You know, it’s as if it is our human nature to cling to what we love.  Letting go is hard to do.  There’s a saying that I think originated in some twelve-step circles that goes, “Everything I ever let go of is covered with claw marks.”  Yet, from what we see in scripture Jesus literally said we have to let go of family, possessions, and even our very selves to follow him.  So, by implication, to be a Christian we must be willing to follow Jesus’ example and risk losing everything.

But, whether we want it or not, loss does come in life.  Letting go inevitably has to happen, and when it does we grieve.  We all grieve.  The disciples grieved.  Our gospel reading today is the beginning of Jesus’ “Final Discourse” where he addresses the disciples one last time before his death.  And, here he begins to address their grief.  Jesus knows that it is as if to be human is to grieve.  In fact, that is actually one way Jesus’ humanity is so evident.  Grief was clearly a part of Jesus’ life.  He cried over Jerusalem and he wept with such heartache at the death of his friend Lazarus that people said, “See how much he loved him!”  In Jesus we see that an openness to love means a willingness for grief.

Interestingly, our word for “grief” comes from two roots: one means “to be burdened;” the other means “to be hurt.”  So, combining the two we get a pretty good definition of grief, I think: to be burdened with hurt.  And, if we’re all honest we’ll admit that we all know that feeling – to be burdened with hurt; for we have all lost people we love, or lost treasured relationships, or possessions, or images of ourselves, or images of our sons & daughters, or images of our church, or even images of God.  And, we have all grieved over lost dreams.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”

To grieve is not un-Christian.  But, Christianity does suggest that there is always a redemptive possibility in grieving.  In fact, it is part of the meaning of the cross – for although it seldom feels like it, grief is an authentic expression of love.

Anthropologists tell us that prehistoric people had rituals to express grieving – and, aspects of those rituals remain today throughout the world in various rites of passage, in funerals, mourning periods, and confession.  Furthermore, as well as providing places and ways to cry, these old ways signified an honoring of grief and an actual reverence for it.

Now, however, we tend to see grief as a problem to be solved.  As with so many other good but painful things, we think not of honoring grief but of coping with it; not of reverence for it but of working through it; not of appreciation for it but of recovery from it.  Some psychologists have described grief as a process of adjustment.  Some psychoanalysts have been telling us that “healthy” grief involves finding a new “love object” to replace what was lost.  And, some modern recovery thinking may even go so far as to say that grief is a symptom of an addictive disease that needs healing.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”

Authentic Christianity, I think, proposes something entirely different from these.  And, that is this: Grief is not always either a disorder nor a healing process, per se; but rather it can actually be a sign of health itself as it can be a whole and natural gesture of love.

Nor must we always see grief as simply a step towards something better.  No matter how much it hurts – and it may be the greatest pain in life – grief can be an end in itself, a pure expression of love.  So, sometimes the emptiness in our hearts does not have to be filled with something else.  It can instead remain as inner freedom; and, as an openness and a willingness for God’s desire it can remain as space for the joys and pains of life-as-it-is-given; and it can remain as heartfelt longing for the fullness of love in the very real situations of our lives.

So, we might want to ask, then, how we can change our attitudes toward grief so that it becomes a beautiful experience instead of such abject suffering that it is perceived as.  But, that very question is inaccurate, for it pulls us back into the trap of coping and control, of managing our lives by strategy, and of taking things into our own hands.  Oh, how we love to do that!

But, I think Christ’s example shows us that prayer is the answer as to what to do with grief.  In other words, like Jesus in Gethsemane, turn to God as honestly, as immediately, and as completely as possible with all you feel and desire.  Or, another way of saying that is “to let go and let God.”

However, given who we are as humans, even this is likely to be turned into a technique.  Some of us will try to do it and wonder if we are doing it right.  We could probably hire consultants who’ll come in and show us how to grieve right.  You see, even in prayer we want to hold the reins.  Letting go is difficult no matter what, and I am beginning to realize that it is actually impossible to do it, for it is really something that we cannot do.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”

I have never been able – nor has anyone I have ever known – been able to positively let go of anyone or anything truly loved.  Instead, it seems more like things, people, images (of self and others), and dreams have been taken from us.  We don’t seem to give them up willingly.  And, most of them I would guess, have been left covered with claw marks.

So, perhaps “letting go” is not necessarily a positive, assertive action.  Instead, maybe we can only choose to allow it to happen when – and only when – God’s grace invites and empowers it.

Think of what happens when you let go of something you’re grasping in your hand.  What is the “doing” involved here?  Well, really nothing other than relaxing.  You stop tensing your muscles, that’s all.  And, when you really let go, you have nothing to say about what happens to the object you were clinging to….maybe it stays, maybe it falls, maybe it flies away…maybe you feel better…maybe you feel worse.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”

In the familiar verse of psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God,” the Hebrew word translated as “be still” literally means “let go.”  So, what I am getting at today is that in grief, as in all of life, we are given precious moments of graceful invitation to “let go and know that God is God.”

But, letting go is nothing forthright, nothing heroic, and really nothing to accomplish.  The “doing” of letting go is nothing more than a soft, gentle response – a tenderly whispered “yes” to an invitation and a possibility offered from somewhere beyond our own wills.

And, this kind of doing is I think a hallmark of Christian living – for it is when the personal will gently responds to a divine invitation:  Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.”  AMEN.

Back to sermons