God and Loss

Sermon

“If God had been there, then…”

As people of faith, at some point or another, we are going to say those words. We lose something – the pandemic hits and we lose a graduation, a Christmas Eve, a long-planned trip. We lose someone – cancer strikes, or the virus, or our beloved just doesn’t wake up one morning – and loss stares us in the face.

In anger, in disbelief, in despair, we look for God, and if we manage to figure out whom we’re talking to, we utter those very words that Mary did: God, if you had been here, then this terrible, excruciating thing would not have happened.

Mary is mad at her friend Jesus. Seriously. He has turned water into wine, made the blind man see, fed thousands of people with mere food scraps. But could he be bothered to get to his friend Lazarus? Could he not see him to say goodbye, or better, heal him? Jesus offers what feels like a flimsy excuse: I didn’t come so that greater things could be revealed. Hardly words of comfort.

And then Jesus himself weeps. There, outside the tomb where his friend’s body lay, God-in-Jesus cried. Scholars are varied in their thoughts why Jesus wept. Maybe he was sad that his friend died. Maybe he hurt because Mary and Martha were so mad at him. Maybe he was fed up with death itself. Maybe the loss was just too much.

Beautiful friends, I want to assure you that we have been through loss after loss after loss in the past twenty months. We have. A few of those losses feel minor, like the sock that never made it out of the dryer. Many of the losses feel irreplaceable. Some losses haven’t even entered our conscious minds but are still wreaking havoc with our hearts and guts and we haven’t yet made the connection.

Last year our family was keenly feeling the loss of our Christmas Eve services, so on Christmas Eve, Gregg, Sarah, and I came to the church, lit candles, and stood in the dark sanctuary and sang Silent Night. It felt… okay. It felt sad, actually. And then, we all started crying, expressing the grief that we were all feeling on that particular night and the grief that had built on over the previous months.

The magnificent poet Rumi once said, “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form,” and I find myself simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with him. We grieve because loss hurts. Whatever, whoever, we lost is not replaceable; that thing or that event or that person was unique and treasured and important, and nothing can fill the void.

So what do we do with our loss, our grief and anger and despair? What do we say to God when we are in the midst of it? God, if only you had been there….

The gospel writer John answers Mary’s accusation, in a way. Jesus has told Mary that he waited, that he intentionally did not come so that a greater glory could be revealed. And then, without fear of the stench from the tomb, without a concern that this display of power will get him into trouble with the authorities, Jesus commands the dead Lazarus to come out of the tomb. With his words, by the power of God, Jesus raises Lazarus, and the process of restoring what was thought to be lost begins.

Now I can imagine a few responses to this. One is the response of the rational mind. No way. That is childish, magical thinking, and death cannot be undone, period.

One is the response of faith. I believe in the resurrection of the body. I believe that with God, all things are possible. I believe that in love, God promises us life everlasting, world without end. Amen.

One is the response of curiosity. Could this be true? Can Jesus raise the dead? Can God restore what was lost? Did Rumi have it right – that what we lose comes round in another form?

On any given day, our response to loss may been one of these or a combination of them. What I know is this: loss is a constant part of life.

On this All Saints remembrance, we lift up those we have loved who have died – some in the past year, some decades ago whose absence from our lives still feels so immediate. As Anne Lamott once wrote, “Everyone we love and for whom we pray with such passion will die, which is the one real fly in the ointment.” (Help, Thanks, Wow, p. 15)

Death can be a trauma, a cruel twist. Even though death is sometimes a release or simply a natural end, death is always loss.

Last week Mary Ann and I led the Sunday morning adult education class, offering seven poems on the theme of All Saints. As she and I read our poems, and as everyone discussed them, certain motifs became clear. One is, as Valerie Kaur says, that grief is the price of love. Another is that talk about dying can turn into talk about living – living fully, living lovingly. Another is that love remains.

John O’Donohue says, “Though we need to weep your loss/You dwell in that safe place in our hearts” and “Though we cannot see you with outward eyes/We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face/Smiling back at us from within everything.”

Merrit Malloy says, “Love doesn’t die/People do.”

Billy Collins says, “The dead are always looking/down on us, they say/while we are putting on our shoes/or making a sandwich/they are looking down through/the glass bottom boats of heaven/as they row themselves slowly/through eternity.”

Beautiful friends, here is my hope, which is tied to my faith, which is forever bound to God’s love for me and you and everyone. That somehow, some day, we will see our beloveds again. I will see my dad; we will see Laura Jean and Kris and Joe and Turk and Linda and Monte and Mary and Annette. It might seem childish to believe that way; I know. But it’s also a testament to love – that we are not done loving them. And it’s a testament to faith – that God can make possible what we think impossible.

In the meantime, though, the loss is real, at times palpable. They are not with us. But here is the grace: God is still with us, even though God does not take away the loss, not right away. God enters into the loss with us, sits with us, weeps with us, waits with us until the loss is filled. Amen.