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Death and all His Friends
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Now, welcome this morning. It's great to have you with us. This weekend, we are starting a quick two week series that we are calling Death and All His Friends. And yes, that is an intimidating title. And yes, this is intimidating artwork on the screen behind me.
Speaker 1:I won't leave it up all morning to morning. That's okay. But to be fair, we did make sure that our friendly skull was dressed in purple sequins just to make him a little more approachable. But the fact is that over the next two weeks, we want to look at grief and loss and lamentations. And so we felt that this was an appropriate image for this conversation because loss is hard.
Speaker 1:Now that said, we are also in the season of Eastertide. The season that is meant to help us sink deep into a resurrection experience. Spring is returning. Love has won. Now is the time to celebrate life in all of its beauty.
Speaker 1:And yet, grief and loss and lament, this is also part of what it means to be alive. And so even as we celebrate the risen Christ who has brought life back to his world, we also recognize and we face into and we come alongside those who mourn in our midst. The risen Christ is not afraid of our grief. And perhaps if we look for him, we may even find his resurrection in these moments. Before we jump into that conversation though, I do want to look back on last Sunday for a moment because we took the space coming out of Easter to talk together about vision.
Speaker 1:Now, if you missed last week or even if you just want to listen again, it is available on our YouTube channel and our podcast feed. You can find all of the links to all of our media on our website commons.church. But last week, we talked about how we add our personal anecdotes to resurrection. About how faith comes alive when it transitions from facts and figures and beliefs, and it becomes personal stories and unnecessary anecdotes. And our anecdote here has been a good one.
Speaker 1:It is a story that has been growing pretty remarkably in the last year and a half. And over Easter, we had 800 people join us to celebrate resurrection. Consistently on a weekend, about six to 700 people join us every Sunday. And so we need to begin to speak about what's next for us as a church. Now very likely that means adding more services on Sunday, but we also think it could mean launching new parishes here in the city as well.
Speaker 1:And so as we head into the summer season, as we pray and listen and prepare for the start of year three at Commons, I would love to ask that you would begin to pray for our community and our direction, but also that you might begin to pray about your role in that story. We have literally hundreds of people who are reengaging with their faith journey for the first time in a long time here at Commons. One of the needs that we have is for solid, stable, committed Christians who get the complexity of the Christian faith, who are unafraid of the questions that we want to ask together, but who at the same time can also come alongside and disciple and encourage those who are still exploring the Christian story. And so some really exciting stuff for us in the time ahead, and we would love you to pray about your role in that story as well. Today, however, we move into a very different topic.
Speaker 1:And so let's pray and invite God to be with us in these conversations. God of grace and comfort and healing, may we sense today all of the ways that you meet us in our grief. The moments of piercing light and love that we experience even as we mourn. The grace and the comfort that come from knowing that we are deeply and unconditionally loved always. Today, if we find ourselves in the midst of these moments, hurt and hurting, we ask that you would be present to us in real and unmissable ways, but that we would not feel that we are pushed ahead faster than we can go.
Speaker 1:Instead, that we would sense your gentle presence with us where we are, sitting and waiting, perhaps grieving alongside us. And if things are light for us right now, resurrection has come and we are glad. May we celebrate life with true and unbridled joy. But may we also be aware of those who hurt in our world. Would you teach us how to bring our joy respectfully and appropriately in healing ways to those whose reserves seem to have run dry?
Speaker 1:For you alone, our soul waits. Our hope is from you, Lord. God alone is our rock and our salvation, our fortress that will not be shaken. And on you rests our deliverance and our honor, our mighty rock, refuge God. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Today, I wanna open the book of Lamentations. And this is a book that by any reasonable measure does not get a lot of exposure in the church, at least not in the West. Duane Garrett writes that the Western church has gotten addicted to success and wealth.
Speaker 1:People who value ease and monetary success will tend to ignore the Bible's statements on suffering and grief. They will avoid confessing sin since to do so would be to admit that they do not deserve to be happy and satisfied. A lack of reality pervades this sort of Christianity. And its adherents are not likely to become interested in lamentations. They might well ask, why read about defeat when we can bask in victory?
