Read: John 11:1-45

Like Jesus, I am now well acquainted with grief.

In January, I lost my dearest friend from college, a lovely, vibrant soul who walked beside me for 48 years through all of life’s challenges and joys. The two weeks before she left us were spent in a Boston ICU, “touch and go” as her long-time partner framed it (she had been suffering for the last four years from a debilitating disease). The Thursday before she died, she texted that she was feeling better and on the mend. I wrote back, “You gave us such a scare! Keep sending good news!” On Saturday morning, her body gave out. It was not the text I was expecting when her sister relayed the news. It can’t be, I thought. Not Amy.

It’s now two months later, and I’ve run the gamut of grief. I wrote her obituary at her family’s request. I’ve attended two memorial services, one at the Unitarian Universalist church in her hometown of Rockford, Illinois, and another, a cocktail party “Amy-style” in Boston, where she had lived since college. I’ve been surrounded by her family and mutual friends and enjoyed wonderful fellowship and conversation.

And I’ve cried. Crying comes easily to me as an emotive (I’m using the word as a noun here, not as an adjective). Perhaps it’s because I’m Irish. Or the daughter of an author. A poet and author herself. Perhaps it’s because I see things deeply and feel things even deeper. Or maybe my eyes are just always ready to tear. It really doesn’t matter why. I just do. Cry easily.

When I am mourning, I need time alone. In a garden. By the ocean. Listening to music. Reading poetry. Also appreciated is a loving arm around my shoulders, a touch, a nod, a word.

But how would you know this if I didn’t share it with you?

What do you need when you mourn? Will you tell me so that I can sit with you? Talk with you? Pray with you? Cry with you?

Dear Lord, in our grief, we look to you for your Revelation promise: He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them; He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things will have passed away. —Rev. 21:1-4 Until then, help us to help one another as we navigate not only the joys of our lives, but also our sorrows. Amen.
-Ashley Sweeney

Read: John 11:1-45

John 11:19 tells us that, “…many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother.” The community that formed around Martha and Mary to comfort them gives us a suggestion of what we can do for one another as we mourn and handle death together.

Emerson Elementary, where I served as principal for six years, was a community of educators who supported one another and the families of the children we served. When my mother was dying of cancer, the teachers provided an evening meal for Ron, our two teenage sons, and me every night for two months freeing me to spend time with my mother. What an example of support!

“Five Wishes” is a living will document that encourages consideration of the kinds of support you want when you are dying. Wish #4 gives us as a faith community some useful suggestions: Visit me; sit next to me and hold my hand; be cheerful and not sad; pray for me both in person and when we are apart; and play music. In my document, I have requested Taizé chants, especially Nada te Turbe (Nothing Can Trouble).

Ron is a Hospice Volunteer, and one of the options is “respite care” which provides a volunteer to sit with the patient so the primary caregiver can be free to do something else. One grateful husband and wife expressed that they had not been able to go grocery shopping together for over a year.

Dear God, we thank You for giving us a community that allows us to participate in healing and restoring your world. We thank you for giving us options to support one another and words to say when we don’t know what to say. Amen.
-Cathey Frederick

Read: John 11:1-45

What strikes me most from this Gospel, other than the obvious of Jesus raising Lazarus, is the familiarity of the scene that John sets. John makes a point for us to recognize that “… many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them,” and that “… when the Jews who were with her in the house, counseling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.”

That scene is so familiar to all of us when death arrives in our lives. The people who love us most, and those who also love the deceased, surround us to support us in our grief. There is a ritual in this process that carries through all of time. Can’t you smell the good food that their friends brought to share (maybe even a casserole or two?)? Can’t you hear the gathered friends crying together, telling stories of their friend, sometimes laughing at a funny anecdote, the silence that sometimes falls among them as they ruminate on their own memories? They are all here to grieve together and to wrap Mary and Martha in their love as they are truly suffering the loss of their dear brother.

Two weeks ago, my 23 year old daughter lost a close friend to suicide. Like Mary and Martha, my daughter is in extraordinary pain over this loss. Right now, she finds it difficult to even put one foot in front of the other, but I have been observing how she and her friends are figuring out how to mourn, discerning which rituals they need to get each other through. They have spent hours on social media talking about their friend. Now they are planning a small and intimate memorial for them to get together at a beach and hang out doing crafts together, as crafting was one of their friend’s favorite things to do.

