John 16: 1; 12-13a; 20-22 

 “I have told you all this to keep your faith from being shaken… I have much more to tell you, but you can’t bear to hear it now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all truth… The truth of the matter is, you’ll weep and mourn while the world rejoices; you’ll grieve for a time, but your grief will turn to joy. When a woman is in labor she cries out, because her time has come. When she has borne her baby she no longer remembers her pain, because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. In the same way, you are now grieving; but I will see you again and then you’ll rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”

 

About 20 years ago, my co-worker, the youth director in a small Lutheran church, where I was the Music Director, died of cancer in her early 30’s.  We found out, on Sunday morning after church.  The youth group had just gotten back from a weekend retreat at camp and the children of the church were running around the sanctuary and playing while the adults in the room stood together in a knot of stunned silence, unable to do or say anything.  My wonderful husband, Tom, was the first one to realize that we had to tell the children and youth, so Tom gathered the children together, his middle school Sunday School students, and the youth, and the small children and gently broke the news and led them in a prayer.

While those of us who were the “professional Christians” in the room,  The Pastor, The music director that I was, the custodian, a few members of the praise team and members of the board.  We were still frozen in our grief.

She – our co-worker, wasn’t even 40.  And she had two little girls, aged 5 and 8.  And now they didn’t have a mother.

Preparations for her memorial happened, in the fog of grief.  Pastor Scott and I had done so many  memorials together that I suppose we were just on auto-pilot.  Swimming through jello as we planned and performed the all too familiar rituals of grief.

Until a stray comment cut through the jello like a hot knife.

I overheard an older parishioner say,

“I can’t believe how much those children were crying. She should have prepared those girls better for her death.”

The lime jello funeral salad that I had been drifting through, melted into a white hot rage.

I was pinned to the salmon pink carpet of the narthex, right next to the antique reed organ, as if that comment had cut through my thorax with a white, hot knife.

The jello was gone. 

The fog was gone.

All I felt was a clear, righteous rage on behalf of those 2 little girls.  Little, little, girls only 5 and 8 years old!

As if!  As if it is even possible to prepare a child that young for the loss of their mother, when I have watched men in their 50’s sobbing so hard at the death of their beloved father that their pew was shaking the entire floor of that little white church.

I do not care how old you are, nobody is *prepared* to lose the person who loves you the most in the whole world.  Nobody. 

Our scripture for today is a very edited version of John chapter 16 verses 1-22, because I borrowed this edit, and most of the liturgy for this service, from Marcia McFee.

In the gospel of John, chapter 16, Jesus is trying to *prepare* his disciples for his upcoming death.

The chapter is super wordy because Jesus is trying to tell them everything they need to know before the guards come to arrest him. Which is why we’re using the edited version…you’re welcome.

So Jesus is talking too fast and using too many words and saying more than they can take in, but less than they’ll need to know…

Jesus says,

“ I have much more to tell you, but you can’t bear to hear it now.”

But Jesus knows that they’re coming to arrest him, right the heck now, so Jesus rattles off a bunch of stuff about how what’s going to happen needs to happen, and how it will be awful and people will be mean.

Jesus said,

“The truth of the matter is, you’ll weep and mourn while the world rejoices; you’ll grieve for a time, but your grief will turn to joy.”

But Spirit will be with you and things will get better, after a time.

Grief is kinda like childbirth.

It’s unbelievably painful while you’re in it, and then it’s over and all you’re left with is the ghost of a memory of what it kinda felt like…and a whole new life.  A life made beautiful by the memories of the people whom we have lost.

And then Jesus spends all of chapter 17 praying for the disciples and then in Chapter 18 the guards arrive to arrest him.

And everything that Jesus said was going to happen happened and it was awful.

Even though Jesus “prepared” them as best he could.

Even though Jesus told them over and over and over again that his death was absolutely going to happen and Jesus told them all those things to keep their faith from being shaken.

They were shook.

The disciples were shaking in their sandals.

Peter was shaking with fear each time that he denied Jesus that night before the rooster crowed.

John and Mary and Mary clung to each other with shaking hands and tear clouded eyes as they stood by and helplessly watched Jesus die.

I wonder if they heard the jerks who jeered at Jesus to save himself.

The disciples stayed in that upper room for 3 days because they were too dang afraid to go outside, and several days more because they didn’t believe Mary Magdalene when she told them that Jesus had risen.

Not even Jesus could “prepare” his disciples for the horrors of death and grief, so I don’t think my co-worker could have prepared her little girls either.

I don’t think any of us are ever prepared to lose someone whom we love and who loved us.

I sincerely hope that those little girls and their father never heard that horrible comment.

But I also pray for all of us who have said something stupid because watching other people be in that much pain is deeply uncomfortable.

That’s why people say such stupid things.

Because God made us, 

God designed us…

To feel compassion.

God designed us to cry when we see other people crying and to laugh when we see other people laughing.

But compassion makes us vulnerable.

Compassion makes us vulnerable to being affected by other’s feelings, 

which can lead us to caring about other’s circumstances, 

which can lead to changing how we behave, 

how we shop, 

how we vote, 

how we treat ourselves, 

and how we treat others.

If we allow ourselves to feel, then we just might allow ourselves to care.

One of the things that I often see at memorials is that people will have an epiphany.  They will allow themselves to feel all the love that is behind their grief and finally listen to their late mother’s advice to do or keep doing whatever it was that she kept telling them.

So much of the changes in our lives and therefore:

 in the church, 

the state, 

our country 

and the world

 begin with letting ourselves feel.

Just feel, the love that flows first from God, our source, through and among us, and let that love lead us into caring about our neighbors.

There’s no blue ribbon prize for being stoic and pretending that you don’t feel anything, when your world has been turned upside down.

That’s just the people who are afraid to feel, being annoyed that your beautiful grief has made them feel something uncomfortable.

Let them be uncomfortable.

Compassion isn’t a woke mind virus.

Compassion is a commandment.

Compassion is the last commandment that Jesus gave us before he *tried* to prepare his friends for his death.

John 13:34-35

34 I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”