Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy (and series intro)

Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy (and series intro)

Amos 3:6

If a disaster occurs in a city, hasn’t the Lord done it?

We live in a grief illiterate society.  We cannot talk about grief.  Therefore we don't understand grief.  We can't talk about death.  Death is the last taboo.  We can talk about all kinds of other things: we can talk about sex, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about perversions, but we can't talk about death.

(There's actually a movement to develop what are called Death Cafes.  This isn't grief counseling: it's just a place, a safe space, to talk about death.  To talk about all aspects of death.  I've been to some of these Death Cafes, and they are absolutely delightful.  The people who come are thoughtful and reasonable.  Although it is not supposed to be about grief counselling, at every meeting that I have attended someone who has lost something important has shown up.  Those who attend are always interested in the person who is grieving, interested in their grief, interested in their life and their lost loved one.  Those who are bereaved obtain an awful lot of comfort from these Death Cafes, which, I may remind you once again, are not about grief counseling, or comforting grievers.  It's just supposed to be a place to talk about death.

One other interesting thing about the Death Cafes is that they make a big deal about having candy, or cookies, or some other sweet treat available for the meeting.  This, so the official website states, is to remind people of the sweetness of life.  But, I didn't intend to talk about Death Cafes in this sermon.  I'm talking about death.)

We avoid even saying the word dead.  There is the "Dead Parrot" sketch, from the Monty Python group, which, at one major part in the sketch, consists of a long list of euphemisms for dead.  All the terms that we have invented, so that we don't have to say the word "dead."

After Gloria died, a friend, who is from another culture, visited me after some considerable time during which we hadn't seen each other.  He asked after Gloria.  "She died," I said.  His, somewhat bemused, reply was, "I think you are the only person that I have ever heard, in North America, use the word 'dead'."

So, now that I have thoroughly upset you, by using the word dead so many times, what is the point that I am trying to make with this sermon?  Well, we don't understand about death.  We can't talk about it.  We don't allow those who are bereaved to talk about it.  Since Gloria died, I feel like I have lost all of my friends, because all of them are completely and absolutely terrified that I will mention Gloria, or death, or grief, or pain.  None of them will talk to me, just in case I mentioned any of those things.  We can't talk about death.

Gloria's death was not my first grief rodeo.  I lost my favorite cousin when I was age seven.  I lost my sister when I was fifteen.  She was twelve.  I remember that I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing in terms of grieving.  I wanted to talk about Fiona, and Fiona's death.  And absolutely nobody, nobody in the church, none of my friends, nobody anywhere would talk about Fiona's death.  Or just death itself.  That is a taboo subject.

But if we don't talk about death, if we don't discuss death, if we don't think about death, then how can we understand it?  And if we don't understand death, how can we understand Jesus' death?  And his death, and resurrection, are absolutely vital to our faith.

We also, as noted, don't understand grief.  And if we don't understand grief, how can we understand God's grief, over Jesus' death?  How can we understand God's grief over *our* deaths?  Over every death, of every human being, who ever lived?  Do you think that God does not grieve our deaths?  Remember, death was not part of the original plan.  If Adam and Eve had stuck to pomegranates and grapes and figs, we wouldn't be in this mess.  Death came into the world because of sin.  Sin, at a time when, as the old joke has it, you had one job!  Don't eat the apple!

We live in a grief-illiterate society.  We don't talk about grief in our society.  We don't like to talk about grief.  We don't like to talk about death.  We don't like to talk about pain.  This is true in our society, and it is *particularly* true in our churches and Christian life.

We think that God blesses us if we do good.  We believe this, and the "Prosperity Gospel" has become almost an article of faith for many of us.  God does say that he will bless us, but he also says that he disciplines us, and teaches us, and sometimes blessings don't come in the way we think.    And, therefore, if we do not feel particularly blessed, we seem to feel we have not done well: that we have sinned.  And that that is the reason that we are not doing well, or feeling good.  So not feeling good tends to leave us with the impression, either with ourselves or with others, that we have not lived up to the Christian expectations.  We have not lived up to the Christian ideal.  We have sinned and that is why we are having problems, if we are having problems.  Therefore the indication is that we have sinned.  If we feel bad, we have sinned.  It is our own fault.

