Grief is slow

I grew up in a small town in the west. That slow, meandering way of life, where people knew each other’s names, and paused to talk to everyone they knew because no one was really in a hurry, the women baked and the men hunted. What that means is that we were raised around guns. We were not allowed to play videos games or watch movies that normalized killing. We were taught gun safety and a deep respect for the power guns hold. ……………… And we lost friends and loved ones to speeding bullets… to accidental shots, and to gun violence, and suicide.

I remember when we lost John. Him and his friends were target practicing and one of the guns accidentally went off when his friend was trying to unjam it. It was a devastating loss for our small town.

I went to the viewing with a friend and she took some to sit with his body. We mingled for a few, mourned, cried, and as we were walking out she told me she did all the things… she doubted his death, said she would miss him, told him good bye, and accepted his passing. You know, going through the stages of grief as quickly as she could… I asked her if she remembered anger… “oh, no. I forgot hold on!” She went back in, told him how angry she was, and came back out just a couple of minutes later confidently resting in acceptance.  

Don’t we all wish grieving was so easy?

I had a hunch. So, I looked up sermon titles on grief. Here are just a few that I found:

“Overcoming grief”, “dealing with grief”, “from sorrow to joy”, “grief 2 hope”

How fast can we take this thing that happened, deal with it, overcome it, and return back to the “way things used to be.”

Isn’t that how people, so often preach grief? Easy, cheap answers “God willed it.” “God needed another angel in heaven.” Any words that stop grief from invading our space.

And it isn’t just physical death! Covid interrupted our lives. We are collectively grieving… as a country and a world. We have all lost something. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Alone time. In person worship. Meeting in person. Breathing fresh air. Seeing smiles on people’s faces.

Listen now to this moment in Jesus life when he was interrupted by death:    

Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 

What Luke asks us to see when we read this text is the mother. We know so much about her. Luke tells us very little about the man that has died, but he makes sure to tell us that she is a widow. She has lost, not any child, but her only son. We know her grief is complex, like all grief is… A woman without husband or child will likely become a destitute beggar. She feels the deep weight of a lost child and of the ability to belong anywhere.  Luke wants us to see this grief, the depth of the loss of a child, the loss of all her resources.

Adam – theodicy

Greif is complicated. Grief isn’t 5 or 6 steps we can take a hope, skip and jump over. Greif pulls us deeply into struggle, and confusion, and emotions that I’m not sure have a name.

Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist Preacher has often shared a story from his past. He was away at college when his youth pastor from his home church died in a tragic accident. He was lifting a boom to the roof of a home when he hit some power lines, killing him instantly. His brother, Adam’s best friend started giving his brother CPR when he noticed that the three men that were on the roof were stuck to the boom by the still raging electrical current. So, he pried the three off with a 2 by 4… exposing his body to the current, and also dying.

Adam’s faith was in turmoil. He had always believed that God was in control of all things. Which worked in his simple, childlike faith. But in the face of this tragedy, that belief fell apart.

Adam, after losing two of his friends, knew a loving God would not have made this happen. He recognized all of the simple, careless answers: God needed more angels, god needed to use their deaths to bring more people to Christ… he saw them for what they were… easy, cheap answers to force the complexity of their grief into a nice tidy box that would be easy to deal with.

So, Adam went the other way… god must be a god that never shows up. Never intervenes. God must have created the universe and stepped aside to allow it to unfold. But that didn’t work either. He had seen God show up, bring miracles that were so full of mystery, they could not be anything but God in his midst.

I don’t know the answer. I can’t see into the mystery. I know I am not a puppet. God does not control my every action, my every word. I am free to make bad choices that cause myself and other grief. I know electricity flows through power lines, if I touch them, my heart would stop beating.

I can’t explain to you why bad things happen. This is a mystery that humanity has wrestled with since we could think big thoughts. But what I do know, is that our God, who doesn’t make tragedy happen, does not have shallow words for comfort but goes into the depths of grief and pain and fear. And anger. And meets us there with compassion. Compassion: to feel with.

Listen to the rest of this story, of Jesus encountering death:

When the Lord saw [this widowed mother], he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

May God bless the reading, hearing, and experiencing of this word.

