‘Grief’, Isaiah 38, Sept 22nd 2024.
Isaiah 36-39 form a block.
Hezekiah in these chapters shows the faith that Isaiah has been calling for.
We read about Hezekiah’s magnificent trust in God…
Hezekiah faces a great challenge in 36-37. He looks beyond his circumstances to see the bigger picture – the sovereign power of God. He trusts God. God delivers.
Isaiah 38. Hezekiah meets again a huge personal challenge – he is told he is going to die. His psalm of lament reflects on how serious it was. He trusts God. God delivers…
Let’s now focus on chapter 38.
Grief.
In those days, Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death.’’
He receives the message.
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD.
Remember O Lord how I walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what was good in your eyes. And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
Hezekiah grieves as he faces loss.
It is described very powerfully.
He turned to the wall – we assume in his room – maybe that was the direction to the temple.
Maybe it allowed more privacy – esp if he had always a servant with him.
Maybe he did not want to be vulnerable before others – but as his words are shared, as he sobs, he is willing to be vulnerable with his God.
I wanted to say some words about grief, recognising this is very simple and far too brief…
Grief comes in many different ways into our lives.
We can suffer grief perhaps over the lifestyle taken by our kids; there can be grief over an abortion;
grief over being single as your friends are each getting married;
grief over divorce, yours or friends who have gone through it;
grief over a life limiting illness or physical injury;
grief perhaps over an empty nest or the grandparents who
grieve over no longer being able to see their grandchildren as often for they have moved away;
grief can be present over losing a job; and it can be there over moving house…
There would be many other examples I am sure you could share…
Grief is the emotion of bereavement – it is part of the cost of having loved, a normal response to the loss of a significant loved person or object or hope.
For a dying person like Hezekiah, he is losing it all, his losses all come together. And to which is added that final loss – that of death.
In the 1960s, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, after research, shared there were a number of stages, which a person could progress through in grief. Denial; Anger; bargaining; depression; acceptance and hope.
Grief is complex, different for each person. It is does not have to be a linear process – one stage after another.
CS Lewis, writing in the book a Grief Observed, in the months after the death of his wife put it this way:
‘’Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed in tears, For in grief, nothing ‘’stays put’’.
One keeps emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, asks Lewis.
Or dare I hope that I am on a spiral? But if a spiral – am I going up or down it?’’
Grief is a human response. Where we are at, may vary. Yet it is unwise and not healthy to deny it, to pretend it is not there.
The first element I take away from Isaiah 38.
Where I grieve, am I willing to acknowledge those emotions within me? Hezekiah weeps…
Bringing Grief to the Lord.
The second point I see here.
He brings it to the Lord God. Remember O Lord.
Simply this asks of me. Where I am grieving have I brought this to the Lord God.
Now this may seem really obvious. Or is it.
Do we bring our grief to the Lord – or are we saying to ourselves – just get over it.
Hezekiah’s words – he brings his personal situation before God.
His psalm – written later – expresses how he saw his situation – the finality of life, death the great enemy.
Grief can mean simply bringing that pain into his presence.
But it is possible in order to do that, this may mean bringing our view of what is right and just, before the Lord God. ‘’Lord what happened was wrong.’’
And there may be another step, where we say ‘God where are you?
If you had been here this would not have happened.’
Where is faith in this Grant? You may ask.
We walk by faith.
Things happen and we come back to God’s word and his truth and stand on it.
At times that is all that is needed.
But at times, the emotions and the beliefs do not line up.
The emotions perhaps are too strong…
So the praying can becomes – Lord I trust this is your will, but this hurts…
To give a few examples.
When Jesus visits Mary and Martha, they both say – Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
These were very honest heart felt words. Jesus saw and heard the pain and it says ‘’he wept’’.
I find it o so comforting that he could have walked in, asked – where is the tomb and done it.
Yet he is not in a hurry. Why? He doesn’t run past the pain. In fact, he wants to see, to hear, to be with Mary and Martha in their pain… to allow them to speak the confusion and pain their faith has caused. If you had been here – we know who you are Lord – yet that makes it even harder….
Jesus own wrestling in Gethsemane.
Abba Father, everything is possible for you, take this cup from me, but not what I will but what you will.
Honesty. Submission. Sharing the struggle.
Hezekiah reminds me – can I bring my grief, in all its honesty, to the Lord God…
GOD’s character
God cares, our scriptures point us to this.
Isaiah has been teaching us about who God is. A God who is majestic and high, God who is passionate about Justice, demands trust and intervenes in battles and in the affairs of nations, he is holy and righteous. We see that in Isaiah 36-37.
