Faith in a time of grief

 This is my homily for yesterday, the 5th Sunday of Lent, Cycle A.  Yesterday's readings are here.

My wife Therese came home from mass last night and shared an opinion about this Gospel reading: “They shouldn’t call this Gospel reading the Raising of Lazarus.  They should call it The Faith of Martha and Mary.”  And I think she may have a point.

Both sisters say the same thing, separately, to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”.  Let’s understand these statements, not as rebukes of Jesus, but of faith in him - his power and his goodness.  The sisters knew, as we all know, that death is evil; but they also know that Jesus is good, and that Jesus is the way that leads us away from evil to life with God.  And perhaps this is how we should understand the raising of Lazarus: as a sign of Jesus’s power over death, and his promise of life beyond our lives here on earth.

The church in its wisdom offers the Martha and Mary passages of this Gospel reading as options for Gospel readings at funerals.  Because the church knows that, when we’re facing the terrible loss of someone we love, that’s a time when we especially turn to God.  And that is surely what we see from Martha and Mary in this Gospel passage: turning to Jesus in the face of the loss of their dear brother Lazarus.

I believe our team of bereavement ministers here at St. Edna would tell us they see the same thing, over and over, in their holy and essential work with grieving families: at a time of loss, people turn to our faith to try to fill the hole that has suddenly appeared in their hearts.  Even people who may have neglected their faith for many years find themselves dusting it off during such a time of crisis because they find it's needed now.  Death in our midst has a way of opening hearts that may have been closed and locked up for many years.

I had a chance recently to witness the role of our faith in providing comfort to grieving loved ones.  On Friday, I was called to do a vigil service – a wake service - at a funeral home.  Before the service, I spent a few minutes speaking quietly with the widower and two family members who were there to support him.  Every death of a loved one has it's own story.  Here is this deceased woman's: she suffered through a long and difficult illness which lasted over two years.  The husband had done his best to be her caregiver – a role that perhaps few of us are prepared for, but which can be thrust upon any of us, and not at a time of our choosing.  Then after two years, the doctors told the woman she had six months to live.  The husband and children made hospice arrangements for her and began preparing their hearts to accept that she would be leaving them in a few months.  But then she died very quickly, within a couple of weeks.  Even though her journey of illness had been long, the swiftness of her death caught the family by surprise.  Her husband and family didn’t have her nearly as long with her as they expected and hoped.  As you can imagine, the husband is grief-stricken, emphasizing the full meaning and weight of that word “stricken” – his wife’s death has struck him a terrible blow that has left him in shock.  

What does one say to a grieving widower or widow in this situation?  The church knows the answer: we turn to our faith.  So that is what I turned to at that moment – the church’s faith, received from Jesus and stewarded over the centuries: that as pain-filled and empty as we feel in the moment, death is not the very end for our loved ones.  She may be among the saints and angels even now.  As I shared a few words of this faith, I could see a glimmer of hope in the eyes of this grieving family. 

The church offers us familiar words that, for many of us, are burned into our memories because they help express the depth of our faith: words like “Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord / And let perpetual light shine upon her”, and “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”  These are things that we believe: that eternal rest is available to our loved ones after death; and that the perpetual light of Jesus shines upon our loved ones who have died; and that our mother Mary and the saints are interceding on behalf of the people we love.  These simple words express, even in the midst of intense grief, the church’s hope and faith in the resurrection and life after death.   

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us, in the midst of Lazarus’s death and the grief of his sisters, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  When death strikes us, let us cling to our faith in these words, just as Martha and Mary did.  These simple words can be like pitons and ropes that prevent our grieving selves from sliding down the mountain of despair.

My wife Therese is right.  (Well, she almost always is.)  Martha and Mary show us the way today: even in the midst of grief – perhaps especially at that time - we can share in their faith in the goodness of Jesus.