Grief Tempered By Hope
I speak to you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Those of you here today are no stranger to sorrow. The sting of death has touched each of you and perhaps sent you tumbling into the waters of grief. You may have fallen headlong, the shock of loss so acute it stole your breath. Or you may have been more prepared, sliding in one inch at a time. My guess is that for all of us there has been at least one moment when we were submerged by the title wave of grief. When the waters close over your head, and hoping whatever breath you had before it submerged you was enough to sustain you through the tumult.
It is my prayer that those of you who are with us today, know deep within what Paul reassures the Thessalonians of: that we who are followers of Jesus don’t grieve as the world grieves. Our grief is tempered by hope.
Do you know what tempering is? In metalworking, tempering is the process by which the metal is made more durable. After the metal has been heated and shaped, it is cooled rapidly by water. That process is called quenching. It is after that initial shock and hardening that tempering takes place.
On the outside, the metal looks the same – whether that’s a cast-iron frying pan or a steel girder. Looking at the item, you can’t tell it’s different, but on the inside – where it really matters – the individual molecules have been rearranged. The tempering process of heating and cooling, heating and cooling, repeated again and again makes the metal stronger, less brittle, and more flexible.
When grief is tempered with hope we are stronger. The weight of grief is no different, but we are able to bear it in a different way. Jesus invites us to come to him with our burdens, and he will share them with us. Strength comes when we know we don’t have to bear the full weight on our own.
The psalmist in our passage today declares, “I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; in his word is my hope.” (Ps. 130:4). When we wait for the Lord, we are waiting in hope, waiting and knowing both that we do not have to carry the burden alone, and also that death is not the final word.
When grief is tempered with hope we are less brittle. When a material is brittle, any amount of stress will cause it to break. When brittleness overtakes us, even the slightest bump or jar can cause breakage. But when we are able to absorb and transform what might otherwise break us, we have found resiliency.
The first question in the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” The answer is one that I carry with me through all difficult times. It says, “That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.”
What happens when we truly trust that we, and those we love, belong body and soul, in life and in death to our Savior Jesus Christ? We are able to do as Paul instructs the Thessalonians, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, though Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died” (1 Thess. 4:13-14).
It is the image of God bringing close those who have died that gives hope. Just as in life, each person is loved and cared for; held close and treasured. Even as we are letting go of a loved one’s earthly life, God is reaching out to bring them in.
When grief is tempered with hope, we are more flexible. In those times we are bowed down with the weight of grief, it means that we don’t stay in that shape forever. Yes, we bend, but we do not break or remain bent.
Just as metal is heated and cooled repeatedly in the tempering process, so too do we go through cycles. Tempering our grief with hope is an ongoing process.
And when we join together on days like today, to remember those we’ve loved and lost, we do not grieve as the world grieves. We name our loved ones before God with the hope of the resurrection, trusting in God’s mercy. We don’t have to invent ways to tamp down our tears, because we know that they express both our love and our hope.
The last 16 months have been incredibly difficult for the Capps family, a part of my own extended family. In June of 2023, the matriarch of the family, Nancy, died after a battle with leukemia. Nancy was the shining light of the family, always ready with a hug and a kind word. She was a steady support to her children, teaching them about love and life and faith.
Nancy’s oldest daughter Kathy was heartbroken to lose her mother. Less than a year later, as the family was adjusting to life without Nancy, Kathy’s middle child Hayden died tragically at the age of 18.
To say that Kathy and the rest of the family were bowed under the weight of grief might be an understatement. But they did not break. Instead, they remembered.
When we remember with intention, we are actually putting something back together. We are re-membering, re-assembling the various pieces into a new whole.
Kathy does not shy away from her grief for Hayden, and she gave me permission to share her story. She lifts up pieces of his life—pictures and stories and videos that she wants to hold close—and offers them to her community. Not only is she re-membering, but all those who knew and loved Hayden are joining in that process as well. These memories are woven together with shining threads of hope.
It doesn’t keep the waves of grief at bay, but each stitch of hope, each memory held up to the light, has tempered Kathy with enough hope to keep going.
The world tells us that grief is a linear process, progressing logically through stages, and when we reach the end we are done. But you and I know differently. There is no done. There is no done when it comes to grief, because it will always remain with us. And there is also no done when it comes to God. Because death is not the end. Our souls wait for the Lord, for God’s word is hope.
As you grieve and remember, know that you have been changed by this process. You are stronger, less brittle, and more flexible because of the hope woven into your very being. You can bear the strain, because you are not doing it alone. And each act of remembrance knits those memories together with the sure hope of the one to whom we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, our Savior Jesus Christ.