2020.11.01 | Through the Ordeal
“Through the Great Ordeal”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Today is All Saints Day in the Christian tradition. In places like Cherryland, California it is an occasion that has become a conflation of Spanish Christian and Indigenous American traditions. It is the result of a mixing of cultures: Spanish and Indigenous American and Christian and Mexican folk traditions. But that is not all.
All Saints Day is also an occasion filled with a mix of emotions. When I speak with children about it, I refer to All Saints Day as a happy/sad day. It is sad, because we take time to create ofrendas (memorial displays), and it is happy, because we not only cull up our feelings of loss, but we also are reminded of the many reasons that we have loved those who have gone to God.
The term “mestizo” was originally a formal label for individuals in official documentation, used for censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and the like. Individuals were labeled by priests and royal officials as mestizos, but the term was also used for self identification.[2]
In the twentieth century, the noun mestizaje, came into usage. It was derived from the adjective mestizo, which is a term for racial mixing.[3] Today it is used to denote the positive unity of race mixtures in modern Latin America. Although some Christian leaders resist the racial-ethnic and cultural mixing of sacred and secular, this phenomenon has been going on since the beginning of time, and in the case of All Saints Day here in Cherryland, I see this as a natural and good thing for our community.
George Peck, who was president of Andover Newton who was also a professor of missiology, told me once, “Arlene, every culture has to make the gospel it’s own, or it is not the gospel and the gospel will not prosper in that land.” That is what is happening in human history, including right here in Cherryland, with the mixing of these traditions.
II
Why does this happen?
I think this mixing happens, partly because it is human nature to wonder about life, death, and the afterlife.
As Christians, we wonder: “What is heaven like?” “Who gets to go?” And, especially on days like these: “Will I ever get through this ordeal, this grief process?”
In the scripture passage from Revelation today, the Apostle John, tries to answer some of these tough, timeless questions for his turn-of-the-second century audience.
John doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He doesn’t claim to have been to heaven and come back with slides or videos. Instead, he uses metaphors to describe what he imagines that heaven will be like.
In today’s passage, John is like an early Second Century Rick Steves. He is giving a guided tour of heaven, only metaphorically speaking. His setting is in his mind’s eye. His audience is a bunch of terrified travelers on a spiritual journey prompted by their quest for meaning, and heightened by the oppression that they were experiencing at the hands of the Roman Emperor.
In Revelation 7, verses 9 and following, John stops on his guided tour of heaven, in front of the throne of God. Here an elder tourist (one of the saints) asks, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” (7:13b)
John replies, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
John’s language probably seems odd to most of us. He is explaining that the souls who are gathered around the throne of God are the faithful who have suffered and died, and who have been redeemed by Christ, and who are now being sheltered by the Almighty into perpetuity.
John’s description of heaven was a great comfort and encouragement to his audience, who had suffered mightily at the hands of the religious and political authorities in those days, and who were being tortured and martyred by Rome because Caesar's political policy was failing, and he needed a scapegoat and a distraction from that truth.
III
Sadly, human history is filled with examples of potentates blaming their victims for problems that they create or are unable to alleviate. But the good news for us as Christians, which we celebrate today, is that suffering is not our purpose. Death is not our end. There is a life beyond this life, where even death itself has died. And, until we arrive at heaven’s gates, and experience that peace that passes all understanding, we continue to experience a mixture of happy/sad days.
All Saints Day provides us with a special occasion to carve out and create a safe space for us to acknowledge these facts, and to attend to our grief so that we might also express our gratitude for those whom we have loved and lost, and experience the hope that comes through faith that our loved ones have gone to God, and where they have gone, we will one day go too.
Until then, we will need to continue to take time and attend to our grief, so that we can progress in our healing process. Today, I’ll offer ten steps that may help us press on in this journey through life to the next life:
1) Grief is universal. Though each person’s experience is unique, sharing the journey with others who have experienced similar losses helps most people advance through the process in healthy ways. If you are having trouble finding people who empathize with your situation, or if you feel that those around you aren’t able to help you work through your grief, let’s be in touch.
