Today I want to talk about grief during the holiday
season.
We
have had lots of funerals this year,
and
there are too many new widows and widowers in the congregation.
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.
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.
Year
after year during Advent
I would 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.
It
seems to me that for many people 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
some other bleak aspect of December right now,
or it might be you yourself.
What
is the personal wilderness 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
loneliness, isolation, or “spiritual dryness” familiar to you,
an arid
spirit to match the 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.
Or
take your pick of addictions,
where there are attachments that bind and
imprison us.
Or
relationship issues.
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 tend 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.
Now,
in the news the last few days,
there
have been remembrances of Sandy Hook Elementary,
on
the one year anniversary yesterday,
but the residents of Newtown CT chose not to hold
a public commemoration
but
instead to initiate a “Year of Service.”
Its purpose is to encourage “small acts or large”
that
will bring out “the best in each other
through
repeated acts of service.”
Newtown 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 – 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 removes 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
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.
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.
