Episodes
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Finding hope in a hopeless place of grief
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Sunday Mar 10, 2013
Rev. Dean Snyder Scripture: Luke 10:1-2; 17
The popular song that has sold the most records ever is a song by the singer Rhianna. “We found love” … “We found love in a hopeless place.”
This Lent our theme is places on our life journeys that can feel hopeless. Places where we can get stuck. Places like shame, addiction, grief, depression, powerlessness, and death.
Today, within the context of this sacred oratorio based on the Passion According to St. John – we want to think for a few minutes about grief. Grief can feel like a hopeless place. We can get stuck in grief.
Grief Is really about loss. Grief is our response to lose. It is loss that we get stuck in.
We think of grief in the context of the loss of someone we love to death, but grief can be about all kinds of losses … the loss of a job, the loss of a marriage in divorce, the loss of kids moving out of the house and going to college, the loss of our youth, the loss of our health. I have a friend who lost some money in the last big economic downturn. It is not that he needs the money really. In fact, he tells me he would have given it away. But still he grieves and grieves the loss of that money.
Maybe ten years ago Foundry hosted a weekend conference on healing. One of the workshop I’ve never forgotten was about loss and grief. The workshop leader said that the loss of a loved one, a job, our youth, whatever, was not only about the loss of whomever or whatever it was we lost but it was also about the loss of our dreams. If a spouse died, , our grief was not only about the loss of our companion, it was also about the loss of the retirement years we had dreamed about spending together, it was about the loss of the traveling that we had dreamed about doing together, it was the loss of the dream of seeing our grandchildren graduate from college .
All loss is about whomever or whatever we lose, but it is also about the loss of our dreams.
I want to go a step further. All loss is also about the loss of our imagined reality. It is about the loss of the way we believe reality is and ought to be.
When we lose our dreams, when we lose our imagined reality, there are two ways to respond, two ways to grieve.
In the story from the Gospel of John about the death of Lazarus whom Jesus especially loved, there are two kinds of tears in the story. There are literally two different Greek words used in the story that in our English translation are both translated as weeping but they are two different Greek words. There are two kinds of tears in the story.
When Lazarus dies, there are the tears that his sisters Mary and Martha and the professional mourners cried. The Greek word is “Klaio.” It is translated weeping but it can also be translated as wailing.
Klaio tears are tears of protest. They are tears protesting reality. This is not the way the world ought to be. This is wrong. I refuse to continence this. I refuse to accept this.
Klaio tears. I believe in Klio tears. I believe in protest. Protest makes change. Protest improves the world. Biblically, history begins when Hebrew slaves in Egypt cried tears of protest and moaned and complained to God about their slavery. History begins in tears of protest. History advances in tears of protest. Klaio tears. The tears that Mary and Martha cry.
But … when the Gospel of John says that Jesus was weeping, it uses another Greek word. It uses the word Dakruo.
This is the only place this particular Greek word is used in the Bible so it is hard to understand its full connotation, but scholars believe Dakruo is a deep inward weeping. Not wailing but a profound quiet internal weeping. I want to suggest that Dakruo tears are tears of surrender. They are tears of acceptance.
I think part of what the Lazarus story is trying to say is that tears of protest can change the world, but tears of surrender and acceptance can lead to resurrection.
Dakruo tears are the tears we weep when we decide to live our lives in the world in which we find ourselves instead of the world of our dreams and imagined reality.
Klaio tears and dakruo tears are both important, Klaio tears lead to revolutions. Dakruo tears lead to resurrections and new life. We need to cry both kinds of tears but we need to know which tears to cry when.
We need to know when to revolt and when to surrender. We need to know when to fight for our dreams and when to live in the world as it is.
Please bow your heads. For a moment, be aware of the person on your right. Pray in your mind and heart for him or her this prayer: God grant him or her the serenity to accept the things he or she cannot change; courage to change the things he or she can change; and wisdom to know the difference.
Be aware of the person on your left and pray for them the same prayer. Now pray it for yourself and repeat it out loud after me.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference. Amen.
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