Tag: grief

Love in the Past Tense: Grief Without Shame

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment

Sermon for the Feast of All Saints.

The text is John 11:32-44. Click here to read it.

Here is the video of the entire service. The sermon starts at 32:23.

“Jesus began to weep.”

John 11:35

This brief verse, John 11:35, rendered even more concisely in other translations as, “Jesus wept,” is well-known as the shortest verse in our Bible. For that reason, it was a favorite among students at the Christian high school I attended, where our teachers required us to memorize a Bible verse each week.

As a teenager, I liked this verse because it was short, but today, in my middle age, I have found other reasons to love it. I continue to love John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) because it puts the grief of our fully divine and fully human Lord and Savior on full display and, thereby, it gives us mere mortals permission to grieve, when we feel the need to do so.

Grief is a tricky subject. We pragmatic Americans tend to think of grief as a problem and grieving as an emotional symptom of said problem. When we operate under this misconception, we try to solve the “problem” of grief by making the “bad feelings” go away. This is why so many well-intentioned friends tend to offer so many problematic platitudes like:

  • They’re in a better place;
  • Everything happens for a reason;
  • Heaven needed another angel;
  • God has a plan;
  • It’s not up to us to question the will of the Almighty;
  • Maybe God is trying to teach you a lesson.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a state of grief, and heard this kind of pseudo-theological drivel spat at you by well-intentioned believers, then you too know just how unhelpful such slogans can be. These kinds of “bumper sticker theology” serve to comfort the minds of the bystanders more than the hearts of the bereaved.

Through my years of service as a hospice chaplain, I have come to realize that the beliefs that “grief is a problem to be solved” and “grieving is a feeling” are fundamental errors. Grief is not a problem; it is a process, and grieving is not a feeling; it is a skill. And frankly, speaking as a fellow pragmatic American, grieving is a skill at which we tend to be very, VERY bad.

If we were to look for a culture that is more skilled at the art of grief than our own, I think we need look no further than the Jewish culture of our Lord Jesus. Jewish culture tends to understand the process of grief better than our own. Our Jewish neighbors have, over the course of several millennia, developed a practical approach to mourning that guides people through the process of grief in a systematic way.

During the first stage of grief, between the death of a loved one and their funeral, Jews recognize that people are in an initial state of shock. The bereaved are exempted from performing many of the commandments of the Torah while they process the loss of their loved one. For the first week after the funeral, they are said to be “sitting shiva,” where they are not expected to go to work, leave the house, or even prepare meals. During this time, friends will visit the family to bring food, sit with them, tell stories, and say prayers. Gradually, after this week of sitting shiva, family members will begin to reintegrate into society. There are certain limitations placed on their activity for the first month and the first year after their loss. After that first year, life has more-or-less returned to normal, but they still pause once a year to remember their loved one on the yahrtzeit, the anniversary of their death. Jewish culture understands, better than American culture, that grief is a process and grieving is a skill that must be taught and can be learned.

In today’s gospel reading, we get to see an example of Jesus sitting shiva with his close friends, Mary and Martha, after the death of their brother Lazarus. What’s amazing about this passage is how Jesus meets each of the sisters where they are, according to their distinct personalities. Both sisters begin their conversation with Jesus in the exact same words:

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

John 11:32

And then, with Martha, the more practical and intellectual of the two, Jesus engages in a theological discussion about resurrection; with Mary, the more emotional and contemplative sister, Jesus says nothing, but simply weeps.

Though we know, from the rest of the gospel story, that Jesus is about to miraculously raise Lazarus from the dead, that knowledge does not stop Jesus from being fully present with these bereaved sisters in their grief. Jesus knows what he is about to do, but he still takes time to meet people where they are.

The most beautiful thing about the Christian faith is our belief that God, in Christ, has entered fully into the human experience, including our experience of grief and death. Divine omnipotence does not create a stoic barrier between us and our feelings, but allows us to enter into them more fully. Real faith enables us to skillfully navigate the troubled waters of grief, charting a steady course between the way things are and the way they ought to be.

