John 3:16-17

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

As many of you know, we’ve been coming at this wall of grief behind me, week after week, on Wednesdays, throughout this Lenten season. And tonight is the last straw, the last stand, the last hurrah … whatever we might want to call it.

I hope those of you who’ve been playing along remember what we’ve left here this season. For those who haven’t that’s okay. I’m certain you are acquainted and familiar with the road of sorrow we’ve been walking – that you’ve walked it, too.

… grief for lost loved ones;

… grief for the losses and destruction of God’s creation;

… grief for unmet hopes and expectations in our lives;

… grief that comes from those who’ve gone before us – from generation to generation – that still lives in our bones and in our bodies and still impacts our lives in the world;

… and grief, too, that is known only between us and God, that buries itself like so much shame, in our heart of hearts.

We’ve called all of this “Grieving Well,” because that was my goal for these Lenten days – that we would find meaningful, practical, holy ways to name the many ways grief and sorrow find their way into our lives. And that by naming that grief, by putting it into words, and by attaching to it some tangible rituals and practices, in worship, we would “do grief well,” in ways that are more real and true and faithful to our experience as people on the planet than we’re always allowed to be.

See, in a world that doesn’t encourage or always have words for – or a comfort-level with – grief, we aren’t practiced at doing any of those things, often enough. We are a people who grieve alone, too much of the time, unto ourselves.

We are a people that has convinced ourselves and each other that grief is, somehow – impossibly – something to be avoided.

And if not avoided, then kept to ourselves when it comes, so as not to show our weakness, or our fear, or our vulnerability; maybe to be polite and not make others uncomfortable about our sorrow.

And we seem, too, to pretend that grief is something to be conquered … accomplished, perhaps … so that we can get on with our happy, blessed, abundant lives, as the good Lord intends.

Well tonight, as I said, is the last stand and last straw for this kind of pretending and pretense. Tonight, God gets the last word. And it’s different than something I’ve ever considered before on Good Friday. It’s cosmic and universal. And it is much closer to home, too. Yes, it’s about God’s love redeeming the world. Yes, it’s about the grace of God being poured out, in Jesus Christ for the sake of all. Yes, it’s evidence that God didn’t send Jesus to condemn the world, but in order that the world would be saved through him.

And it is also God redeeming the world one grief at a time. It is God loving the world one sorrow after another. It is God’s heart breaking, right along with yours and mine whenever the sadness stings. And it is God reminding me that none of us was ever promised this would be easy. The story of Scripture is filled with nearly equal parts horror and hope, if you ask me.

And we do ourselves… and each other… and the world around us … a profound dis-service if we pretend otherwise; if we pretend that life in this world isn’t supposed to include suffering, sorrow, or grief, I mean. And God forbid, Christians, if we convey the message that life for believers is somehow supposed to be immune from any of the above. “If we say we have no sin, no struggle, no sorrow – or that we don’t feel separated from God, from time to time ? – we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Because God shows us tonight that even God’s very self, in Jesus, grieved in that garden when he prayed that all of this might be taken away from him. He suffered. There were whips and thorns and nails remember. He was utterly lost and alone and separated from the heart of God when he cried “my God my God, why have you forsaken me,” and then descended into whatever hell that was for him.

All of that is to say, all of our grief – and God’s sorrow – gathers itself at the cross tonight. And we are called to see it there – our grief, and God’s – because God means for us to know that it doesn’t and will not stay there forever. We can name it. Claim it. Nail it to a tree. And we can watch God gather it all up, unto and into God’s very self, and transform it into something else, much to our surprise.

I watched Stephen Colbert interview Paul Simon last week and found Colbert predictably, reliably wise and faithful in the way he’s able to talk about grief and sorrow and faith in beautiful ways.

After Paul Simon pontificated a bit about the way he understands God and faith, he asked Colbert what he thought about it all. Stephen Colbert, seemed genuinely caught off-guard by the question (he’s the one that’s supposed to ask the questions on his show, after all), but this is what he said:

Having lost his father and two older brothers in a plane crash as a young boy – when he was 10 years old I believe – it’s not a surprise that Colbert wrestled with atheism for a time.

But did you hear what changed his mind? He said that he was “overwhelmed by an enormous sense of gratitude for the world.” And it wasn’t a sappy, happy-happy, joy-joy kind of gratitude. It was gratitude that comes even in grief – even for heartbreaking things – because, “grief with you is an act of love.”

“Grief with you is an act of love.” How beautiful is that?

We can be sad – deeply grieving – and yet there is joy there, because we can share [our] love and share our grief and heal and care for each other in the midst of it.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

And I think that’s a perfect, faithful way to see just what God means to accomplish on Good Friday – on the cross – by way of Jesus’ crucifixion – for all of us and for all the world. And it’s what I hope we’re up to tonight.

“Grief with you is an act of love.”

God is saying – and God shows in Jesus – what “grief with you” looks like. It is, indeed, a profound act of love. Life on this side of heaven is hard so much of the time. There is grief and shame and sorrow too terrible to name, for too many of us and for too many of God’s children. But when we recognize that we are invited to share our love and to heal and care for one another, even and especially in our grief and struggle – as God did and as God does in Jesus – we are also invited to see and to experience this enormous, overwhelming, uncontainable sense of gratitude.

And we see, in all of that, the hope of Easter.

So, on the cross, may we see and experience the depth of God’s grief and sorrow for our own grief and sorrow tonight, that Jesus came to redeem. And may we trust that God shares that with us as nothing less than a divine act of love too mighty for us to imagine or deserve. And may we be moved by that love in a way that comforts us in our grief, that gives us hope in the face of our despair, and that promises us new life, even, on the other side of our greatest sorrow.