Documentary

As I was searching for illustrations and stories this week, searching grief… I found a movie trailer for a documentary on the harm we are doing to the planet. It started with a very beautiful, National Geographic type scene. Sea Gulls were flying and landing on a beach. Hundreds of them! Bird calls filling the air… Then it cut to shots on the beach. Outlines of birds, their remains with piles of plastic in the middle. Then to birds struggling to move, to breath….

Love comes with grief. If we do not care about the birds, we will not experience grief at their loss. God, created us with the ability to love, to seek deep connections… grief comes with the loss of those connection…. As a side note: If we have a god of love, then we have a god that grieves, and we do see God’s grief throughout the bible. Jesus has compassion for this widow. Compassion means to feel with. Jesus knows the pain of grief.

RON

When I first wrote this sermon, it ended here. But life doesn’t avoid hard subjects just because I’m working on a sermon about it. It was easy to talk about grief as a theory, the sermon got harder when, late Wednesday night I received a text that moved grief from a thought process to a real experience. A friend, Ron, died in his sleep. I spent much of 2020 bowling with Ron. We were on a team together. We bowled late. Talked. Ron was a very calm, clear presence in my life as we all struggled through the grief that defines 2020. My son, Devan and I hadn’t seen Ron in weeks. I texted him but didn’t hear a response. We had been missing him. Last Saturday, a friend of Ron’s showed up to bowl and Devan and I asked about Ron. “Oh, you didn’t hear? A couple of weeks ago he got hit by a car. He has a big bruise, but that’s about it. So, he has been at home resting.”

Then last night I received a text that he had died in his sleep.

Grief is not simple. Grief is not easy. And sometimes, our life is interrupted by grief. Because we love. Because we care. Because we allow ourselves to connect with others, we are a species that grieves.

In some ways, the text this week is really hard because I do not expect Jesus to show up, touch Ron’s casket and return Ron to us. Instead, I know that Thursday, when we have league, there will be tears. There will be pain. Maybe anger. There will be grief.

Yet, I am counting on the end of the story to be true. I need a God so big, so overflowing with love that all funeral processions lead eventually, through grief, to abundant life, and meaning, to a collision with the compassionate God that Resurrects us and folds us into loving arms, like that of a mother, overflowing with a greater love than we can ever truly know.

Thanks be to God. Amen

Grief is slow

I grew up in a small town in the west. That slow, meandering way of life, where people knew each other’s names, and paused to talk to everyone they knew because no one was really in a hurry, the women baked and the men hunted. What that means is that we were raised around guns. We were not allowed to play videos games or watch movies that normalized killing. We were taught gun safety and a deep respect for the power guns hold. ……………… And we lost friends and loved ones to speeding bullets… to accidental shots, and to gun violence, and suicide.

I remember when we lost John. Him and his friends were target practicing and one of the guns accidentally went off when his friend was trying to unjam it. It was a devastating loss for our small town.

I went to the viewing with a friend and she took some to sit with his body. We mingled for a few, mourned, cried, and as we were walking out she told me she did all the things… she doubted his death, said she would miss him, told him good bye, and accepted his passing. You know, going through the stages of grief as quickly as she could… I asked her if she remembered anger… “oh, no. I forgot hold on!” She went back in, told him how angry she was, and came back out just a couple of minutes later confidently resting in acceptance.  

Don’t we all wish grieving was so easy?

I had a hunch. So, I looked up sermon titles on grief. Here are just a few that I found:

“Overcoming grief”, “dealing with grief”, “from sorrow to joy”, “grief 2 hope”

How fast can we take this thing that happened, deal with it, overcome it, and return back to the “way things used to be.”

Isn’t that how people, so often preach grief? Easy, cheap answers “God willed it.” “God needed another angel in heaven.” Any words that stop grief from invading our space.

And it isn’t just physical death! Covid interrupted our lives. We are collectively grieving… as a country and a world. We have all lost something. Graduation ceremonies. Weddings. Alone time. In person worship. Meeting in person. Breathing fresh air. Seeing smiles on people’s faces.

Listen now to this moment in Jesus life when he was interrupted by death:    

Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 

What Luke asks us to see when we read this text is the mother. We know so much about her. Luke tells us very little about the man that has died, but he makes sure to tell us that she is a widow. She has lost, not any child, but her only son. We know her grief is complex, like all grief is… A woman without husband or child will likely become a destitute beggar. She feels the deep weight of a lost child and of the ability to belong anywhere.  Luke wants us to see this grief, the depth of the loss of a child, the loss of all her resources.

