A Buddhist master always told his disciples “Everything is illusion.”  Then his son died and his disciples found him sobbing.  “Master,” they said, “you taught us that everything is illusion.”  “Yes,” he replied, “but this is a super illusion.”

       It is human nature to cling to what we love.  Letting go is hard.  There’s a saying in some twelve-step circles “Everything I ever let go of is covered with claw marks.”  But whether we want it or not, loss will come in life.  And when it does, we grieve.

       Grief was clearly a part of Jesus’ life.  He cried over Jerusalem.  He wept with such heartache at the death of Lazarus that people said, “See how much He loved him!”

       Our word “grief” comes from two roots.  One means to be burdened, the other means to be hurt. So grief is to be burdened with hurt.  We all know the feeling.  We have all lost people we love. We’ve all lost treasured relationships.  We have all grieved over lost dreams.

       I have done many memorial services for older people over the years.  It is a bitter day when a man or woman buries his or her life partner.  It is perhaps the lowest point ever reached by the human spirit.  In Genesis 23 we stand beside Abraham as he weeps at the grave of Sarah.  He is walking in the valley where death has cast its shadow.

       Probably about seventeen years pass between Chapter 22 and Chapter 23.  Sarah is now one hundred and twenty-seven years old.  Isaac, her son is in his forties.  The family has moved back from Beersheba to Hebron, under the oak of Mamre, where they had lived when they first came into the land of Canaan.  It’s kind of like going back to their honeymoon cottage.  Here Sarah dies.

       As was the custom in those days, the body of Sarah is placed in a tent all by itself.  Abraham goes into the tent alone to weep and mourn.  The old man has gone through many disappointments.  But the only time we are told that he wept was when Sarah died.  I think this reveals the depth of his grief and his love for this woman.

       As Abraham knelt there, I think he saw in his mind’s eye the beautiful girl who captured his heart long, long ago.  He remembered the sunlight glittering in her hair when he first saw her, the radiance of her face on her wedding day, the softness of her touch, and the grace of her movements.  Each memory brings heartache in the darkness of his grief.  He recalls the adventure of their life together, and especially that supreme, compelling call from God that sent them out as a couple together into an unknown land.  He remembers how Sarah went with him, sharing hardships, accepting the unsettled life without complaint.

       Abraham’s heart then rocks with anguish as he remembers again his cowardice in Egypt when he exposed Sarah to danger and dishonor with his lie to Pharaoh.  All the bittersweet memories come in upon him as he recalls their long, weary years without a child.  He remembers how Sarah cried bitter tears over her barren womb and how in her desperation to give him a son, she offered her handmaid, Hagar, even at the cost of her pride, and Ishmael was born.  All of this fills Abraham’s heart as he weeps for Sarah.

       He remembers, too, how at long last joy shone in Sarah’s face when her own son, Isaac, lay in her arms.  His memory runs back over the years and retraces the love that drew them together, through the bad times and through the good, till they were one in body, mind, and heart.

       Now death has torn her from his arms.  It is an hour of darkness and grief in the shadow of death.  But this is not the whole story.  We read something further of the life of discipleship faith.  “And Abraham rose up from before his dead, and said to the Hittites, ‘I am a stranger and a sojourner among you; give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

       I love this phrase, “Abraham rose up from before his dead.”  That portrays a lifting of the eye, a firming of the step, a facing of life again.  Although Abraham has been weeping in the valley of the shadow of death, he somehow senses there can be no shadow without a light somewhere.  He turns again toward the light.  And this is followed by a wonderful confession of faith: “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.”  This is the word of a man who, as Hebrews says of Abraham, looks beyond all that earth has to offer and once more sees the city which has foundations whose builder and maker is God.”

       Like many of you I have watched the events in New Orleans this last week with horror and grief.   Thousands of people have been reduced to an animal- like existence while lawless people have taken advantage of the chaos to prey upon their fellow citizens.  People are trying hard to help.  But while everyone knew before-hand what such an event could do to the city, no one seemed prepared.

