June 24, 2020
On Grief
A boy I grew up with at church died last week in his sleep at 26 years old. We went through tedious confirmation classes together, an endless amount of retreats and trips, weekly Sunday evening youth group meetings, and Sunday morning worship. We were once close spending hours of our youth together at the local ice cream place, doing service projects, and having fun.
We grew apart in adulthood both leaving the small community we grew up in to go our own ways. We chatted occasionally, saw each other at big events, we were still friends though removed by periods of separation and distance.
But my heart hurts, the tears are flowing, the grief is raw. I always thought we had more time to catch up, that someday I’d go back and we’d spend an hour chatting about how life has been and what we were doing. I never imagined he would die at 26, suddenly and unexplainably. He was doing so well, on the right track, had a family who loved him, many friends and now he is dead at 26 with future plans swept away, chances of reunion demolished by death.
It’s times like these when having faith is hard. When we doubt God, and especially when we doubt that God is good or that God loves us.
Many of us have experienced tragedies or loss in our lives that cause us to wonder just where God is in all our pain, suffering, and sadness.
I wish I had an answer for you or me as to why God allows suffering to happen. For thousands of people to die from a virus, why black young men have been found recently dead hanging in trees, why Alzheimer’s exists, why a perfectly healthy twenty-six year old died in his sleep, and numerous other tragedies. But I don’t have a clear answer for you or me.
All I can tell you is that, Jesus himself was honest about the unavoidability of suffering in this life. In John 16:33 he said, “You will have suffering in this world.” Notice Jesus didn’t say “might”- he said it is absolutely going to happen. I don’t have God’s mind and can’t share what God has in mind for this world. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13:12 “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.” Someday we will see with clarity, but for now things are foggy. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grapple with the question of why God allows suffering in our lives. We can understand some things through our own life experiences and the story of God’s people.
As Lutheran Christians, we confess that the way we live, the way we respond to a crisis, suffering, the things that pain us is our response to God’s love for us in Jesus Christ and not something we do in order to earn or secure God’s love or favor. “The Augsburg Confession” declares that
human beings cannot be justified before God by their own powers, merits, or works. But they are justified as a gift on account of Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made satisfaction for our sins.
“The Augsburg Confession,” IV, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2001), pp 38-41.
Lutheran theology reminds us that our relationship with God is not something we earn or achieve but is God’s gift to which we respond in faith. The heart of a Lutheran response to crisis is to discern, seek, and restore an understanding of God as gracious by bearing witness to Jesus Christ. Our Lutheran theology reminds us that, before we call people to respond, we boldly proclaim that the answer to our questions of God’s existence, identity, nature, and will is Jesus Christ. Preaching Christ and Christ crucified empowers us with the good news that God is gracious and reconciling. Rather than removing suffering and death, God in Christ enters into suffering and death for and with us. God’s response to us and to the world is to forgive and to give love and life. This good news frees us from thinking that God might wish harm to us or doesn’t love us, because when we remember the cross we know that God understands suffering deeply.
This good news frees us from the burden of struggling to discern what God is doing in the world. As in all the events of our lives and of our world, our first response and our ultimate decision in crisis is to have faith, to trust in the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Now granted, this doesn’t mean that being angry, disappointed, or frustrated with God in times of grief or suffering but perhaps it may comfort us to know that when we suffer, God suffers with us.
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