So, we’re just going to keep on pretending? Our only option cannot be to stick to the worship program, given the state of the world, the economy and American democracy. In addition to giving up denial for Lent, I would like it addressed in a sermon series.
Because I’ll never forget the churches that didn’t change their liturgy, that kept on rejoicing while millions of people died from COVID-19, the ones who kept singing praises to God while so many people grieved is where they lost me.
“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot,” Jamie Anderson said. “All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
She’s right. Years later, I am not convinced I can take my grief to church.
I have repeated the refrain, “God is good all the time and all the time, God is good.” But I was young and inexperienced, so forgive me. Because when death is making its rounds, it is hard to hear.
So, let’s not say that right now. Instead, let’s hold space for the life-altering reality of losing a grip on flesh and blood, next of kin, soul mates and life partners.
It is just poor bedside manner for those questioning the God who “needed another angel” more than I needed my Uncle John. It lacks empathy and compassion for those who don’t have family members to spare for God’s heavenly choir. Besides, faith is “the substance of things hoped for”—not denial of the pain and grief that surely follows us all the days of our lives (Romans 12:2).
My uncle John, who had taken his nieces and nephews into his home and cared for both his parents, even though they had long forgotten who he was, died alone in a hospital room on June 17, 2020. Both his memory and body failed him in the end. COVID-19 restrictions prevented me from sitting next to him.
No matter the refrain, I will never get over that or the feeling that I failed him. So, say it again: “God is good all the time and all the time, God is good.” But it won’t stop the pain.
Christians claim to follow Jesus, who came with a target on his back and a bounty on his head. He was a “dead man walking,” so I will never understand those who follow in his footsteps only to take pictures at his tomb.
I assume they come for the miraculous sign shows and the buffet but will return for the resurrection. They don’t have the stomach for his suffering, so they won’t visit him “down at the cross.” They want to celebrate his death and make that Friday good by not staying in the present moment.
But Jesus wept. “(Jesus’) response to Lazarus’ death was not, ‘He’s in a better place,’ and it wasn’t, ‘Don’t worry; you’ll see him again,’ Amy Nix wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “A Christlike response to someone’s grief is to grieve with them.”
Instead, we treat Lent like a new life resolution that lasts about forty days. Once the stone is rolled away, the coast is seemingly clear for us to return to indulgence. Hallelujah!
Because so many of us come to church to be entertained, to forget about our recent trip to “the valley of the shadow of the death.” Because we cannot handle the pain of loss, the depth of sadness or the seeming madness of grief, what we want to say doesn’t go well with “God is good all the time.”
This is why Lent is so important, lest we forget the way of Jesus’s suffering. Jesus never denied what was happening to him: rejection, denial, betrayal and death. In fact, according to the gospel writers, he often had morbid conversations.
I hate to break it to you, but Jesus suffered and died. Though it’s still hard to believe, my uncle John suffered and died too.
Nothing you say or sing will make me feel better about this reality. So just grieve with me. Cry and scream with me.
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering,” Gordon Allport wrote in the preface to Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” I still don’t know why a firstborn son who devoted his life to his country, becoming a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army and retired to take care of his family, including a twelve-year-old niece, suffered and died alone.
I do know that my uncle John loved me so much that I still grieve the loss of him. There is just no denying that.
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Click here to read more by Starlette Thomas.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
