Granger Westberg, in his little book, Good Grief, says that when you have something worth grieving about, then go ahead and grieve, but grieve in a healthy way. Westberg agrees that the Bible says, "Do not grieve as those do who have no hope", but that does not mean we do not grieve. When you have something worth grieving about, then go ahead and grieve, but in a healthy way.
That is the thinking behind the messages of last Sunday and of today. We’ve had many losses among us lately: parents, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, on and on. It feels like a heavy burden for some of us right now. But I am convinced that the Christian faith and its message of good news can be heard in times like these.
The theme is doubly appropriate today. Here we are at Halloween. Halloween is a kind of corruption of our very natural human feelings about death. The church in the middle ages began the practice of remembering those who had gone on, especially those it called saints; saints were believers who had achieved spiritual distinction, and the church wanted to remember them and appreciate them. Nothing wrong with that.
So the church designated November 1 as All Saints Day. The first day of each November was to be a day on which Christians would remember in prayerful appreciation all those who had passed before.
But this Christian observance got all mixed and mingled with pagan beliefs, so that the notion grew up that on the night before All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, the dead emerge from their graves and the goblins and ghosts and other ghoulish things will be about. The Eve of All Hallows, or Halloween, became an ugly corruption of something that could have been beautiful. Instead of releasing our fears about death, Halloween became something which increased those fears. Instead of taking away anxiety about this awesome reality, it made anxiety worse. Instead of remembering those who had achieved spiritual distinction, Halloween and All Saints Day remembered the bizarre and the horrifying.
I hope we can recover what was originally intended. I hope we can remember, reconnect, and rejoice with the mercies of God. I hope we can turn even this most peculiar of days into something that proclaims the love of Christ.
Last week the scene was around the cross of Jesus, where several people were gathered. As your sermon outline sheet reminds you, we thought about what God will give those who grieve: how God will give us a time to remember and accept our old wounds; then how God will teach us to see each other in a new light, providing us ways to fulfill our need to care and to be cared for, to reconnect; finally, we saw that God will give us an understanding presence, for He too knows what it is to grieve, He too knows what it is to lose someone precious. Remembering, Reconnecting, and Rejoicing.
The scene today is the very same one, Jesus on the cross, with his mother, his beloved disciple, and some others. Our children are going to present the scene to us, as it might have happened:
John 19:25-27
Remembering, reconnecting, and rejoicing means taking charge of our own grief. And the instrument for taking charge of grief is trust. Trust. If you remember nothing else from today, remember that the issue is trust. We can take charge of our grief by learning to trust.
I
The first question is, "Can we trust ourselves?" Can we trust ourselves, once we are bereaved, to feel again? Can we get out of the notion that we have done something wrong and trust ourselves again?
Over and over, people tell me that when they lose a loved one, they confront a myriad of feelings about themselves. Often those feelings are feelings of guilt. We become preoccupied with what we didn’t do, what we didn’t say. We remember old quarrels and tough, tense moments, and feel guilty that we didn’t take care of all of everything before our loved one passed away.
Those feelings may become so strong that they paralyze us, they erode our self-confidence. We can’t do anything. We can’t seem to get anywhere. We can’t pull ourselves together. Because of our grief experience, we have, for a time, lost the ability to trust ourselves.
People sometimes have irrational feelings of guilt. Some even get to the place where deep down they think that some way, they even caused that death. Oh, in their minds they know that’s impossible, but down in the gut it still feels guilty. And feeling guilty is the same thing as not trusting yourself.
I know one person whose husband died. Years later she continues to talk about the funeral -- was it all right? About the casket -- was it tasteful? How about the choice of grave location -- do you think it is a pretty place? It sounds like guilt talking, and, to a degree, it is. But it is also the loss of trust in herself. She no longer believes in herself; she is no longer sure she can handle her own life.
One person who lost her husband after more than sixty years of marriage said to me that it felt just like a part of her own body had been torn away. She felt ripped apart. Grief is something like an amputation. Just as when you have a leg amputated, you have to learn how to walk all over again, so when you lose someone close, your own abilities are hurt. You don’t know whether you can trust your balance.
So I want you to hear the wisdom wrapped up in one little phrase in our text. Jesus, in the hour of his death, has asked his mother to care for his friend and his friend to care for his mother: "Woman, behold your son; son, behold your mother." But catch this phrase, "And from that hour and from that hour the disciple took her into his own home."
From that hour … immediately. John trusted himself to build a new relationship. From that hour ... responding to now, not to then. From that hour ... responding to the riches life will bring, not to what has already been spent. From that hour ... knowing that what is past is indeed past, but that we are still gifted by God with the capacity to live and to love. From that hour ... now, right away, responding to new possibilities. John trusted himself.
Like the old adage that suggests that when you fall off the horse, you should get right back on. We begin to take charge of our grief when we remember that God made us whole, capable persons. When we remember that God calls us to take charge of our lives, to let nothing paralyze us. We remember that we can trust what God has given us. And, once knocked down, we begin as soon as possible to get on with the rest of life and to build new and fruitful relationships. "From that hour ... "; taking charge of grief begins by remembering that we can trust ourselves. Torn apart, yet we are whole.
