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Death and all His Friends
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Usually here at Commons, our series are much longer. But I think a shorter series like this, can be a nice change, especially if it's in a book like Lamentations. After all, Lamentations is an easy book to pass over. Right? One of the reasons for this is simply because for those of us in a season of pain or loss or grief, lament hits a little too close to home.
Speaker 1:The book articulates our pain. It brings our loss to the surface and encourages us to interact with it instead of stuffing it down. But sometimes, in the midst of these feelings, exposing our grief and pain to ourselves, to others, and maybe most frighteningly to God, is just too hard to ignore. We suppress or force a smile even though everyone around us can tell that it's a little bit threadbare. And for those of us who aren't in a season of lament, we simply don't know what to do with a book like this.
Speaker 1:Even if we know we've experienced these uncomfortable things in the past, sometimes it's easy to say, I don't need lament right now. Everything is okay, and we put an arm's length distance between us and the feelings talked about in lament, and these feelings that we have felt before and we're likely to feel again. But can I say this? If you are here today in a season of lament, I pray and hope that you can be met by God today and experience his grace and his peace within this community. And for anyone who's here from outside a season of lament, remember that someone in the row next to you may be hurting.
Speaker 1:And in order to treat them well, we need to understand lament. Before we go any further, would you pray with me? Father, today, would you draw near to those who are hurting? And would you remind those who feel alright that we should celebrate and be joyful in this time, but also that loss and grief are never too far off. And in the moments that we come face to face with pain and loss, please meet us.
Speaker 1:Help us to trust that you would never be far off in these hard places. And as a community, help us not only take care of the hurting ones inside these walls, but also help us to see opportunities to draw near those who are hurting outside as well. Comfort us so we may comfort others. Teach us to lament so we may teach others. And help us always to be mindful of who you are, and let us always seek to respond invitation to participate in your imagination for this place and us.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Now Jeremy last week spoke about our response to pain and lament. We saw that this book teaches us the discipline of lament, that lament is not just crying out against the faceless and sometimes nameless dark, the pain and the loss we experience. But lament is a beautifully structured expression of that grief and pain.
Speaker 1:In lament, we invite God to see things, and we ask him to be present in our darkest times. And in doing so, we not only achieve a level of mental and emotional well-being, but we also participate in the kingdom of God here on earth. We name the things that are wrong here. We see the things that should not be present or exist in the way that they should not exist, just as God is naming these things and seeing these things as well. It becomes a cooperative endeavor with the divine.
Speaker 1:But this week, I want to look at how God responds to pain and lament. Now I don't know how many of you had had the chance to go ahead and read Lamentations. It's okay if you didn't, but maybe if you did, you had this experience of the book. And it was similar to mine when I first read the book. You picked up the book and started to read.
Speaker 1:And early in the book, maybe the first couple chapters, you came across exactly the sort of things you'd expect in a book called Lamentations, difficult language of people who are feeling alone, abandoned, and rejected. And as you continue to read, you were waiting for the turn, the flip, the moment or the chapter when God started to speak, and maybe you were waiting to hear that everything was gonna be okay. And as you read, you realized that moment was not going to come, at least not in this book. For those of you who didn't get a to read Lamentations, I invite you to just listen to the very end of the book. These are the last verses.
Speaker 1:Joy is gone from our hearts. Our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned. Because of this, our hearts are faint.
Speaker 1:Because of these things, our eyes grow dim. For Mount Zion, which lies desolate with jackals prowling over it, you, Lord, reign forever. Your throne endures from generation to generation. Forget us? Why do you forsake us so long?
Speaker 1:Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return. Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and are angry with us beyond measure. Lamentations five. Happily ever after. Hey?
Speaker 1:Maybe not. But in all fairness, the book of Lamentations is exactly that, a book of lament. Lament is a genre a genre much like any of our modern genres. The biblical lament tradition varies widely in authorship, occasion, style, style, and and history. History.
Speaker 1:Books like Jeremiah, in particular the Psalms, are examples of the biblical lament. Within the Psalter, we have a whole group of Psalms that fall within this genre with subgenres like individual lament, communal lament, and imprecatory lament or accusational lament. Interestingly, many of them are just as absent of any sort of response from God as what we've just read from Lamentations. Listen as I read just a few. How long, Lord, will you hide yourself forever?
Speaker 1:How long will your wrath burn like a fire? Psalm 89. You are God, my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning oppressed by the enemy?
Speaker 1:Psalm 43. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so off far off from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer. By night, I find no rest.
Speaker 1:Psalm 22. How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Speaker 1:Psalm 13. We are brought down to dust. Our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up and help us. Rescue us because of your unfailing love.
