Prayer for Times of Grief
John 11:1-44
April 6, 2014[1]
During
this season of Lent, we have been looking at the Gospel Texts from the Revised
Common Lectionary from the perspective of the prayer that we can find
there. We have been using a definition
of prayer that I found from William A. Barry:
prayer is a conscious, personal relationship with God.[2]
We
looked at the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and saw how he
fought the tempter by remembering his identity—his understanding of who he was,
as revealed at the moment of his Baptism:
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 4:17). Sometimes our prayer is
a prayer of listening as God reminds us who we are.
We
looked at the story of Nicodemus in the third chapter of John. Jesus is speaking with Nicodemus about our
need for rebirth—for being born in the Spirit, which we cannot see. How do we seek this birth from a Spirit we
cannot see? We pray a prayer of trust.
We
looked at the story of the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of
John. Jesus offers to her a drink of the
living water. What is the prayer that we
offer? “Fill my cup, Lord.”
We
looked at the story in the 9th chapter of John about Jesus healing
the man who was blind since birth. We
found three prayers that were appropriate here:
· A prayer for revelation: “Open my eyes, Lord. I want to see Jesus.”
· A prayer of trust:
“Jesus, I trust in You.”
·
A prayer of
thanksgiving: “thank you, Lord.”
Today,
we look at the familiar story of Jesus calling Lazarus forth from the grave,
and we look at it from the perspective of “Prayer for Times of Grief.” It is so easy to avoid the subject of grief
until the time when we are faced with a loss and cannot avoid it anymore.
There are at least two problems with this avoidance: first, it leaves us
without the resources that we need at the time that we most need them; and
second, if we view “loss” in its broadest sense, we experience losses every
day. How do we cope with our times of loss?
Jesus
invites us to pray—to enter into that conscious, personal relationship with God
and share our grief with the One we call Father. We can find several
prayers in this Gospel Lesson.
Prayer
of Discernment: When Jesus first received word that Lazarus
was critically ill, he stayed where he was for two days. He told those who were with Him that “this
illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory so that the Son of
God may be glorified through it” (v. 4). This two-day delay often has puzzled me. Was
Jesus simply delaying in order to demonstrate the power of God? From a human perspective, it would seem cruel
to Mary and Martha, and most of all to Lazarus, to put them through the agony
of death and loss unnecessarily.
A
possibility occurred to me this past week—this is my own theological
speculation. One of the great themes of
the Gospel of John is the theme of God’s Hour.
Time and time again, we read in John that Jesus’ hour “had not yet
come.”[3]
Jesus and his disciples had just escaped death by stoning in Jerusalem because
his hour had not yet come. Then, Jesus receives
word of Lazarus’s impending death. If He
returns to Bethany and Jerusalem, it will likely mean a death sentence for
Jesus and all who follow Him. What
should He do? Thomas acknowledges the
dangers that are present when he says, “Let us also go, that we may die with
Him” (John 11:16). Could it be that Jesus was agonizing and
trying to discern whether or not His “hour” had finally arrived? His hour is almost here. Was He praying, “God, where are You in
this? What do You want me to do?” In times of great crisis, it is critical that
we take time to discern God’s will. So the prayer of discernment is “your will
be done.”
Prayer
of Why: The “why” question is the one that
theologians call the “theodicy” question:
“Why would a loving God let this happen?” In times of tragedy, in times of loss, this
question often will trouble us. You can
hear this question in the words of both Martha and Mary:
· Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would
not have died” (v. 21).
·
“Could not he who
opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (v. 37).
We
also have the record of Jesus asking the why question. Do you remember the words that Jesus spoke
from the cross, quoting Psalm 22:1? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).
I
am glad that this Gospel Lesson records both Martha and Mary and Jesus Himself asking
the “why” question. They assure me that
it is OK in my own times of need to ask the “why” question. To ignore the questions in our lives is not a
sign of faith—it simply drives the questions deeper, like an infection. God invites us to bring our questions out
into the light so that the light of God’s grace can bring healing and peace to
the “why” questions in our lives.
If
Jesus and two of the dearest earthly friends of Jesus could ask the “why”
question in their time of need, it gives me comfort that Jesus understands the
questions that come to my own mind.
Prayer
of Tears: The Gospel says it very simply: “Jesus wept.”
Jesus wept, because He was human.
In the Christmas season, we celebrate what the theologians call the
“Incarnation,” and we read of how God, the “Word became flesh and lived among
us…” (John 1:14). Our Gospel Lesson today reminds us of the human
side of the Incarnation. Jesus
wept. The lesson emphasizes the human
side of grief that Jesus experiences. It
points out that Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” (v. 33), and just a few verses later, we
read that Jesus, “again greatly disturbed came to the tomb” (v. 38).
So
I find great comfort, in my times of grief and sorrow, in my times of tears,
that Jesus wept. But how do I find those
tears to be prayer?
