Easter Dawn Follows Deep Pain

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

When my father died in 1998 something happened that surprised me. I went into a kind of shock. I thought I was prepared. After all I was a pastor who had sat with people who were dying and officiated at numerous funerals. I had taught classes on death and dying.

Dad had been in declining health for a number of years. We knew death was coming.  Our family had been with him for seven days as he was dying, praying with him and singing his favorite gospel hymns. But when death came, I was not ready; I was shaken like never before.

Diane Armstrong, a member of our congregation, wrote me a note that brought both comfort and clarity: “The world shifts when we lose a parent and is never the same again.”

My world is still shifting. Since the passing of my mother and my oldest brother, half of the family I grew up with is in heaven. The world shifts every time a loved one dies. To feel bereft and hopeless in the face of a death blow is not a lack of faith; there is no sugar-coating death.

I heard the great William Sloane Coffin Jr. preach at Riverside Church in New York City in July 1983, a few months after his son Alex died tragically in an auto accident. I had just read his sermon in “The Christian Century,” delivered ten days after his son’s funeral in which he said, "My 24-year-old son, Alexander, who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his father to the grave."

Coffin spoke about the harsh reality of death and the toll it takes even on those of us with strong faith: “I know all the ‘right’ biblical passages, including ‘Blessed are those who mourn,’ …these passages are true, I know. But the point is this. While the words of the Bible are true, grief renders them unreal. The reality of grief is the absence of God — ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”

Grief is complicated. Losing the loves of our lives is devastating. The finality of death, the longing, the aching in the absence of the loved one, the utter void in which we find ourselves can leave us disoriented, uncertain about beliefs that previously provided grounding. Some never recover from this crisis of faith.

Noted religious educator and author Parker Palmer wrote that one of the most important questions we humans can ask is, “How shall we hold our losses?” He said, “The answers we come up with can make the difference between sinking into bitterness or despair, or becoming a giver of life.”

Louise Penny’s first novel in the Inspector Gamache series, one of my favorite whodunits which I read again recently, has a passage about grief that opened a window into a heartache that I have not known how to express. Clara, an artist who is married to another artist named Peter, is sobbing continually after the murder of her dearest friend, Jane. She lashes out viciously at her husband when he tries to console her, accusing him of not caring about her or their dead friend. Peter resists the urge to hurt her back, instead offering words of reassurance and a challenge.

“’Clara, I love you,’ he says. ‘And I know you. You have to figure out what you believe – what you really, truly believe. All these years you’ve talked about God. You’ve written about your faith … Is God here now, Clara? Is he in this room?’

“Peter’s kind voice calmed Clara. She began to listen.

“‘Is he here?’ Peter slowly brought his forefinger to her chest, not quite touching. ‘Is Jane with him?’ Peter pressed on. He knew where he had to go … ‘All those questions you and Jane debated and laughed about and argued over, she has the answer to. She’s met God.’

“Clara’s mouth dropped open and she stared straight ahead. There. There it was. Her mainland. That’s where she could put her grief. Jane was dead. And she was now with God. Peter was right. She either believed in God or she didn’t. Either was okay. But she could no longer believe in God and act otherwise. She did believe in God. And she believed that Jane was with him. And suddenly her pain and grief became human and natural. And survivable. She had a place to put it, a place where Jane was with God.”

William Sloan Coffin Jr. concluded his famous sermon with these words of hope:

 “And of course I know, even when pain is deep, that God is good. ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Yes, but at least, ‘My God, my God’; and the psalm only begins that way, it doesn’t end that way. As the grief that once seemed unbearable begins to turn now to bearable sorrow, the truths in the ‘right’ biblical passages are beginning, once again, to take hold: ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall strengthen thee’; ‘Weeping may endure for the night but joy cometh in the morning.’”

Coffin added, “And finally I know that when Alex beat me to the grave, the finish line was not Boston Harbor in the middle of the night. If a week ago last Monday, a lamp went out, it was because, for him at least, the Dawn had come. So I shall — so let us all — seek consolation in that love which never dies, and find peace in the dazzling grace that always is.”

John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives.”