Bryan Craddock - Overcoming Grief

When I was growing up, my family lived just over a mile away from my grandparents. Though we lived in a suburb just north of Los Angeles, my grandfather was a farmer at heart. He had grown up in Arkansas and loved to grow tomatoes, squash, melons, and even corn in his little backyard. His world revolved around a greasy old work bench in his garage where he was constantly tinkering. On most summer afternoons, if you walked into his garage you would hear the radio tuned-in to a baseball game. He rooted for the Dodgers, but had an amazing ability to recall baseball trivia for almost any team. He started every morning off with the sports page, but then he would turn to more important matters... like the comic strips. We enjoyed reading the comic strips together.

One of our favorites was Peanuts with Charlie Brown and Snoopy. It's amazing how long that cartoon has been around. Charles Schulz published the first Peanuts comic strip way back on October 2, 1950. It has been called "the longest story ever told by one human being" because Schulz kept creating new Peanuts cartoons up until his death in February 2000--17,897 comic strips spanning almost 50 years. Most of us can probably picture Snoopy laying on top of his dog house or Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound losing a baseball game and saying, "Good grief!"

That's a strange expression, isn't it? I don't know how or where it originated, but we don't normally associate the words "good" and "grief" together. They seem like contrary ideas, particularly in our world. Most people today seem to do whatever they can to avoid grief. Christian psychologist Gary Collins points out that people in our country generally, "value efficiency, intellectualism, rationalism, and pragmatism, so death is often seen as an inconvenience or embarrassment. Emotional expressions are discouraged and grief is viewed as something that, while inevitable, should end as quickly as possible" (Christian Counseling, 349).

Is that how you feel about grieving? Do you see it as an embarrassing inconvenience? This morning I would like for us to consider how we should respond to death and grief as Christians. To answer that question, I want to direct our thoughts to 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. There Paul writes,

13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.14For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.15For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.16For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.17Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.18Therefore comfort one another with these words.


In looking at this passage of Scripture, I see three guidelines to help us overcome grief. And the first is simply this...

1. Grieve

Some people try to avoid grief altogether. They are terrified by the thought of death and they don't want to deal with it. Some Christians seem to think that grieving shows a lack of faith--as if it's a way of doubting God's goodness and the reality of eternal life. In contrast to both of those ways of thinking, here in 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul accepts grief as a normal part of life in a fallen world. We need to understand that there really is something good about grief.

Think back to the life of Jesus. John 11 tells us the story of the death of Lazarus. Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha were close friends of Jesus. They had witnessed the miracles Jesus had performed. They knew of his ability to heal. So when Lazarus fell sick, his sisters sent word to Jesus. They believed that Jesus would come and heal Lazarus. But Jesus didn't come. He delayed a few days before coming. He told his disciples that Lazarus's sickness would ultimately bring glory to God. When they finally set out for Lazarus's home, Jesus revealed to the disciples that he was going to awaken Lazarus from sleep. The disciples were confused, so he explained that Lazarus had died. Jesus planned to demonstrate His power by raising Lazarus from the dead.

By the time Jesus arrived on the scene, Lazarus's body had already been laid to rest in a cave. That was a common burial place in that culture. After speaking with both Martha and Mary and coming to the tomb, Jesus began to weep. John 11:33 tells us that he was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled. In a way it seems odd. Jesus clearly intended to raise Lazarus from the dead. Why would he cry? It seems pointless. I think the best explanation is to that even though Jesus knew that Lazarus would be alive in a matter of moments, he still experienced the bitter sting of grief. And if Jesus, the Son of God, the perfect man, grieved, doesn't it make sense for us to do so?

On another occasion, Jesus spoke of the goodness of grief. It was in His Sermon on the Mount in the section that we call the Beatitudes. He said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4). Jesus was listing characteristics that mark the lives of those who will be blessed to enter God's kingdom. He listed mourning right alongside such qualities as humility, gentleness, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, being merciful, being pure in heart, and being a peacemaker.

Why would mourning or grief be so important to God? Grief is part of loving people. God wants us to love one another deeply, and if we do, the separation that takes place at death hurts us deeply. Grief is also part of having a proper view of death. Some people speak of death as if it is natural and good, but that's not true. God created us to live forever. Death did not enter into creation until Adam and Eve sinned. The Bible teaches us to view death as an enemy that will one day be defeated. Grief flows out of that sense that death is wrong.

The real blessing in grief is that it has a way of making us think about eternity. If we're open to it, our grief leads us to God, and that is part of my own story. On May 19, 1989 my grandfather died, and I grieved as one who had no hope. I wasn't a Christian, and I never knew my grandparents to be church-going people. But I remember my grandmother's words before my grandfather's casket was closed. I was standing with my arm around her and she said to him, "I'll miss you. But I'll see you again." I didn't really know what that meant, but two months later when a friend invited me to church, I went. And I began to understand and believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins so that we could be right with God and have eternal life. In October of that year, I decided to entrust my life and my eternity to Jesus Christ by becoming one of His followers.

Don't avoid grief. Don't run from it. Accept it as a good and right response to the terrible reality of death. It's OK to grieve.

The second guideline we learn from 1 Thessalonians 4 is...

2. Grieve with Hope

Grief is accompanied by a variety of feelings: from the sadness we would expect to emptiness, numbness, and depression; from guilt, anxiety, and confusion to anger. These feelings seem to come in waves, and they don't necessarily fit conveniently into a few days. They keep recurring for months. Particularly around holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries. The intensity of these feelings varies depending upon your personality, your closeness to the person, and the suddenness of the death. Grief can also be particularly hard if you have some unresolved conflict with the person. That only serves to highlight the importance of working through conflicts as we talked about last week. But another significant factor in how we grieve is what Paul mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 4:13--whether or not you grieve with hope.

