Luke 7:11-17
A few weeks ago I presided over a
memorial service for a former classmate and childhood friend; a friend I grew
up with, fought with, played with, shared birthday parties with, built forts
with, and attended summer camps with. My
friend and I (and others of our little group) had known one another at least
since first grade and had all kinds of childhood experiences together. So it is as I shared with the congregation at
the memorial, saying goodbye to a childhood friend means saying goodbye to at
least a small part of one's own childhood in the process. It is a reminder, I think, of the "seasons"
of life; "a time to live, and a time to die".
Last week I received a note from his
widow thanking me for my service but also expressing a profound grief that
often goes beyond the loss itself. We
grieve the loss of a loved one, of course, but we fail to acknowledge the
almost certain disorientation as we struggle to come to terms not just with the
loss but with how our lives are forever changed. This disorientation can also be exacerbated
by well-meaning friends who, in an attempt to provide comfort, try to remind us
that the pain will pass in time. The
rational mind knows this to be true, of course, but we are not often rational
in our grief. Friends mean well in awkward
attempts to comfort those who grieve, but trying to somehow
"distract" a grieving person from the reality of their loss or trying
to explain away the pain can often trivialize the loss and actually
compound the confusion.
Even the psalmist seems to trivialize
loss as it is expressed: "Do not put your trust in princes,
mortals in whom there is no help. When
their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans
perish" (Psalm 146:3, 4). Well, those we love are "mortals"
and we know this much to be true, but in our grief we are not well consoled with
such words that really do make our losses seem ... insignificant. Maybe in the grand scheme our loss is
not going to matter much to anyone else, but to us - at least in that moment of
loss - our world and the life we once knew and took comfort in has come to an
end.
An interesting essay I came across last
week actually speaks directly to our inability - or unwillingness - to deal
with death honestly. Carl Trueman is a
seminary professor of church history at Westminster Theological who wrote that
the problem within the wider church is not that "entertainment" has
become too prevalent; it may be that we are experiencing the wrong kind
of entertainment too often, particularly in worship.
"Worship
characterized by upbeat rock music, stand-up comedy, beautiful people taking center stage, and a
certain amount of Hallmark Channel sentimentality neglects one classic form of
entertainment ... tragedy. Tragedy as a
form of art and entertainment highlighted death, and death is central to true
Christian worship."
Of course Christ is resurrected! But the death had to come first. And that particular death, I think, is the
one we do not deal with honestly - or we make an after-thought. We prefer jumping straight from Christmas to Easter,
so we gloss over or outright ignore the death.
Dancing about and taking any particular "joy" from such a
horrific and gruesome death (like "Happy Good Friday" greetings) ignores
the humanness of Jesus and the excruciating pain He felt, takes even a perverse
joy from that torturous death and even diminishes our own humanity, discounts
the profound grief of his mother who was forced to watch this tragedy unfold,
and reduces Jesus' worth to little more than a head of livestock; just a
"sacrificial lamb". We choose
to ignore all this and thus deny ourselves the full experience and the fullest expression
of Divine love.
Some would argue that we are
Resurrection people, that Christ cannot be killed over and over again. Well, we have completely perverted the Holy
Day of Christmas as nothing more than an occasion of mindless consumerism, and
Easter has been reduced to little more than an occasion for new clothes. But we do these things "over and
over"; why do we choose to ignore the Crucifixion? Or worse, why do we somehow make this
occasion a "happy" one? Would
we take joy in the death of a loved one who died while risking their lives for
us? Why do we take joy in Jesus' painful
death? Or overlook it altogether?
I do not think Mr. Trueman suggests we
should dwell on death, but how can we really experience and appreciate life and
its truest gifts if we try to ignore or gloss over the reality of death? Philosophers and theologians have tried to convey
the idea that it is impossible to appreciate "good" if we never
experience evil. It is, I think, what
Mr. Trueman terms a "distraction", a "diversion" from real
life that a constant diet of "upbeat" entertainment in worship is
about; a "diversion" that leaves us ill-prepared and ill-equipped for
the inevitable; a "distraction" that tries to pretend we can somehow
avoid grief.
Some might suggest that a constant diet
of death can actually lead to a state of depression. While I can appreciate that perspective, I
might suggest that rather than writing off loving and living as worthless endeavors
since it will all come to an end sooner or later, we might be more inclined to
appreciate what is in our lives in their appropriate "seasons" while
they exist - that is, if we are willing to understand and truly appreciate the
nature of "gifts"; something given as an expression of love, but also
something the loss of which reminds us how very alive we truly are. If we never experience pain, if we never
suffer any grief, how "alive" can we really be?
The stories of Elijah and Jesus with
these widows suffering their losses of sons must first be understood in their
cultural context. It was rare that
widows had any rights or owned property, so a son was crucial to their very
survival in a society that seemed to have had little use for widows. This cultural reality is judged,
however, in the Law (Deut 16:11) and
in the psalms (68:5) as well as in
other writings throughout Tanakh (I'm
trying to remove "old" testament from my vocabulary, and Hebrew gives
me the best option for now!).
So it must be noted, in that cultural
context, that these women had each suffered a profound loss that transcended
the loss of a loved one; their own state of being was at stake. The safety and security of their former
reality were at risk, but thanks be to the Living God this was not the Holy
Father's will for their lives (another particularly detestable attempt
to comfort those who grieve by assigning death directly to Divine will)! In a moment of spiritual clarity, the Divine
intersected with the secular and not only restored life to those formerly
"dead" but also gave to these grieving widows a "new way of
being". Nothing ever stays the
same, even for these widows after their sons were restored! Not "same ol' - a whole new reality, a
whole new way of being!
Notice in both stories neither widow was
spared the grief of her loss. Even the
widow with Elijah thought she was being somehow judged by YHWH through this
"man of God" for some long-forgotten sin! But isn't that often a reaction to an unexpected
loss, wondering what we did to deserve this, wondering why the Lord is somehow
"unfairly" judging us? Or even
wondering why the Lord will not do for us what He did for these widows?
There can be no doubt that any
significant loss in our lives is going to change everything to some degree, but
we must not be reduced to a moment of "blaming" the Lord for our loss. This, unfortunately, can often be a byproduct
of too much "happy hour" entertainment in worship, if Mr. Trueman's
assessment is accurate. Rather we should
learn to look to our Lord for our own "new way of being" - through
His death on the cross. It is in the
weakness of our grief in which the strength and might of our Holy God is most
pronounced - especially when we realize Divine grace is Divine grief.
We cannot change that age-old reality:
stuff happens and even those we love will die because death - like our Lord -
is no respecter of persons; there is no partiality as Peter discovered (Acts 10:34). But the "new way of being" in the
Covenant of the Lord is His promise that though we are surrounded by death,
Life will always burst forth - through Him, with Him, in Him. But it is only in our grief when this Reality
finally comes to fruition. In the name
of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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