Jamey's Newsletter: Sunday, 7, 2024
It will be a brief newsletter this week. I have been inundated with funerals and memorial services - four over the past six days, including my own grandmother's memorial service.
So, as you can imagine, my mind has been preoccupied with death.
Death brings with it grief. And as a culture, grief makes us uncomfortable. I watch people fumble around it, try to push through it, and some try with all their strength to ignore it. But within the reality of death, there is no way to get around grief.
Grief is not a sickness that one has to get over. But it is a beautiful sign that love has been part of one's life. We grieve because we have known love through the person who has died.
One of the most challenging places to be in grief is that cycle of running through the "If onlys.". If only I hadn't left her alone. If only he had not gone out so late. If only I had said this or done that. If only……if only.
When she hears that he is finally arriving after her brother's death, Martha runs out to meet Jesus and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died" (John 11:21).
There is love in the greeting, and there is blame. For Martha, Jesus is the only one who could make a difference; only he was not there, and now it is too late.
And yet, she holds out hope. She says, "But even now, I know God will give you whatever you ask of him" (John 11:21).
Jesus tells her that her brother will rise again. She returns to her Jewish belief in the resurrection on the day of judgment and says, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day" (John 11:24).
Jesus is about to shake up her world by replying, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this" (John 11: 25 - 26)?
Jesus did not raise Lazarus from the dead so that his sisters would not have to experience the pain of death. Death is part of our life. At some point in the future, Lazarus will die. Jesus says that those who trust in him, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and trusts in him will never die.
Jesus reminds Mary, Martha, and us that there is life wherever he is present.
Even in death, Jesus brings life.
The sting of death has been removed because, in Jesus, there is life on both sides of the grave. We don't have to fear death because Jesus brings life to death.
Our faith does not deny death. Our faith announces the good news that death is not the last word.
Because of Jesus, our grief is never the last word spoken in our life story.
Jamey