Speaker 1:And I think this might be similar to what Paul is talking about in the book of Colossians. He says, I rejoice in what I am suffering for you. Now at times, people have questioned that and said, well, I mean, it's one thing to endure suffering, and it's one thing to go through suffering without complaining. But to rejoice in suffering? I mean, that sounds masochistic.
Speaker 1:It just sounds unhealthy to our ears. The thing is that Paul isn't talking about rejoicing in suffering for the sake of suffering. It's not that he likes pain any more than we do. It's that Paul wants to fully experience the truth of this world. And sometimes that includes pain.
Speaker 1:As Garrett says, to deny pain, to ignore grief, to pretend that things are always happy by slapping on a brave face, this is unreal. It is a lack of reality, perhaps a lack of honesty. So it's not that we want to suffer. It's not that Paul wants to suffer. That's not why we read texts like Lamentations.
Speaker 1:We read these texts. We rejoice even in these scriptures because they acknowledge life for what it truly is. And the bible is not scared of real life. Now, maybe you have been taught. Maybe not outright, but maybe subtlety in the ways that the bible or faith have been spoken about around you.
Speaker 1:That grief and loss and death and lament are not to be spoken of. Now, there are traditions in the Christian faith where grief is like Voldemort. It is the condition whose name must not be spoken. Four people got that Harry Potter reference, but that's okay. Perhaps, if nothing else today, you would begin to realize just how deeply unbiblical that all is.
Speaker 1:Because the scriptures speak plainly and painfully about all that hurts in our world. And here's the thing. We already know how important this is. I mean, you listened to a pop song? Every time that Britney Spears sings about whatever it is that Britney Spears sings about, there is also Taylor Swift singing about how she broke up with somebody all over again.
Speaker 1:Or Eric Clapton is singing Tears in Heaven about his son who died. Pearl Jam, the greatest band in the history of rock and roll is covering Last Kiss, a tragic song about a loved one killed in a traffic accident. Because somewhere deep inside, I think we want to be near to this type of raw and unedited emotion. We know somehow that it connects with something that's important, something perhaps that's healing. And yet, there is sometimes also a sense that church is the place scriptures are where you go to escape pain.
Speaker 1:I wanna suggest that just the opposite is true. The church in the Bible is where we go not to avoid our pain, but to name it and to feel it and then to begin to heal those hurts. We turn to the scriptures and we see our experience of this world in all of its terrible beauty reflected back at us. And it allows us to begin to fully feel it. The way that generations of God's people have done before us.
Speaker 1:And so we have books like Lamentations that dive deep into pain, and they do not turn the corner for us. Instead, they sit with us, and they give voice to us, and they allow us to be simply and profoundly exactly where we are. Kathleen O'Connor says it this way, that Lamentations names what is wrong, what is out of order in God's creation, What keeps human beings from thriving in their full creative potential? In this way, simple acts of lament expose these conditions. It names them.
Speaker 1:It opens them to grief and to anger, and it makes them visible for remedy. But here's what we need to recognize going into this book. That just as any good sad pop song, it is crafted and created intentionally. Lament is not just a railing against the darkness. Lament is a deliberate and a creative act.
Speaker 1:If you turn to the book of Lamentations in your bible, you will find that there are five poems in this book. And if you're paying attention to the English, you may even begin to notice that there seems to be a pattern here. Now, the first two poems have 22 verses. The third poem has 66. And then the final two chapters return to 22 verses.
Speaker 1:Now, I have yet to see an English translation even attempt to capture what is going on here. But the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. And chapters one and two of Lamentations follow the same pattern. There are 22 stanzas, each with three lines, but the first word of each stanza begins with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order. So the first word of the first verse starts with an aleph.
Speaker 1:The first word of the second verse starts with a bet. The third verse a gimmel all the way through to tav. Chapter three has 66 verses. It's still 22 stanzas. Each are still three lines long, but this time, every line in every stanza begins with the corresponding letter.
Speaker 1:So now it's alaf alaf alaf bet bet bet gimmel gimmel gimmel all the way through to tav. The fourth poem returns to the pattern in the first two, except this time, there are only two lines in each stanza. And then the final poem, the fifth chapter, it actually drops the alphabetical pattern completely, but it retains the same structure. 22 stanzas, each with two lines, the same as poem four. This is not a random expression.
