Sermon 7 - Faith and works, and intuitive vs instrumental grief

Sermon 7 - Faith and works, and intuitive vs instrumental grief

I am a grieving widower.  (Oh, you are getting tired of that?  Well, consider how *I* feel about it.)  In any case, I am going through grief, and I am learning various lessons from it.  Which I'm willing to pass along, to you, so you can learn the lessons, without having to go through the grief.

Some of the lessons are about grief in broad and general terms.  For example, one of the things that I am learning is that there are at least two ways that people process grief.  There is the standard, and traditional, and most likely recognized style of processing grief, which involves expressing emotions.  How do you feel about the grief?  How does the loss make you feel?  What are the feelings and emotions that brief, bereavement, and loss, engender in you?  This is known as intuitive style of grieving.  And, as I say, it is so widely recognized that many people feel that this is the only way of processing grief.  But it's not.

There are people, and, apparently, I am one, who process grief in what is known as an instrumental style.  This is much more involved in activity, and planning, and cognitive types of activities.  So, for example, I am studying grief, since I am grieving.  I am learning everything that I can about grief.  I am planning, and developing, and researching towards, providing assistance for other people who grieve in an instrumental style.  This is the way that I am grieving.  And, because of that, I have learned something that may be of interest to you.

Unless you are bereaved, or have suffered a loss recently, you probably don't care too much about grief, and what I am learning about grief.  After all, you are a church congregation, and do you want to hear about God.  And, no, I am not simply going to say that God will comfort you in your grief.  I believe that that is true, but I also believe that simply telling people that is not necessarily helpful when they are in the earliest, and deepest, stages of grief.

No, what I am going to talk about, is faith.  And, works.  We have this constant discussion about faith and works, in the Christian life.  We agree that we are saved by faith.  God has saved us from eternal separation from Him due to our sinful natures.  All we have to do is believe, and have faith, and we are saved.  We are not saved by works, lest any man should boast.  (Ephesians 3:9)  It is not our efforts that save us: it is faith in God and the work of Jesus Christ.

However, as James tells us, faith without works is dead.  (James 2:20)  If God has saved us, if God has done all of that for us, and we do nothing in return?  What kind of Christians does that make us?  So we do try to do good works.  We do try to live a proper life.  We cannot live a perfect life, the life that we would need to live if we were to save ourselves, but in gratitude to God, for all that God has done for us, we should at least try to do a little bit of good.  Faith saves us, but faith, without works, is dead.  Salvation is a gift of grace, but, if we do nothing in response to it, that's cheap grace.

Okay, what does that have to do with grief?

Well, as I said, there seem to be two styles of processing grief.  There is the intuitive style.  The intuitive style is about how we feel.  We have pay attention to how we feel.  We note how's we feel.  We believe that this helps us to understand how well we are processing the grief: how well we are moving through grief.  We believe this.  We have faith in this.

Oh, look. There's that word.  Faith.

Then there's the other style of processing grief, the instrumental style.  People who are processing grief in an instrumental manner are thinking about it.  They may be studying it, or learning other things.  They are involved in planning.  They are involved in projects.  They are working.

Oh, look.  There's that other word: work.

The thing is, people who study grief tend to find that you are not necessarily only an instrumental griever, or only an intuitive griever.  Those who are bereaved, and who are going through grief, tend to be on a continuum.  Everybody tends to have some intuitive processing of grief, and also some instrumental processing of grief.  Some people are much more intuitive than instrumental, and some people are much more instrumental than intuitive.  Me, I tend to be heavily on the instrumental end of the scale.  But I also have had lots of grief bursts.  And I still do.  Some people need to work through their feelings, and some people need to study and work.  But everybody needs to do a bit of both.

And it's the same with the Christian life.  In fact, it's even more so.  Grievers will have a tendency to need more of one, than the other.  There will be a preference for how you process grief.  But that's not the way it is in the Christian life.  Salvation comes by faith.  As a Christian you need to have faith.  Possibly only as much as a grain of mustard seed, but you need to have faith.  Salvation is by faith.  You do not work out your own salvation.  Salvation is not by works: our works are not good enough, and never have been.

But if we simply rely on faith, and don't make any attempt to do what God would have us do, then what kind of children of God does that make us?  Very disobedient ones.  Saved ones, to be sure.  But rather ungrateful ones.  So we need to try.  We need to work.  And our works, are not for the benefit of God.  God does not need what we can do.  God can do pretty much anything we can do, and probably better than we can do it.  But God has allowed us to participate in working in his world.  God has given us work to do.  And this work is undoubtedly for our benefit.  There is some benefit, to us, in doing what God would have us to do.

One of the other things that I am is a volunteer for emergency management.  Every time there is a disaster I am quite sensitized to it.  And every time there is a disaster, people ask, why?  Why did God allow this flood, this hurricane, this landslide, this heat wave, this snowpocalypse?  There are, of course, many answers.  But one that is often neglected is, "so that you can help."  Every time there is a disaster I invite my security colleagues to sign up for, and get training in, emergency management.  It's good for your career.  You get training.  You get experience.  And, you get to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.  You get to understand what is going on, what is important, what is needed.  You get to help.

Whenever bad things happen to good people, we get to help.  We get an opportunity to help.  God doesn't actually need our help.  He could handle it on His own.  But he gives us the opportunity to help.  Why does He do this?  To help us.  It is for our benefit.  The Bible tells us that.  We are laying up treasures in heaven when we help.  (Mark 10:21)  What are these treasures?  We don't know.  But we have faith that they are there.

There's that word again.  We have faith, even in the midst of our works.  The two cannot be separated.

If you want to personalize this issue, we have two people to talk about.  Two sisters, in fact.  Mary and Martha.  In Luke 10:38-42 we are told of a dinner party.  Mary sits at Jesus feet.  Mary is intuitive.  Mary has faith: faith that what Jesus says is supremely important.  Martha is putting on the dinner.  Martha is working.  Martha is instrumental.  And, generally, Martha gets short shrift in this account.  She complains to Jesus that Jesus should tell Mary to help with the dinner, and Jesus sides with Mary.  But notice: Jesus doesn't tell Martha to stop working.  Jesus doesn't tell Martha that working is wrong.  Jesus tells Martha not to be distracted, and that Mary is concentrating on the most important aspect.  But it doesn't say that Martha *wasn't* listening, while she was working.  And obviously, Martha *was* listening.

Because later, in John, chapter 11, we are told of the death of Lazarus, brother to the two women.  And, since we have been talking about grief, normally you'd expect me to talk about the illustrations of grief involved here.  Once again, normally Martha gets short shrift in this story.  We tend to think that Martha doesn't have faith.  But she does.  She has listened.  Martha says that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus wouldn't have died.  She had that much faith.  She was probably the one who arranged to get a message to Jesus about Lazarus' illness.  And, in fact, Mary's response is exactly the same: Mary says that if Jesus had been there, Lazarus wouldn't have died.  While faith is the better part, and we are saved by grace, through faith, faith and works cannot, and should not, be separated.  Both are necessary.

There are possibly two other people we can talk about.  Two brothers, this time.  And one, the younger, demanded his share of the family fortune, and got it, and wasted it, and got into difficulty.  And finally realized, had enough faith, that his father would take him back.  Maybe as a servant, but take him back.  And the other brother has been working all this time.  Now, I've got to admit, I've got a lot of sympathy for the elder brother.  He's been working all these years while the kid was out partying.  And he comes home, from working, to find that they are throwing a party because the kid has come back.  That's got to be galling.  But, there is no help for it.  He's got to work on having faith in his baby brother again.

Because we need both.