Speaker 1:Psalm 44. So what do we do with this sort of silence from God? First, can I suggest that God's silence shown in these pieces of the text is similar to our own experience today? When we cry to God, when we ask questions like, why me? Why now?
Speaker 1:Why did this have to happen? Where are you, God? God does not always answer in the ways we would like. Or in other words, words, he doesn't always answer with discernible, audible words. Second, can I suggest that we try not to mistake silence for God's absence?
Speaker 1:When God is silent, he is still very much present. He just knows that words won't stop the hurting like we want them to. Last week, Joel and Jeremy talked about our tendency to fill the void of these uncomfortable moments with words. So we speak platitudes that only minimize pain. We awkwardly package up our own and others' pain and then put it on the shelf.
Speaker 1:We say stuff like, God has a plan for everything, or, God knows what he's doing. But even these phrases, even though they may be well intentioned, feel hollow. When we have lost a loved one, when we have received received a terminal diagnosis, or maybe even after we suffer the consequences of a bad decision or unhealthy patterns that we've let run rampant in our own lives. The biblical text, however, does not leave us in the dark about God's response to our pain and lament. I think anytime we want to ask questions like, how does God respond to a man?
Speaker 1:We need to look at examples of where God does the thing we're asking about. Pretty straightforward and makes sense. Right? And if we're looking for examples of how God, the father, would respond, we should first look at God the son. Jesus Christ should be our first and best interpretive lens when we are asking questions, drawing conclusions, or in any way trying to make make sense of the biblical text.
Speaker 1:If we see Jesus Christ saying or doing something, then we can trust and know that God would say and do the same. And for me, at least, least, one of the most powerful responses to the to lament from Jesus in scripture is found in the death of his friend Lazarus. In this story, Jesus travels to the home of a family that he loved very much after discovering his friend died. When he arrives, he's greeted by Lazarus' sister, Martha, who said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now, God will give you whatever you ask, which sounds a lot like lament, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:It sounds like psalms that we looked at, and it sounds like pieces of Lamentations itself. But Jesus says this, your brother will rise again. And then he walks over past the friends and family of Lazarus who are crying to where they have led laid him down, and he weeps. Jesus' response to grief and lament in this story is threefold. The first thing he does is travel to the hurting ones in this story.
Speaker 1:He didn't ask for Lazarus to be brought to him. He did not passively wait for the suffering people in this story to find him. And this marks a major theme in the gospels, in all scripture, actually. Jesus Christ moves towards us, especially those of us who are suffering and vulnerable, or in other words, those who have a cause for lament. He seeks out the suffering.
Speaker 1:We see this even in the Old Testament. God chooses a nation that is consistently in lament, whether because of captivity, slavery, exile, famine, drought, being attacked, or even from their own desire to act outside of God's imagination for them. The nation of Israel is seemingly a never ending source of lament. And in the New Testament and in the incarnation, we see that Jesus' life here on earth is nothing less than God himself in the most intimate way possible entering entering our world filled with pain and death, suffering and lament. Jesus walks to Lazarus' home just as God moved towards the homes of the slaves in Egypt and just as he moves to the homes of those who are suffering today.
Speaker 1:Next, Jesus offers hope. He says to Martha, your brother will rise again. And I think here, we have a couple different options on how we understand this phrase. The first option is to say that this was a minimizing effort of Jesus. As if Jesus was saying, don't worry, Martha.
Speaker 1:Everything everything happens for a reason, or don't worry Martha, because of course I'm here and I'm going to raise him from the dead. Why didn't you know that? Everything's gonna be okay and nothing should ever really hurt. Effort See, for anybody who identifies as a Christ follower, there's a real temptation to use hope to reduce pain. We look to the return of Christ, and no matter what your eschatological bend is, there is always some component of Jesus making it right, whatever that it is.
Speaker 1:And I'm not even saying that that is wrong. Myself believe in the full restoration that Jesus' shalom will bring when he comes. But that doesn't mean that the things I feel today aren't real. It is not a sliding scale where if I can maximize hope, I can minimize pain. And if I get good enough at this equation, I'll never have to suffer again.
Speaker 1:If I just hope hard enough, I never have to suffer. But I don't think that is what Jesus means when he says this. Imagine this instead. Imagine imagine Jesus saying to Martha, this isn't right. Death should not be part of this world.
Speaker 1:But trust me. Please trust me when I say, things can and will be different. Death will not always be as strong as it is now. And let me show you just a glimpse of what that means. I think the difficulty with understanding it this way is wrapped up in the nature and the immediacy of this story.
