A few thoughts about grief. . .

Grief comes in all shapes and sizes.  It comes in the form of friendships and relationships that end, in the shape of life's forced transitions, and in the lament of things taken from away from you.  We grieve over words that should never have been spoken and actions that can never be undone.  We grieve over thoughts that pass through our minds without our will but which leave behind shame. For most of us grief looks like death.  We grieve and mourn not only the loss of those whom we love but the fact that death is there at all.  From the sudden deaths that come like a thief in the night to the long, drawn out deaths that steal a life away minutes at a time, to the death that seems to dally when age, frailty of body, and fragility of mind were ready to surrender long ago -- we grieve.  

God did not create our hearts to know grief.  Grief from sin and loss and death are all the poisoned fruits of sin -- of our wills intent upon going our own way and becoming the gods who would rule instead of the creatures who adore their Creator.  It occurs to me that no one would know grief -- not even God -- if sin had not entered the world (and death through sin).  I am in awe of the fact that the first to know grief was not Adam and Even and their regret but God.  Before the first word was sent forth to create anything, God know the end and felt the grief and loss over what was made by Him, for Him to love, and would be taken from Him in pride, hubris, and willful lust and rebellion.  It began in heaven before it was known on earth.  The devil and his minions who rose up against the reign and purpose of God and it spread to the pristine creation and man created in His likeness.  Now we all know it.  And hate it.  And run from it.  And struggle to get over it.

God answered grief by taking it fully upon Himself.  His one and only Son was born in flesh to die for those in flesh.  Our Lord was born to know grief.  He grieved the ignorance of the disciples and the fickle will of the crowds and the rejection of the religious authorities and the death of those whom He loved.  Grief can be shared but never healed -- at least until Christ know the fullness of grief as the incarnate Savior.  Then grief could be answered.  He answered it not with a word but with blood spilled in death and the coldness of the grave stealing warmth from a body.  He rose not so that death could never be felt again -- sin had already made the deterioration of the flesh a fact of life.  He rose so that death could not have the last word and grieve rule the silence.  

Now we grieve not as a people without hope but as those who know Christ and the power of His resurrection.  We know it not simply as a word and promise but as the womb of the font gave birth to us, uniting us with Christ in His death and raising us by the power of His own resurrection.  We know it as the absolution that answers sin with forgiveness and cleanses our sin with the blood that alone can end sin's rule and reign.  We know it as the Holy Eucharist -- the fulfillment of the Passover, the remembrance of His death still proclaimed, and the foretaste of the eternal feast to come.  We know grief but not as the world knows it.  We know enough not to explain it away or tell the grieving they will get over it or that time heals all wounds or some other empty sentiment.  We know it to confess it for the ugly thing it is and to confess what is beauty and loveliness in Christ who died never to die again and who brings with Him all who died and rose in Him.  We know it as the pain and loss that has at the end a blest reunion and an eternity beyond imagination.

Permit me a few thoughts of grief as I remember a vibrant woman in our parish whose death came too soon, a four year old who had been through more than a lifetime of pain and treatment before death could not be medicined away, and my own mother who had died at the end of a long life, perhaps too long for her as she wished to be with Jesus.  Permit me a few thoughts of grief as a pastor who is wounded by every death among his sheep, a son who has buried now both his parents, and a man who knows that death is nearer to me today than it was yesterday.  I am not being morbid -- only honest.  We must be honest about death or else all that God has done is rendered trivial and worthless.  You cannot sugarcoat death and still kneel before the cross and empty tomb.  Let us at least be honest.  No sentimental ideas about a circle of life or freed spirit or earning wings.  Nope.  Let us at least be honest.  For only in the honestly of what death is and the tears of grief are can we find our way out of grief to hope.  We grieve.  St. Paul does not tell us not to grieve.  But we grieve with hope.

The dead in Christ will rise.  We have not seen the last of them.  Their broken bodies will shine like stars with the glorious flesh Christ already wears. The dust of the earth will have to give up their dead who rest there and the seas will give up those who went down in the waters and the grave stones will all be broken.  That is how we deal with grief -- not by minimizing it but by answering grief with the only thing stronger -- the cross and empty tomb.  I pity those who are left to sentimentalize their sorrows or reconcile death with some fake notion of life's circle or who simply ignore it all.  I know the riches of the depths of the wisdom of God most profoundly when grief hears the answer that is Christ.  I am looking for the grand and eternal reunion -- saints and angels and all those whom we love who have departed this life in faith.  I will be consoled by nothing less than the fullness of this promise.  Neither should you.