Good Grief
 Job 1:13-19; 2:11-13
2 Corinthians 1:3-7
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Rev. Daniel T. Hans
February 24, 2008

This 3rd Sunday of Lent moves us toward Jesus’ death on the cross. This evening begins another session of our grief support group.  Thus I thought it fitting to preach about the grieving process since all of us must deal with death and loss at some time in our lives. Grief is parents extremely proud of their son’s military service yet deeply pained that in that service they lost their son. Grief is a young mother struggling to raise three children alone. Grief is the man so filled with anger over loss that he strikes out at those nearest to him. Grief is the silent, knife-like sadness that comes a hundred times a day when you start to speak to someone no longer there. Grief is the nagging question of why a pastor decided to leave. Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and never will be the same again. (Edgar Jackson) While grief wears many faces, at its heart, there is always pain.

I

Loss by death has no corner on the market of grief. Bereavement is acutely present in every experience of loss. Of the half dozen women present at the Bible study, three were widows. They spoke of their pained feelings over losing their husbands and not seeing them again in this life.  A fourth voice entered the conversion.  She was not a widow but knew the pain of loss. This divorcee said, “There is a grief deeper than that of losing a husband and not seeing him again.  It is the pain of losing him yet seeing him again and again and again.”

The loss of a spouse to death or to divorce, the loss of a child to death or to rebellion, the loss of friend to death or to disagreement, and the loss of innocence to carelessness or to peer pressure, loss is loss; and grief is grief; and we experience both.  While grief wears many faces, at its heart there is always pain.

Whatever the loss, the subsequent grief has stages through which it must pass. Both the grievers and those who love the grievers need to understand grief’s process if life is to move forward amid loss. The story of Job is instructive in grasping the stages of grief. For Job, circumstance causes the loss of everything- his children, his wealth and his health. In his struggle with loss, Job moves through five stages of grief. The order of the stages is less important than the experience of all five.

II

First, Job experiences numbed shock. After his severe loss, three friends visit him.  They don’t recognize him for shock has changed him. The once smiling, upbeat Job sits expression-less and swollen-eyed shaking his head and mumbling, “This can’t have happened.  Soon I’ll awake from this nightmare.” Another father sat immobilized by shock after his two young children died in a fire.  He had tried to rescue them from the flames that engulfed their home but by the time he reached their bedrooms he was too late.  It would be unfair and cruel to expect anything but shock to accompany such loss.

To such numbed grievers, how can we, the church, respond? The best way is by being there with them in their shock. A moving display of compassion is encountered in Job 2: 13: And [Job’s three friends] sat with him on the ground 7 days and 7 nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw his suffering was very great.
 I wonder who is sitting with the grieving parents of the students killed last week at Northern Illinois University. Most of us will admit that when faced with the need to be with the grieving, we do not know what to say.  Nothing can be said or need be said in the initial stage of loss.  Just be there with them and be there for them.

III
Remembering that the order of grief’s stages is less important than the experience of all the stages, another stage is despair. Job knows this anguish.   Job 3 tells us: After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth… “Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire… for the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.” (3:1, 11, 25)

Helplessness and hopelessness lay siege to the heart, mind, and will. Despite outer shows of strength, grievers struggle with inner despair. This deep sadness must find expression. The best thing we can offer at such times is a listening ear. Listen! Don’t try to offer answers to tragedy; there are none. Don’t think you must say anything; words have no meaning. Ears are far more valuable than mouths when helping the grieving.

Job’s friends sit with him in silence.  Their patient, listening presence frees him to speak of his despair. Had his friends continued their patient silence Job would have been greatly helped. However, like so many of us in times of uncertainty, they open their mouths and try to explain the whys of life’s tragedies. By speaking rather than listening, they blow it!

Several months after my daughter died, I was talking with a colleague in ministry who asked how I was doing.  He admitted he had no words to offer in the face of such a loss.  As I shared my feelings of deep, deep sorrow, he listened patiently.  Another minister, who overheard part of our conversation, said to me, “I didn’t hear all the details but I gather you lost a child.”  I nodded. Immediately, he launched into a little sermon about how his faith was strengthened when his child was very ill at birth.  In great detail, he told me all about his situation, completely ignoring mine. One man listened to my despair; the other spoke of his faith. Which do you think was more helpful?

IV
A third stage in grief is anger or bitterness. We are mistaken if we think Job is a story of Job’s patience; it is a story of Job’s honest anger. Anger doesn’t necessarily follow despair. Sometimes anger precedes sorrow; other times anger accompanies sorrow. But with any loss anger is almost always present in some form.