2) The death of a significant loved one launches a long and circuitous grief process. Hospice pioneer Elizabeth Kübler-Ross[1] and others in the human science fields describe grief as a cyclical process [2] involving denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Though most of us would like directions and clear plans about how to get through grief and on with life, there is no direct path and no timeframe that is common to all. No two people grieve the loss of the same person in the same way, and no one person experiences the loss of multiple loved ones the same way each time.
3) Grief is cumulative. Unresolved grief piles up like snow in the High Sierras. Each new loss heaps more grief on the pile, so that it becomes possible to be “snowed in” by grief. If we don’t deal with grief as it unfolds in our lives, that unattended grief will wreak havoc on us. If you sense that you are snowed in with grief, ask for help.
4) There are no shortcuts through the grief process. Disregard all of the messages that you get from pop culture about zooming through or around grief. The only way through it is through it. Grief is unavoidable and there isn’t an exact timeline for moving through it. However, it is possible to achieve healing and relief and to arrive at a new sense of normalcy as we move further along on our journeys.
5) How we grieve is cultural. Our grief processes are shaped by our home cultures, and the larger culture in which we are situated. Therefore, the process varies, and we can experience added stress when there is discontinuity between how we were taught to grieve as a youth and how we are expected to grieve by the larger culture that we live in.
6) The grief process also varies for each person, depending on our personality type, coping skills and style, spiritual practices, ethnicity, gender, religious heritage, and current beliefs. Becoming more aware of how our personal and cultural factors and our spiritual practices, religious heritage, and current beliefs shape our experience of loss and grief helps us better understand ourselves, and why and how we handle grief and loss the way we do. Becoming more self-aware will also help us move through these processes with more grace and less angst. Knowing these things about ourselves can also help us better understand and support those whose grief process is different from ours.
7) Children grieve too, but they often express their grief differently from adults. It’s helpful to learn about the differences, so that we can better meet the needs of the children in our care. For example, children need comfort and frequent reassurance that they’re safe, loved and taken care of. It’s important for us to be honest, age-appropriate, and direct when talking with children about death. We need to encourage children to express their feelings by talking, drawing, and playing. All of us benefit from routine during stressful times, but children especially are helped by having and maintaining a sense of their normal routine. As with adults, children can also benefit from being part of a support group. [3]
8) Grief can be normal or it can be complicated. Normal grief is grief that results when an old person dies, who has had a rich and meaningful life and generally healthy relationships with his or her loved ones. In normal grief, the deceased person’s survivors are sad, but in time they heal and can develop a new sense of normal life and are not held back by unresolved issues with the person who has passed. Complicated grief, by contrast, is a phenomenon that results when a person dies of unnatural causes (like an accident, suicide, or murder) or when the person who dies is young, or when the deceased’s relationships with survivors were unhealthy, and the person died before these issues could get resolved. In complicated grief, unresolved feelings and conflicts intrude on survivors’ daily lives, making it difficult to establish and maintain a sense of peace and balance. Again, don’t go it alone. Reach out. Accept help.
9) Paying attention to the theological aspects of death can help us grieve in a healthy, mature way, and accept and embrace our own aging process. Faith leaders can help us sort through our beliefs about death, cultivate spiritual practices that assuage grief, and help us heal and accept our own human frailty and inevitable death.
10) Spiritual practices can be helpful resources in our healing processes. I am struck by how many secular venues are constructing labyrinths in public spaces today, so that people who are dealing with difficult circumstances have a place to pray. The Ashland Youth Center, the Emergency Room entrance at the Kaiser San Leandro Hospital, and a beach front near the Bay Bridge all have labyrinths, just like we have in the courtyard at Eden Church. If you’re interested in exploring a spiritual practice that may be helpful to you in the grief process, reach out to me or one of our other pastors. We are here to help. We don’t have any magic wands to make it all go away with one poof, but we can accompany you and help you identify other companions and resources for the journey.
All Saints Day is a happy/sad day, a mixed blessing, a day when we remember and celebrate, a day when we hurt and heal. May God’s blessing be upon you, and heal you from all that harms you. Amen.
[1] See http://www.ekrfoundation.org/about-grief
[2] See http://www.ekrfoundation.org/five-stages-of-grief
[3] See http://www.ekrfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/HelpingGrievingChildren.pdf