A Balm in Gilead

This has been a rough couple of weeks, even without current events and world goings-on factored in.

It seems like death and loss have been a very present reality, both at Grace and in my life beyond my pastoral call.  Within three weeks, I will have helped lead two memorial services, attended a funeral as a mourner, and now am mourning the loss of two members of the congregation in Iowa where I spent my internship year who died as the result of a car accident.  In the midst of all of this, I went back through the past year or so of obituaries from the small Iowa town where I lived that year, discovering in the process that several other members from the congregation have passed away.

It just feels like too much.  Too much mourning, too much grief, too much death.  Loss and grief - they feel like weights, a lead vest for the soul.  On Wednesday night (even before the tragedy yesterday), I was praying vespers at Grace, and just felt overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

Jeremiah's question at the end of chapter 8 has rung in my ears - "Is there no balm in Gilead?"  Where is the comfort, the peace, the healing love of Christ in the midst of what seems like nothing but pain and turmoil?  It has felt more elusive than I'd care to admit.  Perhaps there's some reluctance to say this as a pastor, but it merits being said - sometimes, future-oriented promises of hope and resurrection don't quite treat the immediate, acute pain of loss.  Death's sting feels a lot sharper to those of us left to deal with death's ugly aftermath in this life.

Much of our language around death, as a society, is so incredibly poor at really naming the reality for what it is.  Death is painful; there's not a way around that.  Instead of embracing the pain, though, so often we try to flee from it with our words.  People don't die; they pass away, or we lost them, or they're no longer with us.  We mask over the "d word" and politely substitute in something else that soften the blow.  Our explanations around why people die are even worse - phrases like "he's in a better place," or "God needed another angel," or "she's at peace now" have elements of truth in them in some cases, and can even be very lovely expressions of God's mercy (well, except that second phrase)...but how often do they simply feel like a quick, flip explanation to a serious question?

None of that is to dismiss the very true, very fundamental truth of eternal life in Christ.  That's essential because it gives us hope *beyond* where we are at right now, directing our eyes up to the fulfillment of all of God's promises of new life.  The truth of resurrection can't be turned away or diminished, but solely focusing on the post-death aspects of eternal life only offers us a promise that Christ will be with us someday in the future.  What about today?

Maybe some of the gracious balm we're offered comes not through the dismissal of death as a real thing, or in putting all our focus on the glorious day when we all see the fullness of God's Reign come to pass, but rather in discovering Christ present even in the mess and the pain and the loneliness and the grief.  Christ's cross is precisely a place of messy, painful, lonely, grievous death - and through that cross, we find Christ present precisely in all of our spaces of loss, pain, and death.

That's the comfort I've been able to find.  I think Job says it best - in the midst of incredible loss and pain, he still dares (in Job 19) to say that "I know that my redeemer lives," and that the day is coming when we will see our redeemer in the flesh, with our own eyes, and experience the fullness of God's salvation.  In the meanwhile, I look to the cross, and what I see is a sign of Christ's abiding presence, even in the hurt and the loss and the sadness - God's saving grace poured out on us like a healing balm, inviting us not to pretend like nothing's happened, but to celebrate that Christ is with us through it all.