GOOD GRIEF
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 11:17-27
JULY 31, 1994
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” That is what Juliet said to Romeo in Act II, Scene II, of William Shakespeare’s famous play, Romeo and Juliet. Parting is such sweet sorrow.” Yet we all know that sorrow rarely feels sweet, and in truth sweet sorrow is a kind of oxymoron—a joining of two words that are seemingly contradictory like “cruel kindness” or “jumbo shrimp.” Sometimes oxymorons can communicate profound truth.
This morning our subject is sweet sorrow, good grief, because biblically there is good grief and there is bad grief. Not all sorrow is equal before God. To understand this, we need to examine the so-called stages of grief. For our purposes this morning we will examine three stages of grief.
When we experience a tragic loss of someone we deeply love, the first stage of grief is hurt. We hurt. We might try to escape the pain through denial, but ultimately, we hurt. When we lose someone we desperately love, we hurt; and this hurt is profound.
On July 3 of this year, a thin column of smoke rose from a solitary tree on the southwest side of Storm King Mountain five miles from Glenwood Springs. The tree was apparently struck by lightning. The fire began to spread, and a great forest fire happened. Firefighters came to Colorado from Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. On July 6 approximately fifty of those firefighters were fighting a modest blaze on the south side of Canyon Ridge near Glenwood Springs. Then, what firefighters call the blowup, happened. There was a sudden shift in wind direction and a sudden shift in wind intensity. Flames rose to 150 feet, and the fire raced almost a half mile in less than twenty-five seconds. Firefighters tried to escape, but fourteen of them, ten men and four women, were not able to escape. Their lives were snuffed out in a sea of flame.
Whatever pain those fourteen firefighters felt in the moment of their death, pales compared to the pain that their loved ones feel today. The pain their moms and dads feel today. The pain their husbands and wives feel today. The pain their children feel today. A few days ago, one of the fathers, whose daughter was among those fourteen firefighters, said, “I wake up every day, and I cry for four or five hours every day.” That is the first stage of grief. We hurt.
Someone has said, “Grief and sorrow are the price we pay for love” In this fallen world that is tragically true. Yet Christ has called us to love. He has called us to make commitments of love. When we enter into marriage, we make a commitment of love. When we decide to have children, we make a commitment of love. Love is risky.
On July 28, 1993, Lou Roth III died here in Denver This past week was the anniversary of his death. He was 43 years old. He worked for a cable company here in Denver. He was driving home. Some kids drove up in a car next to him and blew him away. He was the victim of a drive-by shooting. This last year has been extremely difficult for his wife according to an article this week in The Rocky Mountain News. His wife, Christina, has struggled because she loved him so much and misses him so much. Just a month ago, after going to a recital with a friend, she went by herself to City Park to the City Park pond where she and her husband had often gone. There she began to feed the geese, which she and her husband had done countless times before. Memories began to fill her mind, all the wonderful things that she and Lou had done together. It was 2:00 a.m., and she was still by the City Park pond. A police officer came by and asked, “Lady, are you okay?” She turned to him with tears in her eyes and said, “I want my husband back!” It has been eleven months since her husband died, and she still feels the pain.
We can understand, and God understands. But God does not want us to remain stuck in this first stage of grief, in the hurt and the pain. He wants us to move on. Good grief moves on. It does not remain stuck in the stages of grief.
Perhaps you have heard of the story of Frank and Jane. Frank and Jane seemingly had everything. They had a lot of money and a lot of friends. They had position and power. Frank was starting a new job. It was January 6, 1853. They were traveling by train. A tragic accident happened that day. The train cars derailed and tumbled over a bank. Frank and Jane survived, but their 11-year-old son, Benny, did not. He died in that tragic accident. Frank saw his son’s lifeless body in the midst of the wreckage. He told Jane to turn her head away, but she did not. She saw her son’s body. She was never the same.
They went to their new job in Washington. D.C. where Frank, Franklin Pierce, was inaugurated as president of the United States. They went to the White House, their new home. Jane went upstairs. She went into the upstairs bedroom, and for two years she virtually never came out. The people of America began to refer to Jane Pierce as the shadow in the White House. For the rest of her life, for all the years that remained, she virtually always wore black, externally and internally. For the remainder of her life, she could not relinquish her pain.
