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Why Lament Matters in the Christian Life · Red Couch Theology

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Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
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Theology podcast. This week on the show, we're
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talking about grief and sorrow and lament.
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Before you turn off the episode, there's some beauty in this
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conversation. Not because it's just light
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hearted, but because God gives us some unique promises to stare
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these realities in the face. Well, to be with us in the midst
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of it. And we somehow have this ability
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as human beings to hold both hope and grief at the same time.
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Let's dive into the episode and see what there is to hear.
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It means we're going live. 11:00.
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Hello everyone, welcome to the Red Couch Theology podcast where
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we actually acknowledge you first thing.
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We do. That's the first thing we do
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every time. Every single time.
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And I would like to start by acknowledging the Unicorn in the
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room. This is for those of you
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watching on the screen. This is a Unicorn mug.
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It was a gift to Aaron because on Sunday morning I declared
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that he was a Unicorn. Hey, and then this actually came
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from a story I've told so many times to different people, but
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not on stage before and didn't think about the consequences of.
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Oh man. Because I was meeting with some
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lead pastors and someone mentioned Aaron being a Unicorn.
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Because he is a great preacher. He's a great worship leader.
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He's very strategic. He's very, you know, he does so
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many things well and with him kind of shifting some stuff I
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said, hey, let's because I had planned a sermon, not regularly
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planned introing staff members just set it off the top of my
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head and now there's Unicorn everywhere and advertising
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floating around all over the place is yeah, people.
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People got a kick out of that comment.
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And so on Monday, if I can show it, stop extending, choose
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display entire window. This is what Teresa did with her
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time on Monday after you said that.
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Yeah. And then my wife gets me a mug
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of a Unicorn. I was like, wow, this hit like
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something. I'm sort of uncomfortable.
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I mean, I love this mug, actually.
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What's taught me is this is clearly I need to start saying
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more stupid, unplanned things in summons.
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Like it's like, apparently you can just say silly things and
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people are like, Oh yeah, sure, we get into that.
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So all of this planning stuff nonsense, just get up there and
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just start talking. Yes, and I'm still adjusting
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cameras. It's good enough for now.
3:01
The podcast studio is messier than it's ever been because I
3:05
basically took all my office stuff and just threw it in here.
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You guys don't get to see it all.
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There's old chairs, there's a jembe, there's.
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AI was wondering, yeah, I was wondering if we could rebrand to
3:16
the Green Chair Podcast. Then you'd be more comfortable.
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I would be so much more comfortable.
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We should do it the the white and green chair.
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We could be Christmas theme. You sit on a green chair or sit
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on a red couch and we have Christmas all year round.
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You know the theory that like white guys constantly start
3:35
podcasts? It's not actually all white
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guys, it's just multiple like white guys that start like 7 or
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8 rebrand. Yes, it's just the same podcast,
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same podcasters. They just rebrand because of the
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because of the furniture. This chair's too uncomfortable.
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We should rebrand guys drinking tea.
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What if we have women on the show?
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We have to not be guys drinking tea.
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Like we just rebrand every year. No, we're actually doing pretty
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good. Yeah.
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I'm committed to this couch. I love it.
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As uncomfortable as it is, I love it.
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I'm committed. Good for you.
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Even if it means we hang it on the wall behind the show and I
4:15
sit in an actual comfortable chair.
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Or just keep it for guests. We'll just have like 2
4:21
comfortable chairs and then we'll bring a guest in and give
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them the uncomfortable. Yeah.
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If we had the Green Chair podcast, we could keep that for
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guests, we could say. So anyway, you know what I've
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heard though? The worst thing you can do on a
4:35
podcast is like brainstorm a different podcast.
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You specifically heard that critique of podcasts.
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I think so, yeah. Where we bash our own podcast in
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the beginning of every episode. All right well, since we are
4:53
have already acknowledged the elephant in the room that this
4:55
is not the best podcast out there, we should dive into the
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content. Yeah, which was a little heavy
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was. It heavy.
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Like it was. It was, I think so.
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OK, I think. Yeah, I never tried to be heavy.
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I know you never tried to, but it was like if you talked about
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grief and went skiddily D in the middle.
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It also would have been very inappropriate.
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Yeah, so I tried to start with some humor, which you did.
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I think you succeeded at not starting.
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Even that because I kind of threw in this like so.
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So for those of you that didn't listen, I started with a story
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about my daughter jumping off the side of our deck and getting
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caught on this hook that hung off the deck and she just
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suspended in midair. At the time, she weighed like 40
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lbs and this hook held her. And so she just didn't go
5:47
anywhere. And I, I talked about like this
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jump and me looking for the place where she was supposed to
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land because you instinctively, I think, do that after a while
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as a parent. And she didn't get there.
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And, and in ancient cultures, they actually talked about like
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they marked their past by stones, like cans or cans, and
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then they would hope to place stones in the future.
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And and grief could catch you in the middle of the two.
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Like it, it questioned like like Arthur Frank, the author talks
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about narrative wreckage. Like it's such a great phrase.
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And he says like at times like we experience life in such a way
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that our narratives they they they get deconstructed.
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So the most basic go on is the childhood narrative of well,
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someday I'll get someday I'll get married, even if that's like
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the the like 8 year olds, like duck boys, yuck girls.
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At some time I get married. At some time I'll have kids.
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Like you hear that language really early from kids.
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Where from kids? When I have kids, I won't do
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what you did as parents. I'll be a better parent than you
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are. And then I'll, I'll have
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grandkids and then sickness is OK to a degree.
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It, it might be scary for all sorts of reasons, But in terms
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of expectations, you know, I kind of did the things I
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expected to do When, when you, you have that story and thrown
7:16
off course early on, it leaves you in this place of like, I
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don't know what to do with this now.
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Yeah. So I, that's kind of where I
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started, but I did think afterwards I had a few people
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come up to me because I kind of threw in this like actually when
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I thought about it, kind of unnecessary pool narrative.
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And so because because you hear kid and pool, actually a lot of
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people's minds went to like, oh wait, what?
