TRIGGER WARNING: MENTIONS OF DEATH, GRIEF, TRAUMA
It’s Saturday and we find ourselves in the wake of Jesus’s death yesterday. I know the temptation is to run to Sunday, but Saturday happened. For as much as you will allow yourself, let us sit here for a moment and talk about grief. I encourage you to breathe through this. Step away, come back, or pause to center and ground yourself. This piece is hard because, well, grief is heavy.
*inhales deeply* Who was your person? Who was the one that you lost that changed you forever? Who is the person that marks your life “pre-this person” and “post-this person”? Have you recovered? Do you ever fully recover? When did it finally hit you? What was the one that changed you?
For me, it was my grandmother. Margaret Rebecca Johnson Murray Stewart Barnes, whose full name is always worth speaking, was so many things to so many people. She was deeply loved and cherished. More than that, she showed up in the world as a whole self — a thing many of us never have the audacity to do. While she gave so much of herself to the world, she was my every reason for coming home. She was what happens when God deposits goodness into the world. She kept my secrets, prayed for me, cooked for and with me. She cracked all the jokes and threw all the shade. She was everything and then some. Between her death, the wake, and her homegoing service I managed my emotions as well as could be expected. It was not until the moment they lowered her casket that I felt my soul shatter into a million pieces.
I’m willing to make an argument that what is harder than knowing someone is dying, is knowing that someone is dead. My life is now separated into the “Pre-Granny”, “Post-Granny” categories. I am forever changed. I believe in the communion of the saints and have cultivated our relationship in this way as best I can, based on the promise the bible gives, knowing she is always with me. This doesn’t take away from the loss, because this is both the closest and furthest away I have ever felt. I know the question of “oh death, where is your sting?” is meant to be rhetorical. However every time I hear it, I think of Granny. Death’s sting is often quite near, quite literally taking its rest in my soul in this “Post-Granny” life.
I do not know the intricacies of the relationships with physical, historical Jesus. I’m not sure what it means to have walked with him, been healed by him, having heard him laughed, watched him do the impossible, listened to him preach, been mentored by him, to have breastfed him, or been called by him directly. I can only imagine. I just know that that level of love, losing it, could not have been easy. Grief is the price we pay for love. Without a doubt, they were loved.
I know the temptation is to rush to Sunday, to get Him up. That’s the shouting point of the story and there’s perhaps nothing more that we love as a people than the glory shout that is birthed from endured pain. Theologians argue about whether or not Jesus went to hell and had a revival, which they’ll get an answer for after Sunday. For today, this sadder day that is Saturday, it is worth sitting in the grief of people who must now co-exist in the world of a dead Jesus. Remembering and honoring our own griefs in our Post-Person worlds.
I love my family, dearly. I think in some ways, like so many families in our communities, culturally we missed this gift that God gives us. This gift is giving ourselves permission to vulnerably sit in and process our grief. When we were at the graveside, I shed one tear, before my entire family began to emphasize our cultural mythology concerning grief: “they would not want you to cry. We’re strong. We don’t do that.” In this moment of inexplicable grief, the messages of my well-meaning village told me that it was not my role, nor my privilege, to openly cry. It would be almost a week before I finally lost it, before I finally paid the debt I owe to true love. I choose to live in a different way now, and embrace the gift that Saturdays — sadder-days — give us. We get to feel them. We get to grieve. We get sit in the weight for it for a moment, if for no other reason, because the world had to reconcile a dead Jesus.
Today, we light a virtual candle for those who have gone on. We grieve with you. You are deserving and worthy of the grief. My prayer is that no one rushes you to your Sunday. May we be a people who do not run from, subside, ignore, or suppress our grief. The same God that kept Jesus’ loved ones on their Saturday will be with you as well. Feel it and let God get in the grief with you. Because when you make room for the divine to get in it with you, it won’t always be Sadder-days.
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