Two
years ago, I stood up to give the pastoral prayer like I do every Sunday. I had
been handed the prayer cards just as the prayer preparation hymn was ending and
so hadn’t had time to scan them before beginning the prayer. As I began to
simultaneously read and speak the prayer concerns, I found myself caught off
guard by the words I had heard myself speaking.
“Josephine
Hernandez, 38, passed away peacefully.”
It
felt as if someone was standing behind me, their hands wrapped around my
throat, squeezing. I opened my mouth but nothing could push through the lump
now lodged deep in my throat. For the first time in my ministry career I found
myself laid out just trying to catch my breath.
Jo
and I had become friends over the past two years visiting at local coffee shops
on and off over the course of her cancer diagnosis. I always left in awe of her
wisdom, courage, and perseverance. Our time together gave me strength and hope
and perspective.
Reading
the prayer card that morning I learned there would be no exchanged text
messages, no more talks and tears over hot teas and healthy snacks. Jo, despite
her strength, resourcefulness, and will to live beyond a cancer which had
invaded her body, was gone.
Unlike
most pastoral care contexts, in the moment I read that prayer card I had no
time to mentally prepare or emotionally process, to cover up grief with the
mask a professional role so conveniently provides. In that moment, I was
nothing more than broken open, struggling to pick up and put back together the
pieces of me. Sitting back down in the pew I buried my face in my hands and cried.
And for the rest of that afternoon the voices inside me relentlessly scorned my
lack of composure and control.
I
remember this story today because for the past few months I have been contemplating
a pattern I’ve observed here at Hope. A pattern I sense is reflected in the
microcosm of my own experience the morning I learned of Jo’s death. The overwhelming
experience of feeling shame in the sharing of our own brokenness.
My
concern with this pattern is not with the experience of shame in and of itself
but around the ways in which this shame manifests itself to prevent us from
being vulnerable and therefore from truly connecting to one another in this
community.
Brene
Brown writes, “The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I
look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s
courage. In me, it’s weakness.”
So,
I begin with a moment of true empathy. If anyone should be comfortable modeling
moments of vulnerability it should be a spiritual leader who embraces the reality
that we are created as broken and vulnerable and beautiful beings in need of
God’s continual salvation.
If
I strive to model for you what perhaps you expect, and most definitely what I
expect from myself -this perfect reflection of this wider culture of mastery, a
culture of problem-solving, a culture of wanting to move on with things for the
sake of not burdening anyone with the inconvenience of our humanity - then I am
distracting the people of this community from the pathways that would lead to healing,
wholeness, and true belonging.
If
belonging is achieved by having the courage to show up and be seen, then we
better believe that what we are about to see is not going to be half-baked
smiles and one-word answers. Being vulnerable in community can feel a lot like
throwing a glass vase on the floor, taking off your shoes, and moving forward with
the hope that you don’t get cut.
In
this community, it seems we must have been cut a lot. Here we wear steel-toe
boots with rubber socks. We warn people when we think we “might” cry as if it
were equivalent to “maybe” throwing up. We use our emotional vulnerability as a
liability to prevent us from participating in gatherings. We apologize for
tears as if we just exposed the other to some contagious incurable disease.
I’ve
spent a lot of time reflecting on these encounters with curiosity and concern. If
not in this church, if not in the presence of God joined together as the Body
of Christ, then where do we find safe space to weep for the loss that surrounds
us?
Today’s
Scripture drops us off in territory I would label as worthy of emotional
whiplash. Jesus was dead, then he was alive, now he’s alive but he’s gone as
though he were dead.
Dr. Pauline Boss, Professor
Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, created a new field in family
psychology when she coined the term, “ambiguous loss.” Dr. Boss defines ambiguous
loss as a loss that leaves a person searching for answers, and thus
complicates and delays the process of grieving, and often results in unresolved
grief.
She writes that ambiguous loss can occur from
Alzheimer's disease and other dementias; traumatic brain injury; AIDS, autism,
depression, addiction, or other chronic mental or physical illnesses that take
a loved one's mind or memory away.