Speaker 1:Lament is not simply someone crying out in pain. This is someone who has sat very deeply with their grief, and they have allowed it to sink deep into their bones. This is someone who has spent untold hours crafting this creative expression of all that hurts in their world. And maybe you hurt. And the advice that you have been given is to move on.
Speaker 1:To pick yourself up and brush yourself off and to get back to living. Perhaps before you can begin to live again, you need to give voice to where you are. Maybe you will write it like the writer of these poems. So maybe you will sing it like Taylor Swift, and maybe you will paint it or photograph it or needle point it if that's your thing. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Maybe you will simply sit in silence with all that is wrong. But sometimes, resurrection requires us to be very deeply where we are for a moment. And I know that that is something that's hard. I'm not downplaying that pain at all. But perhaps, if you can allow yourself to grieve, I promise this can be part of what is beginning to heal you as well.
Speaker 1:And so we speak about what is wrong. We give voice to what is broken. We name it. We expose it. Sometimes we get angry about it.
Speaker 1:But this is what makes it visible for remedy. Even if that process of naming it is just as hard as the grief that brought you here in the first place. And to show you this in action for a moment, I want to read you part of the first poem in the book of Lamentations. And I've already warned you that there is not a lot of hope to be found immediately in this book. So we need to remember that this is not the end of our story.
Speaker 1:In fact, Lamentations sits somewhere in the middle of our bible. There are good words before and after lament. But this is not a book that will rush us. And so wherever you are in your journey today, grieving silently or perhaps celebrating joyously. Let's try to be present to these words as I read.
Speaker 1:How deserted lies the city, once so full of people. How like a widow is she who once was great among the nations. She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave. Bitterly she weeps at night, tears upon her cheek. Among all her lovers, there is none to comfort her.
Speaker 1:All her friends have betrayed her. They have become her enemies. Her filthiness clung to her skirts and she did not consider her tomorrow. Her fall was astounding. There was none to comfort her.
Speaker 1:But now there's a change in voice here. So there has been a voice that is narrating the poem so far and that gives way to the city herself. And she says, look oh Lord upon my affliction for the enemy has triumphed. The narrator comes back. The enemy laid hands on all her treasures.
Speaker 1:She saw pagan nations enter her sanctuary. Those you had forbidden to enter your assembly. All her people groan as they search for bread. They barter their treasures for food just to keep themselves alive. Now the city speaks again.
Speaker 1:Look, oh Lord, and consider for I am despised. Is it nothing to you all who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me. And the Lord brought on me in the day of his fierce anger.
Speaker 1:From on high he sent fire. He sent it down into my bones. He spread a net from my feet and he turned me back. He made me desolate faint all day long. The Lord has rejected all the warriors in my midst.
Speaker 1:He has summoned an army against me to crush my young men. In his wine press, the Lord has trampered the virgin daughter of Judah. But this, this is why I weep. Why my eyes overflow with tears. For no one is near to comfort me.
Speaker 1:No one to restore my spirit. You see, there is something deeply profound in this writing. In his raw and honest, he brought suffering on me in his anger. He set fire to my bones. He spread a net for my feet.
Speaker 1:Made me desolate and faint. Rejected my warriors. Summoned an army against me. Trampled me in his winepress. But this, says the author, this is why I weep.
Speaker 1:Because I am alone. And there is no one here to experience this with me. See, this is what grief does. It makes us feel completely alone as if we were the only person who has ever gone through this. And loss is part of life.
Speaker 1:Every change you go through, it is a loss of something that was. And sometimes it's even something that's really good. A new house, a new job, a new relationship. And yet that old apartment, the last job, the way things were, the relationship that did not endure. We miss them and we grieve them because we have lost them.
Speaker 1:But what we see here in Lamentations is the way that grief makes us feel alone. And change is loss and change is life, and so we will never get away from it. But we are not equipped to do this on our own. This is why lament is so deeply important to our mental health. It's why lament is not simply self indulgent complaining.
Speaker 1:Because it properly and consciously names what is wrong, but then it invites through our creativity others to come and walk alongside us. And this is part of how we heal. Now it's very easy for a conversation like this about something as big as Lamentations to stay very theoretical. But I want I hope that this conversation, if at all, can be practical as well. That we could leave here over these next two weeks at least with the start of some tools and strategies to help us grieve well.
