[Home]  [Search]  [E-mail]

Diocese

On Wednesday, I took part in the funeral of a six month old child. The parents and grandparents are numb, speechless with grief. At least with an adult life, there’s a story to be told, things to be remembered, thanks to be given, something to say. There is something different in the loss of a child - the moment is fixed, frozen and remembered - people don’t grieve and move on in quite the same way as we do when we lose a parent or even a partner. The loss truly is irreplaceable – not even other children can fill the gap. Even so, as many of you will know from your own experience of one kind of loss or another, the protective numbness of that initial disbelief and shock begin, in its own time, to wear off, and you have to face a new and perhaps unexpected future. And now what? 

The funeral this week, the day before Ascension Day, prompted me to think of the disciples as a group of people united in grief. How must they have felt at the loss of Jesus, their friend, companion and teacher, the one who seemed to be able to make sense of things for them., the one on whom they depended for vision and enthusiasm, (even though, it should be said, he tried hard to make them stand on their own feet). He’d tried to prepare them for his death by talking about it beforehand, but it still took them by surprise, as death always does, and left them stunned and demoralised. And when you read the gospel stories of people who met the risen Christ, the women at the tomb, Mary in the garden, the two on the road to Emmaus, Thomas, you find the symptoms of grief in everyone of them - the confusion, anger, fear, guilt and helplessness that most bereaved people go through.

But while some of them had the comfort and assurance of seeing him and hearing him during those 40 days after Easter, Ascensiontide was the moment when they finally had to let him go. And now what?

It reminds me very much of the day that comes to all bereaved people; the funeral is over, the letters are written, people aren’t popping in to see how you are any more, you’re even sleeping and eating a bit more regularly, the clock has started ticking again and there spread out before you is the future. Like us, the disciples were fiddling around, filling the time, meeting up, visiting old haunts, electing Matthias to fill Judas’ place so the yawning gap in their number wouldn’t keep reminding them, they taxed the car and repainted the spare room… 

And we know from the New Testament and from history that life did return. They did what many bereaved people do. They said ‘What would the person who has died want for me now? How would they want me to be?’ The disciples did it by picking up the threads of Jesus’ own life, taking on the task (his task) that he’d left them as a legacy, and in doing so, warmth and feeling began to come back into their bruised minds, hope began to dawn again, energy and life to well up in their hearts, and they were filled with purpose and courage and something worth living and dying for. They went out and told his story, lived life his way and proclaimed his love. They called it the Holy Spirit firing and inspiring them, filling them with confidence to use the gifts they found they had been given. St Luke makes it sound like the work of a moment, or rather the work of two moments, Ascension Day and, then days later,  Pentecost; but from what I know about the pathology of grieving, it was neither as quick or as simple for the disciples as that. But the letting go and the beginning of new life are like bookends framing that process however long it takes. 

In the Church’s calendar, this Sunday stands somewhere between those two bookends: Jesus has left us, but we don’t yet have the Spirit. But that’s not only a trick of the Church calendar, it’s how many Christians feel most of the time - we don’t have Jesus any more; he’s separated from us by 2000 years of history and by a far greater cultural gap that most of us can imagine. Yet we don’t have the full-blooded conviction of people empowered by faith and new life. 

There are well-tried ways to resolve that inevitable issue - through prayer, through the sacraments, practising the presence of God through a disciplined lifestyle and membership of the Christian community - all are ways of helping to make faith not a thing of the past or the future but of the present. But as with bereavement, I suspect that there are some of us, and probably some part of all of us, that prefer to stay in mourning. We don’t want to move on. We resist the coming and the gift and the promise of the Spirit because all that life, all that energy is too much for us. When you’re numb and in hiding at least you don’t feel anything. Once the life starts coming back into bloodless limbs, that’s when the pins and needles and the pain begin. Being so alive would be like being a tortoise out of its shell, all exposed nerve-endings; being so alive would force us painfully out of the shadows into the broad dazzling daylight of God - like those tragic children in Austria this week - seeing the sun for the first time. This Spirit would change us more than we’re prepared to be changed, it would cost us more than we’re prepared to pay. 

In the old days, this Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost was called Expectation Sunday. What are you or I expecting of God’s Spirit? Anything? When the Holy Spirit comes calling will we let him in to those parts of our hearts and lives that so desperately need his warming, healing, softening, fructifying love, or will we say ‘No thank you, not this year’. And we’re right to be cautious when the Spirit comes to call, for the Spirit of God can burn and well as warm, can blow as well as breathe, and the new life he brings carries the responsibility of being Christ in the world today.  

Grieving takes time; but grief can also become a habit. God wants life for us, what Ephesians describes as ‘the hope to which God calls you,’ the ‘rich and glorious share’ God offers you among his people in their inheritance. Maybe this Pentecost is your time to step out from the shadows of whatever grief has been holding you back, to accept your legacy, your inheritance of hope, and start to live again. 

Back to top of page