       As Christians we should care deeply about what is happening along the Gulf coast even if we know no one there personally.  We should do all we can to help.  We should be grieved to the core at such human pain.

       The one thing we should not be is shocked by the chaos.  There is nothing in Scripture to suggest that people, left to themselves, will do the right thing or react the right way.  This is a  broken world filled with broken people.  There is nothing in scripture that should cause us to be surprised by poor planning, lawless acts or inequality in the treatment of social classes.  There is nothing in scripture to suggest that this is the best of all possible worlds. 

       Like Abraham, we are strangers and sojourners here.  And like Abraham in his grief and loss,  we need to look beyond all that earth has to offer – even as we care for and minister to our fellow citizens. 

       John Fischer wrote this last week in the devotional for the Purpose Driven Life, “In legal terms disasters like this fall under the category: “Acts of God” because there is no other way to explain them. One thing we need to remember is that it is the same God who let the world and His human creation experience pain who turned around and sacrificed His own Son in a brutal death in order to save it. Will we ever understand that? Probably not. But as a result of God's unique divine/human incarnation, He understands us. He is neither distant nor untouched by our human predicament. Believe me, He's got His arms around these flood zones right now eager to help and comfort. And just as God suffered over Jesus, His heart is breaking over these losses. Whatever you feel, you can be sure God feels also, and then some. The acts of God include the tears of God. And just as He will ultimately redeem the human race, He will also turn our lives and devastations into good somehow. Life will go on and God will still be God.”

       Abraham lives out of the words of Paul 1 Thessalonians 4 where he writes that as Christians we are to grieve, but that we are not to grieve as people do who have no hope.  For as Christians we know that because Jesus is alive, death does not have the final word.

       God’s hands are strong.  And God has made great promises to us in Jesus Christ.  While we are to grieve, we are not to grieve as people without hope.  We are an Easter people.  We have hope in Jesus Christ.

       Some people, perhaps in their attempt to demonstrate their hope, pretend that they don’t feel what they feel.  They ignore the first part of Paul’s words – “Go ahead and grieve.”  For grief is an authentic expression of love.

       Campuses across the country have courses on death and dying. Taking the lead from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, they try to study death objectively.  Kubler-Ross suggests that dying can be reduced to specifically defined stages, a theory that gives the illusion that outsiders can understand what the dying person is going through.  As I saw my father and then my mother approaching death, I picked up this book, How We Die.  I read it but I still don’t understand. 

      I agree with Soren Kierkegaard’s declaration that “no man can die my death for me.”  No sociological study can help us to die, by making generalizations from a mass of data collected from dying interviewees.  For death is the most subjective of experiences – and grief is the second most subjective.

       As Christians we must realize that our “yes” to hope will not necessarily bring us immediate comfort or peace.  Grief must be allowed to be what it is, and God must be allowed to do what God will do through it.  As Henri Noien writes: “Our task with people’s pain is not to fix it but to make it deeper so it can be healed.”  Sometimes the letting go will open us to deeper levels of pain from which we have been shielding ourselves.

       Abraham doesn’t kneel for a moment, shed his manly tear and pop out of the tent smiling and strong.  But he does look beyond the shadow and see the light still shining.   The dead body of his wife before him reminds him that it is not yet God’s time.  His faith is not weakened by the death that occurs here, but rather, it is strengthened by it.

       If Abraham had not remembered that he was a pilgrim and a stranger, his heart would have been crushed to despair by the death of his beloved life’s companion.  So many many people seem to die inside themselves when some loved one passes on.  But Abraham lifts his eyes beyond this to the light from the city beyond.  He remembers that nothing in this life was ever intended to fully meet the needs of the heart of the pilgrim passing through.  He confesses that fact here again in this hour of grief.  He knows he’s still in God’s hands.  And so are we.

       Listen to the words of Jesus from John 14 as you prepare to come to the table of promise.      

       Read John 14.