When I, as a hospice chaplain, am invited to the bedside of one who has recently died, I notice how often the bereaved family members feel ashamed of their grief. While I stand silently by, they sometimes say to me, “I’m sorry for crying; I know they’re in a better place and I should have more faith, but I just miss them so much!”

Those are the moments when I, as their chaplain, will break my silence by referring to the very Bible verse that inspired this sermon. I say to them, if they are Christian, “When Jesus visited the grave of his friend Lazarus, the Bible very clearly tells us that ‘Jesus wept.’ If it’s okay for Jesus Christ himself to weep at the death of a loved one, then it’s okay for you to do it too.”

As further evidence for my position on this matter, I would cite St. Paul the Apostle, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 13:

“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”

1 Thessalonians 4:13

St. Paul does not say, “so that you may not grieve;” he says, “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.” Grief is a very good and natural part of human life, even for the life of a Christian. Grief, as I like to say, is simply “love in the past tense.” Others have said that grief is just “love with no place to go.” Grief is not a sin. Grief is not a problem to be solved. Grief is a normal process, which we all must go through. Grief is a natural consequence of love, which our Lord Jesus commands us to do.

Kindred in Christ, I want you to hear today that there is no shame in grief; it is simply “love in the past tense.” If you feel sad because you are working through the process of grief, I want you to know that Christ is with you in your grief and this shortest verse of the Bible, “Jesus wept,” is spoken for you this day.

The grief that you experience might be for a loved one who has died; it might also be because of the loss of a job or the end of a relationship. Your grief might be part of coming out of the closet, because you yourself or someone you love is not the person you thought they were. The grief you experience might even be because of something good, like getting married, having a baby, graduating from school, or retiring from a career after many years of faithful service. All of these events are good things, but each of them also involves the end of a previous identity and way of life.

Whatever the source of your grief is today, I want you to know that it is healthy, normal, and good. Jesus Christ does not stand in judgment over you for your grief, but kneels down in the dirt and weeps with you for your loss.

I pray that you will take this mental image with you into your experience of grief. I pray that it will give you the grace to go easy on yourself while you are going through the process of grief. I pray further that your self-acceptance, and your faith in Christ’s acceptance, will give you the wisdom to have mercy on others who are going through their own process of grief.

Through it all, may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Lord. And may the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be amongst us and remain with us always.

Amen.

Becoming Love

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon2 Comments

Sermon I gave for Memorial Day weekend at People’s Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

A friend asked me this week, “What do you tell yourself when you are fearful of your own mortality and the fragility of your own life?” This is one of those questions that people ask you when they find out you’re a minister. (I suppose it’s an occupational hazard.) It’s an important question that gets at the heart of what drives people to religion and spirituality in our culture. 

I say, “in our culture,” because this is not the only question that has driven the spiritual quest in every place and time. The ancient Hebrews, for example, had no concept of an afterlife. Their primary religious question was not, “What will happen to me when I die?” but “What will happen to our people now?” The reward they conceived for obedience to the Torah of their ancestors was not a blissful afterlife for individuals in heaven, but a prosperous life for their community on Earth. Individual mortality was a given for them, but the survival of their people was of paramount importance. 

The Jewish concept of an afterlife developed over time and took several different forms before the beginning of the Common Era. Later Christian formulations evolved from those forms. Both traditions, to this day, maintain multiple views and opinions on the subject of the afterlife. 

Other spiritual traditions have their own opinions about what happens to people when they die. Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, both espouse a belief that people in the West call “reincarnation” (though a Tibetan Buddhist friend tells me that his tradition prefers to call it “rebirth”).

Some (though certainly not all) who claim no religious affiliation take a “that’s it” approach to the end of a person’s physical existence. “The body dies,” they say, “and then that’s it.Nothing else comes next.”