If, at its core, ambiguous loss results from the
experience of someone being both here and not here-
I would argue that losing a loved one to a sudden
ascension after already grieving their death from crucifixion followed
celebrating two days later when they were raised from the dead- that the ascension
of Jesus could also classify as an ambiguous loss.
The significance of classifying the ascension of
Christ as an ambiguous loss is that we relinquish the possibility of full
closure for the promise of continued relationship. By naming our loss it
highlights the implications for our lives today. It makes the absence of Christ
new again and in turn raises our awareness to His presence in our lives today.
Ashley Davis Bush writes that “transcending loss is
the process of learning to live with love and loss side by side in a way that
brings greater meaning and purpose into our lives.”
To be in relationship with Christ requires a recognition
not just of the ways in which God is present in our lives but also acknowledgement
of the ways in which Christ is absent. I grieve the loss of Jesus the most
potently when I bump up against the limitations of my own humanity. I often
imagine that if Christ laid hands on someone in this hospital bed, they would
be healed. If Christ listened to the person in my office, they would be made
whole. In my helplessness, Christ becomes the unreachable magic wand that resolves
all conflict and prevents all suffering, if only he were here.
In grief, the story I tell myself is this: If Christ
were here, I wouldn’t have to be human. I wouldn’t have to be vulnerable. I
wouldn’t have to be broken.
For me, in his absence Jesus becomes the great fixer.
And I have forgotten, despite the pressures and expectations of the people surrounding
him, that this was never who Jesus was, the fixer. The gift of Jesus was his
ability to remain present in the permanence of brokenness and to invite others
to experience the miracles of belonging to such a narrative.
In The Feast of Ascension and the Human Experience, Nathan
Clair writes that, “The Ascension of Jesus articulates a kind of manifesto that
calls us not to rise to heavenly places of prestige, privilege and power, but
to run unhindered into the embodied fullness of the human experience—to
joyfully proclaim in our living that one day here on this good earth made new,
in our bodies, humanity will dwell fully and freely with God precisely because
God has already received us in the body of Christ.”
At its core, the Ascension is a call to connection
and for this reason the loss of Jesus is one we will never find closure. It is
an invitation into an unfolding narrative, an ongoing relationship.
This past Spring, I received news that my clergy
friend had lost his twin boys when his wife went into labor at only
twenty-eight weeks. Eloquent and grace-filled in nature, to me, my friend was a
model for all those who feared the repercussions of grieving loss anywhere
besides behind the safety of closed doors. I admired the courage he showed in
posting online a picture as he solemnly held his stillborn son. I was moved by
the words he shared with his congregation on his first week back, confessing to
them:
“But
I have not grieved well — whatever that may mean. My grief has been made of
spit and mud, staring up at the heavens from a pit where light does not reach.
No
one tells you how heavy the emptiness of grief can be. How it coils around
every organ, every muscle, and squeezes. How it paralyzes you until even
getting out of bed in the morning is a great and strenuous task.
All
I want to do is hold my boys again. To feel the touch of their skin on mine.
But I look down, and my arms are empty. I look at their clothes hanging in the
closet; their toys lying in a corner, unplayed with; their nursery, empty and
forbidden.
In
Ezra and Leo’s absence, I have felt God’s absence.”
If we desire Christ to be more than a stagnant memory
of our collective pastime, we must accept that vulnerability is the price we
pay to belong to God. To belong to one another.
When we have known the presence of someone we love,
we inevitably experience the absence of who we knew them to be. And we grieve. The
pain we feel, the tears we shed, are fruits of memories come again to life. If
we are a community that claims to be in relationship with a living Christ, to
have felt the presence of Christ in our lives, then pain, sorrow, and sadness
will be fruits of our faithfulness. Grief will be a regular part of our work.
But this grief is not busy work assigned to bide our
time but an employment of our humanity for the building up anew of the Body of
Christ in this world, in our lives. A building up of the Body, so that in this
great absence, love might break through and together we might meet again the
Christ we thought we once knew.
