Yesterday I preached on I Samuel 15:34-16:13, and though I thought I would be writing a sermon about God's unlikely choices this ended up being a sermon about grief. Surprised me for sure! I just couldn't seem to get the "How long will you grief for Saul?" verse out of my mind as I prepared. So, I just went with it and here's a portion of it:

When is the last time you truly grieved over something? I mean a good long cry, a into the night cry, into the next day cry that you thought that you never would get over?

 I remember the spring when my grandmother died. Gran, who had played a central role in my upbringing and joy in my childhood, died as when I was in my second semester of seminary. Gran was more than just a grandmother via biological connections, she was a friend, a confidant, someone in whom I talked my problems over with regularly. She made me feel special always in a way that others did not. When she died, the loss stung deep. It ached. It made me feel like there was no reason in the morning to get out of bed-- though trust me, there was plenty of papers calling my name to write! But, I couldn't seem to get over it as much as I tried.

 Anne Lamott in her book Operating Instructions writes about the first year of her son's life the experience of getting used to motherhood but at the same time grieving the death of one of her closest friends saying, "And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore.”

Sometimes as much as we want to get over the loss of someone or something, we simply can't. Our grief grips us and becoming the central story of our lives to the pint in which we simply can't even comprehend seeing past our own circumstances.

 Grief, as many of you know, especially those of you who have studied it in workshops and other seminars, is not always about loss via death. Grief over the loss of careers, aspirations or relationship which used to be close but are no longer can paralyze us as deeply as any physical death can. To wake up one morning and find that what you thought was your life work is destroyed by the rejection of others, to come to terms with your best friend no longer is speaking to you, or be let in on a truth about our family after years of secrecy, we can feel smacked in the face. Grief seeks to holding us down for as long as possible. Grief, if we don't find a way to move through it can destroy our lives.

 In our Old Testament lesson for this morning, we meet the prophet Samuel again.

 Called out as the great prophet of Israel, called out as young boy to be the saving grace leader of a nation in deep decline, called out as the one who would be God's spokesperson to a people desperate to hear a good word-- Samuel  was on top of the world. Things were going great! Samuel was the hope of the nation, after all.  Yet, in this state of extreme responsibility, I can imagine that Samuel  felt  he needed to make just the right choices at just the right time so to ensure that the nation of Israel had a future. And for a while, it seemed Samuel tasted the sweet fruit of his good, seemingly God led choices.

 So, what happens when all goes badly? What happens when the king HE anoints behaves badly and needs to be removed from office?

 And it is at this juncture, we find him in a place of deep grief.  All is not well in his world.  Samuel blames himself. He pouts. He cries. And, see Saul's failures as a reflection of himself.  How can he ever again show his face in public after Saul has flopped big time? Grief was his primary story.

 And God has a word with him about it saying in 16:1: "How long will you grief over Saul?"

 Or, "How long, Samuel will grief be your story?"

 It is not that grieving is wrong or an inappropriate emotion, but that for every period of grief, (especially the more pity party kinds)-- there comes a time when it must end. For as spiritually cleansing and healthy as grief is, it's an emotion has a time and season. For, if one stays in a grieving process too long, past its time-- it can actually be destructive. For Samuel, God says, it is time to move on.

Grief over what could, should, would have been and all the feelings of personal failure internalized held Samuel captive, we learn. In particular for Samuel, his grief held him captive to only what he could see, hear, and feel in the present moment. Grief stole his vision for life and the people he was entrusted to lead.

Thus, the Lord is saying to him, "You are not perfect. All is not perfect in this land.  I know this. But one thing still holds true: I still love these people. I still love you. And, there is work to be done in the future!" And this is the post-grief task one that our text narrates for us, God says: "I have rejected [Saul] from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons."

Though Saul has been a disappointment of a king and leader and Samuel wants to keep believing that it was all his fault, such feelings just aren't helpful. In fact, God is asking him to dust his sandals off from the dirt in which he's sat and go be a part of the next great thing that God was going to do in the nation: anoint the next king.

