God and grief
Tuesday evening. The phone rings. My brother's voice. 'Joe'south been killed.' Iii words that change the world. I didn't know what to say. 'I don't know what to say.' That's information technology.
Do not get gentle into that good dark…
Rage, rage confronting the dying of the low-cal.
And so wrote Dylan Thomas nearly his father dying in quondam historic period. How much more than should we rage at the tragic expiry of a young man in his prime number. Joe was 27, total of life. He died riding his motorbike, on his manner to dinner with his parents. When he did non make it, and the side by side knock on the door was a policewoman, they knew immediately.
And yet, at the time, you cannot rage. You cannot do anything—in that location is no energy.
Time seems to ho-hum to a crawl. The next 24-hour interval took a calendar week to pass.
The world has inverse; the mural is all different now. It is not so much that you do not take a map to navigate this new territory—you simply cannot run into whatsoever of its features. The swirling chaos of shock and grief is similar a blizzard, as if yous are locked into a giant snowfall globe which someone (God?) has given a very vigorous shake, and the flakes go along to swirl and play and have an agonisingly long fourth dimension to settle earlier you tin can run across anything.
And what will God say? What can God say? Tin can anything be said that will make sense, or be of help? Information technology'southward like watching a wizard practice the impossible and plow a circle into a square. Y'all know it is but a flim-flam, an illusion, and information technology has not solved anything in the real globe.
Why wasn't he a minute before, a minute afterwards? Even a few seconds? Why did the car pull out to turn at that moment? Whatever number of things could accept been different, and nosotros would not accept entered this parallel globe to normality. In this moment there are no words to explicate, because what has happened does not brand sense.
Of course, there are the usual reassurances. 'Death is not the end'. 'Considering Jesus died and rose again, there is hope across death'. Information technology'due south not that these things are not truthful; just that they don't do anything right at present. When you sit in the darkest moment of nighttime, knowing that (at to the lowest degree in theory) dawn volition somewhen come does not make the darkness any less dark.
And still…
Every bit I was making the endless journey down to see them, my mind kept going back to the story in John 11, where Jesus meets Mary and Martha afterwards their brother Lazarus had died. It is all there. The regrets. 'If only you had been hither…' The articulation of belief, forming a sparse crust over the reality of grief. 'I know the dead will be raised…'. Tragedy. Lazarus is mentioned 3rd, after his sisters (John 11.five), so is about certainly a younger brother—possibly not yet 20, certainly young similar Joe. A life ended prematurely. Incomprehension in the words of the disciples.
And Jesus' response?
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come up along with her too weeping, he was securely moved in spirit and troubled."Where accept you laid him?" he asked. "Come up and meet, Lord," they replied. Jesus wept. (John 11.33–35)
Jesus wept. The shortest poetry in the Bible, and rightly so. Few words are needed.
But the enormity of information technology! Can it be truthful that the God who made the world shares our grief? The unmoveable first mover is now 'deeply moved?' The 1 who was God's speaking of the cosmos into being wept with those who were bereaved—and does so again today? 'Man of sorrows—what a proper name for the Son of God who came.' What an extraordinary matter this is. God does not simply signal forward to the dawn that is to come up, which all the same nosotros cannot see; he sits in the darkness with us, silent, grieving.
Paul Butler, now Bishop of Durham, wrote almost decease when he was newly Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham. It is a reflection on the metaphor of 'tasting' and 'swallowing' death.
I relish food. I like the huge variety of tastes that exist. I will always get for savoury rather than sugariness, whereas Rosemary goes the other fashion. Our sense of taste buds are a small-scale part of the extraordinary way that we are fabricated.
Simply nosotros have all experienced tasting something that is 'off' or simply unpalatable because it is besides bitter (or sweetness). Decease has a bitter taste. I accept sat with people dying and heard death; both the very placidity, yet terminal breath and the horrible death 'rattle'. I accept seen death; finding two of my best friends lying dead in the road when I was a teenager is an paradigm that has never left me. Only so as well sitting past my Dad's bedside waiting for him to wake up, yet knowing he would not, is imprinted on my encephalon. I have smelt death; it is non pleasant. On that occasion I also tasted something of it; the stench in the air was so potent that it affected my taste buds.
On Good Friday Jesus 'tasted' death. He willingly approached decease, gave himself up to it and tasted it. He did not simply have a small bite and then spit it out considering the taste was too unpleasant. He knew information technology was going to gustation foul only he went correct on and consumed information technology all. Consumed it, ate it up, until there was nix left on expiry's plate.
In tasting decease Jesus dealt with death for usa all. God raising Jesus from the dead on the first Easter Day was his way of saying 'Yes' death has been consumed; information technology has been overcome; information technology has been defeated. All that now lies alee is life, resurrection life, Jesus kind of life.
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