GRIEF AND THE CONFIDENT LIFE Gerald J, Gregg
I Thessalonians 4:9-14, 18 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
October 9, 1983 Columbus, Ohio

The formulas for facing sorrow are as numerous as the world's religions. The
Stoic accepts suffering with grim resclution and absorbs it. The Mohammedan says,
"Kismet," everything is the will of God, and submits to it. The Buddhist meditates
on sorrow and decides to avoid it by escaping to Nirvana. The Hindu traces sorrow
back to previous incarnations and sees it pursuing him in this and all future life and
s0 he knows it is futile to run or hide or fight. The righteous Jew of Old Testament
times believed that being righteous, fulfilling all the commandments, should excuse
him from suffering.

But Christianity is another story. In the two thousand years of our history,
we Christians have had many differences and divisions among ourselves. Great theolo-
gical disputes have arisen about the nature of God, about the person of Christ, about
the work of the Holy Spirit. There have been sharp dissensions over the inspiration
of Scripture, over baptism and the Lord's Supper. Anything and everything about
our religion has occasioned arguments. Except for one thing: The fact of the Resw~-
rection of Christ. Some may express that fact as physical history, others as spiritual
reality, but Christians everywhere in every age are united in the knowledge that
Christ, though crucified, lives and reigns and calls us to share his victory.

Therefore, in the face of human sorrow Christianity does not preach stoicism, or
fatalism, or escapism, or futility as other religions do. Our faith does not suggest —
that human suffering is divine retribution or punishment. Instead, Christianity pro-
claims that Hfe's sorrows can result in good. No one is exempt from sorrow, but
it can be confronted in such a way and with such faith that the suffering itself
strengthens us and increases our service to God. Helping all that happen is a major
responsibility of each Christian community such as this congregation.

Nevertheless, I can hardly begin to estimate the number of times I have heard
church people say, as if pointing their finger at themselves or at someone in deep
sorrow, "The Bible says not to grieve." People berate themselves: "If I really followed
the Bible, I wouldn't be sad and devastated." Today's scripture contains the portion
of the Bible te which they refer. Paul and his companions Timothy and Silvanus
are writing to church members in the Greek city of Thessalonica. They are giving
very practical instruction about the life-style of Christians, We read, then from
the fourth chapter of their first letter:

But concerning love of the brethren you have no need to have any one
write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one
another; and indeed you de love all the brethren throughout Macedonia.
But we exhort you, brethren, to do so more and more, to aspire to live
quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we
charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and
be dependent on nobody.

~p~ .

goed Hebrew and Greek words that describe.a wide range of divine attributes, The
result was a very narrow, impoverished concept of God as male. The church is
learning better now and is beginning to re-discover the full Biblical appreciation
of God. We are still tied to scholarly references and Bible translations from the
past. But they can express the truth of the Doctrine of the Trinity even when nouns
and pronouns are wrong, as you will hear in some quotations,

He who has seen me has seen God, Jesus told his diciples, And we confess
that is true, for as we learn of Christ we think of God in terms of the teaching,
the life, and the sacrifice of Jesus. Then, continuing his teaching to the disciples,
Jesus said, "If you Jove me, you will keep my commandments, And I will pray the
Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, even the
Spirit of truth...; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you." And
these words set forth perhaps the first expression of the Doctrine of the Trinity,

One of the earliest church leaders described the doctrine this way: “belief
in one God, existent in and manifest under three modes or aspects of being" and
these three aspects were purely temporary. Well, that certainly clears it all up.
If that sentence is as hard for you to swallow as for me, maybe we'll find the nine-
teenth-century Englishman James Martineau more helpful. This is his definitions
"The Father is God in himself: the Son is God manifested in the universe and in
history, and brought to focus in the frame of redemption; while the Holy Spirit
is God in communion with man's inner spirit.”

Regardless who is describing the Doctrine of the Trinity, the beginning point
must be with God the Creator. The important statement here comes first out of
the experience of ancient Israel: "Hear, O israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is
one." That is, we cannot divide our allegiance between two or more little gods
or idols, We cannot worship at the altar of security or success or pride and still
serve God. God is one and demands our full loyalty.

This belief in one God is known as ethical monotheism. It was developed
through the history of the Old Testament people. The utterances of the prophets,
the leading through the wilderness from Egypt to the promised land, the survival
and growth of the tiny unprotected nation Israel, the punishment of the nation .
in the time of exile — all these were understood by the Israelites as showing the
power of the one God. Knowing that God is one is essential and true, but the cen-
turies of Israel's swinging back and forth between faithfulness and unfaithfulness
demonstrated that humanity needed a fuller knowledge of God. So, for the Christian,
two new facts of history and experience have changed our thought of the one eternal
God.

