That discomfort you feel is grief
Sermon on Luke 24:13-35
Two friends are walking down a street. It’s something they used to do in a group of 13 or more. Just a week ago. Which seems like a life ago. Now, it’s only the 2 of them. Walking and talking. Tired of trying to make sense of what happened. They have lost their leader, their spiritual director, their dear friend. And they have lost all their hope for a bright future. Life was hard before, but there was so much hope. Now, life is still hard, and all the hope of the world is disappeared in a dying man at the cross. And the man even named the devastation when he cried out: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
During the past couple of weeks, many of you mentioned a strange feeling of tiredness. Many of us have experienced restlessness combined with deep exhaustion. Some of us went into over functioning, while others hunkered down. I had a lot of anxiety-energy, fed by the idea that the more I do, the less this will affect me. Like a bargain: The more I walk, the healthier I will be. The more I know, the less I am threatened by this invisible virus, the less I am powerless. The more I keep up a happy face and reassure others, that we will get through this well, the less I have to fear that we won’t get through this well. And by well, I guess, I meant, that nothing would have to change in the long run. Like we keep saying and making plans for: When we go back to normal.
One day, as I was restlessly scrolling down my Facebook page, I found an article with the headline: The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief. It was an interview with David Kessler, who used to work with Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross on the stages of grief and it instantly explained what I hadn’t been able to name.
Today’s Gospel is a well-known story, the walk towards Emmaus. Today, I want to retell it as a story of a grieving-process with 6 stages. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and in the end meaning. It’s fairly easy to illustrate this right now as a shared experience, David Kessler says. There’s denial, which we see a lot of early on: This virus won’t affect us. There’s anger: You’re making me stay home and taking away my activities. There’s bargaining: Okay, if I socially distance for two weeks everything will be better, right? There’s sadness: I don’t know when this will end. And finally there’s acceptance. This is happening; I have to figure out how to proceed. We are way too much into the pandemic so it’s hard to talk about meaning now. Individually you can do that. Collectively we will have to spare for later.
So, back to our Easter Story of today.
The two friends are worn out from anxiety. They have cried their eyes off until there were no more tears. They have tried to deny the facts. Maybe, Jesus didn’t die after all? Maybe, the tomb was not empty after all but filled with a living Jesus? They fact-checked and nope, there was no Jesus to be found. Maybe, Jesus had restored himself like he did with Lazarus? If Lazarus had 2 lives, Jesus should at least have had as many, right? So, maybe, he would just walk up to them and hug them and everything would be just as before. Wouldn’t be great to be able to just pretend the crucifixion never happened? Wouldn’t it be great to just pretend the Coronavirus never happened?
The 2 friends are exhausted from crying, they are tired even though they rested a lot during the last 3 days. What else could they have done anyway? But the useless sitting at home made them even more restless. Their legs started hurting as if they had been hiking for days. Finally, they started walking and talking. To process their emotions, they needed some motion.
They walked and talked against the restlessness and their powerlessness to change anything. They grieved the huge loss of the most important person in their lives. And they felt anticipatory grief about the totally uncertain, life-threatening future. Their sense of safety is broken. Indeed, safety now sounds like a word from ancient times, long gone. When the future was still predictable. When we still made travel plans a year ahead.
And then the unbelievable happens and the risen Jesus does approach them. “But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” They were sightless for the most obvious reality right before their eyes. Because they were not ready to move on yet.
First thing they tell the risen Jesus about Jesus is the fact of his crucifixion. Note how they don’t blame “others” for it, but their very own leaders. No othering, no making up a foreign threat. Just the plain truth.
And then they reveal some well-domesticated anger when telling Jesus about the high expectations they had put in him: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
That’s when the anticipatory grief shines through. It’s a question of power-structure. If Jesus had redeemed Israel in a political way, his friends would have become honored members of the society. They would have become influencers. Surely for a good cause. But power is power, is attractive, is worth suffering for. As long as there is any chance for it to come true.
The way the 2 men keep telling their story, they perfectly show that the stages of grief are not linear. So, Jesus starts lecturing them. Why his death was necessary, how the Scripture was fulfilled by the suffering and glory. But even for the risen Jesus was true, what preachers don’t like to admit. Most people don’t like to be lectured, especially when they are depressed. And to tell a grieving person that everything had to be this way for a reason and that there is always something good to be learned even amidst the greatest pain, that’s just awful Chaplain work right there. Don’t you tell me the meaning of my pain! Honestly!
Jesus must have gotten a little frustrated with his clueless friends. When he decided to leave, they begged him to stay. Like they were bargaining: If we endure more of your sermon, maybe this whole situation will make sense?
And eventually, Jesus took a different approach. Away from focusing on their pure intellect. Which doesn’t work well when you are emotionally stressed. Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. He did what psychologists call “practiced mindfulness” nowadays. By focusing on something in your room you come into the present. Out of the grieved past and out of the grieved future. Instead, you breathe, you see your familiar surroundings and you realize for a short moment, that right now, right here, you are ok. You have bread. You are not sick. And then, the 2 friends taste the bread, it’s real and comforting. For a little while some of their pain is dampened. For the first time since Jesus’ death they actually live in the present.
And suddenly, there eyes are opened. They recognize the risen Jesus. What a joyful surprise. They wanted to hug him and hold him tight. Yet, in that very second, he vanished from their sight. It’s a pattern of the risen Jesus. To disappear when he is finally recognized.
The 2 friends learn it the abrupt way: They have to let go of what they cannot control. What the risen Jesus is doing is out of their control. What your neighbor is doing is out of your control. What is in their control is how they keep on living and praying. What is in your control is to stay six feet apart, to wear masks, to wash your hands and to keep praying. I cannot control what Safeway has stocked the minute I am in. But I can make sure to stock up on compassion. I can focus on that. That’s where I can find control and acceptance. Every one of us will have different levels of fear and grief and it will manifest in different ways. Someone might suddenly be really snippy. Someone might suddenly be unusually quiet or clingy or rude. Be patient, just like the risen Jesus was with his friends. Try different approaches.
So, the friends have accepted the new reality of the risen Jesus by now. And that’s when they are ready to give their suffering of the last days meaning. Nobody has to tell them. In retrospective it all makes sense. Gladly they announce: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
The truth is: while they did listen to Jesus on their way, their hearts might have been burning, but they sure couldn’t name it or even feel it in that moment. That’s what they know to be true now. After having named what they went through. After allowing all the emotions to sink in. They didn’t tell themselves: “Oh, I am sad, but I am supposed to be happy, because hey, think of Jesus’ mother, it must be so much worse for her.” They were sad and angry. And it was ok. Because if we allow the feelings to happen, eventually this process of grief will empower us.
One last word. The 2 friends went through all the stages extraordinarily quickly. Like straight from the books. I am not as advanced at all. Every time, I feel like: Now, I am calmer and now I have adjusted and now I have accepted this new way of living, several things occur. I either learn about new or longer restrictions and it throws me right back. Or I realize in another detail, how deeply this will affect my life on the long run. Which throws me right back. Sometimes, it’s so subconscious, that I only feel the bodily reaction when laying in my bed. And suddenly I start shaking and my feet get cold and my hands and all I can do is pray over and over: It’s ok, God. It’s ok. I accept this. I do. I do. And after 100 or 200 times I might fall asleep. This is nothing we will be able to walk off easily. This takes time. And hopefully, one day, we too will be able to say in retrospective: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” Amen.