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She's gonna drowned, yeah. And now, of course, they they
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were like, well, she's here. Yeah, but but but it was I think
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a few people sat in that space of like, I don't like this
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story. This feels like it's going in
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some pretty. Dumb.
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Well, and my understanding is like a lot of the moms at South,
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probably a bunch of Christian moms everywhere, a lot of them
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follow a particular Instagram mom whose child just died in a
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pool. And so they've been in the Mops
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community group stuff. They've been talking a lot about
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pools and the danger of that. So it was like especially timely
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as far as that. Topic.
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Yeah, I wasn't. Aware of Allison mentioned it to
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me the week prior to you preaching.
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Like, oh man, so and so's kid died in the pool.
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And so it was kind of at the forefront of some of them.
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Horrific. I mean, so horrible.
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Yeah. And so, yeah, I think it like it
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felt heavy right from there. And then the story is heavy.
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I actually thought like the title of this conversation could
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have been, did you ever watch watch The Lego Movie?
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Yeah, everything is awesome. Everything is awesome.
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Well, this one's everything is awful.
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Like it's so like Lamentations is so heart rendering.
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It is. And then also like, like not
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heart rendering, heart rending. And yeah, at the same time, like
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I think there's some redemptive nature to that.
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It's, it's maybe a a book we will need at some point, even if
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we don't need it now. And so one of the one of the
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things I think, I don't know if you found this.
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Anytime I do something on grief that feels like it lands in
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those spaces, I get conversations from a certain
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group of people. OK.
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Like, not not like the same names, but, but broadly there
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are some people that sit and feel grief a lot.
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Yes. So, so, you know, just just
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talking to like a couple of people who are more like, Oh
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yeah, I didn't want to move after that.
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I wanted to sit in that space and just feel like what it is to
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grieve. Yeah.
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Whereas I think my wiring is more to say, OK, yeah, I get
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that. Maybe I'll need it at some
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point. That's not today.
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I'll, I'll kind of brush it off and move on.
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So, so you kind of realized like you're, you're, you're preaching
10:14
to a niche in some ways. Yeah.
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So I think that the first group you talked about would make the
10:24
would want to make the case that you should want to the the
10:28
appropriate response to a sermon like this is to go ahead and
10:31
feel it and grieve. Yes, and this and so are they
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right? So, so I, I think as I went into
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this, I actually meant to say this.
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I'm not sure I ever did. I don't know, maybe I did.
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I think my, my like belief about humans is we all have grief and
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some of us have great grief. So like the great grief is
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harder to cover up. So, so like, I'm going to try
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and create a metaphor on the fly.
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Imagine you're trying to like bury stones in the sand.
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And some of them are small and some of them are big.
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And in actual fact, it's fairly easy to bury small stones in, in
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the sand. But you, you take something big,
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actually, even if you dig like a significant hole and try to
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cover it up, you're usually left with something protruding above
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the above the sand. And I think when your grief is
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more like minor, it's easier to just say, I'm not going to think
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about that. I'm going to cover that up.
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I'm just going to let life life go on, I suppose.
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Whereas I think there's people that that find their grief is
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not that they, that they, they can't do that.
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And then they become intelligent enough to know that actually
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maybe no one should do that. I don't know.
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That no one should bury it. Yeah, and I'm not sure you
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should just bury it. Yeah.
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And I, I think some of the contention might be that
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they're, they do have bigger stones.
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They just hid them behind a hill so they didn't have to look at
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them anymore. You know, I don't know, like
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there's definitely some folks who have cause for deep, deeper
12:18
grief, you know, especially depending on the season of life.
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They've lost a loved one, they've experienced A trauma
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that's pretty significant. But yeah, I mean, I think, well,
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my team and I were meeting yesterday around like formation
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and like, what does it mean to be live in the way of Jesus with
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the heart of Jesus, all this stuff.
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One of the things we were talking about is there's this
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barrier in spiritual formation, which is usually your emotional
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maturity and health emotionally. Because like, I don't know if
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anyone out there is like I decided I'm going to follow
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Jesus, live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.
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I'm starting tomorrow. I'm all in.
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And then you try and then something like short circuits
13:09
along the way and you're like, why is this so hard?
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I made a like commitment of my will.
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You might even try spiritual practices.
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You like read your Bible. You, you practice like you, you
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fast, you pray, you take a silent retreat and you're still
13:26
just running into this roadblock.
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A lot of the time it's because there's this deeper thing that
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you're not paying attention to emotionally from your past, your
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childhood, your the generational issues with family.
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So the helpful metaphor there is often the iceberg like worth 10%
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surface, 90% under the surface. So we've got a lot of stuff
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that's going on like, yeah, generational things that are
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passed down, just just common family ways of seeing things
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like family trauma. Yeah, that just gets passed on.
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Like, and that's why we see an anxious parent tends to have
14:05
anxious kids like a, you know, things like that get, they get
14:10
passed on pretty easily. And so, So what you were saying
14:17
there is that maybe it's almost certainly it's unhealthy to just
14:21
bury it because just because it's below the surface doesn't
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mean it doesn't affect what's above the surface.
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Absolutely, yeah. You may not the the problem with
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some of us, and I'll include myself in this because I am the
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I'm a master class in how to avoid hard things a lot of the
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time emotionally. Give me that Unicorn mug.
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Yeah, that's right. Yeah, this is just this is just
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a sign of what I'm avoiding. I'm just really good avoider it.
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The end result is that you become passive aggressive above
15:03
the surface. Yeah, you you make little snide
15:07
remarks or you become cold emotionally and you're not
15:10
emotionally available for relationship.
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And you and then people like you're like this is this is my
15:15
personality false. You've got iceberg beneath the
15:19
surface that you buried and you're not dealing with and it's
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leaking. Well, well, we, we heard, and I
15:26
don't want to share too much because we'll hear some more on
15:28
Sunday, but our executive pastor's retiring and he talked
15:32
about like just everyday life and the burdens of it, like
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going on sabbatical and like 4-6 weeks later still like having
15:42
reactions like physical ones around, like pastoring.
15:47
So sitting after four or six weeks of sitting in services,
15:51
not preaching, like checking his microphone and stuff like that.
