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Good Grief
When we were all together last, we were only just beginning to hear about the tragedy that beset Orlando, Florida between 2:00 – 5:00am. Now, of course, we know that Omar Mateen entered Pulse night club and killed nearly 50 and wounded 50 more in an attack that is both terrorist and hateful in nature. It is a painful thing to watch people try to figure out to make meaning of their lives when someone very close to them dies – or, even, when they're not so close, but yet it feels so outside of the norm. After all, it seems to be in our nation that these kinds of tragedies bring us as people together and help us see once again the common humanity that unites us all.
Except, it hasn’t. One even cursory look at social media of late will show how deeply divided we are in the wake of this terrible incident. Depending on your friend list you may see how guns were the problem, or how the lack of guns is the problem. The problem is that there are too many immigrants! No, the problem is that we don’t take good enough care of immigrants so they constantly feel like outsiders. We can’t even entirely decide whether or not this is a hate crime, and act of terror, or both. A recent CBS News poll found that slightly half of Americans consider this a “both/and” attack, with slightly over a quarter of folks it was most a hate crime, and 14% mostly an act of terror.
Furthermore, this type of rhetoric people are using with one another has been hurtful, divisive, and mean-spirited. Certainly, over the last week, and with the continued deaths of prominent figures in the UK, as well as the death of a police office in France and the year since the shootings in Charleston, it made me stop and consider what it means to grieve well, or at least better that what it seems we as a culture are intending to do. And so, taking some advice to not feel obligated to follow the lectionary all the time, wanted to draw on two passages that help us consider how we may be able to grieve a little better.
Oftentimes, I think our first instinct when we look at the Old Testament for answers is to look at Job or to read Ecclesiastes 3, and I think those are always valuable passages, but I was intrigued by Habakkuk. You’d be forgiven if you don’t know much about the book or the prophet. Buried as the 8th of 12 minor prophets, the reality is no one really knows much about him, except that he perform prophesy somewhere between the death of King Josiah in 609BCE (who was, for all intents and purposes the last good king of Israel) and the first deportations to Babylon in 597BCE. It’s not hard to imagine the type of cultural and social upheaval that Habakkuk would have encountered.
The first part of the book is structured as a conversation between he and God, and our passage today is the first portion of our first cycle. Right from the outset, we are met with the idea that Habakkuk has a “burden”. This word in Hebrew, (מַשָּׂא) indicates not only an “oracle” of sorts, but also the feeling of bearing a load – a weight across the shoulders that drags down the one who must carry it. And this burden is what we read in the next three verses. Habakkuk sees a world that seems abandoned by God. It does not matter the amount of shouting or the pain that is in front of the people, God does not seem to answer.
This is not unfamiliar personally, nor does it seems unfamiliar to our family and friends who grapple with tragedies. In many ways, Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have become the modern day equivalent of Hab 1:1-4. Everyone has a stage in which to speak of the God who does not listen.
In our familiar Gospel story, we see too that Jesus carries a burden. When Jesus sees Mary weeping along with the other Jewish people, “he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” So often we skip to the verse a little later and see Jesus weeping, but before then, he was upset. The word used in the Greek here connotes a type of convulsing agitation, similar to a horse’s snorting. Jesus Christ, fully-God and fully-human, felt the pain of the circumstance right to his bones. And he made no effort to hide his feeling. Jesus was hurt. Jesus was angry. Jesus was indignant.
If we left it right here and called it a day, I think we could surmise that the best way to handle tragedy both on the individual and societal scale would be simply to throw our hands up and just be mad – to post another article that supports our specific view of the world, or to demonize other people who just simply have different viewpoints.
But, of course, there’s more to the story. Jesus asks to see the grave of Lazarus. From all indications, he probably already has a sense of where Lazarus is given the very specific practices of burials of the day. Furthermore, Jesus could have just healed Lazarus right then – just a couple weeks ago we heard the story of centurion who had his daughter healed by Jesus and he was nowhere nearby!
