By Amy Butler
Knowing the one-year anniversary of her mother’s sudden death had just passed, I asked a friend over coffee the other day to tell me how she was doing. We talked about the year gone by, about the process of grieving and about the way in which grief expresses itself in our lives. As I heard my friend talk I was reminded again that everyone grieves differently; that there is no set time for the hard work of grieving; and that grief rarely, if ever, expresses itself in any kind of predictable way.
As we talked I wondered aloud what my friend felt had helped her the most over the past year. I don’t know what I expected her answer to be, but she surprised me by telling me a story of how she came to write her mother a series of letters and read them aloud. The letters addressed mundane matters of life, deep unresolved conflicts and, eventually, a heart-wrenching written farewell. “I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get any notice that she was leaving. I had to continue the conversations we’d started and didn’t get a chance to finish,” she told me.
There was something about talking it out, she said, about getting to audibly say goodbye. And though she couldn’t hear an answer from her mom, she felt sure as could be that the conversations they’d started were finished. Even the act of telling me about it, she went on to explain, made her feel like she was remembering her mom in a good and healthy way.
As I heard my friend talk about grieving her mom’s death, I couldn’t help but think of the Luke 23:26-31 text that was the focus of a recent sermon. These five verses are part of Luke’s account of Jesus’ passion, and this passage recounts a conversation Jesus had with the “daughters of Jerusalem” — women who followed him, grieving, up the hill to witness his crucifixion.
Scholars have written extensively on Jesus’ words to the women here; frankly, the words themselves are not really all that comforting. But as I studied the text I couldn’t help but notice the powerful act of engagement. In this interchange between Jesus and the women, grief becomes less of a solitary burden and more of a shared conversation — a reality that is named and, in its naming, validated and shared.
Sometimes I think the church does a poor job of making room for the ongoing conversation of grief. Oh, I think we’re pretty good at turning out casseroles in a crisis and of planning a really inspirational memorial service at the drop of a hat. But what about the continuing conversations that grief requires? What about the need we all have for our struggles to be acknowledged by people who will walk alongside us? Church is often a place we’re quick to cover our pain with a shiny façade; I wonder what it would take for us to make room for the conversations of grief to continue?
Jesus made that room. That’s what I love so much about this passage. The women cried while the crowd stared in morbid curiosity or looked away with vague discomfort. Jesus stopped and named their pain, engaged the conversation of grief, met them right where they found themselves in that very painful moment and began the conversation that would narrate their grieving in the days ahead.
When our communities become places in which we can be real with each other, in which these conversations can unfold, we end up reflecting the kind of real relationship God longs to have with each one of us all the time. Our God is not far-off, inaccessible, immune to the pain and joy we feel. God is here, engaged, ready to confront our deepest pain with us.
God will not turn away.
God will not forget.
God will never leave us alone.
When we do that — and are that – for each other, we reflect the presence of God.
All these thoughts coalesce in a prayer today: Give me wisdom to engage where the conversations of grief need to be had; give me courage to trust those who walk beside me with the burden of my grief; give me reassurance to know that you, O God, long for authentic engagement, every step of the way.
Amen.