When Beth and I left our church in Connecticut to come here, a church member said with sorrowful anger, “It feels like a divorce!” Some of you might be grateful that Second Presbyterian Church in Lexington is taking me from you. Before I announced my departure from Gettysburg, I had a recurring dream.  In this dream, I stood before you, telling you that Jesus is leading me to another church.  Each time you responded to the news in the same way, by jumping to your feet and singing: What a Friend We Have in Jesus! Seriously, some of you, in your grief, are angry about our leaving.
That is natural and understandable. Please know that each Sunday in worship Second Church Lexington prays for his congregation and its loss.

In his anger, Job complained bitterly: God has cast me into the mire and I have become like dust and ashes.  I cry to you, O God and you do not answer me; I stand and you do not listen to me.  You have turned against me… When I looked for good, evil came and when I waited for light, darkness came. (30: 19-21, 26)  Why, God, why? is a natural and necessary response to loss. Regardless of the strength or maturity of our faith, that faith is possessed by human beings. We humans cannot survive without love and when the object of our love is lost we become angry.

As Christians, our anger is often directed at the One we believe to be all powerful. Know that God can handle our anger. I believe God welcomes our anger. Anger toward God is a healthy expression of grief for it helps get out the pain within. If that bitterness does not come out, it can kill us within. Grief’s anger does not need religious answers. It needs honest expression and loving acceptance.

V
When despair and anger are given permission for expression grief can move to the stage of nostalgia, remembrance. Job reminisces: Oh, that it was as the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me.  (29: 1, 5)    Longing for yesterday, longing for the time before our loss, when life was happy and when loved ones were together is nostalgia; and nostalgia is a needed component of grief. However, nostalgia becomes a prison if we remain in the past.

There are: widowers who retreat into yesterday and stay there; bereaved parents who worship the past by idealizing their child; divorcees who wallow in the past crucifying themselves with guilt; and congregations that worship past chapters of their church’s life or, worse, worship past pastors.
The worst thing that could happen here at GPC is what happened after I left United Presbyterian Church in Milford, CT. That church put me on a pedestal making it impossible for my successor to be successful. You and I can be grateful to God for our time together but neither you nor I should worship that time.

While we cannot live in the past and we cannot change the past, we must not forget the past for it has shaped us and left its mark. Remembering the past, without living in it, is a positive expression of nostalgia that helps us come to grips with today and move toward tomorrow.

We can assist the grieving by affirming the past and taking the grieving person back to the past by asking about their loved one. To help ease the burden of loss, instead of asking only: How are you doing? ask the grieving person: What was it that Bill always said about… or recall with the grieving person incidents in the life of the one who has died:  I remember how Mary always loved to… Because of our faith in the resurrection, we can help the bereaved by talking about the dead as being alive. Yet, like the rest of our culture, we feel uncomfortable doing so. If we truly want to help grieving people, ask them to tell us about the loss that causes them such pain. I know it doesn’t make any sense but I know that it works. The reason it works is that grief is an expression of love. When we are asked to talk about the object of our grief we are being asked to talk about the object of our love.

VI

This last stage of grief has a beginning but has no end. Acceptance and new beginning are the goal of good grief. After Job’s shock and despair, after his anger and nostalgia, he comes to a crossroads in his grieving. In the last five chapters of the story, God confronts Job with the realization that while Job will not understand loss’ grief, Job nevertheless must begin to accept it.
The prayer of many a grieved heart is: Lord, when will I get over this loss?  When will my grieving cease? One never “gets over” a major loss.Faith in the risen and restoring Christ helps a person to move forward through grief but faith does not remove grief nor should it.

A young mother lost one child at birth.  Her other daughter had a brain tumor.  The girl’s future lay under the shadow of a question mark.  Yet, this mother, a Christian, shared with me a prayer she offered every day: Dear God, teach us to laugh again but never let us forget that we have cried.
Painful though grieving is, its presence is a lasting tribute of love to the one no longer with us. Where there is no grief one wonders if there is any love.
Love is too precious, too permanent an emotion to end when the loved one is gone.  As love endures so grief endures. Does grief’s enduring nature doom the griever to emotional defeat? Does personal loss confine one to getting up on the side of the bed from now on? NO.  We can learn to live with grief - to laugh again even among the tears and to love again even after rejection.

God gives Job a new perspective by reminding him that the mysteries of life are to be experienced not explained. Each person comes to this acceptance of the mystery at her own pace and by his own path. God is patient with Job along the journey of grief. We can best help to the grieving in like manner, by being patient as the grieving move forward on their path at their pace.

In a church where pastors and members come and go, in a nation where one out of two marriages ends in divorce, and in a world where one out of one lives ends in death, grief over loss is inevitable. While painful grief is inevitable, good grief is possible - by the grace of God who is the presence in every absence.

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