When I am Grieving
Nelmes, 4th July 1999


Today we’re continuing our series of sermons about David. But today we are not talking about the golden-boy, giant-slaying David, today we are talking about the David who is crushed by grief, the David who is devastated by the death of loved ones.

Death touches us all, and I’m sure today’s service will awake memories old and new of times when we have been touched by death, all of us will think of David’s experience in terms of our own experience. Maybe for you that will bring tears today, or maybe the rest of the day will become a time of reflective quietness where memories both painful and joyful will be brought to mind.

My prayer is that as we explore David’s grief together we will be able to understand our own grief a little better and offer it to God as a natural and normal part of the wholeness of our lives.

About 400 years ago, John Donne wrote his famous poem, “On Death”:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure – then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones and soul’s delivery. Thou’rt slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men, And dost with poison, war and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, And better then thy stroke. Why swellst thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more. Death, thou shalt die.

They are fabulous words, powerful echoes of the words of confident faith we heard read from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians – “Death where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

And, of course, words of confident faith have their place. Powerful words of resurrection hope are the very core of our faith. Our lives are founded on the God who in Jesus conquered death, and through the Spirit leads each one of us from death to life.

But let’s pause for a moment before we set off marching triumphantly under the banner of these glorious phrases, for this is a place to tread very softly and very gently.

There is a danger in our confident resurrection assurances. Sometimes we use them as a screen to hide our grief, and it cuts us off from the God who would hold us close and comfort us; sometimes our use of them makes others feel guilty that they do grieve, and it drives them away from the God who would offer them peace.

Sometimes it is noisily blatant, sometimes it is quietly subtle, but how many of us haven’t heard the message at one time or another, spoken or unspoken, that grief isn’t really a proper Christian emotion. Surely we should be glad that our loved ones have gone to a better place… are with our Lord… have entered into the fullness of the presence of God …

Surely we should be celebrating, not grieving; Surely grief is a selfish emotion concentrating on my loss…

It may not be as bluntly put, it may not be intended, but so often that is the message that people pick up from the life of the church. And the message is reinforced by our Britishness isn’t it? Extravagant grief is frowned upon; Grief prolonged more than a day or two is discouraged. A week is enough, the funeral happens, friends drift away, the phone calls cease, and life returns to normal – doesn’t it??

But for all our words of confident faith, death does have a sting.

W H Auden tells it like it is with his words made famous recently in the film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, my West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Death has a sting.

And we are called to comfort those who have been stung by death.

David grieved and mourned and fasted along with all his men. They would have covered their heads with ashes or dust, they would have torn their clothes, they would have wept out loud, they would have wailed, friends and family would have joined them. They would have beaten their breasts and fasted for seven days… there would have been no mistaking their grief, and these stylised customs gave opportunity for people to gather round and to be alongside them.

Let me read you an extract from a turn-of-the-century reference book describing the grieving customs that David would have followed. Listen to the assumed superiority of the colonial author…

The Oriental is demonstrative in the social and public manifestation of his sorrow and has reduced the expression of his grief for the dead to a system which tends to crush out natural feeling … weeping is the most general and most strongly marked expression of pain or mental emotion and is the primary and indeed universal expression of mourning for the dead. This, like other manifestations of deep emotion, is more under control among civilised than uncivilised peoples and more restrained among the staid and unimpassioned people of the West than the lively and excitable children of the East. Their funerals are not like those to which we are accustomed – mute ceremonies in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear: noise, sobbings and wild gestures were also deemed necessary. The excitable eastern temperament, however, is not content with weeping and wailing and exclamations of grief, their grief is also marked by tearing of clothes, fasting, the pouring of ashes on the head and much beating of the breast.

I wonder… We have done away with the outward expressions which the author so looked down on, and we are left with the “mute ceremony in which sorrow is barely expressed by a furtive tear” – all very restrained and dignified, not to say, “civilised”. But have we thrown out the baby with the bathwater? All of those unrestrained Eastern funeral conventions were designed to help the whole family and the whole community gather around those who were bereaved, to be alongside them, to listen, understand and share their experience.

The need to have people listen and share the experience of grief has not gone away. Bereaved people often talk of the rejection they feel when acquaintances deliberately avoid them rather then risk the embarrassment of not knowing what to say. Bereaved people often describe a great void of emptiness after the funeral day when friends and family disperse and assume that life has magically returned to normal.

We have tried to telescope grief into a few short days of dignified sorrow. But it doesn’t work like that.

The research of Colin Murray Parkes isolates four main stages of bereavement. The first is a stage of numbness, shock or even a refusal to come to terms with the reality of the loss. Typically after a major bereavement, this may last up to two weeks. Secondly there is a phase of yearning, with an urge to recover the lost person (or perhaps job, pet, even house or area). There might be physical symptoms, such as loss of appetite, sleep disorders and other features associated with stress. It must be pointed out, however, that grief is complex and different for each person, so it is possible that none of these will be experienced. The third stage involves despair, maybe disorganization, and a gradual coming to terms with the reality of the loss. It is not impossible that it will take two to four years to work through this, so it is important to be aware that the bereaved person’s need might continue longer than the patience of some of their friends. The final stage is of reorganization and resolution. However, grief is not a tidy process, and while some people progress back to stability so that normal life can continue, others who get stuck in their bereavement are being neither unusual or selfish. A satisfactory resolution may involve a long wait. Or in some sad circumstances, may never seem to come at all.

In his later years, C S Lewis married the American poet Joy Gresham. Their love grew deeper and richer during Joy’s illness, from which she had a remission, but which was subsequently terminal. After her death, Lewis published A Grief Observed, first under the pseudonym N W Clerk, and then under his own name: Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing stays put. One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in cycles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down?

A commitment to be alongside someone through their grief is no easy promise, but it is none other than the calling of God to the Church – his people. And none of us here has the personal strength or wisdom or understanding to fulfill that calling. In committing ourselves to comfort those who grieve, we are opening ourselves to all the strength and wisdom and understanding that God has to offer.

Clever words and answers are not what is required, our calling is to put ourselves alongside those who grieve, and by our presence to demonstrate the presence of God. The confident words of resurrection hope we heard read from Paul’s letter and from Donne’s poem can only really be understood when they are observed in the flesh – in you and me.

Actions speak louder than words, and here it is especially true…

Children sometimes effortlessly know what is right to do. When a schoolfriend died in tragic circumstances, one small girl took herself off to the grieving household. When she returned, her father asked what she had done there. ‘I made her mother better,’ replied the child. ‘How did you do that?’ ‘I climbed into her lap and I cried with her.’

Let us pray...