And, it's important to note here that it would have been easy for Samuel, as he went to find the next leader, to fall into the trap that is naturally a part of being in an aggrieved state: the syndrome of "must do anything to fix the pain right now."

 You've met these people if you aren't one right now: the "hurry up and get this over with" folks. Pain and its effects are despised so much that  these people will do anything not to feel the pain of disappointment, rejection or loss.  Things like:  drinking too much wine  when they get home from work, staying at the gym too long and skipping meals, or even drowning each night away in mindless tv-- just avoiding the grief through a distraction.

 Or, the approach of getting to work too rapidly, taking the lead alone to solve the grief right away. Type A things like signing up for every single class or seminar known to man about a particular issue-- trying to become the expert of one's own problems. Things like making lists after lists after lists of what can be done-- trying to logically organize their way through your problems. Or even, the simple act of refusing to rest through grief-- doing, doing and more doing.

 In all of this, I believe that God knew that Samuel could be in this exact place as well-- trying to avoid or solve the problem too quickly. Samuel is given exactly, then what grief needs to keep moving-- clarity. Samuel is told exactly what to do, exactly what to say, and exactly who to listen to when he arrives at the hometown of Jesse.  The end of verse three gives us what is most important as a word from the LORD: "You shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you."

 Specifically Samuel was told in verse 7 not to make a quick judgment just to get the process of selecting the next leader done as quickly as possible. Saying, to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance but the LORD looks on the heart." 

God saying, "Don't just go Samuel to who you think meets the criteria that others will approve of. Instead, listen to me. I can show you who has the heart for the work of king. Don't make this process about you. Listen."

Or simply stated, Samuel could have rushed through the line of brothers among Jesse's sons-- very easily he could have solved his failure complex quickly-- but if he did, then, he'd be missing out on an opportunity to hear God's leading.

And, thus, this is the surprise-- in Samuel's grief, in his pain, God was about to do a new thing, a new thing in the life of Israel where healing would come from the unlikely choice of youngest son David as the next king as Samuel kept listening. This was all he was asked to do.

I can remember some of the most powerful words said over me (that I obviously still remember to this day) at my ordination service. During the laying on of hands a deacon of the ordaining church came up to me and said, "Listen to God. You've gotten to this point in your life through listening and you will do great things if you keep listening."

Isn't God funny like this sometimes? We make it so difficult when all we are asked to do is to put one foot in front of the other and listen as we go.  Of course this doesn't take away the pain or the loss, but we do have direction for what is next. And this can be grief's greatest surprise . . .

How else have you been surprised by grief in your life? I'd love to know!

How many times has it be said about grief: "It's not a big deal. Why can't you just get over it?" Or, "Time heals all wounds."

It is easy for us to say or want to say these words because in doing so we separate the emotion from our participation in it. Grief,  when let loose is confusing. It is consuming and can be all-consuming. Grief always has a life cycle of its own. To be a friend of grief, hard work is required. And, if we are honest, often we really don't want to work this hard, especially when we see others on what looks like much easier paths.  It is a lot easier to throw up our hands and say, "Life is unfair" than to do the work grief lays out for us. Grief is a messy, very messy process, no matter how trained we are in its "stages." 

For the past two Wednesday nights, a group of us from Washington Plaza began a study called, "Sowing Tears, Reaping Joy: The Bible and Brahm's Requiem." This study involves the study of scripture texts that appear and inform the words of the requiem as well as listening to sections of the music in a reflective posture. We've also taken moments throughout the sessions to pause and share with one another our experiences of grief. Together, as a small group, we are wading in the waters of deep community. It's not easy to talk about grief, you know!

Besides observing how real and deep and experienced many in this small group are with the study of and process of grief, I've also noticed how eager each of us in the class are to sit with the depths of grief together in new ways. (What an unusual gift!)

Part of this re-examining process includes revisiting some of the great mourning texts of the scriptures. We started with some words of Jesus.

When Jesus says in his great Sermon on the Mount, "blessed are they that mourn; for they will be comforted" it seems like a completely wacky paradox, we observed. How could Jesus say such a thing? Especially to our natural human tendency to want to explain away grief with simple answers that seem to make it better as soon as possible . . . so how could we believe such? How could mourning be good for us?

