God Filling the Loss - Blue Christmas Service
It is hard to go through any kind of loss. Whether someone moves away, or there is a broken relationship, someone gets sick, has dementia, or someone dies, that great distance we feel hits us deep in who we are. It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis says in “The Four Loves.” One of the loves C.S. Lewis talks about is friendship love. He notices that different friends and loved ones have a way of bringing out different parts of us. When I am with Tyler, I naturally respond or act a little differently than when I am with Bruce or Sandy. Then of course, there are those who are a greater part of us, like for me that would be Mary Anne, Matteo, my parents, or my grandfather Philip. When we lose someone, we don’t just mourn the distance, but we actually mourn the part of ourselves we have lost. That space, gap, or emptiness we feel inside of us is real because, in that other person, we have lost a part of ourselves. In this time, we must remember and hold onto the fact that God fulfills, He fills us and all things.
Losing someone is never easy and I know that God will one day vanquish death and suffering forever, but in the meantime, God can and will, if we let him redeem every death. At every funeral service, we pray that nothing good in this person’s life will be lost, but will live on and be honored and respected by those who are left behind. Do you see something that is happening in this prayer? We are recognizing that through God that person does go on living. They live in us and all those they love. Their goodness does remain because God who is all goodness lives in us. If God is all life and goodness, it is through a relationship with him that this great distance is closed and that we can see and know the goodness and love we now lack.
At a funeral, we also pray that we will be closer to one another because of this death. A common natural way that God redeems death is that he draws people closer to one another because of it. Some of that is because we need one another’s support, but it is also because naturally, we suddenly have more time and energy to give to others. So, that gap inside and outside of us can be filled by others. They are not the same as the person we lost, but they can bring out a new part of us.
Here, we rub up against a struggle. We don’t want someone to take the place of who we lost and to some degree, they never will. It can feel like a betrayal, even if it is anything but. We can hold onto the person we have lost so strongly that we put up walls to how God is trying to fill us. We might not accept invitations, reach out, lean on people, or connect like we should because our loss weighs us down. Yet, if we hold on so tight we can just as easily be turning away from the person we lost. If, in God, they live on in those they have left behind, then loving those that they loved, means we are loving them and spending more time with them. It means that the gap is at least partially filled, but then we are also filled in other ways.
More important than any of that, is that there is only one person who can truly fill that gap and all the gaps, brokenness, weaknesses, and failures in our lives. That is Jesus. God always wants to give us more, even if that feels impossible or hard to imagine. The way he gives us more is by giving us himself as we reach out to him in faith. Grief, more than celebration, becomes an avenue for God to enter in, because that emptiness is real and he is the only one who can fill it. If we turn to him and trust in him, he will fill it. Just like he fills our empty hands at communion, just as he filled me with love after my parent's divorce, just as he filled Mary in her lowliness, just as he carries our burdens, and just as he fills us with new hope and light through Jesus’ birth.
The darkness, the emptiness, and the loss are real and we feel them, but God’s fulfilling light and life are even more real and potent if we just turn to him and rest in him. It doesn’t mean we don’t mourn, we don’t miss people, it just means that we do it with a kind of joy and life. God enters in, he fulfills us, and he transforms our grief, that is exactly what we celebrate at Christmas, we celebrate that God comes into this world to welcome us into his family and transforms all the loss, with his love and presence. AMEN
