When Grief Meets Grace

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist


Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:12

Psalm 130

(A song of rising)

From within the suffocating darkness

of what I will never comprehend

I cry out to you, Holy One

—You who exist eternally—

I plead with you:

Hear my voice!

Force your ears to listen,

to respond to the sound of my pleas!

But if you kept track of transgressions, Holy One, who would stand?

With you there is forgiveness . . .

. . . in order to inspire reverence.

With my whole being I ache for your ever-eluding vision,

like those who watch for the morning,

even more than those who watch for the morning.

Await the Holy One, all you people with whom God perseveres—

wait expectantly, confidently, defiant against despair—

Because union with the Eternal Existence is “hesed”:

a steadfast, persistent, NEVER-ENDING LOVE

beyond anything we can possibly know with our minds.

And union with God is an exponentially-increasing

and ultimately everlasting

repayment of our crushing debt

in this world and the next.

And God will repay the debt for all of our transgressions,

because we are the people with whom God chooses to persevere.

Her mother’s death was beautiful, Kathy Sakai whispered in response to my question. When I asked her how that moment we all dread, and that she had endured—the death of her mother—had affected her life. It was the most beautiful moment she had ever known, she said. And she was right.

The room was decorated for Christmas. The continual coming of Christ. With white Christmas tree lights glowing in every direction. And candles burning brightly through the winter darkness. And tinsel sparkling with delight from the windows. With a bowl of warm ginger water and a vat of lotion mixed with lavender oil sitting at her mother’s bedside. Ready to bathe and anoint her body upon her death. Which is exactly what Kathy and her sister-in law and her niece did. Led by a hospice caregiver who was very much with child.

Wow.

The combination of their bathed and oiled palms massaging her mother’s bathed and oiled body settled them all into a peace that passes understanding. Every stroke of their gentle, firm hands overlapping one another in a gift of unqualified grace.

Another dear friend offered hymns in the background. Her still, small angelic voice singing one life into being through the pregnant woman’s womb. And one life into ending through Kathy’s mother’s death. And all life into being again and again and again in an embrace of a moment the mystics call “the eternal now” and what I would call “the fullness of time.”

And it really was beautiful. And it really is who we are. Every one of us bound up in this moment together. Which, with Kathy’s permission, has now become a shared memory for us all.

If we have to die, which we really don’t want to do, but we really do have to do, someday, hopefully far away, this is how we want it to be, isn’t it? At the end of a long and well-lived life. With the baptismal covenant re-enacted in its purest form. And a thousand angels singing us through the suffocating darkness of what we will never fully comprehend, into the everlasting light of the steadfast, persistent, never-ending hesed love of God. Beyond anything we can possibly know with our minds. Bathed in the font of our identity flowing forever in oil and water and tears and laughter.

This is how we want it to be. If it really does have to be. And, of course, it does.

The reality of our mortality has been much on our minds here at Madison Square in these past several weeks. In our Wednesday Conversations on heaven and healing and hope. In the several brushes with death we have been through together just this week with many we love. In Kathy sharing her story with a pastor . . . and now with a congregation.

And in the tragedy of yet another mass shooting just one week ago. This time in a house of worship not all that different from ours. On a Sunday morning not all that different from this one. Among a group of people not all that different from us. Coming together in their own sacred moment of “home.” Practicing in their own way what it means to love their God and their neighbor and perhaps most importantly themselves, in this time of deep pain. Met with a bullet and a hate crime and a crying out in anguish.

And we must join them in this cry. Because in the deep truth that the writer of Ephesians is trying to tell us, they are us, and we are them, in spite of the vitriol of racial and religious supremacy that would argue otherwise. As the writer of Ephesians keeps trying to tell us, we are one with one another. And God is doing everything God can to keep breaking through these barriers we keep insisting on constructing. The barrier between Jew and Gentile in the first century being not very different at all from the barrier of Christian and Sikh and Muslim and Hindu in our own.

And so we must join them in the crying out “from within the suffocating darkness of what we will never comprehend.” Joining with the psalmist in pleading with God to listen. Speaking, perhaps the truth of our deepest fear: Are you even listening, God? Do you have ears to hear? Do you care? Are you there?