Instead, he asks for help. In this moment we see Jesus as entering the community as another mourner. He is not a stoic superhero who swoops in to save the day with some magic words, but instead he becomes one of us – vulnerable, hurt, and deeply saddened. Then, after walking with Mary and Martha together, he prays to God and thanks God for listening, raises Lazarus from the dead.
I often wonder if the question is not as much if God is listening, and more if we are giving God the space to provide a reply. We have moments like Charleston and Orlando, and we instantly move to the our lament. Oh God, we say, if only we had this part of the world fixed the way we prefer it, then these things wouldn’t happen! An d no matter which side of the political fence one is on, it is easy to move our burden directly from our shoulders to our mouths.
In John’s telling of the raising of Lazarus, we instead see a God who is listening, and we also see a God in Jesus Christ who is also feeling. God is not an abstract part of our grief, but instead asks simply to meet us in the place where it hurts the most. And in this telling we see a God who wants to be part of these moments. Does God have the power to raise the dead? Absolutely. But instead of just carrying out the deeds of deity, was poured out, even to his own death.
As we consider the days and weeks ahead with the aftermath of Orlando, and the sad-to-say-all-too-soon new incident, that perhaps we choose to look less like Habakkuk, and more like Jesus. Perhaps in moments when we’d rather explain the cure to the problem to everyone we know, we instead first focus on just feeling the pain of the one who is devastated. Instead of shielding ourselves from the pain of grief through words and thought, perhaps we instead focus on our hearts and allow, even for a moment, to feel the type of pain Jesus felt, for it is in that pain that we see one another as the same who weeps, mourns, and pains for a greater and someday-coming shalom.
Earlier in the week, the seminary had a vigil in memory of those who died in Orlando. It was at 8:00, which is the time that Abe tends to go to bed. However, from his bed we could still hear the bells tolling in memory of each person who died, including Omar Marteen. As I heard each strike of the bell, I became more and more distracted from Abe, until he held this book in front of me, asking that I read it. I’d like to read a small part to you.
It’s in these moments, when we put down the words that show how right we are and we truly listen for God’s voice that we are able to, even in a small way, bring life back to places that were once dead.
Amen.
Except, it hasn’t. One even cursory look at social media of late will show how deeply divided we are in the wake of this terrible incident. Depending on your friend list you may see how guns were the problem, or how the lack of guns is the problem. The problem is that there are too many immigrants! No, the problem is that we don’t take good enough care of immigrants so they constantly feel like outsiders. We can’t even entirely decide whether or not this is a hate crime, and act of terror, or both. A recent CBS News poll found that slightly half of Americans consider this a “both/and” attack, with slightly over a quarter of folks it was most a hate crime, and 14% mostly an act of terror.
Furthermore, this type of rhetoric people are using with one another has been hurtful, divisive, and mean-spirited. Certainly, over the last week, and with the continued deaths of prominent figures in the UK, as well as the death of a police office in France and the year since the shootings in Charleston, it made me stop and consider what it means to grieve well, or at least better that what it seems we as a culture are intending to do. And so, taking some advice to not feel obligated to follow the lectionary all the time, wanted to draw on two passages that help us consider how we may be able to grieve a little better.
Oftentimes, I think our first instinct when we look at the Old Testament for answers is to look at Job or to read Ecclesiastes 3, and I think those are always valuable passages, but I was intrigued by Habakkuk. You’d be forgiven if you don’t know much about the book or the prophet. Buried as the 8th of 12 minor prophets, the reality is no one really knows much about him, except that he perform prophesy somewhere between the death of King Josiah in 609BCE (who was, for all intents and purposes the last good king of Israel) and the first deportations to Babylon in 597BCE. It’s not hard to imagine the type of cultural and social upheaval that Habakkuk would have encountered.