While many psychological experts might jump in and answer our questions quickly, from a spiritual perspective, we've talked about grieving because we have to.  In fact, our willingness to embrace grief has a lot to do with what we feel about God. Grief teaches us to sit long with such questions as: "What is God's plans for this world? How is it that we know God? Who can ultimately be trusted in the midst of our dark moments? Why do good things happen to such bad people?"

Such grief questions do not even have morsels to offer us if we don't wait. And, wait some more.

Ellen Davis, a professor of mine from seminary said this in a sermon given in 1993 at Berkeley Divinity School, about grief: "From a Biblical perspective, living well with sorrow means dwelling on it, lamenting it before God, allowing-no, committing yourself to search the sorrow, to explore every corner of it, to ransack the emptiness until it yields its treasure, the hidden blessing on those who mourn."

I can't think of a more beautiful way to describe the process of "blessed are they that mourn." For if we refuse to make a friend of grief, both within us and our immediate community, we are also going to also miss out on its great gifts. Again placing the word "grief" and "gifts" in the same sentence sounds wrong to me, doesn't it to you? But, more and more I am learning that the pain of grief is not diminished if we have open hands to what only grief can bring us: joy. Joy, yes, even in grief and all its pain, there might be joy a coming . . .

Joy in the companionship of friends who love us at our worst.

Joy in the ability to keep going when we have every reason to give up.

Joy in the knowledge that we are seen and known deeply by our Creator.

Blessed are they that mourn-- for those who cry, walling, lament, and angrily shout at God for as long as it takes to get it all out--  for in mourning space hope has a possiblity of breaking through.

Any are welcomed to join us on this grief journey for the next five Wednesday nights!

"Everything happens for a reason" such are words that we, as pastoral care givers are often tempted to use though they are not in the Bible anywhere.

We deal with so much crisis. We get tired of saying profound things. We want to feel good about the care we are giving, knowing that our care is making a difference. We want to give people hope that their suffering is not in vain, that it will amount to something greater in the end. We want to be an expert with something to offer the pain of those in whom we are called to care about.

But the truth is we are not God. Sometimes there are no answers. And trying to give a plastic answer often makes it worse. (Read the book of Job lately?)

When I hear the words "everything happens for a reason," it's like scraping the chalkboard of my soul. For, as much as I am tempted to say such as a way to easily explain away life's pains for myself and others as a pastor myself, I simply can't say (or even hear) these words.

For everything doesn't happen for a reason. Sometimes life just sucks in this sin sick filled world we live in.  And often it is not our fault. It just is.

I grew up in a tradition of faith that taught when bad things happened in your life it was the result of either a) a major personal screw up b) being out of touch with a close relationship with God via doing things like regular Bible reading, church attendance and tithing regularly. I was taught about a "if/ then God."  If I do what God wants, then God will bless me.

I truly bought in to this way of thinking as a child, believing that if something was going wrong in my life, it was somehow my fault. God must be punishing me or trying to teach me a lesson. I remember the day my youth group leader told us that you could tell who was living right by who God was blessing with good grades, winning sport games at school, and happily finding mates after completing their "true love waits" pledge to remain sexually pure until marriage. What lies. And it got worse . . . we were told that those who faced difficult life circumstances such as death of family member, the coming of an earthquake or fire, or whose marriages fell apart usually resulted from sin. The reason for these horrible things happening was God saying: "Clean up your act."

Maybe for those of us who are leaders in giving care to others, we can find ways not to either explain away life's troubles with "it will all be good in the end" or "it is somehow your fault" instead to simply be with those in pain. Sure, there might be something beautiful that comes out of life's most tragic moments, but it doesn't take away the gut-wrenching grief of the process.

For I believe it is not important to figure out the why's of suffering-- life is simply too complex and mysterious such answers-- rather to simple be present in life's moments whatever they may be.  Knowing that as we stay close to whatever emotions we are feeling, whatever is troubling our souls, there will be a path of peace to lead us to quieter waters someway somehow.

Let us stop, my caregiver friends, making this pastoral fail. I wrote this blog for this reason.