I will not be so bold as to attempt to resolve this important question for all of you today. One of the beautiful things about Unitarian Universalist communities is the theological diversity that exists among your membership. It would be a sacrilege to insult that diversity by imposing one particular interpretation above all others. What I purpose to do instead, in this sermon today, is to take an “at least” approach to questions about the afterlife. Whatever else life after death may (or may not) be, it is “at least” as much as what we know through science.

Let’s start with the following assertion: Reality is relational. At every conceivable level. Community is everything and everything is community.

This is a fact. We know this from our study of the universe. 

At the macroscopic level, planets and stars are drawn together by gravitational attraction to form solar systems and galaxies. 

At the microscopic level, we can observe those same gravitational forces drawing electrons, protons, and neutrons together to form atoms. Atoms bond to form molecules. Molecules form cells. Cells form organisms. Organisms form ecosystems.

At the level of human observation, gravity is the arm that Earth uses to hold us all close to her heart. 

Human beings and other animals experience a similar force of attraction that draws us together into families and communities for the purposes of survival and reproduction. When we experience this attraction to one another, and the conscious choice we bring to that attraction, we don’t call it gravity; we call it love.

In politics and economics, our choices to honor “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and respect “the interdependent web of all existence” are themselves acts of love. To quote the present-day prophet Cornel West, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” 

Even the individual “I” that I think of as “me” is, in truth, a community. My consciousness is an emergent property of the electrochemical relations between the cells of my body.Biologists refer to this as “the neural network.” The atoms that presently comprise my body were forged billions of years ago in the furnace of a long-dead star. The stars are my ancestors and are part of me today. As Carl Sagan was so fond of telling his audience, “We are star stuff.” After my biological life is over, the atoms of my body will disperse and go on to become part of someone else. From the cellular, to the social, to the solar levels, and everywhere in between, reality is relational.

The relational nature of reality is “the story I’m telling myself” about life after death. Whatever else the afterlife might (or might not) mean, it means at least as much as this. How then do these thoughts about the relational nature of reality help us in our spiritual reflections about life after death?

First of all, I think the relational nature of reality gives us a way to get past the seemingly insurmountable differences we find between various theories of the afterlife. If reality is relational, then relationship is the ultimate source from which all beings derive their existence. If reality is relational, then equitable relationships (with ourselves, each other, and the planet) are the highest and most sacred goal that human beings could pursue. Terms like “most sacred” and “source of all being” are titles that people in some religions would apply to their concept of “God.” My favorite passage in the sacred texts of my own Christian tradition is 1 John 4:16, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” This passage takes on new depths of meaning for me when I hold the phrase “God is love” next to “reality is relational.” A person need not be religious or believe in a personal deity to see the value in this interpretation.

When I die, my body will be recycled back into Earth. I will still be giving new life to other organisms long after I am gone. Those organisms too will eventually die and pass the gift of life to others, just as it was passed to us. The physical and chemical elements that currently empower my neural network will eventually disperse and enter into new relationships with other beings. The “I” that think of as “me” will one day become part of someone else. On that day, relationship will be all that is left of me. On that day, I will become love.

When I imagine death and reality in this relational way, I can see how people in some spiritual traditions could say that the dead have been “reborn” or “resurrected.” If the dead have indeed “become love,” I can understand how some might say that they now have “eternal life” with God and the saints. I can also see how it makes sense to believe that an individual’s personal identity ceases to exist when their brain and body stop functioning. When we imagine reality as relational, we gain the power to resolve the conflict between differing interpretations and religious traditions. We gain the power to hold all of them (and more) together in a unified and interrelated whole.

The second gift that relational nature of reality offers us is the power to have faith without superstition. A person need not believe in a personal God or an immortal soul to accept that reality is relational. If reality is relational, a naturalistic worldview need not necessitate the cynical belief that life is meaningless or hopeless. Indeed, a naturalist who understands the relational nature of reality may find it easier to grow a meaningful and hopeful life than a traditional theist who maintains belief in “God” and “soul” as isolated monads. Even the most ardent atheist can say a heartfelt “Amen!” to the Unitarian Universalist principles of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person” and “respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.”