Let’s
go back to the definition of prayer as a “conscious, personal relationship with
God.” God invites me to share the
deepest feelings in my soul. What deeper
feelings are there than the ones that lead to tears? My tears indicate that something inside me
needs to be expressed; they demand that I remove the mask that I wear and
expose the most central core of my being to God. The Book of Romans tells us that it is at
those times when we are at our weakest, when we don’t know how to pray, that “the
Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do
not what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with
groans that words cannot express” (Romans
8:26). My tears are a prayer to God.
Prayer
of Trust: Jesus told the grieving Martha, “I am the
resurrection and the life” (v. 25).
·
His words remind
us of the opening prologue to the Gospel, where we read “What has come into
being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:3b-4).
·
Jesus told some
of the religious leaders, (those who were debating with him after he healed a
blind man on the Sabbath), “I came that they may have life, and have it
abundantly” (John 10:10).
The
message that Jesus is the “resurrection and the life” is Good News—a central
element of our faith. A week ago, I was
listening to a choir practicing John Rutter’s composition of the Requiem.
The choir had just sung these words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and
the life.” The choir director stopped
the choir; she quite obviously was not impressed by the way the choir had just
sung these words. She told them,
lovingly but with passion, that these words were the most important words in
the entire piece. If they could not
convey this message with tenderness and sensitivity—both as to the words and
the music—then they might as well forget the whole thing. (By the way, the choir tried it again and did
much better!)
It
was one thing for Jesus to proclaim this truth.
It is another thing altogether for us to place our trust in this truth.
That
certainly was the case for Martha. So
Jesus looks at her and asks, “Do you believe this?” There is that word “believe” again. In our post-enlightenment minds, we read that
and think that it is something we do with our heads, but Jesus is asking the
question at a far deeper level. Do you trust
in this? Do you trust in me? Martha answers as best she can in her circumstances: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the
Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world” (v. 26). It sounds like a
textbook answer, but it’s the best she can do in her circumstances. At this point, she has had no encounter with
the resurrecting power of God. Until we
experience this power of God, it remains an academic point to us. It is only through experience that we develop
the ability to trust.
Trust
is not easy, especially if one in whom we have trusted us betrays us. William
Barry tells a story about a father who “puts his five-year-old son Sammy on a
ten-foot-high wall. ‘Jump, Sammy, jump,
I’ll catch you.’ ‘I’m scared.’ ‘Trust
your father, Sammy, jump. I’ll catch
you.’” What would happen to Sammy’s
trust if the father steps aside while Sammy is in mid-air, dropping to a
collision with the ground? His trust in
his father would be destroyed forever.[4]
What
does it mean to trust in God? To find
the answer to this question, I like to turn to one of my mother’s favorite
passages: “Trust in the Lord with all
your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to
him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6, NIV).
·
Trusting in God
means that we don’t rely on our own wisdom.
·
Trusting in God
means that we submit our lives to God.
This means putting God’s will first.
God’s will becomes our will.
But
sometimes, we can’t do this on our own.
Sometimes the best we can do is to acknowledge to God who we are and let
God take over from here. Jesus knew
that. I am so glad that the Gospel of
Mark tells us the story of a father who came to Jesus because his son was
“tormented by convulsions.” The
disciples had not been able to heal the boy, and the father was desperate. Jesus
said to the father, “Everything is possible for one who believes. Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do
believe,” but he didn’t stop there. He went
on to pray, to plead with Jesus, “help me overcome my unbelief!’” (Mark 9:23b-24, NIV).
Even
in our times of questions and doubts, trust happens when we let go of our own
need to understand and simply rely upon God.
In times of grief, it is OK for us to pray, “Lord, I trust; but help me
when I fail.”
How
do we pray in our times of loss? We can
offer a prayer of discernment: God,
where are You in this? We can offer our
“why” questions as a prayer, knowing that God is strong enough to handle our
questions. We can offer our tears to
God, opening up the deepest part of our souls to the One we call Father. And we can place our trust in the One who
said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
These
prayers are not magic formulas that make the pain go away, but they enable us
to connect with God Himself, who surely “has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). The One who has promised to be with us, even
“to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
May
these prayers be the prayers of your heart today. Amen.
Copyright © 2014 by Thomas E.
Frost. All rights reserved.
[1]
Preached at Cunningham United Methodist Church in Palmyra, Virginia.
[2]
William A. Barry, SJ, God and You: Prayer as a Personal Relationship (New
York: Paulist Press, 1987), 14.
[3]
See, for example, John 2:4 (the Wedding at Cana), John 7:88 (Jesus telling the
disciples to go to the Festival by themselves), and John 7:30 and 8:20 (no one
arrested Jesus because “his hour had not yet come).
[4]
William A. Barry, SJ, Finding God in All
Things: A Companion to the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius, Kindle Edition (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria
Press, 1991), 21.
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