The Anticipatory Grief of Jesus - Redeemer Episcopal Church

Matthew 21:1-11 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.”  This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
    humble, and mounted on a donkey,
        and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David!
    Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

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This sermon was preach by me, Pastor Sarah Locke in a specific context for a specific people, but I think it can speak in different times to different folks as well. You can read the sermon below, or listen to it at this link.

You can also watch the worship video below:

Let us pray. 

God of mercy and consolation, you have felt our every grief and desperation in your own son Jesus Christ. Let us take comfort in his presence and in your saving power on this day and always. Amen. 

This is an odd time to be a campus chaplain. Along with almost every other profession and vocation, we are having to adapt to a new normal and I’m figuring out what ministry looks like when I can’t be present with any of my students. So every week we gather together for Food for Thought… over video conferencing. 

This past week we were checking in with one another and one of our students mentioned having a hard time planning anything. She said, “it feels like the worst is still yet to come and it’s hard to believe there is anything that will be worth planning after this. I think I have forgotten how to hope.” 

We’ve had a lot of plans cancelled and a lot of our normal life upended in the past several weeks and I’ve felt similar to this student in the past week. How do we continue to live our lives and plan for the future when things feel so immediate and dangerous and futile? I started to do some reading about this feeling of hopelessness. It turns out that a LOT of people are feeling this way. And this odd discomfort about the future is actually a form of grief. 

David Kessler, an expert on grief, describes what we are feeling as two different kinds of grief. We are feeling regular grief— the grief of things lost, people dying, normal live changing, and plans being cancelled. But we are also feeling another kind of grief called anticipatory grief.

When I hear this story about Jesus on Palm Sunday, that is what comes to mind— grief. We know this story well. We hear a version of it every year on Palm Sunday. So it might not make complete sense that I find grief in this story. After all, it seems like one of the few times Jesus is celebrated for who he is— the Lord and Savior of God’s people. 

But Jesus has been on this journey from the very beginning. He knows that it will only end one way. So I can only imagine that he has some really complicated feelings as he gave these instructions to his disciples and rode into the city among the crowd shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

On the one hand, I am sure that he feels a certain amount of pride and happiness in being among his people, in being welcomed into the city by crowds who are calling out to him. 

But what these people are shouting is “Hosanna” which means, “Help us now!” They were shouting to God for assistance in their plight, their oppression under the Roman Empire. They were asking for a political revolution, not a spiritual one. Jesus knew this and knew that that is not what he would offer them. 

So I can only imagine that Jesus also felt an immense amount of grief. Because with every step that colt took into the city, Jesus got closer and closer to what would seem like unbearable disappointment and abandonment to his friends, family, and followers. With every step, Jesus got further and further away from people’s expectations of the Messiah. As he made his way into the city, he got closer and closer to losing his dignity and insecurity. He got closer to the unknown and maybe even feelings of anger and fear and anxiety. And as he made his way into that city, he got closer and closer to death.

What grief Jesus must be feeling in the midst of this grand parade, not only for himself but for everyone around him. 

The grief expert I mentioned earlier, David Kessler, says that: 

“Anticipatory grief is that feeling we get about what the future holds when we’re uncertain. Usually it centers on death. We feel it when someone gets a dire diagnosis or when we have the normal thought that we’ll lose a parent someday. 

“Anticipatory grief is also more broadly imagined futures. There is a storm coming. There’s something bad out there. With a virus, this kind of grief is so confusing for people. Our primitive mind knows something bad is happening, but you can’t see it. This breaks our sense of safety. We’re feeling that loss of safety. I don’t think we’ve collectively lost our sense of general safety like this. Individually or as smaller groups, people have felt this. But all together, this is new. We are grieving on a micro and a macro level.”

In the same way that Jesus is walking into a future that is largely unknown to the entire world and one that will change everything forever, we are doing the same thing. 

I’ve heard so many people lamenting this week, saying that this is the first year that they can remember when they won’t be in the church for Holy Week. And we don’t know what to do. We are being faced with a big question mark in our lives right now. We don’t know what the next week will entail and there is a lot of stress and grief being held in our bodies right now. We, too, are walking through the city gates into the unknown of of a dangerous Jerusalem. 

Perhaps it is an odd thing to admit, but it does bring me a bit of comfort to imagine that Jesus experienced similar anxiety, fear, and grief as he made his way into the city. And yet he continued. He continued on his journey toward the cross because of his love for the people shouting to him, waving palm branches, and laying their cloaks on the ground for him. He continued because of his love for the people who had followed him for many years and provided for him, loved him, and did ministry with him. He continued knowing that love is often uncomfortable, unbearable, and undignified in the face of real crisis. He continued into Jerusalem and eventually to his death on a cross because he knew that that is the cost of love. He knew that is was the only way to save us all. 

So as we remember that day when he went into the city amid shouts of “Hosanna!” We too are shouting, or perhaps sighing in grief, the same sentiment: “Save us now, God.” And we continue into the unknown in grief, anxiety, and fear for the love of our neighbors, trusting in the knowledge that God has saved us in Christ Jesus, now and forever. Amen. 