Adam – theodicy

Greif is complicated. Grief isn’t 5 or 6 steps we can take a hope, skip and jump over. Greif pulls us deeply into struggle, and confusion, and emotions that I’m not sure have a name.

Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist Preacher has often shared a story from his past. He was away at college when his youth pastor from his home church died in a tragic accident. He was lifting a boom to the roof of a home when he hit some power lines, killing him instantly. His brother, Adam’s best friend started giving his brother CPR when he noticed that the three men that were on the roof were stuck to the boom by the still raging electrical current. So, he pried the three off with a 2 by 4… exposing his body to the current, and also dying.

Adam’s faith was in turmoil. He had always believed that God was in control of all things. Which worked in his simple, childlike faith. But in the face of this tragedy, that belief fell apart.

Adam, after losing two of his friends, knew a loving God would not have made this happen. He recognized all of the simple, careless answers: God needed more angels, god needed to use their deaths to bring more people to Christ… he saw them for what they were… easy, cheap answers to force the complexity of their grief into a nice tidy box that would be easy to deal with.

So, Adam went the other way… god must be a god that never shows up. Never intervenes. God must have created the universe and stepped aside to allow it to unfold. But that didn’t work either. He had seen God show up, bring miracles that were so full of mystery, they could not be anything but God in his midst.

I don’t know the answer. I can’t see into the mystery. I know I am not a puppet. God does not control my every action, my every word. I am free to make bad choices that cause myself and other grief. I know electricity flows through power lines, if I touch them, my heart would stop beating.

I can’t explain to you why bad things happen. This is a mystery that humanity has wrestled with since we could think big thoughts. But what I do know, is that our God, who doesn’t make tragedy happen, does not have shallow words for comfort but goes into the depths of grief and pain and fear. And anger. And meets us there with compassion. Compassion: to feel with.

Listen to the rest of this story, of Jesus encountering death:

When the Lord saw [this widowed mother], he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

May God bless the reading, hearing, and experiencing of this word.

Documentary

As I was searching for illustrations and stories this week, searching grief… I found a movie trailer for a documentary on the harm we are doing to the planet. It started with a very beautiful, National Geographic type scene. Sea Gulls were flying and landing on a beach. Hundreds of them! Bird calls filling the air… Then it cut to shots on the beach. Outlines of birds, their remains with piles of plastic in the middle. Then to birds struggling to move, to breath….

Love comes with grief. If we do not care about the birds, we will not experience grief at their loss. God, created us with the ability to love, to seek deep connections… grief comes with the loss of those connection…. As a side note: If we have a god of love, then we have a god that grieves, and we do see God’s grief throughout the bible. Jesus has compassion for this widow. Compassion means to feel with. Jesus knows the pain of grief.

RON

When I first wrote this sermon, it ended here. But life doesn’t avoid hard subjects just because I’m working on a sermon about it. It was easy to talk about grief as a theory, the sermon got harder when, late Wednesday night I received a text that moved grief from a thought process to a real experience. A friend, Ron, died in his sleep. I spent much of 2020 bowling with Ron. We were on a team together. We bowled late. Talked. Ron was a very calm, clear presence in my life as we all struggled through the grief that defines 2020. My son, Devan and I hadn’t seen Ron in weeks. I texted him but didn’t hear a response. We had been missing him. Last Saturday, a friend of Ron’s showed up to bowl and Devan and I asked about Ron. “Oh, you didn’t hear? A couple of weeks ago he got hit by a car. He has a big bruise, but that’s about it. So, he has been at home resting.”

Then last night I received a text that he had died in his sleep.

Grief is not simple. Grief is not easy. And sometimes, our life is interrupted by grief. Because we love. Because we care. Because we allow ourselves to connect with others, we are a species that grieves.

In some ways, the text this week is really hard because I do not expect Jesus to show up, touch Ron’s casket and return Ron to us. Instead, I know that Thursday, when we have league, there will be tears. There will be pain. Maybe anger. There will be grief.

Yet, I am counting on the end of the story to be true. I need a God so big, so overflowing with love that all funeral processions lead eventually, through grief, to abundant life, and meaning, to a collision with the compassionate God that Resurrects us and folds us into loving arms, like that of a mother, overflowing with a greater love than we can ever truly know.

Thanks be to God. Amen