This understanding of the relational nature of reality offers much to us, but it also asks much from us. It asks that we let go of our egocentric and anthropocentric ways of thinking and living. It asks that we stop centering ourselves in conversations and focus our attention on serving the common good. It asks us rememberthat the way we treat ourselves, our fellow humans, and ourplanet has more spiritual value than any religious dogma or spiritual platitude ever could. In the words of Jesus of Nazareth, the only way to truly love God is by loving your neighbor as yourself. The relational nature of reality asks us to “become love” while we are still alive and have the power of intentional choice. This, in the end, is the kind of life that matters most.

On this Memorial Day weekend, the people of this congregation have gathered to remember those who have come before us, those who have died, those who have “become love” in our midst. May our good memories of these people inspire us to become the hands and feet of love while we still have breath in our lungs. May our bad memories of these complex and imperfect people guide us to honor their legacy by doing better than they did. May we learn from their successes and failures. May we, by our own moral choices, claim our place in the cosmic network of relationships until that day when our biological functions cease and we ourselves “become love.”

Stardust: A Meditation on Grief

On By J. Barrett LeeIn meditation, Uncategorized6 Comments

One of the many remarkable truths about nature is that death is often a gateway to new forms of life. My favorite illustration of this process is the most powerful incident of death in the known universe: a supernova.

A supernova is how a star dies. Stars are born as hydrogen atoms are drawn to each other in the cold depths of outer space. These atoms huddle together in the dark until their bodies fuse into one. This fusion gives off a burst of energy that can be felt as heat and light. The end product is a new atom called helium. As more and more hydrogen atoms join the group, they start a chain reaction that results in a giant ball of gas that we call a star. Stars burn for billions of years, constantly making new kinds of atoms. You can look out the window on a clear day and see this process happening right before your eyes.

Eventually, these atoms become too big and heavy for this process to continue. When this happens, the inward pressure of gravity overwhelms the outward pressure caused by fusion and the star implodes. Because every action in physics causes an equal and opposite reaction, the star’s implosion results in a dramatic explosion. In that brief moment of tremendous destruction, the light of a single star outshines the entire galaxy.

I imagine that for you, the loved ones of those who have recently died, the pain of grief feels overwhelming in the same way. The felt absence of the one who died seems to outshine every other concern in life. This feeling is very normal and natural. You might wonder: Can my universe ever be the same again? Can any good possibly come from a loss so great? These questions are also very normal and natural.

Here’s how nature answers those questions:

Can the universe ever be the same again? No. A great star has been lost, just as the unique light of your loved one’s presence has faded from this world. We grieve this incalculable loss with you.

Can any good possibly come from a loss so great? Yes! The new atoms forged in the heart of that star get launched into space, where gravity draws them back together over billions of years. They form new bodies like other stars, comets, and planets. On our planet Earth, these atoms came together in just the right way to allow life to form and grow. Today, in the ground beneath your feet, in the air you breathe, and even in the atoms of your own body, you carry the remnants of these deceased stars. Quite literally, you are made of stardust!

The spiritual traditions of the world have observed this process and expressed it in various ways. Some believe in reincarnation while others believe in resurrection. Some believe that our physical life ends while our spirits live on in some mysterious way. What all of these beliefs have in common is the hunch that death is not just an end, but also a gateway to new life, just like a supernova.

I know that your world will never be the same again after the loss of this precious loved one. I invite you, in this time of overwhelming grief, to be patient and caring with yourselves and each other. May the gravitational forces of love draw you closer together and help you pick up the scattered pieces. May the blinding light of loss plant seeds of new life as it fades. And may you remember always the unchanging truth that fires your life with dignity: You are stardust!

Shifting Perspective

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Image
The Rich Fool by Rembrandt (1627). Retrieved from Wikipedia.