We particularly believe this about other people.  

This is rather ironic, since the church is a place where one would expect that you can come for comfort.  Yet, if we ask for comfort, the implication tends to be that we have failed.  That we have sinned, that we have not done as we ought to have done.  If we are looking for comfort, we are somehow at fault.

Therefore when we come looking for comfort in the church or in the Christian community, we may end up feeling even worse.  Because we are told that we do not have enough faith.  Or that we haven't "fully" given our lives to God, somehow.  Or that we have sinned, somehow.  This is what Job's friends told him.  This is why we have the phrase "Jobs comforters."  And they were, in fact, wrong.  Very wrong.  God told them so.  Job 42:7 - "After the Lord had spoken these things to Job, He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My anger is stirred up against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken about me what is right, as my servant Job has."

And every time I think of this, I can't help thinking of 2 Corinthians 1:4 - "He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God."  What pain have *we* not been comforted for, if we can't comfort others?

But this is not the only reason that we avoiding talking about death.  And grief, and pain.  And in the Christian church this is wrong.  We need to understand death.  We need to understand grief.  We need to understand pain.  We need to understand suffering.  The Christian message has death at its very centre.

Actually, multiple deaths.  There is our death, our deserved death, as a result of our sin.

Then there is the death of Jesus.  Jesus did *not* deserve death.  But died to pay the penalty for our sin, taking our deserved death on Himself, who was undeserving of death.

We need to understand death.  Yes, death is important to the Christian life. 

And we need to understand grief.  Need to grieve our own sin.  We need to grieve the death of Jesus.  We need to grieve our sin as the necessity for Jesus' death.

We need to understand grief.

Grief teaches you a number of things about the Christian life and the important concepts on which Christianity is built.

In Glen's GriefCare program, he asks those attending to fill out a loss rank and impact chart, as an exercise.  It points out that there are different types of loss, and different types of grief.  I lost my cousin, my sister, my grandparents, and parents, and friends, and Gloria.  But I also lost position and status when I moved to take up a job.  I lost respect for my father when he made an unethical business decision (ironically, supposedly in support of the church).  I lost a lot of money when I had to make a moral stand against some underhanded practices.  But in doing the exercise, I also realized how important those losses were in teaching me lessons that I needed.

When Gloria died I lost my best friend, I lost the person I most wanted to talk to at any time.  I recently came across a Biblical passage, in Proverbs, about enjoying your wife.  One version translated it as saying, "and when you wake in the morning, she will talk with you."  One of the aspects of my grief since Gloria died is that I have no one to talk to: certainly not the person that I most want to talk with.  I lost my friend and wife, but, since I had been Gloria's caregiver for about a decade, I also lost my job.  I lost my schedule.  Our daily schedule was much determined by Gloria's medications, the need to take them with or without food, and the need to have minimum times between taking some combinations of them.  When Gloria died, I lost my schedule.  I lost my reason for *any* schedule.  Interestingly, this also meant that I lost any idea of a weekly or monthly schedule, and I had to build systems to remind myself to do things like washing the bed sheets and paying the rent.

My life ended.  Really, it felt like that.  My life had ended.  I had no purpose.  I had died.  And yet I am still alive.  And what I am doing now is not rebuilding a life as much as building a completely new life.

Doesn't that sound like what we talk about in terms of Christianity?  Dying to self?

And that is only one of many lessons.

We need to understand about pain.  Pain is used to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  That something needs to be fixed.

It is possible, of course, that we need to correct someone, and that they have sinned and that we need to identify that to, and for, them.  However, it is not as common as we seem to think that this is what we need to do.  It is much more likely that we need to comfort the afflicted, rather than correct them.  Most people are more in need of comfort than correction.  Well, unless they're sinners, of course.  But the sin is very often a sin of omission.  Such as, for example, failing to comfort someone.  Instances of necessary correction are much less frequent than we seem to think.  We would like to be the instruments of correction.  We would like to be the ones who are right.  We would like to be the ones who guide the fallen.  We would like that, because that indicates that we are smarter than they, or more holy than they, or more righteous than they, or more knowledgeable about God than they are.