Speaker 1:I And so I wanna take the final ten minutes that we have today, and I want to invite a different perspective into this conversation. Now I've done my theology bit here for a moment, but I'm gonna invite Joel Roos to join me here on the stage. Now Joel is a professional counselor. His practice collaborative care network is here in the city, and it deals with grief and loss and pain regularly in a professional setting. And so I've asked him to come this week and again next week to ask a few questions about ways that he approaches and deals with people as they experience loss in their world.
Speaker 1:So first of all, thanks for being here, Joel. Yeah. Thanks for having me. You're a counselor here in the city. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You work with grief and loss regularly. What are some of the ways that you see in a professional context people responding to grief in ways that is that's not healthy. It's not helpful for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. One of the things that you touched on this morning is something that I see quite frequently in my practice, and it's people starting to isolate themselves and get caught maybe a little bit in their head, a little bit in their own experience of, you know, what it is they've lost and, you know, really start to be stuck in that fact that maybe I'm alone in this place. And I think for some people, there's, even an impulse to, you know, use this to try and, soothe the grief or or feed it with maybe other ways they're thinking that will help or make them feel good. And, you know, some people, I think, you know, have all sorts of we call them coping mechanisms or soothing self soothing things that they can do, but a lot of times, this just looks very self indulgent for many people.
Speaker 1:And so when we talk about that, like isolating themselves away, what does that practically look like? Like, what do we do sort of unconsciously that that drives away or or separates ourselves off?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So often, I think for people, this is a quite a very personal place where people get stuck in their head, you know, not talking to others about the thoughts that they have, the feelings that they have because maybe they feel overwhelmed about it. Maybe they don't know whom they might talk to. Maybe they don't even feel like they have the right words to express the the actual life experience that they're going through. But for whatever reason that it is, it's that stuck place of I am alone, and this is inside of me, and it's not gonna go outside of me.
Speaker 1:So in practical terms, what do we do when we're grieving? If if we're able to recognize, okay. We're doing this. We're withdrawing from people. We're not talking about what's happening inside.
Speaker 1:What are the some of the ways that you encourage people Yeah. To to move outside of that or to be conscious of to try to move in healthier directions?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think one of the things that we really try and work with people about when they're suffering through loss or or grief of any kind, and, you know, I appreciate this morning you kinda highlighting that there's a lot of different kinds of loss. You know? For some people, it is the loss of, you know, a change of circumstance or a loss of health or, you know, a loss of a relationship and not necessarily just the grief that comes from the loss of a the loss of a loved one or the loss of a friendship. But, you know, so often, we start to encourage people to get outside of themselves.
Speaker 2:There's a delicate balance sometimes between, you know, the need to reflect and look internally and be with your grief and see what's going on inside of you, but then to also somehow be able to look beyond that and see what it's like to actually, you know, turn outwards with your grief and find safe outlets to whether it's serving others or whether it's volunteering or whether it's just connecting with your friends and family and the support you have around you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. What would you say so if somebody's experiencing grief Yeah. They're feeling so overwhelmed with it Yeah. And then the advice is, hey, listen. Part of this, not only, sometimes you need that personal space to reflect.
Speaker 1:But part of that is go out, serve, volunteer, help somebody else. And somebody just says, like, I just I can't handle that. Like, do you how do you help somebody with that? How do you approach that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well and and because grief is taxing, you know, we we talk about actually the impact it can have on our minds and on our bodies, and and it really does. It changes things for people. One of the first things we try and highlight for people is ways to take care of yourself. We call this self care sometimes.
Speaker 2:We focus on things like, you know, staying well hydrated and rested and having proper nutrition and having actual, you know, strategic and rhythmic moments of having that good normal rhythm of your life, the healthy rhythms of your life that certainly involve, you know, having people around you and having regular community and certainly even feeding your soul and feeding your faith as a part of that. And that level of self care, that whole person level of self care becomes so important, I think, in a moment like that. But, even that question you begin to ask of how do I know when. Right? You know?
