Grief

June 8, 2022

I have been recently reminded of our inability to experience what has been deemed by society as “negative” emotions, in other words, grief. For instance, since January 1st, I have officiated 14 funerals, with still another to come within the next couple of weeks. As a pastor, it is my honor, duty and responsibility to walk the aisle of death with the family. Yet, I am just as guilty as everyone else in the way I approach someone’s passing. I do want to bring out good memories . . .shared memories beyond just one or two individuals.

The only problem with only focusing upon the laughter for those closest to the person who has passed, when the laughter stops, the hurt is still present. In our current context, we have life celebrations, instead of wailing funerals. In biblical times, professional mourners would be hired out to join the family (at least one was expected to be hired) to officially mourn the loss of the person who had passed.

As humans, we have a desire for consistency and stability in our lives. Change things and it upsets the apple cart. If you do not believe me, just try to change one thing in church . . . something like the color of the carpet in the sanctuary for example and some people will go crazy. We need stability and consistency. Even in the midst of this desire, we try to reconcile ourselves to the fact that change is inevitable.

In the midst of change, we find ourselves in the midst of grief because something has been stripped from us . . . something to which we have grown accustomed to. Now with change, we must adapt to a new normal. I know the church carpet was a silly example compared to the loss of a life, and yet, we get more bent out of shape about the carpet because we often feel we should be able to control something about the environment in which we worship. We recognize that there is nothing about the loss of a person that we can control. Even after laughing, we may be left with grief.

In the middle of a culture in which we are encouraged to laugh all of the time, to experience euphoria, we do not know how to handle the hardships of loss. It may sound a bit morbid, but it would be prudent for us to heed the words of “the preacher” in Ecclesiastes when he says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2) Indeed, there is a time for laughing and a time for crying. There is also a time for joining others in their laughter and/or mourning. As the body of Christ, will we only be present with others in their mirth? Or will we join into their mourning to help them come out on the other side of grief, rejoicing that the body of Christ did indeed help with their healing?