We can sympathize. We can sympathize, but we cannot approve. We can empathize, but we cannot condone. God does not want us to remain stuck in the pain. If you have experienced the loss of someone you really love, in some measure there is going to be pain until you see the Lord face to face. But God does not want us to remain stuck in this first stage of grief.
The Bible tells us about a death in Bethany. Two miles from Jerusalem, Lazarus died. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus and the brother of Mary and Martha. The Bible tells us that many of the Jews came to the home of Mary and Martha to console them after the death of their brother. I do not know whether you are aware of the Jewish process of mourning, but in Judaism there was a period of time allowed for public grief. In some instances, it was two weeks, In other times in Jewish history and in other circumstances, two months were allowed for public grief. During that allotted time for public grief, friends would come and would cry with you. Musicians would come. They would seek to minister to you as you processed your hurt. Sometimes in the Jewish world, they would even hire mourners to come to help you through the pain.
But there came a time when the period of public mourning was over. It is easier to schedule public grief than it is to schedule internal grief. It is hard to limit the time in your internal grief. Yet even that internal grief, God desires for it to come to an end. The Bible says there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). There is a time when we need to move through the hurt, this first stage of grief.
A second stage of grief is hate. We hurt, and then we hate. That sounds strong, but psychologists tell us that it is impossible for a person who has experienced deep and tragic loss not to feel some measure of rage. They might try to repress it, but there is some measure of rage in the midst of the hurt. The Bible tells us that Jesus wept. Outside the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus wept. The Bible also tells us that Jesus was in the midst of the people crying and saw their pain. The Bible says he was deeply troubled in His spirit. This is an unfortunate rendering of the Greek because the Greek word means to be “filled with rage.” Jesus was there. He saw the tragedy. He saw the hurt. He saw the pain; Jesus was filled with rage. The root of that word is a word that literally means “to snort.” It is the word that describes a bull just before a bull charges.
John Calvin, in referring to this scene, said that the Lord Jesus Christ approached the tomb of Lazarus like “a warrior going into battle.” He was angry. Jesus Christ hates death. He hates sin. He hates what sin has done to this world. He hates the work of the devil. Jesus came into the world to destroy death, to destroy sin, to destroy the works of the devil and the powers of darkness. If you have experienced a great loss, if you have lost someone you really love and you do not feel some sense of rage, something is wrong. Something is wrong. We hurt, and in some sense we hate.
But there are a couple of cautions here from scripture. The first caution is this. With respect to the second stage of grief, be careful where you direct your anger. Oftentimes in the midst of grief, the rage, the anger can be misdirected. Ivan IV ascended the throne of Russia in 1547. He was the first czar of Russia. For thirteen years, from 1547 to 1560, he was a benevolent ruler, a man of great compassion, a builder of churches. Historians tell us he attended church every week; he even attended church during the week. Can you imagine that? He also prayed and fasted. He sought communion with God. He was a man of incredible compassion. He instituted social reforms, all of which were designed to show mercy and compassion towards the poor and the hurting.
But in 1560, in the thirteenth year of his reign, Anastasia, Ivan IV’s wife, died. He loved her deeply. When he was 17 years old, he had chosen her. Of all the women in Russia, he had selected her. He loved her. Now she was gone, and he hurt. In the midst of his hurt, he began to hate. He began to direct his rage at God, and that rage festered. Soon he began to destroy churches throughout Russia. He had church buildings torn down. He had clergy murdered. Then he decided that he would defy all the laws of God. He instituted a reign of terror with the secret police. He murdered his own son. For twenty-four years, from 1560 to 1584, there was terror. Ivan IV became known as Ivan the Terrible.
That example is extreme; but for many people, when they lose someone they really love, they begin to feel anger and have a tendency to direct at least some of that anger toward God? Consider a woman who has lost her 35-year-old husband due to a brain tumor. He loved the Lord, taught Sunday school, ate right, and exercised regularly. That grieving wife sees 85-year-old men who have eaten horribly their whole life, drink too much, and have big bellies. They are doing just great. Could not have God done something? Is that not part of grief?