 

Grief is an unpredictable thing.  It tends to bring out the best or the worst in people.  Everyone grieves a loss differently, so it’s not up to anyone else to tell another person how they should or shouldn’t cope with a loss.  Some people want to laugh and reminisce about the best and favorite memories of their loved one while others might need to just be sad and have a good cry; some folks need to keep busy while others need to stop and sit down; some might need to be alone while others crave human contact.  All of these are good ways to grieve and the best thing to do whenever someone you care about is grieving is to let that person deal with their loss in whatever way they feel they need to.  You don’t have to say or do anything in particular, just be there for them, hug or give space as needed, and listen when they speak.  After all is said and done, they probably won’t remember what you say, they’ll just remember that you were there for them.

The only exception to this, the only time that grief can go wrong or turn tragic, is when a person allows the pain drive a wedge between those who are left behind.  This can happen in lots of unfortunate ways.  In cases of sudden or early death, someone might start pointing the finger of blame at others, believing that the loss could have been avoided if only the situation had been handled differently.  Even worse, some folks turn really nasty when it comes to dealing with estates and inheritances.  I’ve seen tragic situations where siblings turn against one another over the distribution of property or money in the wake of a parent’s death.  These are the only situations where I, as a pastor, want to intervene and suggest that they find another way to face the pain of loss.

In such situations, the issue at hand is rarely the money or the property itself.  Most of the time, family members are simply overwhelmed with pain and are looking for some place toward which they can direct the energy of their sadness.  In our culture, which glorifies strength and despises weakness, finding something to get angry over feels a lot easier and safer than just admitting that we’re feeling sad or lonely.  So, we hide our grief behind fights over things and never really get to the bottom of what’s really going on in our hearts: the sadness we feel over losing a loved one.  We’ve missed the point entirely and, in the process, damaged or sacrificed our relationships with the ones who might have helped us get through the pain and find our way toward healing together as a family.

The real trick in those moments is to stop, step back, and take stock of what’s really important and what life is really all about.  Is fighting over money or stuff really going to bring back the dead or help us to deal with the pain of loss?  No, not really.  Life is not about getting money or stuff.  In our better moments, we all know that.  But we forget it sometimes when the pain becomes so great that we would rather think about anything other than the fact that we are hurting right now.  I’ve seen this happen more than once and it breaks my heart every time.

In this morning’s gospel reading, the scene opens with just such a situation brewing.  Two brothers have lost their father and a dispute over a contested will has arisen between them.  We don’t know many of the details, but we get the basic outline of the situation as they bring their fight to the rabbi Jesus for a just resolution.

But Jesus, as usual, declines to answer directly the question he’s just been asked.  He says, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”  Once again, Jesus is not conforming to the role that would normally be expected of him as an itinerant rabbi traveling among rural villages.  He continues, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

I hear something deeper in Jesus’ words to these disgruntled siblings.  I hear him saying, in effect, “What you are asking is not what you really need.  You’ve missed the point entirely.”

The key phrase in his response, which is also the central phrase in this entire passage, is, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

That one word, “life,” is super-important.  Jesus isn’t just talking about life in the sense of biological survival, he’s talking about that rich, full, and meaningful (i.e. abundant) life that God intends for us as human beings.  Jesus is talking about really living and not just getting by.

This is a particularly important (and particularly challenging) message for us to hear in 21st century America.  We live in an extremely wealthy and powerful culture.  Capitalism has given rise to consumerism in our post-industrial society.  Our sole purpose on this earth, it seems, is to produce, buy, and consume products that keep our economy going and growing at any cost.  The American dream is an ideal of security through economic prosperity.  We dream of having a white picket fence and a car in every garage.  We are inundated with literally thousands of advertisements every week, each one insisting that their product is the key to achieving true happiness in life.

