Learning How to Mourn

These past 40 days of the Lenten season, an idea has been running through my head. It’s the idea of learning how to mourn. Sometimes it seems as if the Church is not a place to mourn. As modern-day believers, we know that Christ has risen. We know we have hope. And because of these things, we are told to be joyful. And joy is a vital, important thing to cling to, especially in days like these. But I’m not sure if anyone can truly know joy if he or she has never truly mourned. Sometimes when a believer opens up and shares grief or a difficultly that is keeping them up at night, a first response from fellow believers is an uplifting cliché, meant to encourage but somehow not being enough. With good intentions, we sometimes do not spend time mourning but instead fill up the silence with words or thoughts that are about joy. But joy that is false is no joy at all.

These thoughts bring me to the last days of Holy Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. On Maundy Thursday, we remember the last meal Jesus had with his disciples before he was arrested. We remember Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. We remember how his beloved disciples fell asleep in his darkest hour.

Today, on Good Friday, I am thinking about the paradox of such a title. On a day when Christ was brutally tortured and killed, “good” seems to be the wrong adjective to use. I imagine that those who followed Christ, those who stood beneath the cross, were just waiting for Jesus to show his power and end his execution. As the hours went by, their hope must have diminished. This day was certainly not a good day for them.

In current Christian tradition, it seems as if Good Friday and Easter Sunday get all of the attention, but my mind always drifts to Holy Saturday. This was the day to mourn. This was the day when Jesus’ followers must have felt numb and shattered. They must have been thinking that Jesus was just like all the other men claiming to perform miracles and save men’s souls, men who also died leaving behind bewildered followers. On the Saturday after Jesus’ death, I can’t imagine the heartache his disciples felt. I can’t imagine Mary’s grief. These people must have mourned for all they had lost. They had lost a leader, a friend, a son, a Savior, and a Messiah. They had lost their life’s purpose. These 24 hours must have been brutal. We have the luxury of knowing what would happen the next day, that Jesus would indeed defeat death. But his followers did not know this. They missed Jesus’ clues. Instead, they mourned.

On Easter Sunday, their mourning must have ended. The tomb was empty and Christ was alive. Hundreds of people saw him during his final days on this earth. They saw the man who was supposed to be dead walking around with his friends, the men who would eventually spread the message of the Gospel around the world. On that first Easter, hope was restored. Death was defeated. Jesus revealed the power of God, making redemption possible and the Christian faith worth something after all.

I’m not sure if Jesus’ followers could have experienced the joy of that first Easter had they not mourned on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. I think the same still applies to us, still applies to me.

It is not a pleasant thing to do an inventory of one’s soul. It is much easier to believe that my flaws are not that bad, that my choices are not that destructive. But the whole purpose of the Lenten season is to reflect, be honest, and repent. It is a time to give something up to gain something even greater.

I believe that it is difficult to understand the love of Christ until we are face-to-face with our own humanity. It is there, when we mourn for what we are and what we have lost, that we can receive grace and joy. It is there we can know redemption, the gift that Easter presents us with.

The Christian faith is incredibly paradoxical. Through Christ’s death, we have life. By losing our life to Christ, we gain life. We are to pray for our enemies and love those who in no way deserve to be loved. And too, we mourn to know joy. We confront our brokenness so that we can receive the grace of God with the utmost joy and zeal. Christ was broken so we would not have to be any longer. Because of that, today, a day we remember Christ’s death, is indeed good. It is good because we know the end of the story. Saturday is Holy because we know that Christ was indeed set apart.

My favorite poem is “Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward” by John Donne. He concludes his Good Friday reflections with these lines:

O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

The speaker of this poem has mourned. He knows he is not even worth God’s anger or punishment. But he also knows that the glory and majesty of God’s face is very real, so real that he will have to turn away from the sight. May we see, if only for a moment, the beauty in the brokenness. May we mourn for what has been lost, knowing all the while that it will not be lost forever.

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