They stood at the gravesite, looking at the flower-covered casket of their father. The committal service had been over for ten or fifteen minutes. Everyone else had gone back to the cars. But the two sisters stood there, lingering long, staring into space. Their faces were masks: no emotions, no feelings, it seemed. But I found out that some feelings were there. When I slowly approached the two of them, one of them turned on her heel and blurted out, "I’m not sorry to see him go. I don’t think I should be. He was hard on my mother, he was mean to me, I’m not going to miss him one bit. Goodbye and good riddance." At that the other sister just about went into shock, "Don’t say that. Don’t say that. You must not speak ill of the dead. You’re not supposed to feel that way about your own father. Please don’t say that."
Now I ask you, which of these sisters was grieving? Both of them? Neither of them? Which of them was on the way to spiritual health? The one who disliked her father and said so? Or the one who disliked being different and said so?
Grief is a very complex emotion. Some of us are in touch with real feelings when we grieve; in the midst of our grief, we get permission to feel something and to talk about it. We get a chance to get rid of some guilt.
Others, however, become afraid to feel. They find that when they grieve that they feel very guilty. Losing someone dear to us may drive us deep into despondency and depression, and not just the simple, ordinary kind of depression, but a guilty depression. A guilty grief.
Grief is indeed a complex emotion, and it is bound up with guilt. When we grieve, of course it is because we have suffered the loss of something or someone very important. But that loss, that grief is compounded by feelings of guilt. If that feeling lingers, if it won’t go away, that’s not healthy; that’s not what God wants for us.
There is a way to guiltless grief. There is a pathway through grief that is a gift from God, making us stronger and giving us freedom. I want us this morning to hear good news about guiltless grief.
The passage of Scripture I’m using today is a very rich one. It will require your best efforts. But it will reward you if you will work through it. I’m going to ask you to turn to II Corinthians 7:5-11 in your Bibles and to follow very closely. A very rich, demanding, but rewarding selection:
Guiltless grief.
I need to spend just a moment to paint the background. The writer is Paul. The occasion of grief is his dispute with the church in Corinth. Paul had been greatly disappointed with this Corinthian church; it had developed all kinds of behavior problems. It was a church in which there were factions, cliques, parties, and divisions. It was a church in which dishonesty and sexual immorality ran rampant. And the contradiction in the Corinthian church was that the same folks who did all these things were also acting extra-holy. They exuded piety while at the same time they were ready to stab you in the back. Do you know the kind I mean? The kind who just love you in Jesus but hate your guts? The kind who with grinning faces say, "Bless your heart" but mean "Curse your hide"!
Well, Paul had been in conflict with these folks for a long time. He felt tremendous grief, because he had nurtured and built this church, and now it had turned against him. It had walked off and left him. He felt that an awesome grief experience.
But Paul had done something about that grief. He had taken action. He had sent the Corinthians a very severe letter. He had looked inside his own heart, he had listened carefully, and then had laid them out. After sending this stinging letter, he sat down to wait and find out what their reaction was. Grieving, as many of you know, usually involves a lot of waiting. Just plain waiting. That’s one of the things Paul had to do with his grief. Just wait.
But by the time Paul wrote the passage we’ve just read, he had had news from his co-worker, Titus. Titus had brought word that the Corinthian Christians had responded well to Paul’s letter. They had listened, and they were making some changes. They were reaching out to Paul. So Paul is now ready to complete his grieving. That’s what we are hearing in this passage Paul is completing his grieving and is teaching us what it is to achieve guiltless grief.
Now let’s unpack the passage very carefully.
I
First, notice that grief is a rich, complex mixture of many ingredients. It includes everything from physical exhaustion to interpersonal conflicts to personal immaturity. A grief experience, a loss experience of any kind, churns around inside us everything we’ve gone through and makes life messy for a while.
Look at what Paul identifies in his own life. Physical exhaustion ... "our bodies had no rest"; interpersonal conflicts ... he calls them "disputes without." And then, as the icing on the cake, personal immaturity, which he calls, "fears within." Exhaustion, conflict, fears. Does any of that sound familiar?
Grief is a massive, complex experience. When you are grieving, there will be all kinds of things happening to you. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. The important thing is to recognize that however you are handling your grief, it is not simple. It will take time to work through.
I have seen people cope with their grief by jumping in with both feet, work, work, work. I have been astounded by the ability some of you showed when your loved ones passed away; you were capable of organizing a funeral, notifying the relatives, printing programs, planning a menu, juggling your work schedules, and all of it with focus and drive and determination. Everybody complimented you, didn’t they? Didn’t they all say, "Look how organized she is! She’s doing so well!"
Little did they know! "Doing so well" but inside you were a mess. You were torn to shreds. Your way of dealing with grief was to tackle whatever needed to be done and move on. But inside yourself, there was still other work to be done. Did you give yourself permission to do that grief work? Did you give yourself permission to fall apart?
I hope you did. I hope that at some point you recognized the emptiness, the exhaustion, the conflicts, and the doubts and you let it out. The trouble is that in our American culture we place a premium on keeping a straight face, on being strong. Got to keep a stiff upper lip, got to be okay! Well, no we don’t. No, you don’t have to be okay. It is a false theology that suggests that we ought not to cry; it is a false psychology that leaves no room for our real emotions. It is healthy to allow ourselves the privilege of grieving. If the apostle Paul can recognize that in grief there is exhaustion and conflict and personal fears, who are we to say there isn’t?