Speaker 2:How do I know, what to do when? You know? When to be a little more introspective and look inside? When do I know, you know, to approach something more outside of me to serve or to volunteer? I think asking that question over and over, what should I be doing when is actually part of the solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I mean, I think that's really helpful to realize all of our stories are always gonna be different. Yeah. The way I experience grief today is probably gonna be different than a year ago. It's different than how you're gonna experience it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And so just asking ourselves those same questions over and over again, sometimes trying to evaluate where we are in that process.
Speaker 2:Well and and highlighting it, I think, exactly that that for while we can talk about grief as a thing or loss as a thing, that, you know, the change here is that everyone's an individual, and everyone's gonna process it differently and experience it differently. And so there isn't necessarily a textbook answer of this is what someone's grief will look like or these are the steps they're gonna take to go through it, but it's gonna have to be asking themselves these questions. What do I need today? What do I need to adjust today?
Speaker 1:Right? And just being generous with ourselves, I think, is a big part of
Speaker 2:it. Well, yeah. And quite often, you know, not being so stuck in the idea that there's a right way to do it or a wrong way to do it. Maybe being generous in that giving yourself the space to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Is there anything else that you wanna add in terms of last things as far as us this week as we grieve? Yeah. How do we do that well? Next week, we're gonna talk a little bit more about how how does God respond to grief, and then how do we come alongside others who grieve, help them. But for us, if we are grieving, knowing that maybe if we're not, we're going to at some point.
Speaker 1:What's one last thing you could leave us with?
Speaker 2:I think something that would be important that I'd wanna say is don't be afraid to speak about the grief or the loss that you may be going through, especially if you can identify a safe way or a safe place to do that. I think in so much of our society and so many of the smaller communities inside of our society, you know, this type of loss, this type of grief can be very taboo. You know? We're not sure at work or at church or with our friends or family. You know?
Speaker 2:How do I talk about this hard stuff, this rough stuff in my life where, you know, it's not the victory stuff you were talking about at the beginning of the sermon. And so, you know, it takes a little bit of bravery. It takes a little bit of chutzpah to actually put that out there and, you know, selecting the right type of people in the right environments to say that. And on the flip side of that coin, you know, maybe to be willing to be a listening ear without needing to jump in and, you know, being able to sit there uncomfortably sometimes and recognize I don't have all the answers for this, but, you know, I can make space for people in my world who might need to have these types of conversations and say, you know, things are not going so well for me right now. I'm having a hard time in my world and being able to listen to that kind of message from our friends or the people around us and just simply respond by saying, you know, I'm really sorry that that's the place that you're in, and I'm your friend.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that's all it has to be.
Speaker 1:Great. Thanks, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Absolutely. It. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Again, this morning, a lot about, you know, what does it mean when we are grieving. Next week, we wanna shift gears a little bit to how we come alongside others who grieve. But regardless of where you find yourself on this spectrum of deep grief to pure joy in this moment, I would encourage you to read Lamentations. Perhaps even just the first chapter this week. To sit down, read through it, and feel it as best you can.
Speaker 1:And this is not an exercise in bringing yourself down. It's not what Lamentations is for. It's not what this series is for. But simply as a reminder of the presence of God at every point along the human spectrum. Sometimes when we are not grieving is where we need to be taught that God will be there for us when we are so that we can look for him in those moments as well.
Speaker 1:And so if you grieve today, may you learn to do that well as you sense that God is present walking with you in this moment. And if you celebrate in this season, may you learn and remember the moments when life surprises you. But may the spirit of God also motivate you to care and to love and to carry where you can those who are around you. Let's pray. God, help us as we engage with big topics that we often shunt to the sidelines.
Speaker 1:Topics that are not the most accessible or exciting. They don't soften, lift us up, and make us leave church on a high note. And yet, they are deeply part of our shared experience of what it means to be human. God help us to have the courage to face deep into our own grief when we need to. And then to be present, perhaps silent, but just with those who grieve in our world so that we could demonstrate that they are not alone, that they are not unique, that they are present in part of this larger human story.
Speaker 1:God, at the same time, help us each to remember that our own stories are our stories, and that my grief today may not be the same as it is in a year from now, and my loss can't be compared to anyone else. It's mine, and it's the story that you have gifted to me. Help me to rejoice in it, not because I enjoy the sadness, but simply because this is your world, and I am experiencing the full spectrum of what you have for us as human beings. God, we pray that you would be present to each of us exactly as we need you to be. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen.