grief & hope
Holy Week always reminds us of the events that stand between the joyous parade of Palm Sunday and the celebration of triumph over death on Easter. Our words for yesterday, Maundy Thursday (where we remember the Passover meal where Jesus redefined the symbols of the ritual) were power and humility. No where were these words more evident than in our service to our most vulnerable neighbors as we provided the meal under the bridge yesterday. It humbles me every time how little things that we take for granted are so significant to those we serve. Today our words are acceptance and resistance. Those that watched Jesus be tortured and die proclaimed resistance but in their fear hid in acceptance. We are also called to proclaim resistance when an innocent person dies at the hands of those with power. We do not have to accept that this is just the way things are. We can use our voices, our money and our time to work for a better way. Sometimes we judge those disciples who fled and hid, those who denied and those who stayed away. Yet, how often do we let fear keep us silent and we flee into the safety of our homes pretending that we cannot be touched by the sinners of the world?
On Easter, we will stand in-between grief and hope. So many of us have stood in this place with the loss of someone that we love. It wrenches our hearts when those we have lost are young, misdiagnosed or self-inflicted. We rail at God in our anger and denial of these losses that are so unfair. Grief is often discussed as four stages that we work through, but they are not linear. I often describe them to families as being more like spaghetti. Our emotions are powerful and sometimes they simply crash over us like an ocean wave just when we think that we have finally made it to acceptance. In our confirmation classes, we do a class called “death and dying” where Bev Burk shares with the students both a medical understanding of what happens at the end of our lives and what happens spiritually. I have often leaned into what I have learned from Bev as I walk with you through these difficult transitions. We have this presentation on video here if you would like to watch it. Grief can disrupt a life intensely and never goes away. We simply learn how to manage the grief and live with it. We adapt or we get stuck unable to fully live. I want to remind you that we do have a grief support group led by a trained Hospice Chaplain. Sometimes just sitting with others who are also mired in grief can help sooth our souls. Sometimes talking about how we are feeling and struggling can release us from the bonds of debilitating grief. It has been my experience that learning to manage my grief takes years, not days or even months. It is a slow process.
At the same time, our grief is bathed in hope. I have often been with folks nearing the end when the family tells me that they have started talking to people who have died. I always say that it is the welcome team for heaven standing in the threshold between here and what is next. The party to welcome our loved ones home has already begun in that liminal place. In a sudden death, we know biologically that all the feel good endorphins are released and our loved one has no pain. Those are the hardest deaths because we have not had time to prepare or say the things that we wish we would have said. As we celebrate Easter, we celebrate the triumph over death that allows us to know that there is a next place. That we will be reunited with those that we have loved and lost. Our hope holds in their restoration and that the pain that they suffered is gone. We hope that we too will transition to being back with God. That piece of us that we call our soul, is reunited with the Holy One, who made us. This is our joy in Easter and really, in every Sunday. May this community of Faith, surround you in the assurance that you are worthy of this transformation.
God loves you and I love you,