The first of these new facts is Jesus of Nazareth, He brought Ged near in
a new, intimate way. Firm believers in the unity of God found themselves thinking
of Jesus whenever they thought of God. They knew that God was like Christ and
that God was in Christ. Yet Jesus was not God, for he suffered pain and death.
He was truly human. He was the incarnation of Ged. So they came toa speak of
the Father and the Son; and even if they couldn't quite explain it or think it out,
it was at the very heart of their faith.

we fon

At this point it is good for us to keep fairly busy and continue to carry on as
much of our usual activity as possible. It is certainly not good for someone else
tc take over completely, well meaning as they might be. That would be Hke the
surgery patients in the past who were told not to do anything, net even to get out
of bed for several days after the operation. Uoctors then discovered that forced
inactivity often delayed the patient's recovery.

Therefore, anyone wanting to be helpful in times of grief should consider this
principle: Let the person know you are there and that you care. Be available to
help if everything breaks down. But normally let the person have the therapeutic
value of doing whatever he or she is up to doing.

The next stage of grief is emotional release. It comes about the time it dawns
on a person how dreadful the loss really is. An uncontrollable urge surges up to
express that grief. And that is exactly what we ought to do. We have been given
tear glands for a reason.

For a generation, psychologists have told us this is a particular problem for
men. That is a very old saw by now. But I don't see that the situation has changed
markedly. ft works this way: We men have been taught from the cradle that boys
don't cry. So, when a boy is eight and hurts himself, he doesn't dare to cry, not at
eighteen when something happens he needs to cry about. At thirty-eight when some
great loss is suffered, he cannot cry.

So, let it be said again: Crying is not a sign of weakness. In fact, it is more
often the tearless macho who develops weakness, If he always holds himself in,
always maintains stiff-upper-lip, dry-eyed calm, he may well be headed for trouble
like an ulcer or a breakdewn. The scriptures tell that when great calamities came
to the hardiest men, the strongest men of faith, they wept bitterly, The Bible says
their "tears were with them all the night long."

There comes the time in the process of deep grief when we feel depressed
and very lonely. It is as if God is no longer available, as if God does not care. During
this thne we are sure that no one else has ever grieved as we are grieving. A person
feels isolated and utterly depressed. That feeling is to be expected after a significant
loss. Temporary depression is a part of good healthy arief.

Depression comes to all people when something or someone they love and trea-
sure dearly is taken from therm. Even the songs of faithfulness in the Bible—the
Pealms—reflect this depression. The 42nd Psalm crys out: "Why are you cast down,
O my soul?...t say to God, my rock: ‘Why hast thon forgotten me?'...My adversaries
taunt me, while they say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?™

Depression can lead us to believe that no one has suffered as we, that Hfe
can never be good again. An ancient story from India tells how a woman in deep
grief one morning went to Buddha to plead that her child might return to life, She
could not be consoled. Nothing Buddha said helped her. So Buddha sent her on a
project: He told her to take all day to go from house to house all through the town
and collect a green pepper from each family who had never had a deep grief. Then,
when she returned with her basket full of peppers, Buddha promised te answer her
need. But when evening came, her basket was still empty and she returned to Buddha
with new understanding. Everyone she met had had some grief such as hers.

~d—

At first a new idea is invisible and abstract. It can't be measured or phote-
graphed, Then the discoverer writes down a part of the growing idea as a short
Magazine article and, if in a scholarly field, perhaps several articles are written,
each describing a different facet or application of the main idea, Then, the idea
having expanded, a book is published to describe as thoroughly as possible the whole
idea and all its ramifications, Now the idea is solid and concrete. The book is
published, is passed from person to person and the idea is communicated from mind
to mind. It becomes a part of the life of a great many people who had never thought
of that idea before.

So, here we have three separate realities: an idea, a book and the influence
of the book. These three are not separate really; they are closely connected. One
without the other two would mean very little. What good is an idea which no one
ever hears of; or a book which has no influence, no impact; or influence without
a good central idea to guide it? And the discoverer, the originator, the author,
the inventor is in all three of these.

So, too, the creative power of God is invisible. It grows and expands and
moves toward becoming fully concrete throughout the experiences of the people
of israel — the burning bush, the deliverance from bondage, the lives of the prophets
—— just as the discoverer’s idea was partially expressed and grew little by little
in the magazine and journal articles. Then as in the book, this creative power takes
substance in the person Jesus of Nazareth who embodies completely God's creativity,
for that is what redemption through Christ is, The influence of Jesus then radiates
in all directions and the Holy Spirit becomes an influence upon people in all places
and in all times. All three are connected and God is in all three.

The truth expressed by the Doctrine of the Trinity, then, says these things
to us, In this manner we know God — the creative power traditionally called Father,
the created substance which is Son, and the influence which follows and continues
and dwells with us and in us forever — the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray: Most gracious, loving God, help us to stretch our understandings, to
appreciate your care for us, and to experience your presence powerfully active
in our world and in our lives. May we combine the wisdom we receive from previous
generations and from distant lands. with our own insights, our own experiences of
the divine encounter, so we will live confidently to serve you, our Creator, Redeemer,
and Sustainer. Amen.