This community of mourners is coming together to grieve, to console, to counsel, and to begin to heal. I imagine there will be tears, laughter, silence, and food. As it should be.

Lord, whether it is my time to mourn or to be with those who mourn, send your loving and healing spirit into everything I say and do. Amen.
-Charlotte Burnham

Read: John 11:1-45

I imagine most of us, young and old alike, have mourned the loss of someone dear to us. After that, the “if only” wishes sometimes begin. “If only” I had called, visited, hugged, kissed, said “I love you” one last time. We wish for something different, not so final.

When my mother died, I was 3000 miles away. ‘If only’ I had been with her. Our children were with her and I’m grateful for that. Still, I wrestled with the ‘if only’ thoughts. Bye-and-bye, I remembered the happy times when we talked over everything in the world – school, boys, duplicate bridge, marriage, my babies, her grandbabies!

Just imagine the dizzying swing of emotions experienced by Mary and Martha when their friend Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. They mourned their brother’s death and then experienced such shocking joy just four days later. My own experience with rejoicing in the memories of my mother took longer than four days, but I got there. Thanks be to God.
-Sue Shepherd

Read: John 11:1-45

Jesus wept.

I will pass over some puzzling features of this text to note that when Jesus – who had delayed by two days his journey to Lazarus’ side – eventually got to the home of Mary and Martha, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days, and the mourners were keening and wailing. Jesus wept.

Yes, Martha had run out to meet Jesus before he arrived on the scene, and Martha had heard Jesus say “your brother will rise again.” Even with this hope for Lazarus in his heart, a hope he shared with Martha, Jesus wept.

The Book of Common Prayer contains a “note” on the burial liturgy which acknowledges that the rites for burial are Easter rites and are thus characterized by joy. “This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian,” the note continues. “The very love we have for each other in Christ brings deep sorrow when we are parted by death, because Jesus wept at the grave of his friend.”

So, as the Letter to the Romans counsels, “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” So we are to let ourselves cry. Let others cry. Share grief, without uttering platitudes to one another.

And in our hearts, we nurture the hope expressed in one of the prayers of the burial liturgy in which we pray for

“faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by our call, we are reunited with those who have gone before.”

O God, inspire in me the quiet confidence that trusts you even in the face of death, and so establish me in that confidence that I will be free to weep over my losses and the losses of others. Make me a member in truth of Christ’s community of compassion. Amen.
-Fr. Jonathan Weldon

Read: John 9:1-41

“… Isn’t this the same (one) who used to come sit and beg?”

Our focus this year is on community.

When I’m not feeling well, I go into isolation. It’s not because I am contagious or unclean (although I certainly could be). It’s simply because I find my suffering deeply personal. I don’t try to hide my suffering. There’s no shame involved. I had a friend who was a physician, and his hair was always jet-black until he retired. He then went gray – almost white–haired overnight. He no longer had to color it to keep up the appearance of being young for his clients. I found he actually looked ten years younger with his natural hair than he ever did with it dyed. Sometimes our vanity or training calls for the erection of a facade. No, I don’t try to hide my frailties, nor do I wish to brag about them. I don’t suffer martyrs well either, to be honest, so I try not to pull that out of the haversack of fakery I keep close by for emergencies.

No, when I am not well, I isolate myself so that I may recover more quickly and with fewer distractions. Give me chicken soup, take my blood, poke me with needles as needed, but otherwise just stay away so that, in my being healed, I can recover enough to rejoin the human family. When I’m feeling human again, that’s when I will leave my sick bed.

The man born blind lived most of his life in isolation. The unwell were often shunned. My isolation is short-term and by choice, but not so the one born blind (or deaf). And yet, Jesus draws near. Jesus touches. Jesus anoints with a holy mudpack and sends him off for a self-service facial baptism. And the one is healed by the One, restored to a new community, because the old one challenges, chastises, and ostracizes. Not Jesus. “You’re well; it is the work of God; leave darkness behind, and join us.”

Let us pray. God, the forces for healing and restoration are varied; they rest in your hands. Heal and restore us so that we may be instruments of healing and restoration to this community in which we live. Amen.
– Fr. Keith Axberg