An Open Letter to Those Who Grieve

To all the believers who worship the resurrected Christ: Grace to you and peace and comfort to all those who have lost someone they love. I write to offer an honest reflection on the nature of death and grief. 

Is there a more universal human experience we all share than facing the death of someone we love? Who among us is untouched by the sting of death?

Jesus spent a serendipitously sweet forty days following the resurrection with his followers. Then he mysteriously departed. 

One after another, members of the early church died. The survivors were forced to consider the meaning of death based on their belief in the resurrection of Jesus. The threat of death is surely one of our earliest and deepest fears.

Grief is the soul’s response to significant loss. It affects our emotions with a strong sense of sadness, despair or numbness. For a while, we feel like lost children, and even the simplest tasks are overwhelming.

But our grief is strangely tempered by an extraordinary hope centered in our deep faith in Christ. We find in the despair of our grief a mysterious power that is grounded in a faith that believes that even death is subject to God. The sting of death is tempered by the power of God to reign over even the grave.

In 1925, Eugene O’Neill wrote a play about Lazarus. From his journals, we learn that O’Neill felt a drama centered on Lazarus might be of interest since he was “the man who had been dead for three days and returned to life, knowing the secret.”  

What secret? What Lazarus proclaimed to the world upon his return was, “There is no death!” 

In his play, Lazarus stumbled out of the grave, having passed through the door of death onto the other side where the mystery lies. Like a discoverer returning from a strange, unknown world, he came back with the startling news “that death is only a doorway …(and) there’s a life on the other side of the door!”

O’Neill recognized Jesus’ sadness in realizing he had arrived too late, with Lazarus already on the journey of death. Summoning all the courage he could muster, Jesus shouted into the gaping hole of the grave, “Lazarus, come out!” and the dead man stepped from the darkness into the bright sunshine of his previous earthly home.

For the resurrected Lazarus, the great, simple truth of the mystery of death literally became a fountain of youth. In each scene, his age peeled away one layer after another.

Knowing the secret of what lies beyond death’s door, Lazarus repeatedly lets loose a hearty laugh in response to all the threats the Roman government or the Jewish priests might offer him for his faith in Jesus.

O’Neill imagined Lazarus with an otherworldly confidence in life, taking a lighthearted look at how overinflated our fears of death can be. He understood death is merely a portal to the next existence and not the ultimate victor. Death is swallowed up in the victory of God who rules over even the sting of death.

Lazarus moved back into the world of the living like a butterfly emerging wet and folded from its cocoon. In O’Neill’s creative imagination, he decided Lazarus, free from the fear of death, “would rise radiant and full of laughter in joyous affirmation of unending life.” 

In effect, O’Neill was protesting against our interpretation of this story that overemphasizes the grief Jesus displayed at the death of his friend. In his protest, O’Neill found the title for his wonderful play, “Lazarus Laughed.”

In the fullest expression of the incarnation, Jesus came to live among us. In that life, even he understood what it meant to stand before the grave and contemplate his grief. 

But Jesus also understood that death was not the final word. Jesus understood the pain of his grief was a momentary experience of loss that would soon be eclipsed by the joy of reunion.

I invite you, my sisters and brothers, to remember the power of our community as Christian believers. We stand together and share our tears with one another in honest grief over our loss. 

In standing together, a new sense of power is released that is healing and comforting. In the pain of our deep feelings of loss, off in the distance, a hearty laugh erupts, reminding us that even death is absorbed in the life-giving power of God.

Have no fear, my fellow strugglers, have no fear. When that awful moment comes unbidden, we will stand together until the dawn of another resurrection day. 

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s love, and the Holy Spirit’s communion be with you all.