15:55
To, to like, you know, even little things that we do in
15:58
everyday life become like they, they become like part of us to a
16:03
degree. And so when we think about like,
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you know, I, I think I've used the one I but but people have
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used the language of like the small T drama and big T drama.
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So. So we all have small T trauma.
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We've all experienced life in ways that we got fired from a
16:23
job, we got laughed at when we were kids.
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Someone gave us a name that stuck.
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Someone told us we were like you.
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You see that regularly grown adults who still believe they're
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stupid because a teacher at school said you're stupid.
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Like those things, like words hit hard.
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They, they, they, they can't just be taken back.
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I was listening to a pastor not long ago who he did a A and I
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don't, I don't know how I feel about the way of approaching
16:58
this kind of conversation. But but a lady in the church
17:01
came and, and apologized because she was gossiping about him.
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She was saying something that wasn't true.
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And she said, I just want to tell you I'm sorry.
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And he said he grabbed a feather cushion and he ripped it open
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and the feathers went everywhere.
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And he said, that's what you're trying to say sorry for.
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Like, you can't take it back. You can't just say, you know,
17:27
like, you can't just make it like it didn't happen.
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It's already out there now. And so, like, to different
17:33
degrees, words have powerful effects, all those different
17:35
things. And so we're all experiencing
17:37
that constantly from people in our lives.
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We experience good from some and then bad from others.
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So this sort of thing, we've all got stuff that's, that makes up
17:48
that 90% under the surface. And, and it's just surprising
17:53
when you open that up, when you actually get people to a point
17:57
of saying, Oh, no, I wanna, I wanna get into this where you
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can get to. Yeah.
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And and and and then. Beautiful when you hear healing
18:08
stories. Yep.
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And it's, it's like, I don't know if you've been walking with
18:15
Jesus for a number of years, usually you run into this
18:19
because you, you know, you decide I'm going to Sprint in
18:23
the direction of Jesus and then you're just, it just going
18:27
slower than you expected. It's like you're pulling this
18:30
baggage and this weight, and then you, if you, if you stop
18:38
and turn around and actually deal with the weight that you're
18:40
dragging behind you, suddenly the speed increases.
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You might be doing all the right things in the surface, you know,
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doing the right spiritual practices, trying to engage in
18:49
community, well, all this stuff. But until you deal with some of
18:52
that beneath the surface stuff, it's going to be holding you
18:56
back a little bit. Yeah.
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So let me ask you this. Well, one, you try to do the
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whole book of Lamentations, I think you did.
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I think you actually did a really incredibly good job
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because I had several people come up to me say, I've met one
19:10
who said, I've been in listening to sermons for 47 years and I've
19:17
never once heard a sermon in Lamentations.
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And today I realized how much, how much of A travesty that was.
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That was the one person said and the other person said.
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I don't think I've ever looked at the Book of Lamentations
19:31
though this way, and now I feel like I've missed out.
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Yeah. So, so it's a, so it's a book
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that's always really interested me because it has, I'm trying to
19:46
think of another book that is that structurally so like 10,000
19:54
foot view. Interesting.
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In Scripture. Well, literally.
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Like as far as a literary masterpiece, maybe Jonah?
20:03
Yeah, that's, that was the one that was in the back of my mind.
20:05
Jonah's like got like almost like a stage comedy.
20:09
Yeah. Totally different genre but like
20:12
these are like masterpieces of literary design and like
20:18
brilliance. Maybe Ruth as well.
20:20
Like, yeah, short enough to see the overall structure fairly
20:25
quickly. Yeah, yeah, controllable.
20:27
Like you get to some of the bigger books and it's hard to
20:29
see that get to ones that are trying to describe big narrative
20:33
pieces of history. I mean, the the the period that
20:35
Lamentations is in at least like set in, but, but most, most
20:40
scholars would agree actually written in is probably 10 years,
20:46
but but it's almost like a moment in time that could be
20:49
placed anywhere in that 10 years.
20:52
And, and so it's, it's like, it's so static in some ways.
20:57
It doesn't move anywhere. There's, there's like the, the
21:01
biggest movement is the, you know, I mean, you can always
21:04
picture like these, these three characters.
21:06
There's the narrator who begins, who's a little more abstract, a
21:09
little bit more detached from the emotion of it, until chapter
21:14
2 at least. There's Lady Zion, who's the the
21:18
the like, the personification of the city, who weeps and feels
21:22
deeply the emotion and the. Constant.
21:24
It's happening. There and then there's the
21:26
Gabba, the strongman who who almost reads like a soldier
21:29
coming in from the front lines, who's like maybe been in the
21:33
battles and now he's somehow back in the city and has
21:36
experienced some of the horrors of it.
21:39
And, and the biggest movements, you can always picture it like
21:43
it begins with Lady Zion sat on the ground and the narrator
21:46
speaking over her. And the biggest movement is that
21:49
the, the, the, the Gabba, the strongman, the soldier arrives
21:53
on the scene and begins talking too.
21:56
There's no physical movement in the text other than that.
22:00
Now you think about that in comparison, even compared to
22:02
Ruth and Jonah that have some similarities like spatial
22:08
movement, like like Lamentations is a picture of grief because it
22:14
has the static nature of grief. If we say grief is like we we've
22:18
been here and we thought we were going there and now we're
22:21
narrative wreckage were were stuck Lamentations like it
22:25
doesn't just say those things. It it, it, it's structured in
22:30
that way too. Yeah.
22:32
So I, I think on, on that level, it's fascinating.
22:35
I didn't even get a chance to get into like the poetic, like
22:38
the meter, the B, the cadence of it in, in lots of ways.
22:43
Like the there's a, there's a in each verse.
22:46
There's a emphasis on specific words like third syllable, 5th
22:52
syllable. Like it, it just so it's so like
22:56
it. It's the, I would say A-Z.
22:58
You guys would say A-Z, alpha and Omega of grief.
23:02
Like when you actually strut, like think about the work.
23:05
It takes the structure 22 verses alphabetically.
23:12
Like, you really have to think through how you're expressing
23:15
grief. Yeah, and not like water down
23:20
the bottom line message like agenda one, but let's make it
23:23
alphabetical Agenda 2. Make it make sense.
