Cut from the Sermon: Feeling Guilty about Being Serene

On Sunday I preached about life going on after death – both for the person who has died, and for the people left behind (click here for sermon audio). In the first draft of my sermon I considered building on comments about a passage from 2 Samuel that our head pastor Malcolm had made in his sermon last week; I ended up cutting it because it took too long to frame and the sermon was long already. The passage recounts what King David said when his infant son died: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). Malcolm quoted it to talk about the finality of death for those of us left behind – that there is a simple fact, that we will not see them again until after we’ve died, and that hurts.

That resonated with me, and it’s something I wanted to reiterate in my sermon. But since I was talking about the aftermath of death, I also wanted to call attention to something else: that at a some point, we stop feeling the acute grief of losing someone. We realise a day has gone by where we didn’t cry for them. And the first reaction on realising that can be guilt and fear that we’ve betrayed their memory, and an attempt to pull ourselves back into acute grief. But that’s not necessary – this is the way grief works. It doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten them, and there still will be times when you cry for them. But you do go back to living life.

The passage from 2 Samuel speaks to this. The context is this: David had been told that his infant son would die as punishment for David’s sin. The child became ill, and for a week David lay on the ground and refused to eat anything. When the child died, David’s servants were afraid to tell David, given how extreme his grief had been before the child had died. But David saw them whispering, deduced what had happened, and asked, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” Here’s what happened next:

David arose from the ground, washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes; and he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house; and when he requested, they set food before him, and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while he was alive, but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” And he said, “While the child was alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who can tell whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:20-23, NKJV).

David displays, in the words of the Serenity Prayer, a shocking degree of “serenity to accept the things he cannot change.” In context, David’s statement is not one of resentment: it is a peaceful acknowledgment of a new reality, an acceptance that things are the way they are. Now, I don’t think that this implies that grief is wrong, or that someone who weeps for a lost child is displaying a lack of trust in the Lord. Not at all! But I do think it reflects a state that is healthy to come to eventually, a state that need not inspire guilt – the simple acknowledgment that the person we love is not coming back, and that life goes on. We can go on with life because of the first acknowledgment: in the end, we will go to them and see them again.

(Image is “David’s Punishment” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld)