Communal Grief

Rev. Beth Hoffman Faeth

July 7, 2024

Scripture: Romans 12:9–18

Sermon text here.

On June 20th the governor of Louisiana signed into law that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom in the state. Like most of you, I am furious about this legislation as it points to the growing fear mongering tragedy of Christian Nationalism. The Ten Commandments were meant to create order out of chaos, ancient covenantal decrees for being a community of God’s people. That they are being used now as a form of coercion and manipulation is both heartbreaking and maddening. The section from scripture that I am about to read is a more powerful testimony to the creative possibility of community than are the Ten Commandments. Attributed to the apostle Paul as a way to encourage the new Christian community in Rome, these statements are all about what we CAN do, rather than the punitive “shall nots” of the Ten Commandments. I invite you to open your hearts to these words, especially as we prepare to acknowledge our collective grief. Let the message of this text settle into the fissured and fractured places of your spirits, which will be followed by some prayerful moments of silence:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal; be ardent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Let us pray…

Receive us, O God, as we are. Settle us into a holy silence as we acknowledge the tender places of our mind, bodies and spirits…

Decades ago, when I was trying to piece together the jagged shards of my heart following my baby’s death, I attended a state wide church conference where they offered a worship service centered upon healing. I entered the space tentatively, unsure of what to expect or if I could even trust myself to participate. I do not remember the liturgy, or the prayers or the music. But at an appointed time, attendees were invited forward one by one where pairs of worship leaders were sitting. We were asked to kneel and speak aloud the balm we were seeking, that is name where we needed healing in our lives. Something outside of my own rationale propelled me forward into what became holy ground. I knelt. I spoke my child’s name outloud and I confessed my utter and complete brokenness, my shattered spirit, my profound and all encompassing sadness. And the two ministers placed their hands, covered with anointing oil upon my head and prayed out loud for my splintered soul. When they finished I looked up to see their faces as wet with tears as mine, their anguish evident as they absorbed and shared in my pain. They helped me up and embraced me, these two acquaintances who were now intimately connected to my own grieving. Around me were similar scenes, other facilitators praying healing grace into their companions hearts. I returned to my seat, feeling dazed… and different. Something had shifted within. I looked around realizing mine was not the only broken heart, but all who were there were carrying the heaviest of burdens and we were all vulnerable within our collective grief. The cause of their sorrow may have been different from mine, yet in that time together the Holy Spirit had conjoined our suffering, and our pain was acknowledged. No one tried to justify joy, or explain away our hurt. No one told us to get over it and move on, even when those are the messages we all carried, heaped upon our hearts like rotting garbage. Instead we were offered the grace of recognition, and there was the potential of healing in the naming. There were some in the room I knew well, others I didn’t know at all—much like any church congregation in worship. But recognizing our communal grieving carved out a space for deepening relationship while also uniting us in the sharing of our individual mourning. The blessing of solidarity I knew in that communion of forlorn saints prepared me to continue my own deeply personal and lifesaving journey of healing.

I can think of no better real life experience of “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

Beloved Community, we would do well to acknowledge our grief. For indeed, ours is a shared story of sorrow.

In the year 2017, which is only seven years ago although for many of us feels a lifetime, three of Plymouth’s four ministers left, two of whom had very long tenures here. Both Seth and I were new to you then, and the congregation had to adjust quickly to new personalities and styles of leadership while missing and grieving their beloved clergy, known so well. In 2018 and 2019 we endeavored together the difficult conversations and decision making around the cherished church embroideries and our progressive and inclusive message of welcome, and while we attempted along the way to acknowledge the pain of that process many people, who perhaps did not agree with one another about the embroideries, could agree that clergy fell short of helping the congregation know healing. 2020 brought the global pandemic and suddenly church as we knew it came crashing down, the building mostly idle and empty for a very long time. When George Floyd was murdered we entered into a necessary yet unsettling time of racial reckoning, still while sheltering in place and not having access to this sanctuary and communal gatherings. At the end of 2020 we said goodbye to Paula, minister here for 18 years and the one remaining familiar ministerial tie of this congregation pre 2017. Post pandemic we have had to acknowledge the way this congregation has shifted and changed, many folks still preferring to watch online rather than attending in person, others seriously questioning the relevance of church in their lives, all while joyfully welcoming new people into our circle who bring unique and precious gifts that transform our culture and understanding. And all this change and hope and loss is just within our church, my friends. The world as we know it has shifted in ways with which we continue to grapple. Decisions are made that strip us of our freedoms and send us catapulting back decades if not centuries; leaders cannot be trusted, strife is constant and our country is so very fractured. And even this is not all we have had to endure—for through this short yet endless seven years this congregation has had to say goodbye to people we have loved dearly—because they have moved away, because they have distanced themselves from Plymouth, because they have died. And while every death is significant right now we are carrying the weight of successive loss of pillars in our congregation, women who were beacons of commitment and presence and leadership and faith who will never be forgotten and will be so very missed.

We are a community that is grieving. And we must name this. We cannot ignore it. We cannot pray it away. I feel the heaviness in our gatherings, the sadness of our collective spirits. I am heartbroken—not just for myself, but for all of us. Each week some are courageous enough to name their joy as well as their sorrow. Yet how often do we acknowledge our shared grief? The weight that we carry is too much to bear alone. So let us lament together.

Cole Arthur Riley writes about lament in her beautiful book “Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems and Meditations for Staying Human”. She says, “I don’t know how to explain the difference between a silence that is judgmental or awkward and one that is tender, but when you live it, you know. We listen to each other breathing, a compassionate silence stretching out in the space between us… What does it mean to be present to the pain of another (I add, especially as you are carrying your own pain?)? How do we keep ourselves from rushing to trite platitudes and promises that we have no right to utter? What happens when you remind a friend you aren’t afraid of their pain?” (pg 85) As we sit together in silence, listening to each other’s breath, there is no resolution. “Only the tender silence of everything we don’t have words for… healing comes when we are at last able to point to where it hurts. Lament is not a threat to our survival but a means to it. It’s how hope’s salve knows where to go…. when you practice lament with intentionality, you claim agency in your own emotional life. It’s not a sinking, it’s a steadying. You light the candle on the altar for the one you lost. You linger in your parked car, letting the song move you. You cry and don’t apologize for it. You tell stories. You name exactly what has been stolen.” (pg 85)

Cole Arthur Riley might be speaking here about the power of lament in our individual journeys, but I hear an invitation to communal lament as well. While we are willing and do name hard things in the midst of our Sunday services, do we truly allow for a time of communal grieving, an opportunity to name what has been taken from us, to cry aloud that our collective heart is breaking for all the pain and loss of the world outside our sanctuary doors and inside them, too? You have heard me say numerous times that we have the capacity to hold joy and sorrow in one hand and I believe that with all my heart, yet we also tend to glide past the sorrow part and work perhaps too hard, as a community, for a place of joy. Arthur Riley speaks to this as she closes her meditation on lament. She writes, “you shouldn’t have to rush through your grief. You should never have to sit through thoughtless pep talks or trite and over-spiritualized words about “hoping in God”. You deserve more than that. You are no further from the divine because of your pain. With every wail, you become more human. Every ache, an admission that something mattered. Until you are ready, do not let them wipe away a single tear.” (pg 86-87)

Several weeks ago I preached a sermon on anger and how for many it is an unwelcome emotion yet when used productively, anger can be a powerful change agent. While I didn’t say it that morning what I believe to be true is that anger is usually a mask for grief. Often the root of our anger is associated with loss and change and things we cannot control. Rather than paying attention to those feelings we become defensive and mad. As I consider the loss Plymouth has endured in the last seven years, anger became a regular player. People lashed out in group discussions, in mass emails, in private conversations, raging against whatever change or decision was made that caused individual pain and suffering. When one feels excluded from beloved community, it is difficult to reconcile those feelings. We would have done better if we had made space for the congregation to lament, to name the losses felt, to be honest about the crushing power of grief. Because I will tell you what you already know, what you have already lived—we can not avoid grief. We can attempt to bury it, ignore it, pretend we are fine and always, without fail, grief will have its day. Sidestepping the process of grief is a guarantee that it will show up backwards and sideways, plummeting us into a depth of erratic sadness, creating in us someone we no longer recognize. There is no way to “get over” our grief. The only way through grief is to acknowledge it and live in to all the lessons grief teaches. What might it look like moving forward if we were intentional about gathering together in lament, not trying to God speak it away but instead to be together in community—sad, scared, tired, brokenhearted. Paul wisely names in the passage from Romans that love is at the root of every healthy community and that when we lead with love everything improves: relationships strengthen, trust is secure, care is real, fear dissipates. The balm which we seek can be found in the love this community shares, even when we are weeping, especially when we celebrate tender silence, always when we acknowledge the pain and sadness of another.

Grieving together is its own path towards healing. I pledge to make space for communal lament. May it be a balm for the sadness that penetrates our souls.

With an open, bruised, loving, hopeful yet grieving heart, I offer you this blessing. A Blessing for the Brokenhearted by Jan Richardson:

Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.

Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.

Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—

as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,

as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,

as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.