We are continuing our series of teaching looking at human emotions today, and we come to the most difficult of all human emotions. We will go at this gently, but it may touch some raw nerves with some of you, and if does, please do make sure you talk to someone about it before you leave today – either Martin or myself, or one of the Elders, or anyone from the family of God here today.
Death is an inescapable fact – one of the two sure things in life, along with taxes. And yet, although we can cope with the idea that taxes are always with us, we somehow strive to make death less of a reality. We don’t like to talk about it, we don’t like to have anything to do with it.
Particularly as Christians, we don’t like to admit that death is a sad thing, because we know that Christ has defeated death for us, and the physical act of dying is just a gateway to eternal life. The Christian hope of resurrection from the dead into eternal life, the promise we have, and God keeps His promises, means that we tend to think that we shouldn’t grieve. We think that we have to maintain our stiff upper lip, because we know our beloved relative has gone to a better place, so that is not need for sadness.
I think that taking that line actually stores trouble up for ourselves. As we take a look at this part of David’s life, we will see how he grieved at the death of his friend Jonathan, and even how he grieved at the death of King Saul, who had tried so hard to kill David. And as we look, we will see a far more honest and godly approach to grief that just denying that we are sad or need to be sad.
The rightness of grief We have heard how David grieved – he shows us that it is right to grieve when someone we love dies. And we have heard how Jesus Christ, the Son of God grieved. We heard the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” Why would the Son of God cry because someone died? Surely, He of all people would understand that we cannot escape death! And yet He wept.
He wept because His friend was dead and buried. He wept because He wouldn’t see Lazarus again. He wept because not only didn’t He get the chance to say goodbye, and all those thousand and one things we wish we had said before someone dies, Jesus didn’t even get there in time for the funeral.
And the people saw Him weep, and knew why: “See how much He loved him.”
Jesus Christ, the Son of God wept because He lost someone that was dear to Him. Doesn’t that say something about a realistic, Christian, attitude towards death and dying? Some people say that grieving is selfish, because it means you want the person back. Since Christians know that when we die we go to a better place, eternal life with God, bringing the person back to ease our sore feelings is surely a terrible thing to do – we would be denying that person their rightful place with God. No, grief isn’t about being selfish.
Of course we want the people we love to be near us, but not at any price. But grief is not about wanting the person back, even if we do. Grief is about feeling sorry that we won’t have their company any more. In fact, grief encompasses a lot of things – missing the change to put things right between us, the dead person not seeing us achieve our ambitions, or indeed theirs, not seeing the children or grandchildren grow up and get married. It is about fear for the future without someone we’ve shared our past with, and a lot more besides.
But none of this means that grief is wrong. Even Christians who face death in the assurance of eternal life with Jesus need to acknowledge their loss and sadness. We don’t get extra points for being “super spiritual” and refusing to face the pain we feel, which can be very damaging.
Of course, grief is different for everyone, and we will also find that the way in which we face death and cope with it and deal with our grief will be different each time we go through it. Sometimes for some people, our grief will be very deep and last many years. At other times, we can say, ‘yes it is sad, but we know that he or she is at peace now, and so am I.’
We will come back to how we can help ourselves in grief later, but let us look for a moment at how we can help others.
If it hasn’t happened to us yet, then we can be sure that it will. Someone close to us dies, and when we need friends most of all, we find that they are not there. Bereaved people often talk about how they felt rejection when friends and acquaintances deliberately avoid them, rather than risk the embarrassment of not knowing what to say, or worse still, saying the wrong thing.
If you only remember one thing from this sermon, let it be this. I want to encourage you, then next time one of your friends has a close friend or relative that dies, not to avoid them, but to speak to them. Because the very worst thing that you can say is nothing. You might find it embarrassing sitting there in silence, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, silence with someone will be better than silence alone.