The first part of the book is structured as a conversation between he and God, and our passage today is the first portion of our first cycle. Right from the outset, we are met with the idea that Habakkuk has a “burden”. This word in Hebrew, (מַשָּׂא) indicates not only an “oracle” of sorts, but also the feeling of bearing a load – a weight across the shoulders that drags down the one who must carry it. And this burden is what we read in the next three verses. Habakkuk sees a world that seems abandoned by God. It does not matter the amount of shouting or the pain that is in front of the people, God does not seem to answer.
This is not unfamiliar personally, nor does it seems unfamiliar to our family and friends who grapple with tragedies. In many ways, Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have become the modern day equivalent of Hab 1:1-4. Everyone has a stage in which to speak of the God who does not listen.
In our familiar Gospel story, we see too that Jesus carries a burden. When Jesus sees Mary weeping along with the other Jewish people, “he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” So often we skip to the verse a little later and see Jesus weeping, but before then, he was upset. The word used in the Greek here connotes a type of convulsing agitation, similar to a horse’s snorting. Jesus Christ, fully-God and fully-human, felt the pain of the circumstance right to his bones. And he made no effort to hide his feeling. Jesus was hurt. Jesus was angry. Jesus was indignant.
If we left it right here and called it a day, I think we could surmise that the best way to handle tragedy both on the individual and societal scale would be simply to throw our hands up and just be mad – to post another article that supports our specific view of the world, or to demonize other people who just simply have different viewpoints.
But, of course, there’s more to the story. Jesus asks to see the grave of Lazarus. From all indications, he probably already has a sense of where Lazarus is given the very specific practices of burials of the day. Furthermore, Jesus could have just healed Lazarus right then – just a couple weeks ago we heard the story of centurion who had his daughter healed by Jesus and he was nowhere nearby!
Instead, he asks for help. In this moment we see Jesus as entering the community as another mourner. He is not a stoic superhero who swoops in to save the day with some magic words, but instead he becomes one of us – vulnerable, hurt, and deeply saddened. Then, after walking with Mary and Martha together, he prays to God and thanks God for listening, raises Lazarus from the dead.
I often wonder if the question is not as much if God is listening, and more if we are giving God the space to provide a reply. We have moments like Charleston and Orlando, and we instantly move to the our lament. Oh God, we say, if only we had this part of the world fixed the way we prefer it, then these things wouldn’t happen! An d no matter which side of the political fence one is on, it is easy to move our burden directly from our shoulders to our mouths.
In John’s telling of the raising of Lazarus, we instead see a God who is listening, and we also see a God in Jesus Christ who is also feeling. God is not an abstract part of our grief, but instead asks simply to meet us in the place where it hurts the most. And in this telling we see a God who wants to be part of these moments. Does God have the power to raise the dead? Absolutely. But instead of just carrying out the deeds of deity, was poured out, even to his own death.
As we consider the days and weeks ahead with the aftermath of Orlando, and the sad-to-say-all-too-soon new incident, that perhaps we choose to look less like Habakkuk, and more like Jesus. Perhaps in moments when we’d rather explain the cure to the problem to everyone we know, we instead first focus on just feeling the pain of the one who is devastated. Instead of shielding ourselves from the pain of grief through words and thought, perhaps we instead focus on our hearts and allow, even for a moment, to feel the type of pain Jesus felt, for it is in that pain that we see one another as the same who weeps, mourns, and pains for a greater and someday-coming shalom.
Earlier in the week, the seminary had a vigil in memory of those who died in Orlando. It was at 8:00, which is the time that Abe tends to go to bed. However, from his bed we could still hear the bells tolling in memory of each person who died, including Omar Marteen. As I heard each strike of the bell, I became more and more distracted from Abe, until he held this book in front of me, asking that I read it. I’d like to read a small part to you.
It’s in these moments, when we put down the words that show how right we are and we truly listen for God’s voice that we are able to, even in a small way, bring life back to places that were once dead.
Amen.
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