Do Not Be Afraid - Redeemer Episcopal Church

Luke 12:32-40 

³²“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. ³³Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. ³⁵“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; ³⁶be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. ³⁷Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.³⁸If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. ³⁹“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

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This sermon was originally preached at Redeemer Episcopal Church on August 11, 2019 by The Rev. Sarah Locke. You can listen to the sermon audio (with infusions from the Spirit) at this link. 

Grace and peace from God in Christ, without whom we cannot exist. Amen. 

“Do not be afraid” seems like an absolutely ridiculous thing for God to say to us, and to these people in these stories. 

Think of the story of Abram: God had promised that he would be a great nation and up until then, he had only had a son born to his wife’s slave— hardly the right kind of heir! So he questions God, and I think most of us would say rightly so— and God says “Do not be afraid.” But can we blame Abram for being afraid? Things aren’t going as planned or promised and he is already an old man. 

In the gospel text, Jesus is in the core of his teaching. He has already healed many people, he has calmed the storms, and he has predicted his death multiple times to his disciples. Why wouldn’t they be in fear and trembling about all the things their rabbi has done and says that he will do? Just before this, Jesus told someone in the crowd that possessions are only going to rot and crumble beneath them. The one thing that assured the life and longevity of people in the ancient world— wealth, acquiring more stuff— Jesus says is worthless. It makes sense that people are a little uneasy. 

So how galling is it that Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”

This is the same message that God brings to us today. 

The imagery that Jesus uses as he speaks to the disciples strikes me. Jesus gives us a story of a slave, waiting in the middle of the night, for the master to return. Then he says that “if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁰You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Jesus us tells his followers about two times when we much stay awake, stay alert. And they both happen to be at night. It is in the middle of the night that the master may return from the wedding banquet. We are to stay up, far into the darkness of evening to await his return. Far into the unknown hours of mystery and vulnerability. So too, Jesus speaks of a thief who comes during some mysterious, unknown hour to break into the house.

This is where we find ourselves this morning. In darkness, in mystery, in fear, awaiting those things that we know will come, but without any indication of when or for how long we must wait.  

127 of God’s children have died or were injured in mass shootings in the United States just in the last two weeks. 

680 of God’s children were arrested in ICE raids this week and hundreds of parents were separated from their children.

God’s creation of land and water are being exploited at unprecedented rates, wreaking havoc on our whole world. 

Friday’s triple shooting marked Jacksonville’s 100th homicide this year.

Do not be afraid, Jesus says. 

But it seems we are sitting in the deepest darkness many of us can imagine. 

Think about what it means to be in the dark. As children, many of us were probably afraid of the dark. Maybe we still are. It’s often terrifying and it makes us sit up a little straighter, strain our eyes a bit to be sure we know where we are going, keeps us focused and diligent. But is also gives us an opportunity. 

Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us that “we are never more in danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going.” Only when there are no more maps, no more compasses, no more lights to direct the way, are we fully vulnerable to God. 

So here we are, waiting in the darkness, beginning to understand that we are fully reliant on God. In the collect this morning we prayed that we cannot exist without God. How often do we truly believe that? Only when we know we cannot rely on anything else in this world. Only when we are in total darkness, waiting for God to return.

So what do we do in this space? What do we do to quell our fear and feel more secure?

The world would tell us that we have to have more defenses, buy more guns, increase our national security budget, have some sort registry of the mentally ill. The world would tell us that we must frantically flip on all the lights and respond in fear, gathering up all the resources we can so that we can defend ourselves against intruders and thieves. The world tells us that these things will keep us safe. 

But God tells us that true security doesn’t come from those things. In fact, Jesus tells us to sell all of our possession in preparation for his return, we are to give to the poor and be cautious of what lies within our hearts. Our psalm this morning says this: There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army; a strong man is not delivered by his great strength. The horse is a vain hope for deliverance; for all its strength it cannot save. God is our only help and shield.

The only thing that can hold is in this in-between time— this time of darkness, mystery, and fear, when the reign of God is not but not yet come, is God. Only God. 

So what are we to do? We look to our ancestors and all those saints who have gone before us, we look to those who have gone through the darkest of times and we learn from our history. We remember those who have died fighting against the same evils. We read their stories again and again, we remember their names on our lips and in our prayers. We dine with them at this holy table. We are assured in the promise that we are washed in the same waters of baptism with them. And like Abraham and Sarah, and our parents before us, we defiantly, rebelliously have more faith in God than we do in this world. 

Because we know where we are in this story, as resurrection people— we know the end of this story. We know how it ends. God’s story does not end with the darkness of the sun being blotted out as Christ dies on the cross, it does not end with the darkness of the tomb. 

The story continues as the sun rises to reveal an open and empty tomb. 

God’s promise of life everlasting is the only thing that allows us to sit through the night, waiting for the thief, wondering what comes next. It is only God’s promise that allows us to have faith that something better awaits. 

And that is exactly why we come together in this community to sit and wait and be vulnerable before God as we wait for what is to come, trusting in God’s radical and revolutionary promise that we need not worry. 

Amen.