Don’t smother the bereaved person with your kindness and attention – they probably won’t want to feel that they are putting people out. Just be as natural as you can with them in what are actually very natural circumstances. Don’t be afraid to use the ‘d’ word. People die all the time – they don’t pass away, pass over to the other side, go and join the choir invisible, or any of the other euphemisms jump onto our tongue so readily.
Most people experience a sense of denial in the early stages of grief. This isn’t quite the same thing as the shock of hearing the news. And it isn’t as simple as saying, “they are not dead, they are still alive.” It is more subtle than that – people find it difficult to accept the fact that their friend or relative has died. They expect the next sound at the door to be their loved one coming home, for instance. We saw this in the last week, as we heard the reactions from the Kennedy family moving from ‘they will still be found’ to ‘we now accept that there is no real hope of them being found alive.’ There was a distinct shift from the authorities carrying out a search and rescue mission to a recovery operation. We can know in our head that a person is or is almost certainly dead, but it can take a little longer for that to move to our heart.
Speaking about death gently but honestly, can help people to get that message from head to heart.
The cultural context for dealing with bereavement in the Middle East allowed David to know the comfort of those around him as he grieved. The precise nature of that grief might seem very strange to us – we would get some fairly strange looks if we were to tear our clothes or put earth on our head. But that was the practice then.
In Victorian society it was accepted that you black for a fixed period of mourning, and then resumed, as afar as possible, ordinary life after that time. In other culture today, such as in Judaism, there is a short period when the bereaved are not expected to do anything for themselves – friends and neighbours will bring in food and clean for them – so that they can get on with dealing with their emotions. We see on our televisions screens how much more open many societies are in displaying their grief. We might think they are hysterical – we could never do the weeping and wailing that they do. But guess who gets over the grief fastest?
Children sometimes effortlessly know the right thing to do. When a school-friend died in tragic circumstances, one small girl took herself off to the grieving household. When she returned, her father asked her what she had done there.
‘I made her mother better’, replied the child. ‘How did you do that?’ Back came the reply, ‘I climbed into her lap and I cried with her.’
Our culture has different expressions of grief to that of the Middle East, but the need to have people listen to us and to share the experience has not gone away. Sharing people’s burden through their grief, in a way which is sensitive to what they actually find to be helpful, is not only important and a great help to the grieving, it is also a command. Romans 12:15 says, “Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep.”
We’ve talked about helping others in their grief, but we should also know how to help ourselves deal with death.
In David’s reaction to Jonathan’s death, it is possible to see many features which we recognise in the behaviour of bereaved people today. David and his men fasted, and we lose our appetites as well. There was also anger, despair, perhaps denial (v20 says “Do not announce it Gath or in the streets of Ashkelon,” but that might be for practical reasons, since they were enemy cities.) there was an extraordinary desire to see the best of people, even enemies. David’s lament said, “Women of Israel, mourn for Saul! He clothed you in rich scarlet dresses and adorned you with jewels and gold.” We feel that we are somehow cursing someone if we “speak ill of the dead.” Their eternal destiny is not affected by what we say or think, but death certainly ought to be a time of healing. And of course, there is in David’s lament, above all else, sorrow.
All this means that we can expect to experience these other emotions when we are grieving. We should not be surprised at them, or fight them off, but accept them as normal and natural, bearing in mind that I said that all experiences of grief are different.
Perhaps most interestingly, and perhaps most significantly, there is not one mention of God as David sang his lament. That ought to give us reassurance that feeling God to be absent is neither unusual not sinful.
Recognising that these feelings are neither uncommon nor unChristian is a great help to us as we deal with our grief. Remembering this fact will halp us to work through our grief and come to the point where we can start to reorganise our lives and look to the future again.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. It is important for those who grieve to know that there is blessing to come, that God’s care is undiminished, and that the Christian hope of meeting again in the presence of Jesus can be certain.
Let me finish with a short poem from the comedienne Joyce Grenfell:
If I should go before the rest of you, break not a flower no inscribe a stone. Now when I’m gone speak in a Sunday voice, but be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, parting is hell, but life goes on, so sing as well.
Amen