Speaker 1:Most of us here have had a loved one die or get sick. And maybe even today, you are watching someone you love go through this, and you've prayed to God to see them again or that they would get better, and they haven't. And you're asking yourself why Jesus didn't simply do for them what he did for Lazarus. And I am sorry, but I don't have a good answer for you. At least not one that makes sense from inside the pain that you're experiencing.
Speaker 1:I myself have asked these questions, and no amount of theology or path answers did me any good. But in time, listening to the heart of God, seeing Jesus in this world, I've come to hope in God's imagination for redemption and shalom in this place. That one day, all the metaphorical and literal death will be washed away, and those who have died will live. But until that time, time, we weep like Christ did. See, even though he knew what he was going to do, he knew that he would share food with, talk with, maybe even hug and kiss Lazarus again.
Speaker 1:He also knew that this was real death. This was not a fake half death. Lazarus was not just in a deep sleep. He was laid in the tomb and likely decaying already when Jesus shows up. And Jesus weeps.
Speaker 1:He weeps alongside the family of Lazarus, his friends, and everyone everyone else that was gathered there. His tears show us that pain is real and that it hurts, that it cuts us and marks us. We develop scars from it, and it shapes us. But he is willing to stand beside us, experiencing those shaping events alongside us. Not from the other side of a chasm chasm between creator and creation, not just as a cosmic spectator towards small lives, but from within.
Speaker 1:He enters his creation and feels our pain, feels our loss, feels our grief, and feels how vulnerable we are to death. He is imminently involved in the tough stuff of this place. So as we see in this story, Jesus's response to loss and lament is this. He draws near the hurting. He offers hope, and he experiences the deepness of that hurting.
Speaker 1:And if we, as a community, want to take Jesus seriously, then we need to to to truly struggle with how we embody this response. And as a church, we have to ask ourselves, who are the hurting ones in our world today? And that can mean those who have lost loved ones or are dealing with some life endangering illness, but it can also mean those people whose lament is not necessarily tied to questions mortality. What about the LGBTQ community, or perhaps the refugee communities that we have present in the city? And as those of you who joined us here yesterday for Weekend University, you saw firsthand an indigenous person's struggle to make sense of the pain of colonialization.
Speaker 1:If Christ doesn't passively or accidentally just himself walking alongside these people who are suffering, he actively searches them out, then we need to be able to ask ourselves this question. Who in the world is hurting? And as the Holy Spirit begins to show these people to us, we need to go to them, not from a position of power or ones who have all the answers, but simply as the ones who are willing to walk next to them as Christ walked next to them. Can we offer hope? Not a trivializing hope, but a hope which is grounded in the beauty of God's best imagination for all people and all creation.
Speaker 1:A hope that is often best shown not through words, but by simply being present to someone's pain. Present, maybe even to the point of tears. Tears which become lament in themselves. They become a prayer to God, a prayer crying out to God saying, this isn't right. But I see these people's tears, and I know that you do too.
Speaker 1:Would you pray with me? Peaceful and gracious God, would you be present to those who are hurting here today, not just in this room, but also in all of your creation. As your body, help us to move towards the hurting. Help us to be sensitive to their pain. Give us the humility which is required to just sit next to someone without offering to fix it or make it go away.
Speaker 1:And where necessary, give us quiet and gentle words, words that seek to heal and to restore, words that come from you and remind us always that you have not left this place and that you are always whispering to us, calling us to experience your presence. In the name of the god who sees the hurting, we pray. Amen. Now even though we've been looking at God's response to lament and suffering today, I do still believe that there are lots of really good practical things that we can do and that we should consider. So just like last week, I wanna Joel Roos to come on up, and we're going to share a bit of a conversation.
Speaker 1:Joel and his team, the Collaborative Care Network, work with these kind of situations all the time professional counselors. And so we just are wanna have a little bit of a conversation around, what it looks like to to be a body that's responding to people. So first off, Joel, I wanna gonna welcome you here again, and joining us this week. Thanks, Joel. It's always fun to do these kind of things.
Speaker 1:But Yeah. So first off, I think a good place to start is how can we approach someone that we know is suffering?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's a a really great question. And, you know, both Jeremy last week and you this week have touched on how uncomfortable this can be and potentially even feel a little taboo when, we're faced with all of a sudden a situation that looks very painful and emotional because, you know, maybe we feel we don't have the words or we don't have the right responses. And one way in particular, I think, that we can approach someone is kinda illustrated by what you spoke about this morning. It's taking initiative to kind of seek out or walk towards someone.
Speaker 2:You know, whether we know people really well or not so well, we can generally get a sense of, you know, is something on or something off with that person? You know, is there something that looks more regular like, you know, my experience of them usually is? Or is there something that seems to be, you know, a little bit irregular and, you know, potentially being caused by some kind of hurt or some kind of internal process or something like that. And, you know, sometimes just taking the time to approach someone like that and saying, hey. How are you doing in a real way?
