From Grief to Joy

The Sunday morning message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are John 16:16-24.

            In my nearly thirteen years here, I have conducted two hundred sixty funerals.  That’s twenty funerals a year.

            Now, they have not all been people from our church.  But the vast majority have been people from one of the communities of this parish.  What that means is that, at any given time, there are people in our parish, people you know, who are grieving the loss of a loved one.  It may be recent, it may have been a while ago.  But either way, as you go around one of the communities of the Wheatland Parish on any given day, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll run into somebody who is dealing with grief.

            Our reading today talks about grief.  It talks about grief turning to joy.

            That’s one of those things that sounds good in principle.  No one wants to live their life feeling grief all the time.  We’d like that grief to turn to joy.  But sometimes it’s hard to see that happen.  In fact, sometimes, it’s hard to even imagine that it could happen.

            In our reading for today, Jesus is in the last night of his life on earth.  The disciples don’t know that, of course.  They know they’re in danger–they know the authorities are trying to figure out a way to stop them–but they don’t know that Jesus is going to be killed, and they certainly don’t know that he’s going to be killed the next day.

            But Jesus knows.  Jesus knows this is his last night alive on earth.  And so, he tries to prepare his friends for his death, and for them to go one with their work to go on without him.

            This comes near the end of a pretty long speech Jesus makes.  It takes up about four chapters of the gospel of John.  Jesus has already told the disciples all kinds of things to get them ready for him to be gone.  

Now, he tells them that time is coming soon.  He will leave them.  And they’ll be sad.  But then, he tells them, “Your grief will turn to joy.”

It’s questionable whether the disciples understood Jesus at all.  But if they did, they must have wondered, how can that be?  How can our grief turn to joy?  Jesus dying was probably about the worst thing they could probably imagine.  I suspect Peter and James and John and the others would rather have died themselves than to have Jesus die.  How could their grief over Jesus’ death possibly turn to joy?

It’s a question we may ask sometimes, too.  Because grief is a very hard thing.  It’s more than just being sad.  It’s a deep sorrow.  It’s a sense of mourning.  It’s a sense that something has been lost, taken away from you, and that things will never again be like they were.

As I said, when we’re grieving, joy is about the last thing we can imagine feeling.  Joy does not even appear on our radar screen.  I mean, yes, we’ve heard all the Bible verses.  We may even believe them.  “There’s a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”  “Weeping may stay for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  “God can work all things for the good of those who love him.”  We hear those verses, and we nod our heads, and maybe somewhere in our minds we agree with them.  But at that moment, when we’re grieving, we really don’t want to hear it.  All we know is what we’re feeling, and at that moment, we don’t think we’ll ever feel anything else ever again.

And you know what?  That’s okay.  Because there is a time to mourn, and we need to take that time.  And we’re allowed to take whatever time it takes.  After all, even though Jesus told the disciples that he was going to die and that he was going to rise again, when Jesus died they still felt grief.  They were completely at a loss.   The only thing that got them out of their grief was when they saw proof that Jesus was raised from the dead.

So it’s okay to grieve.  And it’s okay to take some time to grieve.  But in our grief, can we somehow, in some way, also hold onto hope?  Can we have enough faith to believe that, somehow, in some way, we will feel joy again, even if, at the moment, we cannot see how it could possibly happen?

Because that’s what we’re really talking about here.  It’s not that our grief goes away.  Yes, the disciples felt joy when Jesus came back to them, but eventually Jesus did go back to heaven.  And when that happened, the disciples were sad.  We’re told that, when Jesus ascended back to heaven, the disciples just stood there for a while, staring after him.  Probably wishing desperately that he might come back.  It was only after two men dressed in white, whom we assume to be angels, told them Jesus had gone back to heaven that they left.  

It’s not that the disciples stopped feeling bad that Jesus was gone.  I’m sure they wished he could be back with them.  But they also felt joy that Jesus was now in heaven.  And they felt joy at the assurance that someday, they would join Jesus in heaven.  Their grief turned to joy, not because their grief disappeared, but because they could see reasons for joy despite their grief.

And it seems to me that’s how it works.  God turns our grief into joy, but not by making our grief magically disappear.  God turns our grief into joy by showing us that there are reasons for joy in spite of our grief.

And part of that is doing what the disciples did when the angels left them.  They prayed, and they figured out a way to start again.  They figured out a way to move forward.  Yes, Jesus was gone, and they were still sad about that.  But they still had work to do.  God still had a purpose for them.  And they set about figuring out how to fulfill that purpose.

That’s what we need to do, too, when we’re grieving.  Feel the grief.  Don’t deny it.  Don’t pretend it’s not there.  But then, look for reasons for joy in spite of our grief.  Figure out a way to move forward.  Because God still has purposes for our lives.  There are still things God wants us to do.  And we need to figure out how to fulfill those purposes God still has for us.

I don’t mean to pretend this is easy.  It’s not.  It was not easy for the disciples.  In fact, you could say the disciples went through grief at losing Jesus twice.  Jesus was crucified, and they grieved his death.  And then Jesus was resurrected, and he came back and was with them again, and they were overjoyed.  But then he left them again, this time for good.  And they were left grieving again.

It could not have been easy for the disciples to get over that.  But they did.  It’s not easy for you and me to get over grief, either.  But we can.  We can through our faith in Jesus Christ. Again, it’s not that our faith takes our grief away.  But what our faith can do is show us that our grief does not have to be permanent.  

The reason we know it does not have to be permanent is that we know who God is.  Not completely–no human being can fully understand God.  But we know that God is all-powerful.  We know that God is all-loving.  We know that God is righteous.  We know that God is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-wise.  We know that God is holy and perfect.  We know that God is all-caring, all-forgiving, and all-merciful.

Because we know all those things about God, we know this:  in the end, God wins.  No matter what happens on earth, God wins.  And if we have faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior, we win, too.  No matter what happens on earth, by our faith in Jesus Christ and by God’s love and grace and mercy, in the end, we win.  And we go to be with the Lord in heaven.

Now again, that’s not to say we cannot grieve sometimes.  Even Jesus grieved, when he was on earth.  Jesus cried when His good friend Lazarus died, and Jesus knew He was going to bring Lazarus back to life.  If Jesus could grieve, we can grieve, too.  It does not show any lack of faith.  It’s okay.

But through our faith, our grief can turn into joy.  Because we can know that, in the end, we will win.  We will go to be with the Lord in heaven.  We, and everyone else who believes in Jesus, will go to be with the Lord in heaven.  We will be where there is no pain, no worries, and no fear.  We can be where there is nothing but peace and joy and love.  Love of each other, and love of God.  And we will feel God’s love for us, a love that never dies and never weakens.

The disciples grieved, but their grief eventually turned to joy.  We will grieve, but our grief will eventually turn to joy.  Through our faith, we can look for reasons to move forward.  Through our faith, we can find the purpose God still has for our lives.  Through our faith, we can fulfill that purpose, and feel the joy that comes from that.  And through our faith, we can know that our grief is not permanent.  Eventually, we will feel the joy of being in heaven with the Lord.

“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.”  It was true for the disciples.  It’s true for us, too.