And may we share all of that – comfort, hope, and promise – as an act of love for the world around us, just Jesus calls and shows us how to do in his name.

Amen

Matthew 18:10-14

‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.* What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your* Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.

Have you ever made rock candy? I have not. But the process isn’t that hard. [Start video] To make rock candy you wrap a piece of string around something and let some of it hang down. Then you take a glass, combine water and sugar until it makes a thick solution, and then you drop that string down into the water. For a while nothing happens, a day, two days go by and you don’t notice a big change. But then all of a sudden, when the saturation point is reached, the sugar molecules begin to crystallize around the string. More and more crystals form, making the string harder and harder. Eventually, the string is completely calloused over with these crystals. That is how you make rock candy and it’s how shame works.

Over the past many weeks we have journeyed together through different forms of grief or different ways we experience grief. Some were obvious and common. Others were nuanced and unexplored.

Tonight we have one more kind of grief and it is perhaps the one many of us least want to address: grief for the places that have not known love. As Francis Weller explains, “These are profoundly tender places precisely because they have lived outside of kindness, compassion, warmth, or welcome. These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. We often hate these parts of ourselves, hold them in contempt, and refuse to allow them the light of day.”

We all have these parts of ourselves. It might be one’s body or a part of it that you loathe or won’t look at in the mirror, bringing about the self-image you’ve struggled with all your life. It might be the neglect you endured growing up or face now, leaving you feeling rejected and not just that you did something wrong, but feeling that something is wrong with you.

It might be abuse, physical, mental, or sexual, that you survived but have locked away hidden in the dark out of fear of judgment or reliving the trauma.

It might be one’s sexuality, the realization of who you were made to love, and at the same time rejecting that with all you can, afraid of rejection from family, friends, even your own faith.

And here is how shame is like making rock candy. We can endure some neglect or hurt. We can withstand some berating, self-criticism, and disappointment. But then there comes a point when we can’t. And with enough repetition, by staying in that solution too long, crystals grow around that thing and we become hardened. The internal stories associated with those events reach their saturation point and the fictions, the lies, the hurt crystallize into things that feel like truths we cannot break.

What is the thing in your life, in your very soul for which you are ashamed. We all have this and we all do our best to cast it out to the deepest, darkest parts of our souls where we hope it goes to die. But it doesn’t. Instead, we end up carrying around this shame, and it separates us from others and ourselves, bending us over, pulling us down so that we no longer gaze into the eyes of others, because the last thing we want when we feel such shame and self-doubt, is to be seen.

So like the sheep in the parable, we try to run off, to hide, to go astray. That is what shame does: it makes us think it’s better to be alone because at least then no one will know my shame.

Yet, that’s not how Jesus, our shepherd, works. The catch in the parable is that if one sheep goes astray, no shepherd in their right mind would leave the other 99! But this shepherd does. Here the words of the Psalmist as if Jesus, our shepherd, is saying them to you: “I have searched you and known you… I have discerned your thoughts… I am acquainted with all your ways… I know you completely. I surround you and protect you.

There is no place where I can’t find you or won’t go to save you. In your joyous moments and when shame has you in the pit of hell, I am there. You say you dwell in the darkness, but that’s where I do my best work. For only in darkness can my light shine through.”

Shame hardens our hearts; it makes us feel as though parts of us are outside of God’s reach, as if we are unloveable. But that is a lie. You are sought out, you are known, you are loved. In Jesus, God takes all our shame and the sin that caused it, and puts it to shame on the cross. We need not carry it anymore.

But what can we do? Is there anything, other than hearing this good news, that helps us address the shame that's hardened within us? And this is where grief comes in. “what we feel ashamed of, what we perceive as defective or flawed about ourselves, we also experience as loss. And the proper response to any loss is grief.”

So what can we do to move from shame to grief?

Here are three things: One, we begin to see ourselves not as worthless but as wounded. Because, if we are honest, that’s what we are. We have been wounded by ourselves, by others, and by a society that feeds off of shaming. And yet you have worth! You are made worthy through the grace and love of Jesus. It has been bestowed to you, given to you, and nothing can ever take that away from you.

Second, once we recognize our hurt, we can begin to see ourselves with compassion rather than contempt. With less condemnation and more understanding. The samaritan looked upon the stranger and had compassion. Out of compassion, Jesus fed the 5,000, gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, and forgave those who put him on the cross. The path to forgiveness for others and healing for yourself begins with a posture of compassion, never scorn or disdain.

Lastly, move from silence to sharing. This is nothing new. Over the last few weeks, we’ve heard the importance of sharing our grief. And The same is true for our shame. When we share it, all that pulls us down or keeps us away is lifted and we can begin to grieve the loss we’ve experienced. So share it with a trusted friend, with a trusted therapist or counselor, or with a trusted pastor. Most of all, share it with God and hide it no longer.

Let the love of Jesus break through the hardened lies that shame has formed inside our souls, giving light to our darkest parts.

Tonight we will practice exactly that. On your chair you have a candle. As Jeannie plays this next hymn, share your shame with God in prayer. Tell God of the parts of you that have not known love, the parts you’ve tried to hide. Invite God into those very places, to heal our wounds, move us to compassion, and soften our hardened hearts. Then, when ready, light your candle and place it on the way. And together we will see that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Amen.

Good Friday: Grief as Love

Grieving Well - Places That Have Not Known Love