Look back at 1 Thessalonians 4 again and let's see what Paul means when he speaks of hope. This hope is founded on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the beginning of verse 14 Paul said, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again..." Do you believe? Do you believe that there was a real man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived 2,000 years ago? Do you believe that He was crucified and died? It's hard to deny that. Do you believe that He rose from the dead? That's requires some faith, but it's still hard to deny. After all, Jesus' apostles staked their lives on the belief that they had seen Him after He rose from the dead. Why would they do that if they knew the resurrection wasn't true? Even more importantly, the real question is whether you believe that the death and resurrection was more than a historical event. Do you believe that Jesus, the Son of God, paid for the sins of the world? Do you believe it to the degree that you are willing to entrust your life now and your eternity hereafter to Jesus Christ? That is where hope begins.

This hope is not some vague existence where our spirits become one with nature. Look at verse 14 again. Paul says, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus." Paul picks up the same picture that Jesus used in John 11. He speaks of death as sleep. Specifically, those when those who believe in Jesus Christ die, they are asleep in Jesus. And Jesus will bring the souls of these people with Him.

Look at verses 15 through 17. He says, "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord."

Follow what he's saying here. At some point, Jesus Christ will come back. He will descend from heaven. And when he does, the souls of all the Christian believers who have died will come with him. He will resurrect their bodies for them, not as they were before but in a glorified, perfect state. These bodies will be made to last for eternity. At the same time those believers who are alive at that incredible moment will be transformed into a glorified state too. Then all of the Christian believers will be caught up together, taken up into the clouds to meet Jesus.

This is the event that theologians call the catching up or the rapture. And looking forward to the rapture is how we grieve with hope. It gives us hope because it will be the time when we are reunited with those believers who have died. This was what my grandmother was hoping in. She was able to let go of my grandfather because she had the hope that the separation would only be temporary.

But make no mistake, this hope can't be claimed by everyone. Only those who are have followed Christ will get to be caught up with Him in the future. Maybe someone here this morning is hoping to be reunited with a loved one. But if you've never come to that point of becoming a follower of Christ, you don't have this hope. But you can have it. Trust Jesus to be your Savior. Begin to follow Him as your Lord today.

But there's another question. How do you grieve with hope if the person who died wasn't following Christ? That's very hard. It's one of the reasons why it's so important for us to share with people the message of Jesus Christ and invite them to come follow Him. When someone we love dies without Christ, we look ahead to another part of our hope. The Apostle John spoke of it in Revelation 21:3-4. He says, "And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.'" When you enter into the presence of God, all the sorrow and tears and pain is gone. What an incredible hope! I long for that day. Don't you?

Now Paul's not saying that having hope here and now takes away grief. It doesn't. He just says there is a grief without hope and a grief with hope. The advantage of fixing your hope on Christ is that it enables you to have strength in the midst of grief.

You may remember hearing of Dr. C. Everett Koop. Koop was the U.S. Surgeon General in the 1980s. But prior to that time Koop experienced a great tragedy. In 1968 his son David died in a mountain climbing accident. Koop and his wife later wrote a book in which they spoke about their grief. They said, "In an effort to be comforting, so many Christians glibly say, 'God will fill the void.' Instead, we found that the void is really never filled, but God does make the void bearable" (qtd. in Collins, Christian Counseling, 353).

So grieve. But grieve with the strength that comes from having hope in Christ--the hope that makes life bearable even when you've lost someone that you dearly love. The third guideline we find in 1 Thessalonians 4 is...

3. Grieve with others

In verse 18 Paul says, "Therefore comfort one another with these words." The original Greek word for comfort literally means to call alongside. If you possess this hope that we've talked about, then you are commanded to come alongside others who are grieving. What exactly does that mean?

Often when people try to comfort those who are grieving, they try to somehow minimize the person's loss. Back in 2001, my wife became pregnant and had a miscarriage just short of three months into the pregnancy. Some elderly lady came to her and said, "Don't worry darling, you're young and healthy. You've got time to have plenty of other children." Now I'm sure she had the best intentions, but that comment wasn't helpful at all. It reminds me of Proverbs 25:20 where Solomon says, "Like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar on soda, is he who sings songs to a troubled heart." The last thing you need on a cold day is for someone to run off with your coat. And when you pour vinegar on soda, it reacts. It bubbles up. When someone is troubled, don't try to minimize their grief or get them to laugh it off. There is a place for laughter when you're grieving, but it's the laughter of remembering and savoring the person you've lost, not the laughter of forgetting.

Romans 12:15 is a good place to start in comforting someone. It says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep." That's why I say, "Grieve with others." Come along side them. You don't have to be an entertainer. You don't have to be a counselor. You just enter into someone's world to be alongside them, if they're open to it. When you are, look for opportunities to serve.

But what do you say when there is an opportunity? I'm always haunted by the story of Job and the men who came to comfort him and ended up trying to diagnose all of his problems. We certainly don't need to do that. Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 are helpful. He says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." I think that's consistent with what we read in 1 Thessalonians 4. We shouldn't give pat answers. But we can share with people the biblical truths that have given us strength in our own grief. And the hope of reunion with loved ones described in 1 Thessalonians 4 is one of those great truths.

Conclusion

Friends, our God is the God of all comfort. He created this world to be a perfect place, but it has been marred by sin and death. It's only right to grieve, but you don't have to grieve without hope. When you have the hope of eternal life in Christ, you can have the strength to press on. And you can also come alongside others to share this great hope.