Speaker 2:And maybe even pushing past what an automatic pat answer would be. You know? I think everyone likes to say, oh, I'm doing fine. And, it can be a difficult conversation to bridge from there to say, but how are you really doing? And so, yeah, certainly that idea of kind of watching out for being aware of the people in the community around us, and then taking the initiative to even, you know, start a conversation that might not be regular.
Speaker 1:And so what are some of those, kind of first questions that we can ask when we kind of see that somebody's off? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, a a good way to to actually address this sometimes is just call it like you see it. Really say, you know, something like, you know, I've only known you for a couple of months, and I don't know everything about you, but it seems like something's off recently. How are you doing? Or maybe, you know, saying something more to the effect of, well, you know, I've known you for a very long time, and, you know, I start to get a little bit worried about you if I see a, b, and c. So, you know, do you wanna sit down and talk sometime on what's going on with you?
Speaker 1:So it really sounds like just trying to open up that dialogue to have that conversation.
Speaker 2:Yes. Sometimes we call these process comments, just saying the thing that's happening between you and this person. And if you're noticing something different, it's okay to talk about that.
Speaker 1:So then with with the people who are noticing this, sometimes we try to reach out in ways that may not be the most appropriate, I. E. Or social media. Yeah. And so what does that look like?
Speaker 1:What's the validity of those things? Are they helpful, or should we just have these face to face conversations?
Speaker 2:You know, I think sometimes our society forgets that social media is is only about ten years old, and and really, it's quite in its infancy. And for many people who are, you know, becoming familiar with that means of communicating over the past decade, there is a a level of critical thinking and learning about how to use those tools. That becomes a huge piece of this conversation. And quite often, my recommendation to folks is, you know, be aware that if you're putting something out there to someone, there is a bit of a barrier if you're using something electronic like email or texting or Facebook or or something because what you've really done is you've exchanged some written communication. And, also, be aware that if you're you're doing it in a public way, in a way where someone else could read a comment or see what you've done, you know, this is kind of the social equivalent of standing up in the middle of a crowded room and, you know, kinda yelling at the top of your lungs what it is that you're wanting to say.
Speaker 2:And so maybe choosing the right medium, you know, certainly, I think a lot of people, especially people of faith sometimes, get a little caught up in maybe debating what is right and wrong versus maybe focusing on what could be helpful to someone. And so, oftentimes, I would, recommend to people to think twice maybe about how they wanna communicate before they start communicating.
Speaker 1:And that's interesting because I think a lot of times as, maybe especially as you add faith into this mix, a lot of times we like to look for reasons that you're suffering. Mhmm. And that sometimes leads to unhealthy, guilt or shame Yeah. That we says, you're doing this because you've brought it on yourself. Sure.
Speaker 1:So how do we, reach out to somebody and listen to them? And when their experience doesn't line up with our experience Yeah. How do we still show an empathetic response?
Speaker 2:See, this is probably a a perfect conversation to have in a community like this because, you know, day to day, I would expect we all interact with people who don't share our beliefs or don't share the same way we view things in life, whether it's socially or politically or whatever it is. And, when it comes down to it, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, you know, we try and explain why it's happening. And I often think of that as a as a why question. You know? And why questions and finding the answers to them often, you know, have a lot to do with finding what to blame.
Speaker 2:And, I often encourage people that, especially if it's a viewpoint you don't understand or you can't really connect to someone's pain and what's going on with them, you know, maybe focus on ways that you could, ask more how based questions. You know, I I have a saying a with some of my clients where I I say, you know, the magic four words you need to learn is how can I help? Mhmm. Because a a how question like that invites a response that, you know, is essentially the other person giving you their viewpoint even if you don't understand it. And
Speaker 1:so it sounds like that's really based more on a listening component than it is a sharing component. As we journey to do that, as we journey to listen, how do we then, if we're not coming from the point of being the one in pain or the one suffering, take that stuff in?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Is a really good question, I think, because I don't know that there's one specific way to do it. You know, there's no magic manual out there about the right way for this, but I think what we could look at is the guideline of understanding that you can be with someone in their pain without necessarily having to take it on. You know? Sometimes it's just as easy as saying, I see you're going through this.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And I don't understand it all, but, hey. I'm your friend, or I know you, and, you know, I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Those are some great advice. I mean, I don't wanna speak entirely for Joel, but I'm sure he would spare a couple minutes after this. If you have some more questions that you'd like to ask or just connect, about his practice, and about, that side of his life as well. So once again, Joel, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It was great.