Yet. 38 for me, reminds me, that we have a God who is interested not just in the nation but in the individual.
The God who is close to those who are crushed in spirit and humble, the God who is merciful and caring.
He is not only the God of the future who wants to lead us to the new heaven and new earth, but the God of the present who meets us his people in our struggles and difficulties.
Isaiah 57 15 For this is what the high and exalted One says—
he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15
God the majestic and high, who intervenes to defend his people and the city he chose to place his name.
This is the God who listened to the prayer of the king for the nation.
This God acts in the life of an individual.
He listens to his grief filled prayer as he was ill and death was approaching…
I live in a high and lofty place, yet I am with the one who is lowly in spirit, to revive their spirit…
In Jesus we see this lived out…
The Word made flesh through whom the universe was made,
who makes time to be with two sisters, to listen to their grief, and to weep…
God will say to Hezekiah – I have heard your prayers and seen your tears… like Jesus saw the tears of Mary and Martha and the others around them as they grieved Lazarus…
Heard and seen…
maybe at times that is all we need to know that God sees us.
Recently I was chatting with an Open Doors worker and they shared a story from the head of the trauma centre that Open Doors operates. They have seen terrible suffering among the Christians. And that coordinator had too. She shared what her favourite name for God was. El Roi – from Genesis 16 – the God who sees me. To know that she was seen by God, in all her suffering and all the suffering the centre would minister into, that gave such strength…
Our role.
Isaiah becomes an instrument of healing. He brings God’s messages. He shares that Hezekiah will recover and that the ongoing threats of Assyria will come to nothing… Also when Hezekiah, in his doubts, asks for a sign, Isaiah shares what sign will be given…
How can you be someone used to help someone grieving – as I said grief can be over many things.
Isaiah – listened to the Lord.
Reminds me of prayer – the people you know, the people you know in this community who you know grieve, bring them to the Lord and to continue to pray for them as Jesus encourages us in Luke 18.
Second step – Romans 12 – v15 – rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn. When Paul is beginning to describe how to live in the light of the glorious gospel, he says many words to which we would say a loud AMEN to – well if we were a lively Pentecostal we would say Amen out loud but as a bunch of mostly Anglicans, Baptists and Protestants, we say a loud AMEN in our heads!
But Paul says things like be zealous for the lord, faithful in prayer, be devoted to one another in love, live in harmony, use your gifts. Amen!
But he also says ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.’
It is easier to rejoice isn’t it. On a Sunday. To hear the good stories. But what about mourning with those who mourn. It does not mean having an easy answer. It can be listening, grieving with them in that moment in that time….
I always remember two shaping examples in my life.
When I was a missionary I remember a lady from our Hungarian church. She had lost her husband. She wore black for a year in grief. I saw her once in the supermarket, close by in a queue. I thought I should say something but I was too embarrassed, didn’t know what to say and I said nothing and I walked away. I don’t think that lady was looking for answers, but maybe to have had a member of her church say I am sorry may have been enough…
Second was when Claire died when I was in training. I remember several weeks later I was talking to the administrator of the college; a person training with me – Mike – came along, saw me, and he paused, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said – nothing. But I knew in that touch, in that moment, he cared I was seen, he was expressing his grief…
Sometimes we think we need to have the theology the answers the wisdom. Most of the time. I don’t think we do. We just need to care.
And if that moment is just totally wrong time to get into a conversation with that person, maybe it is easier to ask if you can meet up for a coffee and there, when it is a less noisy or maybe when the kids are not getting lost etc, you can ask how are they and be there and listen…Or if you are the one grieving, maybe when asked, to help them care for you, maybe that isn’t the time to talk it over, but to find another time…
You may say that you are not a pastoral type. Okay.
But the challenge of the word still applies to you too… God was aware of you when he wrote it!
Maybe it is not a conversation but perhaps it is a touch, maybe it is gift – a card. Or maybe it begins with a prayer: Lord teach me to grieve with those who grieve. I can rejoice. But help me to grieve…’’
Another way we can care is through our prayer ministry team. To let them care for you. You may struggle with grief on a matter – you may not feel able to pray about it yourself. But to ask the prayer team – I am so sorrowful or hurt or whichever words you want to use – can you pray with me.
You see our prayer ministry team is praying for you, also praying with you, and bringing you to the Lord’s presence when maybe you feel you cannot…
Closing thoughts
So, Isaiah 38.
We see grief and grief expressed
We see grief brought before the Lord God – in an honest way…
We see a majestic God who has just defended a city, come close to the broken hearted and crushed.
We see a person used by God in helping to bring healing… each of us called to be devoted to each other in brotherly love and to mourn with those who mourn. Shall we pray…