the clogged and disrupted
streets, but he arrived to find the school flattened, a mound of bricks, concrete and girders. Staring in
horror at the wreckage, the father remembered a promise he had often made to his boy. “No matter
what, I’ll always be there for you!” That was the promise spoken often, at bedtime, when leaving for
school, that was the promise repeated until it became a holy bond between them. “No matter what, I’
ll always be there for you!”
Weeping on the school ground, the promise echoing in his mind, the father did the only thing he
could think of. He went to the corner of the ruined building where his son had classes, and he started
digging.
He was not alone at the school. Other bereaved parents had made their way to the ruins, and
some of them simply staggered around in shock, some weeping, some calling the names of sons or
daughters. Some of these other parents tried to reason with the man. For his own good, they tried to
convince him to stop digging. “Your boy is dead,” they said. “You can’t help him. You’ll only harm
yourself if you keep this up.”
A police officer said the man should go home. A firefighter told him the same thing. He ignored
them all, and kept digging, tossing bricks out of the way, raking through the heavy rubble with bruised
fingers.
“You can help me,” the man said, “or you can get out of my way.”
After a while the others left him alone and he dug on. He had to know if his son was still alive.
Even if he only recovered a lifeless body, he had to do what he could. A thousand times he had
promised, “I’ll always be there for you!” and he meant to keep that promise as best he could.
He dug through the wreckage for six or eight hours. Night came, and he kept digging, resting now
and then to restore his strength, and then throwing himself back into the hopeless task. Twelve hours
of digging, twenty, thirty… Digging, weeping, resting, then digging again.
In the thirty-eighth hour of his labor, with bloody hands he heaved a slab of concrete out of the
way, and from somewhere in the debris he heard a voice calling out—his son’s voice. The man
shouted his son’s name. “Armand! Is that you?”
From the dark hole in the earth a little boy’s voice cried, “Dad? It’s me, Dad! I’m down here!”
Laughing and crying and calling his son’s name over and over, the man hurled bricks and mortar aside.
And from the darkness, the boy called out, “I knew you’d come, Dad. I told the other kids not to be
afraid. I told them that if you were still alive you’d come for me. I told them you’d find me, and you’d
get us all out of here. I knew you wouldn’t break your promise. I knew you’d come for me.”
And Armand’s Dad? He doesn’t answer. He saves his breath for digging. He’s a man of his
word, and he’s keeping his promise.
I guess it’s a little like that when Jesus says, “I am with you always.” Jesus promises, “I’ll be with
you when it all comes crashing down. I’ll be with you when you’re buried in troubles. I’ll be with
when it’s dark and lonely and hopeless. I won’t quit, I won’t walk away, I won’t give up. I am with
you always, even to the end of the world,” (New Life Version).
And Jesus makes this promise in connection with the command to baptize. In baptism we claim his
promise and we put ourselves in his hands. We baptize Corinne Elise today, and she’s so small and
so helpless. She can’t even claim this promise for herself, not yet. So we bring her here—it’s not just
her parents who bring her; we bring her, the community of faith brings her here—we bring her here
and we say, “Lord, we love this little girl, and we’re going to do our best to take care of her, but we
can’t always be there. We won’t always be there, and she can’t go it alone.” And Christ says, “She
doesn’t have to. I promise. She’s not alone, and from this day on she never will be.”
And we believe it. So we fill the font and we tell the story and we say the ancient words and we
baptize in the power of that promise. We can’t prove that promise, but we believe it anyway. Which
is, I guess, more than a little crazy. It’s like huddling under tons of brick and mortar and believing that
your Dad is digging, that he’s on the way, and he won’t stop until he has you in his arms.
That’s what we believe. We believe our Savior will be with us always. We believe the promise,
because we believe in the one who makes the promise.
Soli Deo Gloria!