Sermon Glimpses of Grace in Grief

Grace in Grief
John 11: 17-35, by Rev. Carson Overstreet
Van Wyck Presbyterian Church
January 10, 2016

The next five weeks we will journey together to catch glimpses of God’s grace in the healing stories of the gospels:
January 10 –Glimpses of Grace in Grief: John 11: 28-35
January 17 – Glimpses of Grace in Healing: Mark 5: 25-34
January 24 –Glimpses of Grace in Forgiveness: Luke 15: 11-32
January 31 – Glimpses of Grace in Worry: Matthew 6: 25-34
February 7 Glimpses of Grace in Anointing: John 12: 1-8



When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’

When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there. When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. - John 11: 17-35


Many of you know how much I love poetry. I recently received Mary Oliver’s newest book, “Felicity.” A podcast interview with Oliver revealed that she writes poetry as she listens to the stillness of nature. Her poem, “The Gift,” has had a long conversation in my heart this past week:

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful.
That the gift has been given.

Our journey of faith is one that encourages us to find moments of stillness to search for whispers of God gift among us. One of the greatest gifts we have been given is God’s grace. Our hearts and minds are touched by the full measure of God’s grace as we celebrated the coming of the Christ Child anew into the world. We certainly experienced that last month with the Lighting of the Way and our Christmas Eve candle light services. God’s grace breathes sighs of new life, new beginnings, and new hope into all of life’s impossibilities. But as the holidays fade and the barrenness of winter surrounds us, our walk that was once confident and quick becomes a little slower as Mary Oliver says.

Our spirits long to find the full measure of God’s gift as we search for ways to navigate the brokenness that still lingers – and today we are considering that of grief and loss for it touches all of us. From the onset of birth the human journey entails a process of learning how to cope with loss. Our first experience of loss is leaving the womb of our mother to enter an uncertain world.

Loss continues to take on many different shapes throughout our lifetime. Two best friends are separated when one has to move to another location or state with family. Major life transitions and even illnesses unsettle family life or work and often bring about depression. The death of a beloved family member creates an indescribable void in life. Old regrets hold us captive as we ask “What if?” into the unanswerable questions that still haunt us. Our health shifts in the aging process and the slow losses of independence cause us to feel isolated and alone.

We all encounter loss in life. It is a part of the human story of faith which points all the way back to our first biblical loss; humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Loss is painful because it reveals our created connectiveness to God and one another. Loss hurts because it seems to steal a part of our identity. “[Loss] is an affirmation of our linkage with the whole of creation that God has given us as a sacred trust. To be human is to be a griever of all kinds of losses” (All Our Losses, p. 52).

John’s Gospel captures a poignant moment of loss and grief in Martha’s and Mary’s experience. The language is rich with meaning for us and transcends to all experiences of loss. John helps us to see three spiritual needs as we navigate through grief and loss.

The first spiritual need is community. Martha and Mary are surrounded by family and friends to console them in their loss. The extension and receiving of comfort and sympathy is so important when life is altered. We each have an innate need to feel care, love, and support whether it is from just one trusted friend or the community at large.

While each of us experiences loss and grief differently, it is the hardest to navigate alone. We are created to live in relationship with God and one another. We all need to have someone in our lives that not only consoles us when loss occurs, but is also willing to be a supportive presence as time moves on.

If you are a friend to one who is grieving, then give a glimpse of grace.

• Send a card acknowledging your friend’s loss and prayers for healing. Remember anniversaries of loss.
• Sit in silence with your friend when there are no words to offer. Solidarity speaks volumes.
• Inquire how your friend’s heart feels today. This helps him/her to put words around their emotional landscape.
• Be honest that you can only imagine how this loss hurts. None of us can truly identify with another’s pain. But our compassion allows us to suffer with another.
• Find opportunities to laugh and go outdoors when your friend is up to it. Let your friend take the lead.

If you are the one who is grieving, then receive a glimpse of grace.

• Remember your grief is your own. It is not identical to anyone else’s. We all have different families of origin, personality types, and life experiences that shape the way we engage grief.
• Be gentle on yourself and give yourself permission to grieve in your own way. Engaging our emotions allows us to gain new perspectives to dispel our fear of grief.
• Find ways to remember the story of your loss through journaling, prayer, or talking with a trusted friend. Learn to tell your story of this treasured person or situation that you lost. Telling our stories is a powerful thing.
• Allow the ones in your circle of family and community to offer support while recognizing when you need to be alone.
• When grief becomes too hard consider talking with a pastor or counselor.

The second spiritual need is naming our emotions. Both Martha and Mary are very real in naming their hurts to Jesus. As we dig deeper into Scripture so many texts empower us to be real to our Creator about the breadth and width of lament in times of loss and grief. Just think back to Job and even throughout the Psalms.

Now grief is not a linear experience. We do share common emotions such as shock, denial, anger, regret, depression, and acceptance which can be quite powerful. However, we cannot check off these grief emotions as one and done. These emotions have an ebb and flow throughout time. And these emotions can visit us in unpredictable and cyclical ways as we do our grief work.

A colleague in ministry talks about grief work in this way: As time moves forward, we begin to dread naming our grief. Many times we feel pressured to move past grief and just move on. But navigating through our losses takes good grief work. When grief knocks at the door, we can take courage to invite grief to come inside our spiritual house. Pull up a chair and let grief sit with us for a spell as with an old friend to see what we might learn today.

That kind of self-awareness is a gift of grace for it creates an opportunity for deeper understanding and hope. We become more empowered to look back and to look forward. We have a little more courage to take another step towards the “new normal” we are nudging towards. This “new normal” is integrating our loss into the story of our lives. This is how God’s amazing grace claims that we are not defined by our loss. God’s grace weaves through our story to mend us towards God’s story of healing and wholeness.

The third spiritual need is remembering that God meets us where we are. Both Martha and Mary ran to meet Jesus Christ. Martha and Mary knew Jesus as the Messiah, Savior, the resurrection, new life, and as trusted friend. Jesus met the sisters where they were. Jesus listened to the sisters’ struggle. Jesus held Martha’s and Mary’s brokenness and was deeply moved in holding the fullness of their heartache. And Jesus wept.

When no one else knows the full measure of our loss, Christ does. Our faith in a God who is willing to come alongside us in our human vulnerability and in Christ’s vulnerability on the cross is a powerful thing. “The relevance of faith lies not in the power of faith as such, but in the fact that faith creates a communion with Jesus and that through Jesus believers receive the gift of life” (New Interpreter's Bible Commentary, p. 591). That gift of life is none other than God’s divine love and grace. And there is nothing that can separate us from the love and grace of God. As Paul says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

“The hope that nothing will separate us from the love of God is the hope that endures; it is the hope that encourages us to bring our angry, clamoring, hurt, guilty selves to the throne of grace. Because of that hope, we are free to grieve more rather than less. It is a hope that makes grieving possible” (All Our Losses, p. 103).

My prayer is that if you are walking more slowly in this New Year to navigate through loss and grief then claim the truth of where you stand in the journey of life and faith. Let your soul be still and steadfast. Take each slow step with hope to find and savor God’s great gift so that “the heart may still play its true part” – that is living in assurance and gratitude for all that the grace of God has done, is doing, and will do in the future. However small or large your loss is, may you find glimpses of God’s grace.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sources:
Kenneth Mitchell and Herbert Anderson, “All Our Losses, All Our Griefs” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1983), p. 52
New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary: Volume 13, Luke and John ( Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015), p. 591.
“All Our Losses, All Our Griefs,” p. 103.