Jesus Wept. Why Can't We?

    In the US, when someone we love dies, there are a myriad of ways we convey the death of a person to those around us: They “passed on.” They are “no longer with us.” They are “in a better place.” It’s all very sterile and removed from the reality of death. The way we speak about death points to the way we expect the family and friends of the deceased to act. We should be sad, but not too sad. After all, the person we loved is “in a better place.” We should feel sorrow for a certain amount of time, but then we should “move on.” To someone who has experienced the death of someone very close to them, all of these cultural norms feel insane, but surrounded by a homogeny of expectations we start to feel that maybe we’re the ones who are a little bit crazy.

            But we’re not crazy. Our Western traditions are not random- we’ve been indoctrinated into a culture based on a massive misinterpretation of Christianity ultimately designed to conform and corral everyone who didn’t fit specific expectations. One of the earliest records are the Edicts handed down during the Third Council of Toledo (589 A.D.) wherein the Catholic Church, attempting to eradicate “pagan” mourning practices, banned wailing at funerals citing New Testament scripture which reassured believers the souls of the departed were with the Lord. This interpretation was more focused on the broader eradication of pagan traditions and the consolidation of religious power than it was a true desire to instruct. This is evidenced by the other 21 disciplinary canons of the Third Council of Toledo, some of which forbid the intermarriage of Christian and Jew and prevented civil authorities to issue instruction to clergy or slaves of the clergy/church. The Protestant Reformation did not change Western Christianity’s course of suppressing emotion, but rather painted a picture of the Catholic faith as too expressive. It’s no wonder we’re emotionally repressed and judgmental of those who express their emotions freely- we’ve been systematically told being sad is ungrateful or ignorant of the gift of eternal life (this does not address the sadness of the death of someone who did not acknowledge God/Jesus within the faith structure).  

As we’ve lost our ability to grieve, other problems have cropped up. Martín Prechtel says it best in his book, “The Smell of Rain on Dust” when he writes, “Grief does not go away. It can change into many things and will, but as a substance and presence it never leaves.” He discusses the need to “metabolize” our grief or else we run into other significant problems: 

“If time [to grieve] is not afforded us, then we contract a hard empty place somewhere inside us that we must emotionally and physically negotiate every time we remember it or else try to detour our minds away from the memory of it for the rest of our lives.” 

This manifests in violence, substance abuse, emotional distance, mental disturbance, and other negative impacts which often are carried by our descendants in some form or another. So, if we don’t appropriately grieve, our grief is passed down to others- tragically, the ones we care about the most. This feels so incredibly true to me, having had an alcoholic father and a paranoid schizophrenic mother (a victim of physical abuse from her husband)- I certainly have paid for the the grief they carried but never dealt with. Perhaps their grief was also a deferment from their parents all the way back to the Puritans.

1 Thessalonians 4:13 reads: “Do not grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.” That scripture, among others, is often used by fellow believers to chastise grieving individuals, but this chastisement completely ignores the content of the verse itself and bypasses the totality of scripture which is filled to the brim with expressions of grief. Heck, we have a whole book in the bible dedicated to sadness (Lamentations), not to mention many Psalms that deal with despair and grief over deaths of loved ones. Wherever you look in scripture there exists brokenness that demands grief. Up until the last chapters of Revelation where a new Earth will be created in perfect harmony with God, grief exists.

Old Testament references aside, it is worthy to note Jesus mourned over the death of Lazarus when he arrived at his friend’s grave. He wept for the reality of death and for Mary and Martha who had just lost their beloved brother. Even though in just a few short minutes Lazarus would no longer be dead, he wept. This shows us that we can have hope and be terribly grief-stricken at the same time. Jesus weeping provides a powerful juxtaposition that validates the emotion, desire, and even the need to grieve the ones we’ve lost to the shadow of death, regardless of what comes next.

For some of our loved ones who died at ripe, old ages, their funerals can be a time of celebration- of lives lived well and all the amazing experiences they had and shared with others. I in no way want to encourage folks to not have happy feelings in the midst of farewells if that’s what your heart feels. And for those big, full lives, weeping can be as appropriate as celebration for not having more time. I grieve the death of my biological mom because it was a tragic, preventable end. Like her life, her death was defined by paranoid schizophrenia. The loss of her life is a sadness, even as I rejoiced the ability to reconcile with her in the last months of her life. The loss of a whole life, unencumbered by mental illness, is also heartbreaking. 

Grieving the deaths of young people is different and much harder to rejoice over. We’re not just grieving the end of their lives, but all of the things they won’t do and be. We grieve that we live in a world where children and young adults can die. We grieve our tremendous loss of them. With or without a belief in life after death, we have lost someone so precious that we’ll never be the same. All death is worthy of deep grief. 

And if we don’t grieve, truly grieve, we risk deferring our grief to our children and loved ones in the form of divorce, alcoholism, emotional distance/ignorance, and other manifestations of unfelt grief which, left to fester, destroy our ability to love and find joy. So let us grieve. Sit with us and listen. As Jesus said, “weep with those who weep.”