23:26
Yeah, and and one can't supersede the other.
23:29
No, it's why it's a master class in literary design.
23:32
It's brilliant. So it really sits in those
23:34
spaces of like intentional grief, but but like the emotion
23:41
is deep. It's like pouring out from like
23:44
some deep places. OK, so how does this relate to
23:48
the things we build? So, so it's, it's the loss of
23:51
them. So it's like what happens when
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they fall down? S 1st.
23:54
I wanted to kind of start with this side because someone
23:56
actually said to me, are we going to get to like how we
23:58
build good things? And I'm like, well, we are
24:00
unfortunately, like the start of scripture doesn't really have
24:04
any. So if you want want to follow a
24:06
vague chronological plan, you've got God building good stuff and
24:11
this, this hope of, of, of a good Adam and Eve partnership.
24:16
But but from there, it's it's pretty much a train wreck.
24:20
Yeah. I mean, you might argue for the
24:22
Ark, but but it it's it's pretty like it's, it's it's it's a,
24:31
it's a disaster really for a lot of chapters.
24:34
So, so yeah, like through Genesis other other than maybe
24:39
Joseph's Egypt, which has a little bit of a like food for
24:45
all everyone has like everyone's provided for well.
24:49
It feels to me like it's a little bit of a mixed bag it.
24:52
Does where? Where's the good like?
24:55
In each one of them, even the worst city, even Kane City, the
24:59
arts are created. The so like, it's a horrific
25:04
city, yeah, because there's murder and taking in advantage
25:09
and all this stuff. But at the same time, within
25:11
that same context, the arts are created, there's advancements
25:16
that then ultimately can lead to some human thriving later.
25:20
So. So those, but those come with a
25:21
mixed bag as well. Right, exactly.
25:23
So it's it feels like every human effort is like this
25:27
exertion of like, oh, they were kind of on to something and then
25:32
they just screwed it up. But but it's it's A to me, the
25:36
cautionary tale is a is A. And we talked about this in the
25:39
daily team meetings the other day.
25:42
It seems like the the the message that comes across is
25:48
like this is what happens when create creativity outruns
25:51
morality. Yes.
25:52
It's what happens when gifting outruns character.
25:54
Yeah. So you almost see this.
25:56
Like, which is why I say it's a mixed bag.
25:58
It's like creatures made in the image of God who aren't
26:03
tethered, but they're still made in the image of God.
26:05
So there's like this like weird morph of some diamonds in the
26:09
rough where humans were like, oh, oh God, that was not quite
26:14
it. Like we're going to bring God
26:16
into the center of our city and make it as temple where it's all
26:20
about him. But we still have these
26:22
protective walls where we're like, secretly hate all the
26:24
other guys outside the wall, you know?
26:26
Even the language of like city of God quickly becomes City of
26:32
David. Like it's, it's like and any,
26:35
and with the instruments in Genesis chapter 4, it's like
26:38
they were known for this. They were known for this, like
26:41
this, this, these humans created to reflect God's glory.
26:44
And now it's very like it's very personal.
26:48
In actual fact, one of the lowest points of David's David's
26:54
life is, is the Bathsheba story. But but he's also the censor
27:00
story of like, I'm going to go count everybody and just see how
27:05
big this Kingdom thing is. Like, and that's actually the
27:09
moment that God judges the most harshly in some ways.
27:15
So, so I think like we see that even in in Jerusalem, which is
27:19
supposed to be this, this almost like outpost of good.
27:23
Yeah, I I think get back to your like the comment that someone
27:27
made to you. Like, are we ever going to talk
27:29
about the good? Like we'll, we'll probably the
27:32
the one we'll talk most about it is actually maybe the last week
27:36
when we get stuck at. The new Kingdom, but.
27:38
The weird part is that the key to humans creating good stuff is
27:43
that they don't ever do it alone.
27:45
It's all like God driven God. Like God redeems goodness out of
27:52
our stupidity and so. Weakness and and then, then,
27:54
then what? Like, so the fascinating passage
27:57
I get to look about, look at this week is the Nehemiah story.
28:00
Yeah, which is again about building walls.
28:04
But it seems on some level to be a partnership between God and
28:08
man. There's like this weird, like
28:10
middle ground where Nehemiah sees a rebuilt temple.
28:14
It's like that there's no walls. Like, how can there be a city
28:17
without walls? And he prays and God creates
28:20
this opportunity, surprisingly, for him to come back and begin a
28:24
rebuild. So like, very interesting.
28:28
Very. Which is why, like, oh man, it'd
28:31
be so much easier if the scriptures just made everything
28:33
black and white and said like, all walls are bad, categorically
28:39
unacceptable. Yeah, all human effort is bad
28:43
categorically and and unacceptable.
28:46
Like that would be easier because we could just draw hard
28:48
lines, but it no, there's this like God is more gentle with us
28:53
and he kind of works with our he works despite our brokenness.
28:57
He sometimes redeems the brokenness.
28:59
He's like, he's constantly doing this stuff.
29:01
So, So I think what was interesting to me this week when
29:08
I read Lamentations, So I sat and read it through again
29:14
because I know it pretty well. I've read it a lot.
29:17
For some reason, I get, as I say, it's one of my favorite
29:19
books, even though I'm not someone who holds grief easily.
29:24
I think I heard a narration of a chapter years ago that just, it
29:28
got me. I could just sat in that space
29:31
and, like, this is amazing. Yeah, so I read it through again
29:36
to feel it. What was what?
29:38
I was surprised. That is like there is language
29:41
about fault there, and that's always hard when you're talking
29:45
to people about grief. Lamentations is about the like
29:50
the the loss of a spiritual physical universe for a whole
29:57
people group and based on their story, which is the if they stay
30:05
faithful to God, God will stay faithful to them.
30:09
Based on the story, some of it's their fault.
30:12
Now fault doesn't translate easy to our suffering and Jesus
30:17
really seems to question some of that belief anyway.