II
But if the first question in taking charge of grief is, "Can I trust myself?” then the second question is, "Can I trust others?" "Can I trust somebody else in my life?" "Can I open my heart and my life to someone else and expect to come out unhurt?"
You see, grief makes us want to retreat into a cocoon and stay there. Sometimes grief makes us want to keep things they way they were, so that you find people who keep a dead child’s room exactly as it was when that child was alive. Or you find people who become recluses, withdrawing from human contact as much as possible. The issue is whether we will again trust a close relationship, whether we’ll risk getting hurt again.
Now what did we see last week that Jesus did? Jesus insisted that those who were grieving accept responsibility for one another. Jesus asked Mary to look out for John and John to look out for Mary, a relationship of responsibility.
But look at it. Look what John did with this. "From that hour the disciple took her into his own home." "Into his own home." It was not to be just any old arm’s length relationship. John did something very wise and redemptive. He took Mary into his own home; he made his responsibility for her and hers for him into something close, something warm and intimate. He trusted her. He took her into a no-escape involvement. He took a risk; he trusted Mary and asked her to trust him. That’s healthy grief at work.
One significant step you and I can take on the road to recovery from grief is to reconnect in a risky, redemptive relationship with someone who needs us. When you meet someone else’s need, you are also meeting your own need. When you serve someone else, you are also serving yourself, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. If we can work at creating a caring environment for someone else who has suffered, our love and our self-worth will be reborn. Trusting ourselves and trusting others, it all works hand in hand.
"The disciple took her into his own home." If you are grieving, find someone who needs you. What about finding a child to love and care for, a child who is at risk, maybe through the Reclaiming Our Youth program. It will be risky, yes, but it will also be redemptive, and it w ill he1p you move beyond your grief. It’s trusting someone.
What about linking up with someone who is ill, maybe even terminally ill? That’s very risky. But it is also redemptive. The other day I met a nurse who works exclusively with AIDS patients. She spoke about how tough that was, because time after time she ends up losing people she has come to know and care about; but she also said that she wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. It made her feel needed. I think that’s what I’m talking about. "The disciple took her into his own home"; trusting others, up close and personal; trusting ourselves to be redemptive for those who suffer. Reconnecting helps us recover from grief, because reconnecting is trusting both ourselves and others.
III
So how do we get this ability to trust? If the problem is that when we grieve we don’t trust ourselves, and that we don’t want to risk ourselves or trust others, then what is the source of trust? How do we become trusting persons?
I believe that trusting God first is the way to find the ability to trust ourselves and to trust others. It all starts with trusting God Himself.
Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could get inside the minds of Mary and of John on that day? Did they trust God? What on earth would have led them to trust God? Surely they must have felt betrayed by God; Mary knew that she had been promised that her son would be lord of the nations, but just look at him now, broken and bleeding. John knew that he had put his whole confidence in one who could heal and bring back the dead, but how could he trust a God who would let the cross happen to his anointed? How could they trust God? It’s not always easy to trust God. We can talk that talk, but we can’t always walk that walk.
“Meanwhile …,” says the text. “Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus …” Meanwhile. That strikes me. Meanwhile. Until God does whatever God will do, we are called to live in the meanwhile. Standing near the cross. Standing in the shadow of the pain. Meanwhile.
Today disease strikes, surely and swiftly; we have to live in the meanwhile before a cure is found.
Today a molester or a crazed adult takes the life of a child, and somehow we are to muddle through the meanwhile until justice can be done.
Today an accident claims a life, and we are caught in the most frustrating of meanwhiles, wondering if there is any sense at all to this world.
We live in the meanwhile. And trusting God in the meanwhile wouldn’t be easy. Except that you and I do know about the other side of meanwhile. You and I do know how meanwhile comes out. Yes we do.
For Mary and John meanwhile lasted only three days. On the third day the victim on the cross became the victor in the empty tomb. Meanwhile came to a crashing halt on the third day, and God, who had said he would not suffer his holy one to see corruption, brought him forth. Meanwhile has an end; God can be trusted.
We have to live in meanwhile. But at the end of meanwhile, death gives way to life. At the end of meanwhile, sickness gives way to health. At the end of meanwhile, darkness yields to the light. At the end of meanwhile, despair gives way to hope. God can be trusted. God, our God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, can be trusted. At the end of meanwhile, sorrow gives way to joy.
You and I have to live for a little time in the meanwhile, yes. We will struggle with trusting ourselves, because it’s not easy to operate with part of our lives torn away; but, because Christ lives, we remember that we are whole, and we can get right back up and respond again. We can trust ourselves. "From that hour the disciple took her ... "
You and I have to live for a little time in the meanwhile, yes. We will struggle with trusting others, because we know it’s risky and we’ll get hurt again if we do; but, because Christ lives, we can reconnect, we can relate redemptively to somebody who needs us. We can trust others. "The disciple took her into his own home .. "
You and I have to live for a little time in the meanwhile, yes. But because Christ lives, and is the first fruits of those who sleep, we will trust God and trust him to bring victory. "What though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us."
God can be trusted, and we can rejoice. We rejoice in the meanwhile.
