Introspection: My Grief and My Hope

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My Grief and My Hope

But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.

1 Corinthians 15:20 (The Message)

Life is only death, or death is life disguised
We endure this time of death until by life we are surprised

From a poem in the story "The Desecration" by Jesse Turri¹

When a member of my church dies, my pastors say that, though we grieve, we grieve with hope and that, while we have tears in our eyes, we have hope in our hearts.

The past thirteen months have brought a lot of grief and loss into my life.  Last Wednesday, my grandmother, Emma Snyder, lost her life after a long battle against the effects of COVID-19.  Just seven weeks earlier, my other grandmother, Mildred Whisnant, passed away after living with dimentia for a number of years.  A little over a year ago, my father, Bobby Snyder, died suddenly of what was most likely a heart attack.

Something that gives me hope right now, amid all this grief and loss, is the Gospel story.

The Gospels tell us the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who lived among humanity during the days of the Roman Empire.  He traveled throughout the land, healing the sick, bringing peace to the troubled, raising the dead, feeding the hungry, befriending the friendless, touching the untouchable, giving hope to the hopeless, and proclaiming the coming of a Kingdom not of this world.  One fateful week, He clashed with the religious and political leaders of His day.  Though He had done nothing wrong, He was arrested, put on trial, and sentenced to death by crucifixion.  He was stripped, beaten, nailed to a cross, and hanged up to die like a terrorist.

A couple of days after Jesus died on the Cross, His followers went to His tomb and found that it was empty.  He appeared to them, alive and well, and commissioned them to share His message of hope with the whole world, and His followers have continued to do so for the last two thousand years.

The Gospel story gives us the hope that, as we like to say at my church, "the worst thing is never the last thing."²  It dares us to hope that, in the same way that a brutal and gruesome execution was not the end of Jesus's story, loss and death are not the end of ours.  Right now, the Gospel story is giving me the hope that someday, somehow I will once again see the loved ones I've lost.

St. Paul, in one of his letters to the early Christians, refers to Jesus Christ, who "has been raised from the dead," as "the first fruits of those who have died."³  Paul is referencing the "first fruits" offering required by the Law of his religion.  In the Book of Leviticus, the ancient Hebrews were instructed to bring the first of their crops the priest.⁴  According to Scholar William Barclay, "The first-fruits were a sign of the harvest to come; and the Resurrection of Jesus was a sign of the resurrection of all believers which was to come."⁵

For most of my life, I've tried my best not to think about death, be it my own or that of someone I love, but lately death has been slapping me in the face repeatedly.  The harsh truth of the matter is that all of us will face death.  Throughout our lives, we will lose people who are dear to us, until we inevitably come to the end of our own lives.  Though we will grieve in this life, the Gospels, which tell us of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, offer us the hope that the Resurrection of Christ is just the first of many.


Notes:

1. https://unfolded.jesseturri.com/portfolio/episode-3-the-desecration/
2. My pastors borrowed this saying from pastor Adam Hamilton, who borrowed the idea from writer Frederick Buechner.
3. 1 Corinthians 15:20 (NRSV)
4. Leviticus 23:10
5. William Barclay.  The Daily Bible Study Series: The Letters to the Corinthians (revised edition).  1975, The Westminster Press.  p. 150

The photograph of the candles is used courtesy of Pixabay.