30:21
You know, couple of passages like the man born blind in John
30:24
Chapter 9, the the rain falls on the righteous and the
30:29
unrighteous, which I growing up in England always took to be
30:34
like a bad thing. I always grew up with like,
30:37
yeah, the rain, it falls all the time and it falls on those of us
30:40
that are good and bad. But for them it was like, no
30:43
like. The blessing.
30:45
Of rain comes lands on those that are are both good and bad
30:51
and in our own. I mean to to I don't know who
30:53
that influencer is whose whose child died, but but they didn't
30:57
necessarily do anything wrong. And so when you're asking people
31:03
to feel a book and it's conversation around grief and
31:08
some of the ways it works in our hearts, but you know that there
31:11
could be great suffering in the room and it's not necessarily
31:16
anyone's fault. You're kind of asking people to
31:20
kind of like hold the the blame language intention.
31:26
And so Lamentations does have blame language.
31:29
It talks at times about the the sins of the people.
31:33
There's a, there's an ownership of those things that's really
31:37
interesting. Totally.
31:41
But yeah. But but it but it it it, it
31:44
requires like something else as a focal point.
31:47
You can't land on blame as the focal point.
31:49
So what I what I felt as I read through all 5 chapters was that
31:52
Lamentations talks about fault, but its emphasis is actually on
31:56
forgottenness. It's like it's emphasis is
32:00
actually this, this question of God, have you forgotten us?
32:04
Have you forgotten what you promised?
32:06
Have you forgotten to notice us? Like look, pay attention and
32:12
remember is the, is the, the beginning line of chapter 5.
32:17
And, and I think that is actually what we feel in great
32:21
suffering at times like God. Have you forgotten me?
32:25
Yeah, like, regardless of who's at fault, like either way, you,
32:29
you said we were your people and it doesn't feel like that right
32:33
now. Have you forgotten the promises
32:35
you made and stuff like that? Especially if you grew up in a
32:38
Christianity that said like, you know, wealth, health, all those
32:45
sorts of things. And to some extent, I think
32:48
anyone who embraces the gospel good news, they can't help but
32:54
smuggle in their definition of good.
32:56
Sure. A little.
32:58
And as, as time goes on, they're like, wait, this doesn't feel
33:03
very good. I don't know if it's the gospel
33:06
anymore. And that's a wrestling of any
33:08
follower of Jesus where you run into suffering.
33:11
You're like, wait, I signed up for this Christian thing because
33:14
it was good for me. Yeah.
33:16
And it was about me thriving and feeling, feeling purpose and
33:20
meeting and maybe having monetary safety and all the
33:23
stuff. And then when some of those
33:25
things start to fall by the wayside, you're like, what's the
33:28
value of being a Christian if it doesn't include some of the
33:31
things that I define as good? Is this?
33:34
Is the Gospel real? Yeah.
33:37
That's a hard journey to deal with.
33:40
And then he says, I'm like, I'm with you.
33:42
You're like, I don't want that. I want lots of money.
33:45
Yes, the with me part is not helping me right now, or at
33:48
least. Enough like like, you know that
33:51
that like. Like you're being with me.
33:53
I don't feel that. So OK, you're with me.
33:56
Great. I need like a physical hug.
33:59
Yes. I don't want a spiritual
34:02
metaphorical like metaphysical hug.
34:05
Which is is one of the reasons we we find Jesus language in
34:09
John the at the end of John, which is it's better that I go
34:13
away to be so problematic. Now, when you think about how he
34:21
talks about life in the spirit, which very rarely is our
34:25
experience of life in the spirit for all sorts of reasons,
34:29
interest, time, busyness of life.
34:33
But but he like, like if, if, if we're now in a world where
34:37
there's a couple of billion Christians, then FaceTime with
34:41
Jesus is pretty minimal. You know, I don't know what the,
34:45
the working hours of the day divided by 2 billion people is,
34:51
but but it it's not, it's not a lot.
34:53
Yeah. So, so the relationship that
34:55
those those 12 people that that that that were with him
34:59
constantly had is is not possible.
35:02
Yeah. And yet, and yet we have this
35:06
suspicion, I think that if Jesus was still present with us, it
35:09
would feel very different than how it feels now.
35:12
Yeah. And so, so it it's it's kind of
35:14
revealing of the the importance of presence in, in, in, in
35:20
grief, in suffering. We actually often want someone
35:23
just to be with us. Yeah.
35:27
The writer Peter Rollins, he does these rewrites of parables
35:32
and not actually necessarily like just hear rewrites.
35:35
Some of them are just his own parables he's made-up.
35:38
Yeah. And one is about a like a
35:41
blacksmith in a town whose whose child dies and, and he has one
35:48
friend in the town who every every night will just come and
35:54
sit with him in front of the fire.
35:56
And they'll talk and, and, and drink whiskey together and, and
36:02
over the years, like his grief still remains, but he has this
36:05
constant companion and eventually goes to a local
36:09
priest. And the priest explains to him
36:11
how like actually God is bringing good things out of his
36:15
suffering that actually, like his child die dying will
36:18
actually lead to lead to good. And, and he goes back to his
36:23
friend and says, well, I guess that means I'm supposed to be
36:25
grateful for all of that. And, and you know, his friend
36:30
kind of sits with him. He says, well, if if your son
36:32
had to die for good, that seems like a great tragedy.
36:39
But but it's actually like throughout the story, it's not
36:41
the priest's great explanations that that that do the healing
36:46
work. It's the guy who sits every
36:48
night with no answer to the grief, but simply participates
36:53
in it with them, with him. And, and so I think, I think
36:56
that that that to me is like something about that rings true.
37:02
Yeah, So interestingly, like for the daily devotional, I wrote
37:09
one of them that comes out with this week.
37:11
I don't know what day it comes out, but I tell the story of
37:14
like I've met two people who the primary reason they became
37:20
followers of Jesus is the book of Lamentations.
37:22
Wow. And I think I, I talked a little
37:28
bit about in the daily. The thing that's fascinating
37:31
about it is both of them explained that the reason that
37:34
was is a religious system that's willing to stare their actual
37:41
human experience in the face, honestly, and not sugarcoat it.
37:47
That must be a real religion. That's that was the tipping
37:51
point for them where they're like, oh, Christians are able to
37:55
include this in their holy book and not sugarcoat the pain.
