The Tension Between Grief and Hope

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

Let us pray: Come Lord Jesus, be with us in our grief as you accompanied Mary and Martha and all who mourned. Speak through these words and call us to new life in you. Amen.

In this season of Lent, as we consider our own mortality, “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” as we journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem, crucifixion and death, it’s a very fitting time to talk about life and death, to talk about grieving and loss, both individual and collective. During this three-plus year period of the COVID pandemic, we have accumulated SO many losses that it may be hard to even keep track of them all. Many have gone unacknowledged, these life events that have been postponed, diminished, or simply dismissed. Funerals have been put off, we have been reduced to saying our last goodbyes on Zoom, or even worse, unable to say goodbye or to be with loved ones as they died, or after they died, such heartache and immense sorrow. Weddings have been postponed, the important people in our lives yearning but not able to be present, in-person celebrations have been cancelled, we have missed out on the joy of welcoming new babies, birthdays have been missed, no embracing, no rejoicing, many important milestones have gone uncelebrated. And for our young people: no high school proms, no final sports seasons, quinceañeras, birthday celebration sleepovers, play dates, summer camps, and on and on and on.

We have LOTS to grieve. And each and every one of these events missed, diminished, or postponed, are worthy of recognition. They are losses. Things that we longed for that never happened. And it is right and a good and healthy thing to name them, and grieve their loss. Yes, after three plus years, we all have much sorrow and loss in our lives. This is our new reality.

Today’s gospel story is all about loss and grief. This great story about Mary, Martha, and Lazarus shows us how Jesus enters into our lives, into our emotions. Jesus is present with Mary and Martha and everyone who knew Lazarus who are grieving his death. Jesus enters this space that is full of sorrow and loss. And Jesus is moved. John tells us two times that he was “greatly disturbed” and “deeply moved.” Jesus weeps at the loss of his friend Lazarus. Jesus wept at the pain and sorrow that this loss brought his sisters and his community. Jesus hurt. Jesus felt the sting of the death of a close friend. Jesus is our example of the acceptability, of the appropriateness, of the healthy aspect, of grieving losses in our lives. Jesus loved his friend Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha and it hurt him that Lazarus had died. Jesus KNOWS our grieving. Jesus knows our losses and Jesus mourns with us in our pain and sorrow. Ours is a God who is intimately acquainted with the pain of being human and suffering losses.

In our lives, we face heartache and pain. Jesus knows. He enters into it with us, present with us, accompanying us through it all. And Jesus reminds us that there is hope, there is light, and that there can and will be joy again. Yes, we mourn our losses as we should, this is healthy and helpful, AND we find hope to carry us forward in the words of Jesus whose love is more powerful than death itself: “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.” Love has the final word. Love conquers even death itself. The power of God is at work in our world resurrecting, recreating and renewing, bringing new life.

Together we look for this pattern of God at work in our lives and in our world, resurrecting, unbinding, calling forth new life all around us.

“Lazarus, come forth!” “Unbind him!”

Our lives are made up of this tension between grief and hope, loss and new life, sorrow and resurrection. This is Lent and Easter. This is humanity and divinity. This is the Paschal mystery, the awful death and the glorious resurrection of our redeemer and sustainer, Jesus the Christ.

There is a note about funerals in our book of common prayer that sums us the duality of our sorrow and hope quite well. It reads:

The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we too, shall be raised. The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy, in the certainty that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian. The very love we have for each other in Christ brings deep sorrow when we are parted by death. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend. So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.

Siblings in the compassionate love and understanding of Jesus, may you grieve and mourn your losses this Lent and in the seasons to come, remembering with love and affection those people, places and things that you have lost, may you know deep in your hearts that none of us can ever be separated from God’s love, and may your eyes and hearts be open to the hope of resurrection, rebirth, and new life in the world all around us.

Amen.