Grief Is the Price We Pay for Love
As many of you in the Foundry Church family already know, my mom, Dorothy Coughlin, passed away recently after a short illness. She was 96 years old and is with Jesus now. Her death wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it left our family grieving and out of sorts.
We’ve appreciated all the Foundry folks who’ve shown our family such kindness and compassion. Many of you have experienced loss as well so you’re familiar with grieving and can offer real comfort to us.
My mom came to know Jesus shortly after I did in my freshman year of college. Even though she wrestled with doubt for much of her life, she had confidence in Jesus to save her. She gave me a Bible on my 45th birthday. Inside is this inscription, “Dear Mike, Thanks for leading me to the Lord. With all my love. Your Mom, December 10,1988.
I’ll be speaking at her graveside burial on Saturday, December 14. And being the preacher I am, I’ve been thinking for some time about what I’ll say. Going through her belongings, I found this quote attributed to Queen Elizabeth II: “Grief is the price we pay for love”. In other words, as we love the people in our lives, we also grieve for them when they die.
So that brought the preacher in me to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11. There’s a lot to unpack in that chapter, but I’ll be focusing on Jesus’s reaction to his friend’s death.
Jesus enjoyed a deep and special friendship with this little family of siblings, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (11:5). He enjoyed their hospitality in Bethany, a small village just outside of Jerusalem.
Yet it’s perplexing when Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick, he waits two days before going to see him. And on the journey to Bethany, Lazarus dies (11:6-15).
This delay causes no uncertain anguish to Lazarus’s sisters, especially Martha (v.27). She questions Jesus’s timing but trusts his person. Martha knows Jesus possesses the power of life and death (vv.25-26). Soon Jesus himself would experience an excruciating physical death and yet bodily rise from the dead.
Who of us hasn’t questioned God’s timing in our lives? We question God with the phrase “if only”. Yet God’s timing is always perfect and his solutions always better: Consider John 11:40:
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
Jesus is about to perform a miracle, demonstrating his power over death and that his timing is perfect.
But amidst the grieving and questioning surrounding the death of Lazarus, Jesus grieves too:
When Jesus saw her (Mary) weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” John 11:33-36
The word translated ‘deeply moved in his spirit’ in the NIV is a particularly strong one. It usually conveys the idea of anger. Certainly not against the grieving sisters but maybe against the professional mourners who always showed up in times like these but didn’t really mourn. Or perhaps Jesus’s anger is directed against the ravages of sin in the world which leads to death. He knows something is wrong in our world and he came to fix it. Death isn’t the way it was supposed to be (Romans 5:12). Whatever the case, Jesus feels deeply along with us.
I’m all for memorial services that look back on the life of a believer and remember their past and future impact on the people they influenced. For example, I’m going to give an opportunity for those at my mom’s graveside service to share memories about her. But I’m against those services that whitewash the terrible reality of sin and its resulting death and destruction. And Jesus does too.
The second word “troubled” in verse 33 expresses “agitation, confusion, or disorganization…it implies agitation rather than complete sorrow…Jesus was not apathetic or unnerved by the prevailing mood of sorrow…Jesus shared in the common feeling of grief over his (Lazarus) death…His human feelings were normal and revealed the crisis of the moment.” (Merrill C. Tenney in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary on John, p.119)
Finally, Jesus wept. The old Living Bible paraphrases it, “Tears came into Jesus’ eyes.” Again, Tenney cites Charles Williams’ translation, “Jesus burst into tears.” Jesus’ grief was spontaneous and genuine just like ours.
Not surprisingly, I’ve experienced this whole range of emotion since my mom’s death. I’ve felt distracted, sad, found it difficult to concentrate, had difficulty sleeping, and more.
I’m sure many of you reading this have too.
If you take nothing else from this article, be assured that Jesus feels what you’re feeling in your time of loss. He is not apathetic or detached. He weeps alongside you. And he has conquered death through his resurrection and ascension.
Finally, in verse 36, people take notice of this weeping. It says, “See how he loved him.”
The quote I shared with you at the beginning was right. Grief is the price we pay for love. It reveals that we are genuinely human and that we have a Savior and Lord who is genuinely human too.
Don’t we often sing hymns and choruses without thinking about the words? That’s been true for me when singing What a Friend We Have in Jesus. But in writing this article, the Holy Spirit brought to mind this verse from that song:
Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged
Take it to the Lord in prayerCan we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness
Take it to the Lord in prayer
During the Christmas season we remember God became one of us to reverse the curse. We need never again fear death if we put our trust in Jesus. Someday because Jesus came and is coming again, there’ll be no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, and no more pain (Revelation 21:4). But even as we experience sin’s consequences in this life, we have a Savior who feels what we feel right alongside us.