38:00
This feels so real to me that God must be real and
38:05
Christianity must be real. That's what that's what tipped
38:08
the scales. And you see that in Malcolm
38:11
Gladwell talks about that he wrote a book called David and
38:14
Goliath, which was around like actually why surprisingly, David
38:17
beats Goliath a lot, you know, in all sorts of arenas.
38:24
And he shares and he goes up to visit a couple who that their
38:28
son is killed. And they stand in the courtroom
38:30
and they actually embrace the murderer, put their arms around
38:34
him and forgive him. So like a mother of a murdered
38:37
son looks at a man who did the murdering and say, I forgive
38:40
you. I love you.
38:42
Yeah. And he, he said, I I wrote about
38:45
this and sat with them and visited with them.
38:47
And he said I had no explanation for how this could be possible.
38:53
You know, only the love of Jesus seemed to make this thing
38:56
possible, like a God who loves his enemies.
39:02
What was transforming this couple?
39:07
You know, I, I think the, the, the pain piece is it, is it GK
39:13
Chesterton talks about how like for a moment on the cross, God
39:17
becomes an atheist. Like you have God crying, my
39:22
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
39:25
There's like an absence of God in the life of God, which he
39:28
said is, is, is not found anywhere else.
39:31
I think the, the other week I, I used a quote from Slavoj
39:35
Jacques, who's they call him the rock star of philosophers.
39:39
And he has this weird affinity for Christianity that I'm like,
39:44
I, I just like, I would love him to experience Jesus, but he's
39:48
like, this is the only religion I can see that claims that God
39:51
reached out for them. They're not trying to find a
39:55
way. But there's something here where
39:57
they're like, no, God came down to us and God experienced the,
40:01
the, the, the most brokenness that the world can, that the
40:07
world can offer, Which again, like just fascinating how those
40:13
stories resonate with people that are.
40:17
Whose job it is to think. Yeah.
40:20
And what's so what's interesting, I think about your
40:23
sermon on Sunday about the book of Lamentations in general, is
40:32
it is strangely comfort, comforting to hear someone name
40:38
grief for all that it is in all of its vadnais and discomfort,
40:45
and to acknowledge it and say, there it is sort of lock eyes
40:50
with grief and sorrow and sadness and all of the dreams
40:55
fell apart and just look, stare at it straight.
41:00
Why is that comforting for us as humans?
41:05
What is it about being human that we just really need someone
41:09
to name it? Really.
41:16
You know, I think, I wonder if some of it is, yeah, I remember
41:21
my uncle dying and I remember as we were leaving his house after
41:27
the funeral, we were some of the last to leave and we were taking
41:33
my grandmother, his mum, and she had sat in the deep pain of
41:38
like, like, like there's that floating question.
41:40
Should any should any parent have to bury their child?
41:47
It's it's like something like tells us like horrifically it's
41:51
the wrong way round. Like in a natural order of
41:54
things, even with death in a foreign thing like parents,
41:58
children burying parents make so much more sense than the other
42:04
way round. And I remember her saying to my
42:07
aunt, you know, oh, look, he's all around you.
42:11
Like, there's these pictures on the wall.
42:13
There's these, you know, and I remember my dad saying as we
42:16
drove home, like, I wonder if that's actually comforting.
42:20
Like, like, it's almost like a, oh, everything's all right,
42:22
really. You know, you don't, don't you
42:25
don't have to grieve too much because like, see, like,
42:29
remember, he bought that thing, remember?
42:31
And and yet my, my dad, with his kind of like kind of cynicism
42:36
that he was going through at the time is left in that space of
42:39
like, yeah, but he's not there anymore.
42:46
And so he's willing to put his finger on the great grief that
42:49
it doesn't matter that he bought this statue and put it in the
42:52
the hallway. Yeah, aborted.
42:55
It doesn't, doesn't matter that he painted that painting.
42:57
And he's like, he went through a phase where he would do oil
43:01
paintings and some of them were quite good, but always with
43:03
mistakes. And so you see he's like
43:05
replicas with little like, doesn't matter that he's not
43:09
there anymore. Like, like because he's he's
43:12
paintings. They're like, no, no, the guy
43:13
that painted it, he's gone. I would give up all of this,
43:16
these paintings and all the statues to get a little moment
43:20
back with the actual. Person and so he was like, I
43:24
mean, he put his finger on it. And so I think that's what we
43:28
try and do at times, maybe almost especially as Christians,
43:32
like we take our language of like we're those we're not.
43:35
We don't grieve like those with no hope.
43:37
And and. We turn that into C It's not
43:40
that bad after all. And the answer is no, it's
43:43
awful. Like, it's deeply painful to see
43:47
like children burying parents. I mean, my cousins were like 11
43:52
and 14 when it happened or something like that. 12 and 15,
43:56
like, like, I mean, and you know, I, I often talk about
44:00
their dad as like the most charismatic man I've ever met in
44:03
my life. He was, he was incredible.
44:09
And so we we get to the whole part with Lamentations.
44:13
That's kind of how we looked at it.
44:14
We looked at it at the linear in the linear western fashion of
44:18
like. We end on Chapter 5.
44:21
Yeah, like your first pass. Yeah.
44:22
Yeah, you kind of ended in Chapter 5.
44:24
We kind of jumped over some places in chapter 3 that are,
44:27
you know, a little more hopeful, but but you get to that place of
44:30
like, unless you have forgotten us, God hasn't spoken like the
44:34
it's unique in terms of like God's silence in the midst of
44:39
it. And, and, and so, So what what I
44:45
see in my cousin as an example is I actually see her mourning
44:52
as those without hope, but it's not OK.
44:56
Like every July, without fail, she posts a video of her dad
45:03
singing and talks about like, you know, one day, like one day.
45:09
Like, it is still deeply painful.
45:12
And we're now like, I think it was 1995 or something like that.
45:16
We're, we're like 30 years on and it's, it's deeply painful.
45:22
Yeah. There's no getting away from
45:24
that. Now has that grief formed, or
45:26
has it transformed? Or it probably has.
45:30
Yeah. It doesn't just make it OK.
