| Title: | “Unresolved Grief” |
| Scripture: | Jonah 3:1-5, 10, 4:1-5 Mark 1:14-20 |
| Date: | 1/26/03 Third Sunday after Epiphany (Yr. B) |
| Rev. Joy Haertig |
The story of Jonah is told annually at the services of Yom Kippur in Judaism. According to the International Jewish Encyclopedia, it is shared not as a true story in terms of fact, but as a story of profound truth. Yom Kippur is a day to reflect on and repent of one's sins. Sin is that which separates us from God, it blocks the flow of relationship, the give and take of love. This time as I reflected on the story of Jonah, I saw a man almost drowning in grief. Jonah's grief was making him run from God rather than towards him. Jonah's grief has become a sin, something that separates him from God.
It seems odd to me to speak of grief as a sin, for it is a very real and even necessary part of life. But grief can become a sin, something that separates us from God when we hold on to our grief with all of our might, and it festers into resentment, unresolved anger, depression or even rage.
Jonah was so full of rage at Nineveh, and so full of disappointment in God, that he turned away from God, he could not bear the thought that such horrible people might know God's mercy.
Carl Sandburg wrote this little poem about the story of Jonah and the whale:
If I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time in the dark
And came out alive after all.
Jonah is asked by God to proclaim divine judgement against Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, which overran Israel in the 8th century “before the Christian era” (BCE). Nineveh was famous for its gross cruelty. It was a place full of enemies that conjured up horrible images and stories of cruelty and violence. Jonah was asked to carry the word of God's divine judgement as well as offer them an opportunity to repent once and for all. The people of Nineveh, in Jonah's mind, should not even be considered worth God's time or interest, much less God's mercy.
Here is another poem inspired by Jonah, written by Thomas John Carlisle.
-Coming and Going-
The Word came
And he went in the other direction.
God said: Cry
Tears of compassion
Tears of repentance;
Cry against the reek
Of unrighteousness;
Cry for the right turn
The contrite spirit.
And Jonah rose and fled in tearless silence.
Jonah did not want to face his call from God, he did not want to allow his grief to be healed through forgiveness and mercy; instead he wanted revenge. A very real and human response indeed.
It is not hard to come up with glaring examples of the “Ninevehs” of our day -- Sadam Huessin, Osama Bin Laden or the Washington D.C. snipers. The Post Intelligencer published an article last week on the lives of two homeless women who were murdered in 2001 by a group of wandering teens. The article reflected upon the lives of the two women, both driven into a very severe depression from grief, addiction became an attractive antidote and homelessness followed. I do not doubt that unresolved grief also played a part in the frightening behavior of the young men, but at first it is hard to find any sense of mercy for their horrifying acts.
As I try to understand the complex and confusing perspectives on the war in Iraq, I can not help but wonder if unresolved grief could play a role in war. What is God asking us to do with this unresolved grief? Will war give us a resolution?
These are obvious examples of a modern “Nineveh”. But what of the less obvious ones, the personal ones that lie closer to our own hearts.
The grief that lingers on and on and takes the form of angry resentment over a difficult divorce, the grief that stays locked inside when a friend has betrayed us. In families, neighborhoods, and organizations like church communities, disagreements occur - frustrations or disappointments are not talked about and walls are built between people.
Or a big one that I believe haunts many of us - the grumbly grief that dances around the edges of our daily lives that is rooted in our resistance to change. We struggle to keep up, adjust or long for the “good old days”.
I included the reading from the Gospel of Mark this morning because I was struck by an image I had of Zebedee, the father of two newly called disciples, James and John. Zebedee is working on the fishing boat with his two sons and some hired workers when Jesus comes by and invites the sons to follow him. According to the story, the two sons walk away from the boat and don't look back. I can see Zebedee standing there in his fishing boat, watching his sons walk away from him. I can feel his heart pounding in his chest as his emotions run between rage and sadness; I can see the grief in his eyes. His world just shifted right in front of him; it would never be the same again. How would he deal with that? How have you dealt with your children when they have gone a direction you did not want them to go?
The story of Jonah reminds me of the many “grief's” we hold on to that can take the form of anger, resentment, judgement, depression, a desire to give up or to put our head in the sand. The grief we hold on to so tightly that even the thought of releasing it, healing it, even a little, is enough to send us stomping out the door. I have come to believe that our own sense of identity can be wrapped up in the various sorrows, disappointments, and losses we hang on to. If we relinquish them, we lose a part of ourselves. Our pride perhaps, our self-righteousness? We lose the opportunity for justice in OUR terms. We risk appearing weak.
I once had an acquaintance in Oregon whose father became ill rather suddenly and then died while he was in the hospital. The son was haunted by the loss. All the what-ifs were constantly swirling in his mind - his anger at the doctors, his frustration that he could have done more - his anger that he had lost a father that was more like a friend. The grief became a part of his identity, I believe he feared that in letting go of his grief and the various forms it took, that his connection with his father would be completely gone. Somehow, by staying angry, his father stayed alive.
Sometimes grief can become depression when we don't talk about it. I know that sometimes I am afraid that if I start talking, I'll start crying and I will never stop until I just melt away like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz! Or we don't ask others about their grief because we are afraid of opening up their floodgates as well.
The Stevens Hospital newsletter from the Bereavement program included a poem in one of its publications that was called “Please Ask” by Barbara Taylor Hudson. The poem was about the release she felt in her grief when someone had the courage to just ask her about her deceased husband. She so enjoyed the opportunity to tell a story or two. These are the beginning words of her poem: “Someone asked me about you today. It's been so long since anyone has done that. It felt so good to talk about you, to share my memories of you, to simply say your name out loud.”
I've come to believe that for grief to heal, we must be willing to let go of it and open our tightly held fists of pride or self-righteousness, despair or hopelessness. Yes, it just might take years for grief to be resolved. The first step is being willing to acknowledge our limitations and powerlessness, to acknowledge the grief and not run from it. Limitations and powerlessness - these are at the core of grief.
Grief can take many forms and I am in no way trying to suggest that all grief can come to a neat and tidy resolution. Yet I believe that much of what we grieve can be healed enough that it no longer has a strangle hold on us. We can let go; we can find peaceful solutions, we can move on, we can “come out alive after all.”
If I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for a while;
Because I was swallowed one time in the dark
And came out alive after all.