The first step in achieving guiltless grief is to recognize how deep and how pervasive the grief experience is, and just go ahead and let it happen. Just let go.
II
But the second step toward guiltless grief is to accept the help of loving friends. Grief is made more difficult if we try to carry it alone. But if we will accept the help of the right kind of friends, grief will be much more bearable.
Paul had to wait until his grief over the Corinthian church could be worked out. After he had sent the scolding letter, there was nothing to do but wait for word. The best gift that Paul received during his waiting was the gift of a friend named Titus. Titus was one of those rare and wonderful people who not only come to see you, but who actually want to hear what you have to say! All of us have friends who come with speeches to make; Paul was fortunate enough to have a caring, listening friend. Titus identified with Paul’s feelings, and accepted them as legitimate. I hope you have a friend like Titus in your life.
"But God, who consoles the downcast, consoled us by the arrival of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was consoled about you." Watch this. Paul is saying, not only did my friend Titus just come and sit with me, but better yet, he felt my grief, he knew what it was all about, and he found a way to encourage me. Paul says that he felt consoled because his friend Titus felt encouraged about what was happening within the Corinthian church.
Friends, this is a very important principle. You need a friend who will accept your feelings as legitimate. Your feelings are your feelings, and you have a right to them. Every now and then someone will say to me, "I shouldn’t feel this way, but ... ", and then go on to describe some unresolved anger, or some deep-seated complaint. You will say, "I guess I’m wrong to have these feelings."
Well, I don’t know that we can be responsible for how we feel. We just feel. Feelings are there. They just happen. But .we can be responsible for what we do because of our feelings. We can be responsible to work out our negative feelings and move on to something better.
The best gift you can have in that process is an understanding friend, a friend who will accept you no matter what you feel. A friend like Titus, who really does understand why this thing matters so much to you, and who will look for good news to share with you. Why do we think we should do our grief work all alone? Why do we think we should be so strong, so independent, so self - reliant? The hymn we sang is exactly right when it says, "I cannot bear these burdens alone." Again, if the great apostle Paul, one of the strongest personalities who ever lived, needed a trusting friend in his hour of grief, who am I to reject God’s gift of a friend?
"God, who consoles the downcast, consoled us by the arrival of Titus and by the consolation with which he was consoled about you." You are well on the way to guiltless grief if you will allow into your life somebody who does not tell you what you should feel, but who just accepts what you do feel and then helps you look for good news.
III
So, now: if you want guiltless grief, first you recognize how deep and complex an emotion grief is, and you accept all of that messiness in yourself. Second, you accept the gift of a friend who will receive you just as you are and who will help you find good news.
But most of all, if you truly want guiltless grief, you must allow the grief to change you. You must be open to the growth that God wants to give you. You must wake up and realize that life has changed and you are changing with it. You can meet life on a new basis, with the help of God.
Listen carefully to Paul on this point; turning from his own grief, now, to the grief that the people in the Corinthian church felt over the breach between themselves and Paul, Paul says, "I rejoice ... because your grief led to repentance; for you felt a godly grief ... Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret … For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, what eagerness to clear yourselves You have proved yourselves guiltless."
There’s so much in that. I would love to spend all afternoon dissecting it. But let me just focus on this. Did you catch the phrase, "Godly grief"? Godly grief is grief lived out in the presence of God. Godly grief is grief which God uses to change us. Paul says that godly grief produces repentance and brings no regret. Paul is saying that if you receive grief as a gift from God, and you embrace it, then even your loss will help you grow. Grief does not have to diminish us; godly grief grows us. Godly grief produces repentance, salvation, and no regrets.
I think I did much of my grieving for my mother even before she actually died. She spent such a long time in serious decline, unable to function above the bare minimum, that I did most of my giving her up well before her death. But I do remember waking up to the fact that I had become the family patriarch! I had become ... how I hate to say this ... I had become the older generation.
Now I know you think I am a bright young thing, barely out of the Pepsi generation. But since our son will be thirty years old this coming Sunday, Margaret and I can no longer pretend that we are young. We are on the way to becoming the older generation. And so, with both of my parents deceased, and with my brother being six years younger than I, suddenly everybody was depending on me for decisions. Everybody expected me to be the family’s leader, the family’s voice of authority. That’s a sobering thought. That kind of comes home to you. Nobody older and wiser to turn to! And I got to thinking, it’s all on me. It’s all my responsibility. Everyone is looking to me to take care of things.
In that moment I learned how vulnerable I really am. In that moment I found out that I could not carry these burdens alone. In that grief experience I founded out I truly did need the Lord and His strength. In godly grief I found how much I had to depend on one whose faithfulness is sure and whose love is certain. I knew the limits of my strength. Godly grief leads to repentance and salvation, says the Scripture. Godly grief leads to repentance ... to growing up; and to salvation ... to depending on God.
Guiltless grief. Guiltless grief means that we let God use our grief to grow us up and to change us. The greatness of God is that from our messiness and from our pain He makes a new person; the greatness of our God is that just when we think we can handle nothing, He strengthens us; and just when we think we can handle everything, He gives us the gift of grief, and we have to grow up. We have to learn to lean on Him.
How great Thou art! How great Thou art! Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee; how great Thou art. To give us guiltless grief.