The thing about the psalms is they do not gloss over the depth of human grief with mere platitudes about God and greatness and grace. They tell it like it is. As we must. That it hurts. That it leaves us aching for that ever-eluding vision of wholeness and hope that flows from our baptismal covenant. The one we glimpse for brief moments in stories like Kathy’s with her mother but that far too easily fades when we face the fear that comes in violence and the too-soon taking of a living, breathing presence in our midst. And it does not make sense. And there is no way to explain the unexplainable. Or excuse the inexcusable. Or console the inconsolable. And so we plead with God to listen. To hear. To care.

And God does.

With a reminder that our baptism into grace asks something of us in return, as well. And it is time for us to take heed of that call.

In the days of the early church, confirmands into the faith of Christ committed themselves to a rigorous process of preparation for a life of non-violence. Of stripping away the anger and the indignity and the aggression that was deep within them. Of refusing to return evil for evil but to respond to evil with grace.

The way Jesus did.

In the days of the early church confirmands into the faith of Christ would face to the west and renounce the forces of darkness. And then face to the east claiming allegiance to the light. And then strip off the clothing of their old life and wade through the waters of the font of their new identity. And receive an anointing in oil on the other side. And wrap themselves with a new robe, in a new self. With a singing celebration to carry this moment of heaven here on earth with them always. Just like Kathy did with her mother. Which is why I will always remember the moment she shared as a re-affirmation of the baptismal covenant.

This is the call to each of us today, as well. Re-affirming our baptismal covenant and the grace it proclaims. But also re-affirming the commitment we make in return to keep on stripping away the anger and indignity and aggression that continues deep within us. And prepare ourselves over and over and over again for the non-violent gift of grace we are meant to become in Christ.

It is harder than we wish it were, or we wouldn’t be here today crying out in anguish again and again and again, right along with the Ephesians in the first century. Which is why Paul must remind them, and us, to keep on practicing the grace we have been given and the grace we are to give in return.

Even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard.

“Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” the writer of Ephesians tells us. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander,” we hear again and again and again. “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

Let’s just admit it. It is easier said than done.

The problem with anger and bitterness and wrath is that it is real, no matter how much we cling to our baptism in grace. And the reality of anger and bitterness and wrath is that it is how we deal with our pain. We call it “grief.” And so I would suggest that the admonition to “be angry but not sin,” as the writer of Ephesians encourages, must be more like praying psalm 130 to its fullest than it is like glossing over the very real rage we carry from whatever wounds the violence of this world has inflicted on us and on the ones we love. It must be about the reconciliation that can only begin by naming the anger, and the hurt, and the hope. And dealing with it truthfully as soon as is humanly possible so that the grace of God can somehow transform it for “building up the body.”  In order “that our words may give grace to those who hear.”

The psalmist does not hide from the pain and the anger and the grief that she feels and neither should we. She sings through it. Crying out to God. Crying out to community. Calling forth an active, listening, truthful response that every one of us needs to hear:

Which is that none of us can stand if God is keeping track of transgressions. Not one. That the pain we receive becomes the pain we inflict, if we are not careful. Whether it is intentional, or whether it happens without our knowing.

So what are we to do?

A generalized search on Amazon.com will reveal over 40,000 religious titles addressing the topic of anger. We could read our way into wholeness and hope and healing.

But I think ritual matters more.

I think it is not enough to reason our way to the beloved community of grace. I think we have to actually practice it when we come to worship every Sunday. Grounding ourselves over and over again in the glow of the “eternal now” we claim in our baptism. Touching God and each other over and over and over again in a shared memory of a room filled with candlelight and oil and the healing touch of two mothers giving birth to the grace that will always meet our grief. With one part of our body always pregnant with life. And one part of our body always pregnant with life beyond death. And every hand and heart and hope in touch with the healing love of God. In union with the God who really does choose to persevere with us. Even when we find it so hard to persevere with ourselves. And singing us into the fullness of time.

And I think if we can keep drawing ourselves back to the memory of that moment when we worship, as if it were happening still now, because it some mysterious way it actually is, perhaps we just might be able to “imitate Christ, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us. A fragrant offering,” like lavender mixed with lotion. Welcoming every one of us home.

“So then, putting away falsehood,” the falsehood that would deny the reality of our mortality, or the grace that meets our grief, we might live fully in each moment. As members of one another. In the household of our faithful God. Expectantly, confidently, defiant against despair. Kind to one another. Tenderhearted. Forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven us.

I pray it may be so. Amen.