This past week Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy celebrated her 104th birthday. It has not all been easy for her. Three of her four sons have died tragically. In each of those three cases, when each son died, she quoted the Bible. She quoted the book of Job. She said, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” I do not know her heart. God only knows her heart. But I know that it is very hard for people to bless the Lord when they have lost someone they love. A lot of people think a little bit more like Job’s wife when she lost all of her children and said to Job, “Curse God and die.” While God understands, He warns us. That is anger misdirected. That is rage misdirected, and we will see why in just a moment.
There is another caution with respect to the second stage of grief. We do not want to misdirect our anger, and we do not want to tarry in that anger too long. God does not want us to remain in the rage. It is dangerous. Many of you have been following the newspapers to some degree about the fragments of the Shoemaker Levy 9 comet that has impacted the planet Jupiter. This past week scientists have debated what would happen if one of those larger fragments hit the planet Earth. According to scientists, if just one of the larger fragments had hit planet Earth, the impact would not have been equal to a hydrogen bomb. It would have been equal, they tell us, to six million hydrogen bombs. Can you imagine? It would have blown a hole in the surface of the earth the size of the state of Rhode Island. Dust would have risen heavenward. A canopy of dust would have enveloped our world, blocking off the light of the sun for months and perhaps years, stopping the process of photosynthesis and diminishing life on earth.
When you experience the death of someone you love, in a sense it is like taking a meteor hit. A canopy of grief envelopes your world, blocking the light of the sun, diminishing life, diminishing your life. But that canopy of grief is not meant to remain forever. That canopy is meant to dissipate. It needs to dissipate. If it remains, do you know what makes it remain? Do you know what can cause that grief canopy to envelope your world for years and years and years, diminishing your life for years? Harbored bitterness. Harbored anger can do that. This is the warning of God. Good grief does not remain in the stages of grief. If it is good grief, it reaches a point where it ceases to say, “Why me?” and it begins to say, “What now?”
There is a third stage of grief that we need to look at this morning. It is this. We hurt. We hate. We heal. If it is good grief, we begin to heal. We are broken. We become bitter. Then we begin to get better. Perhaps by the grace of God, we become even better than we were before we were broken. If we are going to heal, if we are going to get better, we need to have a biblical perspective. If we have a biblical perspective, we begin to understand that God does not view time as we view time. We live in a time/space continuum, and it seems to us that that time/space continuum envelopes reality as we know it. But the Bible tells us God transcends that time/space continuum; reality is different for Him. The Bible says, “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
To us, it is a big deal whether we live thirty years or a hundred years. That is a big deal. It is a big deal to us whether the person we love lives ten years with us or thirty years with us. That is a big deal. However, I am not sure it is a big deal to God. He does not view reality the way we do.
John Newton wrote that great hymn “Amazing Grace.” Do you remember the verse, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years / Bright shining as the sun, / We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise / Than when we’d first begun.” If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, 10,000 years from now it is not going to matter to you whether you had forty years on this earth or a hundred. It is not going to matter because you are going to begin to have God’s perspective. You are going to begin to view time as God views time. God wants us to understand that in whatever time we have in this world, this world is not paradise.
You have read Genesis. You know about the Eden event. You know how sin entered the world. Creation was falling, and God banished the man and woman from paradise. We no longer live in paradise. This world is not paradise. We should not expect wonderful things to always happen. Jesus said, “In the world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). This world is fallen.
If you are a Christian you live under the promise of paradise, and that is important. Whatever time you live in this world, whatever time I live in this world, we have the promise of paradise. Jesus said to the Christians at Ephesus, “To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7b). In the book of Revelation, if you look at the seven churches of Asia, the message that Christ gave to each of those churches ended with the promise of the blessed hope, the promise of heaven. We live life on this earth with the blessed hope. That is why the Apostle Paul said, “We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). We grieve, but we grieve differently because we have hope, and we have that promise of paradise.
The Apostle John, by the power of the Holy Spirit, looked through the portals of time and got a glimpse of our future. John said, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ And he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the fountain of the water of life without payment. He who conquers shall have this heritage'” (Revelation 21:1-7). Death shall be no more. There will no longer be mourning or crying or pain. We live life in this world with a biblical perspective. We grieve but not as others do.
There is an old joke that you may have heard about the guy that loved golf and wanted to know if there was golf in heaven. He went to his pastor and asked, “Is there golf in heaven?” The pastor said, “I’ll pray about it and fast and see what I can find out.” The pastor came back to this guy and said, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there is golf in heaven. The bad news is that your tee time is next Thursday at 10:00 a.m.”