Yet, one needs only look at those who occupy the top spots in the heap of consumption.  Celebrity gossip columns give a regular indication that those who “have it all” are NOT actually any happier than the rest of us.  They keep on spending their millions in the “pursuit of happiness,” only to discover that there are some things that money really just can’t buy.  Or, as Jesus put it, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

For those of us who live in this consumerist society, I think Jesus wants to extract us from the cult of MORE and initiate us into the church of ENOUGH.  And the first step in this process is to step back and really look at who we are and what we’re doing.  The meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn calls this an “orthogonal shift.”  That word, “orthogonal,” comes from geometry, where it refers to a set of lines that run perpendicular to one another.  In the sense that Kabat-Zinn means it, an orthogonal shift is one where we step back and shift perspective in order to get a different point of view on our lives.  Kabat-Zinn says this is like moving from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional point of view: we rise above the flat level of everyday existence, survival, and concern in order to get a clearer view of the whole chessboard on which our lives are laid out.

This, in a general sense, is what we do every week here in church (and hopefully every day in our private devotional lives): we take an hour to remove ourselves from our culture’s rat race of constant production and consumption and we remind ourselves of where it is that true life, abundant life, is really to be found.  We remember that life is so much more than stuff.

The first thing we realize when we step back, make that orthogonal shift and get a three-dimensional perspective on our two-dimensional world is that we live on a planet of tremendous blessing and abundance.  We are all already spilling over the brim with “enough-ness”.  Most scientists believe that Earth has more than enough resources to safely support life for the number of people who live here, so there’s no real reason why anyone should have to experience starvation.  I won’t bore you with the statistics, but I’ll just encourage you to take your spirituality outside with you.

I mean that literally: take a hike, sit by a river, fish, hunt, or even sit on a park bench for a while.  Just get out there and appreciate the free gifts that Earth has to offer.  From what I’ve seen, those who do so come back with a much deeper sense of gratitude and appreciation for just how lush and green life can be.  That’s one way to make that orthogonal shift and get some perspective.

Another way is to keep a financial journal.  This is a great exercise, and it’s an easy one too, if you’re used to keeping good records.  The thing to do is keep track of every single penny that comes in and goes out of your bank account for a month.  And I don’t just mean balancing your checkbook, I mean really take stock of where and how you spend your money.  At the end of the month, add everything up according to category: rent, food, utilities, entertainment, charity, etc.  Where does your money actually go?  And here’s the hard question: how does that match up with the values you claim to hold as a Christian?  Are you meeting your needs before satisfying your wants?  Would a stranger, looking at this record of your earning and spending, be able to tell what your most deeply held beliefs and values really are?

Both of these exercises can be ways in which Jesus is able to lead us to that point of shifting our habitual perspectives and reminding ourselves that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

Really living, according to Jesus, is about so much more than that.

One of the interesting things about this gospel passage is that Jesus doesn’t spell out the answer for us.  For example, with those two grieving brothers, Jesus doesn’t explain to them what their problem is or how to fix it.  He simply refuses to get involved in their dispute.  Instead, he challenges them (almost dares them) to make that shift in perspective themselves and see that the real source of their conflict is grief over the loss of their parent that has been misdirected as anger toward each other.

Jesus, in this situation, is drawing the brothers’ attention to the questions they didn’t even think to ask, initially.  He tells a story about a greedy farmer with the same problem.  This farmer had a huge bumper crop one year, but instead of looking to share the wealth, devised ways to build bigger barns to store keep his own massive profits to himself.  This farmer never stops to think about his wider community.  His focus is solely on “my money, my property, and my needs.”  Once again, Jesus doesn’t spell out the answer, but says more in his silence than most people do in a thousand words.

The implication, which would have been crystal clear to Jesus’ audience of hungry peasants and should have been clear to the farmer in the story, is that an abundance of blessing is meant to be shared.  We have a moral and spiritual obligation to care for one another, not just through taxes and donations to social programs, but with our own time, energy, and resources.  That, Jesus implies, is where life, real life, can really be found.