O come, thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadow put to flight. Amen.
Today I want to talk about grief during the holiday season.
I have had a number of conversations with people during the last week,
and over and over again people mentioned how hard it can be
going through a holiday that is supposed to be joyful and all happy
when one is dealing with all sorts of difficult things
that are anything but joyful and happy,
when one is dealing with grief, depression, health issues,
family relations issues, economic difficulties,
or an uncertain future.
This is a time of the year
when grief comes more readily to the surface,
when dark thoughts of impermanence, death and loss
come more to mind.
For one thing, the days keep getting shorter, less and less light;
and “seasonal affect disorder” can set in even for the most hardy of us.
And then there is Christmas,
a time of the year associated with rosy family scenes,
depicted as happy and comforting, full of expectation.
But if you have just lost a loved one,
or if there is nothing to look forward to,
Christmas cheer may seem like a cruel taunt,
something hopelessly out of reach,
a painful reminder of your isolation and loneliness, of how bereft you are.
And this is the Sunday when we light the Joy candle on the Advent wreath.
Year after year during Advent
I have preached what I called the December sermon.
This came out of past experiences of innumerable Decembers
in which pastoral care situations would present themselves,
and it became obvious
that December was a particularly difficult month
for more people than you would expect.
The month of December can be a real personal wilderness.
As we look around the pews this morning,
the one you are sitting near could be facing grief
or it might be you yourself.
What is the personal desert that you may be in at the moment?
Is this a time of facing illness, disability, or the death of a loved one,
or the memory or anniversary of a death?
Is it some other form of personal loss?
Is “spiritual dryness” familiar to you,
an arid spirit to match an arid desert?
Perhaps you have been struggling with uncertainty about the future,
fear of transition, the pain of self doubt.
Or economic hardship,
or the various ways we can become paralyzed and imprisoned through sin,
psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually paralyzed.
Or take your pick of addictions,
where there are attachments that bind and imprison us.
In the spiritual geography of our lives,
wilderness wanderings and desert times might be seen as in-between times:
slumps or 'valleys' between the 'mountain top' experiences.
We like the mountain tops, the emotional highs of these times,
We have a wonderful experience of God,
but then those lovely experiences appear to dry up and disappear.
I say all of this simply to acknowledge
something of the major dynamics of December
and the fact that everything is not all rosy with joyful expectation.
Having this opened up in the conversation, put on the table,
may, in some cases, be enough – all it takes -
to take the pressure off of unrealistic expectations about Christmas.
So if it looks like everyone around us is so together,
so blest with family and friends,
then we may think we are silently alone.
But - we observe - pain and grief are universal experiences
affecting each one of us in varying degrees.
So how do we cope? How do we live with this?
Let me tell you about one example of how a whole community faced
what was a horrendous loss causing unspeakable grief
and what came of it.
I think of this example
because I have been seeing references to it again:
Sandy Hook Elementary School.
When I hear about this again, however,
I think about what took place on the one year anniversary:
It was not just a painful reminder of a terrible slaughter of innocents,
It was a story of going through that first year of unimaginable grief
and choosing life as an act of courage.
The residents of Newtown CT chose not to hold a public commemoration
Its purpose was to encourage “small acts or large”
that will bring out “the best in each other through repeated acts of service.”
A local resident and psychiatrist, John Woodall, explained the town’s decision. He said:
“We thought, really, what grief is
is a form of love, but with the loved one gone,
so it’s really the heartbreak of separation from the loved one.
So the work of grief is to find a new form for that love,
to find a new expression for it,
a new commitment,
a way to honor the love. . . .
We came back to this idea that a commitment to transform that anguish
into a commitment to compassion and kindness,
that’s where we wanted to keep the focus.”
Grief is a form of love
so we need to find a new articulation of love, new expressions for it;
we need to find new ways to love.
This is tremendously powerful.
And that is what the discipleship of Jesus is – a new articulation of love.
That’s the way to find Jesus in the middle of your life,
in the middle of your grief,
by this affirmation and exercise of healing love.
This is the way that grief is dealt with.
Actually the resurrection of Jesus heals and reconciles all grief
because it is empowerment to love.
That’s what the Holy Spirit is for:
to carry out that discipleship of loving one another as Jesus has loved us.
In this there is tremendous hope,
but we’ve got to make that hope real.
You’ve got to find within yourself the strength, with God’s help,
to do that healing work of love in the family and in the world.
Our hope is based in God's love for us,
a love so profound that God became one of us,
and was born in Bethlehem
just so that the times of grief and loss,
the wilderness experiences of pain and isolation
could be overcome through and dissolve away in
the love of God
present here and now in the Spirit of the Resurrection Jesus.
John the Baptist sent disciples to Jesus to ask,
“Are you the One who is coming?”
And Jesus said, “Go and tell John what you see -
the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them.”
The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand and has come in Jesus.
And so we are empowered to find a new articulation of love
and new ways to love.
So especially for those of us who currently are experiencing
the joy of Advent anticipation of Christmas
our mission is to make ourselves accessible to others
in the strength of that joy
whether it is to simply listen or extend an invitation or do an act of kindness,
make that candle of joy burn bright.
Don’t lose hope. Help has already arrived.
Isaiah 35:10
And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
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