45:34
And, and I think that's maybe the suspicion of what people
45:36
around us might say. They might imply if we just look
45:40
close enough. It's not as it's, it's not.
45:42
It's not terrible. Yeah, so there's this, there's
45:50
this idea that dawned on me the last time we went through some.
45:54
It's a series of grief or something.
45:57
But the grief is, is maybe just your soul and your emotional
46:07
reality, your emotional self accurately reading the vadnais
46:13
of the world. Like grief is correct because
46:20
it's your. Your emotions are saying this is
46:23
not OK, It's not how it was supposed to be.
46:28
Losing someone is not correct. And so it's the part of the self
46:35
that that you can't escape that God is wired into human beings
46:40
that set that sort of like the red flag diagnostic that there's
46:44
something seriously wrong with the way the world is currently
46:48
functioning. And then when our when our
46:53
emotions rise up and say this is this hurts, this is wrong.
46:57
It's like calling you forward to you're like, yes, God is like,
47:00
uh huh. So, so I think how we read what
47:03
Paul says at times as Christians is that our grief is not really
47:08
bad because we have hope. Whereas actually what I say I
47:13
think he says is no, we have grief.
47:17
And we have. Hope as well.
47:21
And so the hope is that is that God will make things right Now.
47:27
Interestingly, there's this like, you know, you guys can
47:31
stop hearing about my class probably pretty soon because
47:35
it'll be in the rearview mirror for far enough away that I'll
47:37
stop referencing it. But one of the class periods we
47:39
had the last class period we had, we talked about great
47:42
Gregory of this I'm we might have talked about this last
47:44
week, but Gregory of Nisa does like this fascinating dive into
47:50
an old patristic father way, way back.
47:52
And he he's just trying to explore what does the
47:55
resurrection actually mean? And he's asking about like when
48:00
we when we have our new resurrected bodies and eternity,
48:04
part of who we are as human beings is shaped by the griefs
48:08
that we experience, the sorrows even like we are who we are
48:13
because of navigating. Do we really want all of that
48:16
fun? Well, well, and you think like
48:19
Jesus resurrected body has scars in the hands.
48:22
Yeah, because do you ever lose those scars?
48:25
I I, I think, I hope not. Exactly.
48:29
So like, so they're even in eternity of the resurrection.
48:32
This is what he's wrestling with.
48:34
Do we not want to be able to look back in the rearview mirror
48:38
and see that he brought us forward?
48:41
From it yeah, yeah, yeah and. You know, again, you get into a
48:46
place where the Scriptures don't address it very heavily.
48:48
So you're you're on thin ice. Just say with tons of
48:51
confidence. But it's a good question.
48:53
Yeah. Because who am I without my
48:56
griefs? Yeah.
48:57
Am I the same person? Am I resurrected and I just have
49:00
no memory of the bad? Is that even Aaron that was
49:04
resurrected? Yes, absolutely.
49:06
And now, now it like you get into all complicated things,
49:10
like if you think about like an eternity where maybe some people
49:13
are absent, like do you remember their absence?
49:16
Is there that morning of like loss and.
49:18
Yeah, it gets real hairy real quick if you actually ask the
49:22
serious questions. Yeah, but, but, but, but, you
49:26
know, whenever I think through that, that concept, like I think
49:34
CS Lewis does an amazing job of, of, of describing some kind of
49:40
shift. I think.
49:45
Yeah, his, his last chapter of Narnia is Farewell to the Shadow
49:52
Lands. And he uses this language of
49:58
like further up and further in. And this is how he describes
50:07
this last shift. As he spoke, he no longer looked
50:10
to them like a lion. But the things that began to
50:13
happen after that was so great and beautiful, I cannot write
50:15
them. And for us, this is the end of
50:18
all the stories. And we can most truly say that
50:20
they all lived happily every after.
50:22
But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
50:25
All their life in the world and all their adventures in Narni
50:27
had only been the cover and title page.
50:30
Now at last they were beginning chapter one of the great story,
50:33
which no one on earth has ever read, which goes on forever, in
50:36
which every chapter is better than the one before.
50:39
Like he does this great job of kind of stepping back from the
50:44
the the like the details into like the conceptual of like, you
50:49
know, there's a trust that there's this continuation of a
50:52
story. I don't love the fact that he
50:59
kind of diminishes this story to just just a prologue almost.
51:07
A cover, Yeah. Yeah, like it feels like it's
51:09
more than that now. I think the story after is is
51:15
like has that eternal element to it.
51:17
Yeah, like it almost has to be functionally because of the
51:21
sheer quantity of time. Yeah, but but that.
51:26
But it's still like the things there matter.
51:31
And so you can imagine like couples that have fought for
51:38
their marriage through 40 years of pain and hardship and
51:42
struggle and beauty and wonder and have felt all of those
51:48
different things, like stepping into that place with some of the
51:52
joy and victory of what it took and what they invested in it.
51:57
And it's a new story and some of the like the broken fragments
52:03
and now put together in beautiful ways.
52:06
But the the memory of it still seems valuable when when you get
52:11
to look back and say, look what we did together, like it wasn't
52:14
always easy. And you get to go back and see
52:17
like where Jesus was in that story.
52:19
And you're like, oh, the gratitude.
52:22
I mean, it's no wonder worshiping in eternity is so
52:24
much more rich. It's because you see the hand of
52:26
God just littered everywhere. Yes, yeah.
52:29
And so, so, so like to go back to the story of my family, like
52:35
Will, Will, my cousins, just like, is it as simple as like,
52:39
Oh yeah, everything was fine. But but there is like great
52:44
reuniting's and you know, like you think of what it is when you
52:50
get together with old friends that you haven't seen for years.
52:54
And there's those moments which like, oh, wait, hold on.
52:56
It's like never been apart from each other.
53:00
Like the the story just picks up like that.
53:02
Like when you have friends like that, it's just a wonder.
53:05
It's just kind of like I'm, I'm going back to spend some time
53:07
with my family and I know like within like 30 seconds it's like
53:14
we've never been gone. Like they're beautiful gifts.
