Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist
Pregnancy and Infant Loss Sunday
Scripture: Luke 10:16–21
Spring of 2011 should have been a happy affair. After three years of an intensive program, I was finally graduating from seminary. But things don’t always turn out as planned.
As I walked up to receive my M.Div., my mind was racing.
The Orthodox Church was dealing with some larger political issues that had delayed several ordinations to the priesthood, including mine. This meant I was graduating from seminary with no job prospects. We were living in seminary housing and were required to leave after graduation. We were living paycheck to paycheck, and without a parish assignment, I wasn’t sure where we were going to move, let alone how we would afford housing.
Additionally, we were dealing with a family crisis and a personal health scare. And, on top of it all, we were experiencing our first miscarriage.
That young man who had gone into seminary, the one who optimistically thought he could change the world, was now exiting with a very different, darker perspective.
Nonetheless, this parish stepped up to give us a parish home for a year and a half. I’m deeply grateful for that. Everything eventually sorted itself out, but there’s one thing this parish did specifically that has stayed with me.
As we struggled with our first miscarriage, Fr. Tim asked if we would like to have a Trisagion service. So, after Vespers one Saturday evening, Fr. Tim, Presvytera, one parishioner, and I stood in front of the icon of the Theotokos and prayed the Trisagion for our first child.
By the way, this is why we recognize Pregnancy and Infant Loss Sunday every year.
I had done memorials before, both at the seminary and in my parish assignment, and with families at cemeteries. Typically, I’m very stoic. But this time, I struggled to get through the prayers.
At first, I hadn’t really had the time to process our loss. After all, a lot was happening, and the logistics of it all occupied most of my thoughts. But standing in that church, in that moment of prayer, in that stillness, everything else went away.
It dawned on me what we had lost: being able to hold my child, watching him grow, forming a relationship with him, and simply being a family together.
I was dedicating my life to God. I was becoming a priest. So why would God permit something like this to happen? It seemed unfair.
I know I’m not the only person to ask this question or feel this way. I’m sure everyone who has experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, or another tragedy that has taken a child from them has wondered why.
When we’re struck with such agony in the ugly face of death, we wonder: Where is God in all of this?
Sometimes, a well-intentioned friend will say, “It’s God’s plan. Everything will be OK.”
But if you think about that phrase theologically, it’s actually quite awful.
Is it really possible that a God who is goodness, beauty, truth, and love, as Scripture tells us, has planned such horror?
Think about what we are saying when we call a tragedy part of God’s plan. We are saying that before parents ever know their child, God had already written this loss into their story. God knew the love that would grow, the hopes that would be awakened, and the grief that would follow. And God chose this story anyway.
What kind of God does that make God?
Does a mother have to lose her child so that she might discover the depth of her faith? Does a father have to bury his infant so that he might become more compassionate toward others? Does a family have to experience this devastation because God has some greater purpose that could not be accomplished any other way?
What kind of God would need the death of a child to accomplish something good?
We may discover goodness in the aftermath of tragedy. We may find unexpected love, compassion, and even moments of grace. But that doesn’t mean God *needed* the tragedy to happen. There is a difference between God bringing good out of suffering and God causing suffering to bring about some greater good.
The theologian David Bentley Hart, in his book The Doors of the Sea, challenges this very picture of God. He asks us to take seriously the reality of evil and the consequences of believing that everything that happens must somehow be what God intended.
So … what if the problem isn’t that we cannot understand God’s plan? What if the problem is that we *assume* this tragedy was God’s plan in the first place?
What if God did not plan the death of your child? What if God did not need this loss to teach you something, strengthen your faith, or accomplish some hidden purpose?
What if death is not a tool God uses to get what God wants, but an enemy that God has come to defeat?
This is the God we encounter in Jesus Christ.
We see Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. We see Jesus moved with compassion for those who suffer. We see Jesus himself enter into the depths of human suffering and endure death on the Cross.
And what happens at the Cross? God does not stand at a safe distance, explaining why our suffering is necessary. God enters into it. God takes on our humanity, our vulnerability, our pain, and even our death.
And in the Resurrection, God declares that death does not have the final word.
Notice what this means. Our hope is not that every terrible thing that happens is secretly good, or that one day we will finally understand why God needed it to happen. Our hope is that God will overcome the terrible things that happen. Our hope is that God will make right what is wrong, heal what is broken, and bring life out of death.
Death is real. The grief of losing a child is real. And we do not have to pretend otherwise to be people of faith.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus rejoices and gives thanks to the Father because these things have been revealed to babes. It’s a reminder that the wisdom of God is not always what the world expects. And perhaps we need to be careful about claiming to know the hidden reasons for another person’s suffering when even Jesus meets human suffering with compassion rather than an explanation.
So, if you have lost a child, I want you to hear this: You do not have to believe that God wanted your child to die. You do not have to find a lesson in your loss. You do not have to make your grief fit into some explanation of God’s plan.
You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to ask God why. You are allowed to bring all of that into prayer, even when you have no words left to say.
And you are not grieving alone.
Today, we remember the children we never got to hold, the children we held for only a little while, and the children whose lives ended before we were ready to say goodbye. We remember the parents who carry that loss quietly, sometimes for years, and the hopes and dreams that remain part of their grief.
We remember them because their lives matter. Their names matter. Their place in our families matters. And our love for them does not become meaningless because death has interrupted the life we hoped to share with them.
We entrust them to the mercy and love of God.
And to those of us who have not experienced this particular grief, perhaps our calling is not to explain why it happened. Perhaps it is to be present. To listen. To pray. To remember. To sit with someone in the stillness, as Fr. Tim and those others sat with us, without needing to fix the pain or offer an explanation.
May the Lord remember all the children we hold in our hearts. May he comfort their parents and all who mourn. And may he bring us all, in his time, to that day when death shall be no more, when every tear will be wiped away, and when nothing good will ever again be lost.
Until that day, we do not have to call death God’s plan. We can call death what it is (an evil that works against God’s plan), and place our hope in the God who promises to overcome it.
Amen.