By Macy Froetschner
Grief is often associated with death. We tell ourselves and others that grief is the appropriate response to losing the life of someone we love. While it is certainly true that grief is a response to the loss of life, grief can also be a response to the loss of a future, an ability, health, a relationship, a career, and much more. When we find ourselves in these latter situations it is so easy to disregard our feelings, telling ourselves that we have no right to feel sorrow, anger, bargaining, or denial because we have not experienced death. But this is not true. I think that grief can accurately be defined as a response to sin in the world; we know it is not right to lose a life, so we experience grief. We know it is not right to experience betrayal by someone we love, so we experience grief. We know it is not right for our bodies to fall apart, so we experience grief. Grief, then, acknowledges that God did not make us or the world to experience loss, destruction, and hurt.
For this reason, Jesus also experienced grief. He went to a private place to mourn the death of His friend John the Baptist (Matthew 14:13). He wept over Israel’s rejection of Him, mourning their destruction (Luke 19:41-44). So too Jesus grieved the sins of all people on the Cross as He bore the weight of all our transgressions. From the Cross He prayed in His grief the words of Psalm 22, crying out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” While this opening line from Psalm 22 is always remembered with the Cross, we often forget that Christ prayed the entirety of Psalm 22, which means His words did not end in grief. Our sin did not defeat Him. Rather, by His death He defeated sin, suffering, grief, and, as verse 24 of Psalm 22 says, “He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but he has heard when he cried to him.” Christ heard our pleas for mercy. He took every pain to the Cross, carrying our own affliction and making it His own, so that we might have life abundantly with Him.
There is another important time in which Christ experienced grief. After the death of His friend Lazarus, John 11:35 tells us that, “Jesus wept.” He wept out of love for His friend and because of the tragedy of death, which God did not create us for. But Christ did not leave Lazarus in the tomb. Instead, He raised him up, giving him new life so that he might become an example of the even greater resurrection to come. This resurrection, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is ours. Christ has bought us by water and the Word, grafting us into His family and making us heirs of eternal life. Christ did not leave Lazarus and his sisters in grief. Instead, He used their grief to point them to Him and the abundant life with flows from His pierced side on the Cross. So too while we labor, mourn, and grieve in this life, we can look to the words of Romans 8:31-39, trusting that nothing, not even grief, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, who works all things for the good of those who love Him.
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“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
~ Romans 8:31-39 (ESV) ~
Macy is a senior at Concordia University Chicago where she is in the Deaconess and Classical Lutheran Educator program. She served as the CUC4Life co-president for 2.5 years and hopes to bring this experience and love for life into her ministry someday!