53:19
And so, so it feels like, like in life there are partings and
53:28
and, and in eternity there's reuniting.
53:35
Yeah, that somehow makes the entire grief journey have a
53:42
meaning that's so far outweighs the sorrow.
53:46
So that's the grieving with hope.
53:48
It it, it doesn't diminish the pain that returns every year on
53:53
the anniversary of the lost one or whatever it may be, but it
53:58
redeems it to a place where there's a reuniting and you see
54:04
the story arc of what God was up to and how he was there and in
54:08
the midst of it. And yeah, so there is, there is
54:12
hope, but without diminishing the the sorrow.
54:18
Yeah, it it for me. One of the things I've noticed
54:23
as I've gotten older is I appreciate the bad more.
54:32
I wouldn't choose it ever again. But I look back and I there's
54:39
enough in the rearview mirror that I can say, you know what?
54:43
I am a different person because of that.
54:47
And when you're in the middle of it, you crying out to God to
54:51
take it away. But once you've seen it unfold
54:58
for a long enough time, you can see how God's redeemed or
55:03
whatever maybe. Yeah, I'm trying to remember.
55:05
There's there's an amazing, there's an amazing.
55:18
Oh, that's it. Yeah.
55:19
Fyodor Dostoveski quote where he says it's not as a child, I
55:24
believe and confess. Jesus Christ, my Hosanna is born
55:27
in the furnace of doubt. Like like he's like, you know,
55:31
he's been through some stuff and he sat in some lamentation
55:35
places where it's like, did you just abandoned us?
55:39
Are we just on our own now? And yet like the hope, the
55:46
central hope story, the chiasm that points to hope but doesn't
55:51
diminish the pain. Like that's that's the language,
55:53
right, that we want to hang on to that.
55:55
It's not because we have hope. Grief doesn't matter.
55:59
It's that in the midst of our grief, hope is held like
56:04
alongside it. Something happens there like
56:14
that. That's his story.
56:15
That's the Lamentation story. That's what the chaos and points
56:18
do. Is is kind of where I'm going
56:19
with that. But they're still in the same
56:24
spot. Lady Zion is still sat on the
56:26
ground and the Raiders now kind of with her.
56:28
And, and there's a beauty in that that I didn't even get a
56:30
chance to talk. About, yeah.
56:31
The three voices kind of unite at a certain point that they're
56:36
like, you know, now it's the whole city, and they're all like
56:39
speaking the same words and they're all participating in it
56:43
together. Yeah.
56:46
So the the beauty of this narrative structures that may be
56:49
the best place for the hope is the middle.
56:51
Yeah, not necessarily. And and then the uniting at the
56:54
very end. I, I mean, I love we've talked
56:56
about a lot about this presence concept and the even you hint at
57:01
it there where all these characters who seem like they're
57:04
on a different page at the beginning and sadly and also
57:10
deep, deeply, comfortingly by the end, they're all on the same
57:14
page in the bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:16
Which is like maybe some of the hope.
57:19
Yeah, this idea of presence like this, this painting is like, oh,
57:25
man, mind blowing to me. This is it's called the the
57:30
physician. And you have this, you have this
57:33
doctor here character. It it, it's a paint like this is
57:42
the it's a sort of self-portrait.
57:43
This is the artist who actually lost his child.
57:46
Oh wow. You can see the the wife here
57:51
with her head on the table and the hint, her husband's hand on
57:55
her and the, the the the child's just beyond.
58:00
It's hard to look at for me. But the beauty of this painting
58:05
is the physician can't do anything else.
58:09
But he's there. He's no longer trying to fix.
58:13
Yeah. But he is 100% present for this
58:17
family and for this girl. And that's why it's called the
58:22
physician, not the, the, the great sorrow or the, the great
58:26
grief or something like that. Now that's a physician, right?
58:31
There there's a a writer that I love called Andy Root and he
58:34
talks about pastoring in this particular age.
58:38
And one of the stories he tells, he's, he was reading a book
58:43
about a brain surgeon who describes his process of
58:47
navigating difficult choices around brain surgery with
58:52
patients at a crisis point. And he's navigating like, the
58:56
potential, like loss of function from surgery, the potential
59:00
upsides, the potential risks. And he's kind of bringing them
59:04
to a place where they see all the options on the table and all
59:07
the possibilities. And he kind of helps them
59:11
pastorally navigate what's your choice here?
59:16
And they come to a conclusion, and he supports them in their
59:19
conclusion. And he talks to his wife about
59:22
how, like, how amazed he was to watch this pastoral nature in
59:26
this physician leap off the pages.
59:30
And his wife is a Presbyterian pastor and she sat there with
59:34
all of her papers for a board meeting on the table and all of
59:38
her budget line items and stuff and everything she's working
59:41
through. And she kind of like exasperated
59:44
looks at her up at him and says, well, it would be really nice to
59:47
have time to do that. But I've got to do this.
59:49
And I've got to do this, and I've got to do this and I've got
59:51
to do this. And he says like, like he saw in
59:54
this moment, this age that we've created where pastors are CE OS
59:58
operating huge structures and millions of dollars.
1:00:02
And doctors are sitting in the space of pastors.
1:00:06
Yeah. And and it just was so
1:00:08
interesting to read. He's like, get his take on that.
1:00:13
But actually that witness is is indispensable in the midst of of
1:00:18
suffering. Yeah, yeah.
1:00:21
And sometimes just the sorrows of life it does take.
1:00:25
It does actually happen. Yeah, the bad thing does happen.
1:00:29
Yeah, sure. And the promise that we have the
1:00:32
the hope is that it'll be redeemed long term.
1:00:34
OK, great. But the other promise is that
1:00:37
like a great physician, sometimes he sits by the
1:00:40
bedside. Yeah.
1:00:42
It's beautiful. Beautiful and hard and heavy.
1:00:46
So I'm tired of extra weepy today.
1:00:51
All right. I I I cry usually in sermons,
1:00:54
not in podcast episodes. And on that bombshell?
1:00:56
Thank you all for tuning in to the show today.
1:01:01
I've got to find the stop button.
1:01:03
Yeah. Gosh, that painting wrecks me
1:01:06
man. IE.