But it's more likely that *we* are sinning by assuming that we know more than they do, and that what they need is correction rather than comfort.

We need to understand about pain.  Pain is necessary to life.  Pain is used to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  That something needs to be repaired.  That something needs to be fixed.  That something needs to be healed.  That's *another* reason that we need to comfort more than we need to correct.  We may need to correct someone.  Someone's pain may be because of their own sin or their own choices.  But we need to comfort them enough, to heal them enough, to give them the strength to make better choices.  To identify and acknowledge their own sin.  That takes strength.  It takes energy.  And those who are in pain may not have the energy to make those necessary changes.  We need to give them comfort so that they can come to the point of making the changes that they need to make.  If they are sinning, they are broken.  If they are broken, they need our help, not our condemnation.

Yes, sometimes pain is to alert us to the fact that something is wrong.  But not always.  Unfortunately, sometimes pain simply happens.  Sometimes pain is random.  Sometimes pain is meaningless.  If you have shingles, what sin did you commit?  What lifestyle choice did you make that resulted in shingles?  It's not a matter of sin.  It just happened.  If it happened and it causes pain for you, it is not alerting you to the fact that anything is wrong.  Other than the fact that your nerves are infected.

And, of course, the alert that shingles gives you is out of all proportion to our abilities to correct it.  So, why do we have this type of pain?  Well, maybe it's just presenting those of us who do *not* have the pain with an opportunity to help the sufferers.  Maybe this is what we are supposed to do.  And maybe, in *not* comforting those who are afflicted, we are, in fact, sinning because God wants us to comfort the afflicted, and we aren't.

In fact, many people in our churches are afraid of hearing that *anyone* is in difficulty or discomfort.  It is contrary to our beliefs in what we assume is God's provision for us, and may even threaten our faith.  If someone is facing a serious difficulty, through no fault of their own, that is not easily overcome with a few Bible verses or cliches, and if this person has not sinned and yet is in discomfort or in trouble, this threatens belief in the prosperity gospel.  And in our belief that God will bless us if we do good things and don't do bad things. 

In one of the movies on my list for the Jesus Film Festival, there is a very interesting take on the temptation of Christ.  The Tempter suggests that Jesus turn stones into bread in order to feed those who are starving.  As well as the standard Biblical reference, the film script has Jesus respond that people are hungry because of the hearts of stone of other men.  I think it's not only poetic, but a very important point.

We need to understand death.  We need to understand grief.  We need to understand pain.  We need to understand how it affects us.  And that means that we need to acknowledge it when it does happen.  We need to learn lessons from grief.  The lessons about dying to ourselves.  The lessons about the need to comfort others. 

There is a trueism that you should learn from other people's mistakes, because you're never going to live long enough to make all of them yourself.  What I want to tell you is related to, but slightly different from that.  I'm grieving.  I am suffering and in pain because of the loss of my wife.  I am learning about grief.  I am also a systems analyst.  So if I am going to grieve, I am going to learn everything possible about grief.  I have been studying grief.

My grief is not because I have made a mistake.  But I have suffered a loss.  It wasn't my fault.  But it is painful, and I'm suffering.

Learn from my grief, in this series of sermons.  I want you to benefit from my pain.  I am suffering.  There is nothing I can do about that.  (We'll talk about that point.  Yes, you may think you can argue about it.  We'll discuss that later.)  There is nothing I can do about my pain.  But what I *can* do is possibly reduce the total suffering on earth by providing you with the benefit of my experience and my study.  These sermons are the result of a lot of pain and suffering on my part, and a lot of work, research and study.  Learn from them.  Benefit from them.  Take the lessons and apply them.  Help yourselves and help others.  I am in pain, but if you learn from my pain, you will hopefully reduce the total suffering on earth.  You will provide love to your neighbours.

You may even understand God a bit better. 

Grief series

Sermon 22 - Grief Illiteracy

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/sermon-22-grief-illiteracy-and-series.html

Sermon 4 - Grief and Dying to Self

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/01/sermon-4-grief-and-dying-to-self.html

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

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/02/sermon-7-faith-and-works-and-intuitive.html

Sermon 10 - Why Job

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/03/sermon-10-why.html

Sermons: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/09/sermons.html