This morning, my message focuses on grief. We are all grieving right
now. We are grieving the loss of friends and family who
have passed away during the past month; and we are grieving the fact that we have
not been able to mourn their loss with others. We are grieving the loss of
eating lunch at Bob Evan’s with our friends, or spending an afternoon wandering
the shops at the Greene. We are grieving the loss of events that we anticipated
joyfully: graduation ceremonies, opening day of the baseball season, or taking a
special vacation. In a larger sense, we are grieving the loss of a way of life
that we are afraid might be lost forever! Just to enjoy the Troy Strawberry
Festival on a sunny Sunday afternoon is impossible right now; and no one knows
what will happen in the future.
Some of you are familiar with the work of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Just
about 50 years ago, she studied the reactions of cancer patients who were
coping with their diagnosis. She found that coping with grief is a process that
moves through several stages. You can see those stages in the Bible as God’s
people have struggled with their own grief. Hearing their reactions can help us
deal with the feelings that we have right now.
When we suffer a loss, the first thing that we experience is denial. Numbers 14:1-4
That night, all the people of the
community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled
against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, “If only we had
died in Egypt, or in the desert! Why is the Lord bringing us to this land, only
to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder!
Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” And they said to each other,
“We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Back in
mid-March when events began to be cancelled, I’ll bet I know what all of you
said. “This can’t be happening! It will all be over soon, and we’ll go back to
the way things were.” I said that. Remember what some people said? “Oh, this is
all just hype that the press picked up. It’s not real.” We were all in denial.
It’s just like experiencing shortness of breath and feeling like a heavy weight
is on your chest (all classic symptoms of a heart attack), and saying, “Oh, I
don’t need to go to the doctor; there’s nothing wrong with me.” What’s that
clever saying? “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” Now, there’s nothing
wrong with denial in small doses. Denial gives us time to adjust to reality
without being completely overwhelmed. Insisting to ourselves, “This can’t be
real” keeps us mentally healthy even while we adjust to the fact that the
situation is real. In the long run,
though, constant denial isn’t a good idea. God didn’t lead the Israelites back
to Egypt; and we can’t go back, either.
As they move past denial, some people get angry. Job
10:1-3, 8-9
I loathe my very life, therefore
I will give free reign to your complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my
soul. I will say to God, “Do not condemn me, but tell me what charges you have
against me. Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands,
while you smile on the schemes of the wicked? Your hands shaped me and made me.
Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will
you now turn me to dust again?”
I talked about Job last Sunday when I considered how overwhelmed many
of us are; and here he is again today. Job is a great example of someone who is
sunken in the depths of grief. He simply experienced more than he could deal
with! Job was white-hot with anger. And he took out his anger on God because
there was no one else to blame. God is blamed all the time for tragic deaths
and natural disasters. But in the current crisis, it’s easy to blame somebody
other than God for the coronavirus and for our response to it. Lots of people
are blaming China, and taking it out on anyone who looks Chinese. Some are even
claiming that China manufactured this virus and unleashed it on the world! Others
are blaming people in authority for our isolation: The World Health
Organization, our state governors, even scientists and doctors! Still others
(especially those who love conspiracy theories) are blaming technology; and
some are even trying to destroy cell phone towers because they believe that
some kind of radiation is causing the viral outbreak. Oh, the blame game is so
easy to play when you’re angry! My guess is that we have all been angry about
this pandemic at one time or another. And that’s OK! Anger is a normal, healthy
response to grief. Dr. Kubler-Ross said that loss “is unfair. Anger is a
natural reaction to the unfairness of loss.” God understands our anger. But we
need to move through that anger to a more productive response.
After anger, many people fall into the depths of depression. Psalm
6:1-3, 6
O Lord, do not rebuke me in your
anger or discipline me in your wrath. Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am faint.
O Lord, heal me, for I am in agony. My soul is in anguish. How long, O Lord,
how long? I am worn out from groaning. All night long I flood my bed with
weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow.
The psalmist
was certainly despairing when he wrote this. “Life doesn’t seem to be worth
living.” “I cry all the time.” “I can’t find any pleasure in anything anymore.”
“I feel like I’m stuck.” These are the kinds of things that grieving people say
when they are sunk into despair. Folks who deal with clinical depression know
exactly what it feels like. Despair is like a bottomless pit that seems to go
on forever. It is a shadow that sticks to you like glue and won’t let you go.
Some people describe it as a demon that sits on your shoulder and whispers into
your ear that things will never, ever get better. Despair is the Good Friday of
our soul. It tries to convince us that God has forsaken us and left us to live
in perpetual misery. But despair is a liar! God never forgets us! The prophet
Hosea spoke on God’s behalf when he said, “When Israel was a child, I loved
him, and out of Egypt I called my [people]. It was I who taught [them] to walk, taking
them by the arms. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. I
was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed
them.” (from Hosea, chapter 11) God’s essence is love; and God has promised
never to leave us alone. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus; and he weeps with
us, too, when we suffer losses. If you
are in despair right now, mourning a loss that seems to be too great to bear,
remember that God is there mourning right along with you; and that your despair
won’t last forever.
After all the denials, the anger, and the despair, we move towards the
peace of acceptance and finding new meaning in our lives. 2 Corinthians 5:14b-18
We are convinced that one died
for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live
should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was
raised again. So from now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view.
Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if
anyone is in Christ, that one is a new creation! The old has gone, the new has
come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and
gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
When we
accept what has happened, we begin to see our losses from a new perspective;
and that opens the door to experiencing God’s peace that passes all understanding.
Are we still angry sometimes? Of course. Do we still despair from time to time?
Probably. But the anger and despair no longer control our lives. When we accept
what has happened, we can allow God’s grace to flow over us and free us from
the burdens that we have been carrying. Finding new meaning is Easter morning
after the darkness of Good Friday. It is the rainbow that follows the hurricane.
It is the joy and wonder that we feel when we realize that God is, once again,
making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. To quote Dr Kubler-Ross once more: “The
most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known
suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the
depths.” When you are a person like that, she writes, “You will be whole again.
but you will never be the same… nor would you want to [be].” This is God’s
intention for all of us: to move through our losses to the new meaning that God
wants to help us create in our lives! If you aren’t in this place yet, don’t
give up hope. Most of us aren’t there yet. We are all struggling with our losses
in the midst of the hurricane, and we can’t see that rainbow yet; but God has
promised that it’s on the way. Hold on to that promise! God will never forsake
us! Thanks be to God!
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