There are a couple of problems with that joke. The first problem is that many of you have heard it. The second problem is that the bad news is that you are going to heaven. That does not make sense. What does the Bible say? “To live is Christ, to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). To die is gain. If you are going to be healed in the midst of your grief, if your grief is going to get better, you need a biblical perspective.
Life for us as Christians in this world is like going to school. Death is graduation day. That is what death is. By derivation, the word school comes from a word meaning leisure. I do not know what school was like for you, but it rarely seemed like leisure to me. The reason the word school came from the word leisure is that long ago only people of leisure, only people of wealth, were able to go to school. For most of us, oftentimes school was hard. For us as Christians, life in this world is sometimes hard. I mean this school is like living in a blast furnace sometimes. Have you ever seen a blast furnace? Some of them rise more than 100 feet from the earth. Iron ore is put in blast furnaces. It is mixed with coke and limestone in temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees. It is all for the purpose of purification so that the pure iron might be separated from the slag, from the waste products.
Christ is trying to purify you and me as through fire. It is painful sometimes. You cannot learn to love like He loves. You cannot learn to have compassion like Christ has compassion unless you need compassion. Some of the things that are so hard for us in life are meant to mold us, to make us more of the people God wants us to be. That is why in the Bible we are told “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials” (James 1:2). Life is not easy, and God knows this. Life for us in this world is like school.
It is also like a mission. God has stuff for us to do. There is a calling on your life and on mine. Whatever time we have in this world, there is a calling on our lives. Life for us as Christians is like a mission. That is why we have to stop saying, “Why me?” and begin to say, “What now?” We need a biblical perspective. If we are going to find healing, if we are going to get better, we need a strong Christian community of support. We need to care for one another. We need to do a better job of caring for one another in the midst of the hard things in life, in the midst of the suffering. That is why Christ has given us to each other, that we might be brothers and sisters, an eternal family. Through this world where we are just pilgrims, just passing through, we are to weep with those who weep.
Most of you have read the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth could just as easily be called the book of Naomi. When you read the book of Ruth, you will see that Naomi is as important a character. The story of the book of Ruth begins with the character of Naomi, a Jewish woman. She is very happy. She has a husband and two sons that she loves. They leave their Jewish community and travel to the land of Moab. Naomi has everything going for her. Her two sons marry Moabite women. She now has two daughters-in-law. Then her husband dies. That is hard for Naomi. She feels grief and pain. She pours her life into her sons. Then her sons die. She is devastated. She talks with her daughters-in-law. Naomi tells them to go back to their families, to go back to the Moabite people, and build a new life. She hopes things work out for them. As for her, she is going back to her people.
When Naomi goes back to her people, she says “Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the LORD has afflicted me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” (Ruth 1:20-21) She would have stayed in her bitter stage of grief, in her hurt and her hate. She never would have healed had it not been for Ruth.
When she said to her daughters-in-law, “Go back to your people. I wish you well. Leave me alone. I’m going to go my own way,” Ruth said, “No.” Ruth, who loved her mother-in-law, said, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16b-17). What an incredible statement. It was because of Ruth that Naomi found healing. It was because of Ruth that Naomi’s grief became good grief. It was because of Ruth’s love and compassion. Ultimately, God blessed both Ruth and Naomi.
In the later years, everyone looked at Naomi and marveled at how God had blessed her life anew. People looked at Naomi and said, “He [the child born to Ruth and Boaz] shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.” God is indeed the restorer of life and the nourisher of old age. Ultimately from Ruth’s line, and in a sense from Naomi’s, came King David and even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
As a congregation, as a church, we need more Ruths. We need to be a people who have made commitments of compassion to each other. To be there for each other in the midst of the hard times as well as the good that we might learn what it means to be the people of Christ.
With respect to grief, if it is good grief, we hurt, we hate, we heal. If we really believe in the blessed hope, there is a sense in which our sorrow is indeed sweet. The challenge of God to us today is not simply that we would have a biblical perspective as we live life in this world but that we would seek to be the community of Christ, to love each other with the love of Christ. Let’s close with a word of prayer.