Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.

In our Christian tradition grief sometimes gets short shrift. The question comes at us in various forms but it sounds something like this: “Given Jesus’ victory over sin, sickness, death and every evil; given our expectation and hope that border on certainty, shouldn’t we rejoice when someone dies?”

The expression of this sentiment can be downright rude. In the wake of one of those murder-suicides that have become a bizarre ritual in America, I once heard a woman speak of the slain children, “They’re better off now than they ever were.” Perhaps that woman had heard too many stories and was tired of it all. Perhaps she was feeling compassion exhaustion and chose to isolate herself from the general distress that we feel about these incidents.

Grief cannot be so easily ignored. I’m sure you have noticed, perhaps you have taken part in the development of grief groups. People gather with a trained facilitator to share their grief and help one another through the difficult passage in their lives.

There must be a hundred different theories why churches, clinics and hospitals gather these groups now. My own theory is that modern health care forestalls death for so long that many of us never experience personal loss until late in life. I knew a forty year old man who still visited all four grandparents, his parents, all his aunts and uncles, his cousins, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, wife and children. Other than family pets he had never seen death up close.

And then, in one brief span of time, death comes to call and you attend four or five funerals of loved ones in a short span of time. It’s as if a tsunami suddenly washed through your life and you never knew the ocean was so close. Nor did you understand how much you relied on the presence of these people.

Grief comes in many forms because we lose so much. People, homes, careers, health, money, status: you name it, it can be lost. Even the loss of bad things can cause grief: the decision to sober up, or quit gambling, or smoking, or to sever an adulterous relationship can be very painful, and all the worse since “good people” don’t know why you were so attached to those things in the first place.

The death of Jesus was the cause of grief. Despite everything we say about his Resurrection, he was no longer with the disciples as he had been in the past. And there were moments when they missed him. The strange story in John 21, when Peter and the boys went fishing, may describe their experience of being leaderless and lost.

At the Last Supper, as John tells the story, Jesus insisted the Holy Spirit could not come until he had gone away, and instantly they felt fear and grief at his loss.

We can honor that. Jesus was a wonderful man to have around. If his Holy Spirit has more than replaced the presence of his living human body, we can still appreciate the grief his disciples felt.

And, more importantly, we can honor our own grief when we’ve lost something precious. “She’s in a better place!” intends to console but it doesn’t mean we hate our human life with its challenges, confusion, difficulty, disappointment, occasional satisfaction and ecstatic pleasures. Grief fills our hearts and yet we are glad to be here.