On Preaching: Proclaiming Death Unfinished

David Lower

These days most places seem to have hospital waiting room vibes. The usual noise of ordinary places—grocery store lines, school parking lots, traffic jams, sidewalks and lobbies, pews before worship—even places that celebrated the last election, sounds different. 

To me the everyday din now seems like the hushed ringing that hangs in the corridors outside the ICU, heavy with unspoken anxiety, where time holds its breath. Beneath this unsettled silence runs a current of deeper dread—not just for personal losses, but for our shared dreams, collapsing institutions, and disintegrating common ground. The waiting room of course is where the truth we’ve avoided has its say: I can’t fix this. I don’t know what’s coming. And I’m scared it might be death.

It is from this Congregation of the Waiting Room that I find myself called to preach the gospel lately. Maybe this is always the calling, just clearer now. But there’s urgency and accountability here. Casual Christian theology—that God is with us, no matter what—though true, is not enough. Not now. Not with so much unknown and at stake. 

Because what the waiting room demands is more than companionship; it demands transformation. It demands a word strong enough to confront despair, honest enough to name pain and fear, and bold enough to declare God’s work isn’t finished, even amid dying. Our Reformed faith surely has much to say in such a dreadful room: God is not only present in suffering but actively bringing life from death. Resurrection isn’t mere encouragement but God’s radical interruption of death’s certainty with more life.

God loves us and abides with us all no matter what, but it sure feels like it’s time to make clear again that love and presence are only the beginning. The further claim is that God is not done, and neither fear nor death will have the last word. Faithful preaching of course is pastoral and prophetic, and the prophet defies principalities and despair itself. Resurrection preaching is an act of holy defiance against despair, against the assumption that things are as broken as they’ll ever be, that death holds the last word, that our future can be predicted solely by our past and present. This act of preaching doesn’t rush past suffering; it steps gently, honestly, into the middle of it. It names sorrow. It acknowledges loss. It doesn’t pretend death isn’t there. But it dares to trust something deeper—that the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead still moves among us, still speaks into tombs, still whispers to bones grown dry: “Live.”

One day in a hospital waiting room I encountered Anders, a stranger whose dad, like mine, was dying in the ICU. When he asked if he could pray for my dad, I nodded, unprepared for what followed. With eyes fixed on mine, Anders unleashed his Pentecostal faith and defiantly released me from fear, released my dad from his affliction, and released all who loved him from worry. Though we likely would not have agreed on much, what power there was in those words: “I release you.” That’s what my family had sought since Mom died—release. This wasn’t meek petition but bold proclamation. He finished: “When you come to know ultimate love, you come to know freedom and power.” His prayer didn’t end my sadness but interrupted it with possibility in that sterile room of endings. Years later, I still remember the surprise of those words, showing how divine interruption can arrive precisely when we have stopped expecting anything new. It changed my grieving and still does. I wish my praying and preaching could do more of that.

Preaching like Anders’s isn’t cheap hope or wishful thinking. It’s resurrection hope that has walked through Good Friday, waited in the quiet agony of Saturday, and been astonished on Sunday morning. It’s the same hope that calls churches to seek peace where conflict seems entrenched, to offer forgiveness when the wounds are still fresh, to strive for justice when oppression looks immovable. And it’s the hope that keeps our weary hearts open—still praying, still loving, still willing to risk another breath and another step forward.

Because if God raised Jesus, then death—in all its forms—is unfinished. Our feared endings, intensifying in our times, are not God’s endings. And our stories, wounded and wearied and worried as they are, still rest in the hands of the One who writes resurrection into every chapter, every heartache, every seemingly irreparable break. That’s the gospel promise that has the power to interrupt and divert this life in the waiting room.

Our waiting rooms won’t empty anytime soon. Grief, confusion, and uncertainty are reasonable and natural responses to the times. But these places of suspended breath need not remain chambers of resignation. They can transform into sacred ground for quiet rebellion—where hearts tender with loss still dare to whisper that God isn’t finished. The church, when true to its deepest calling, doesn’t merely endure such despairing times but becomes their holy interruption. We are summoned to preach not with shallow reassurance but with a weathered hope that has seen new life get made. When we break bread across chasms of difference, when we build bridges over boundaries deemed permanent, when we stubbornly affirm human dignity, when we stand up for justice, when we show mercy, when we work for peace—we aren’t just performing good gestures. We are embodying resurrection itself, helping what we believe be seen. 

Maybe that’s our truest calling in days like these: to preach and live as people who trust resurrection so deeply that we’re willing to wait differently—less afraid, less alone, and surer than ever that the final word belongs to God. And that word, even now, is life. In that word of our faith may we find release from this scary waiting room.