“Itinerate” is not a word I hear very often outside of Methodist circles, but it’s an important word in our tradition.  One of John Wesley’s rules for his clergy was to never spend any more time than absolutely necessary in any one place, because, as Jesus said once, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.  John Wesley wanted his preachers to be able to freely move from place to place, wherever their services were most needed.  While Methodist clergy no longer travel a circuit of churches on horseback, we still are called upon to itinerate, to leave the congregation we have grown to love, and to bring God’s love to a new place.  This is a difficult reality for both the clergy and the congregations.

Last week, when Pastor Karen called me and said she’d been offered a full-time opportunity at another church, I was surprised.  But I wasn’t shocked.  Believe it or not, about two weeks ago I woke up one morning with a strong sense that God had spoken to me, telling me that Pastor Karen was needed elsewhere.  Which is very weird because our appointments—moving clergy around—this is usually set by Easter every year.  We’re two months past the time for making appointments.  So I thought maybe God was just giving me a big heads up for next year.  But it turns out, God gave me the gift of a word of preparation for this year, this week in fact!  When I told Karen that story, we both agreed that God is undoubtedly at work in all of this.

I know you will join me in congratulating Karen.  I also hope you will congratulate yourselves!  Lima Church has an amazing track record of supporting developing leaders in the church!  We can be proud, and rejoice, and know that we were partnering with God to help Pastor Karen answer God’s call on her life.  What an exciting way to invest our resources!  Everywhere she goes in ministry, she will be building on the very strong foundation laid for her by her time here.  Good job, Lima!  Give yourselves a pat on the back!

But in addition to our pride and joy are deep feelings of loss.  Last week we talked about anger, and how it is always a signal that something needs our time and attention.  And that something is YOU.  It’s your anger, so you have to figure out what to do with it.  Sadness is like that as well.  But even though I know it’s my sadness, and only I can deal with it productively, this week I found myself playing a lot of Solitaire on my phone, rather than face head-on the sadness I feel about Pastor Karen moving on and all the other changes life is bringing during this season.  Grief is a confusing emotion.  Sometimes it even shows up in our lives as anger!  But underneath that anger is a more tender emotion.  We have sadness when people move because we will miss seeing them!  We have anxiety because we don’t know what the future will look like.    We have frustration because here is another change in a long line of changes over the last two plus years.  We have a lot of feelings, some of which we’d really rather not feel!

So what do we do with our grief?   You may be surprised to hear me use the word grief, because no one has died.  But we can have grief for all kinds of reasons.  Our kids leaving for college.  Our friend moving away.  Our dreams going unfulfilled.  Grief is a much more common emotion than we want to admit. But here again, Paul gives us good counsel.  Two weeks ago we read Ephesians 4:25, “Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor.”  Only in dealing with grief, we need to put off falsehood and speak truthfully to ourselves.  We have to name our feelings.  We have to visit our grief to find relief.  We have to turn toward our loss, and face it head on, instead of falling asleep, or playing Solitaire, or getting angry, or minimizing and downplaying the reality of our loss.  Grief hurts!  But there is indeed a way to make grief good.

And the model for good grief is none other than Jesus himself.  On the night he would be arrested, Jesus knew what was ahead for him.  He went with his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray.  Jesus turned toward his loss.  He turned to God in prayer.  He faced the reality and asked God to forge an easier path for him.  But ultimately he prayed, “Not my will but Thine.”  Jesus faced his grave sorrow, stayed true to his calling, and paved the way for us to do the same.  By facing our loss, naming our grief, and staying faithful, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we can trust in God.  God will bring us through the darkness and into the light; God will bring us through what feels like a death, and into new life.

This is our resurrection hope as Christians.  The first step toward living into that new life is to pay attention, and be honest.  Be honest with ourselves, and with God.  That’s not always easy.  The second step is not easy, either, and that is to wait.  To wait in the confusing in between, when the bad news has arrived but whatever new thing God has for us is not here yet.  That can be a very challenging time.  Perhaps this is why Bishop Schol signs every letter with, “Keep the faith!”  We know that church as it used to be is gone, but we don’t know yet what the future has in store for us.  Wait with prayerful expectation, anticipating and trusting that God is indeed at work for good—that is our task in the in between.

I decided it wouldn’t be appropriate to title this sermon, “Good Grief in Three Easy Steps!”  Because of course the steps are not easy.  But I believe there are three basic steps to good grief.  Step 1, pay attention to your feelings, and turn toward your losses.  Tell the truth to God and yourself!  Step 2, wait faithfully, preferably in community.  Keep the faith!  And Step 3, allow the old to give birth to the new.  Sometimes we get so stuck in our grief, we don’t have eyes to see the new life budding in our midst.  We don’t see the new possibilities.  We may even block the new opportunities God is bringing to us!  You have probably heard that adage, “Let go and let God.”  I used to wonder, let God what?  But I think that’s the point of the expression.  Let go of the old, and let God bring the new.  Surprising us with new life is one of God’s favorite things to do!

Grief and loss, like anger, are normal parts of life.  Life is, as one of our pre-school teachers told me recently, a fluid situation!  Things are always changing!  Which is why we need to learn how to grief well.  Good grief is truly a life skill.

But where do you go to learn to grieve well?  When our son was in elementary school, he joined the Cub Scouts, and I got to be his Cub Den leader.  One of the boys in our den is Jewish, and I really enjoyed getting to know his family.  One night I got to talking with the dad, Dave, about how he volunteers at his synagogue.  Every Monday night he goes to the synagogue so that anyone who wants to come to say the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourners, does not have to say the prayer alone.  He went on to say that he doesn’t feel gifted to teach or work with the youth group or lots of other things, but stand alongside people who are grieving?  That he can do.  So he does.

That conversation left a big impression on me.  First, it made me feel like Christians could really learn a lot about how to up our game when it comes to grieving and processing loss.  In Judaism, when a loved one dies, traditionally you “sit shiva” for seven days, which means you stop your regular life as completely as possible, and receive family and friends, literally and figuratively sitting with your loss.  But we all know loss cannot be fully processed in seven days.  So Jewish law calls for mourners to recite the Kaddish, the mourners prayer, with others in the synagogue if possible, for a year after losing someone special.  Then after that, the prayer is to be recited once a year on the anniversary of the death.  I admire our Jewish siblings for having a structure in which the whole congregation supports those who are mourning over the long haul.

Second, I never heard Dave say, “God is so good!”  But I saw him embody it with his life.  By being willing to sit with each other in our pain, we embody the goodness of God.  It seems to me that knowing you will never have to grieve alone could make losses more bearable.  Even though the Kaddish is not in our tradition, we do know we never have to grieve alone!  Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)  Jesus personally guarantees his presence will all who mourn!  But in order for grief to be good, we have to turn toward our losses.  We have to muster up the courage to put off falsehood, and speak the truth to ourselves.  We must name our losses before God, and put our complete trust in God as we wait for God to birth the new out of the old.

Several years ago, I participated in a series of writing workshop for young clergy.  One of the men in our group wrote an essay about how he learned about grief as a boy.  He was playing outside and found a turtle, brought it home, and asked his parents if he could keep it.  They set up a glass enclosure for the turtle, and my writing group member was SO happy!  He loved that turtle.  He read books to it.  He took it on hikes.  He doted on it before and after school.

He took such good care of it, that the turtle got bigger and bigger, and his parents told him, the turtle is getting too big for our glass enclosure, we need to release the turtle into the wild.  But my writing friend could not bear the thought of life without his turtle.  His parents asked him again and again to release the turtle, but this boy wouldn’t hear of it.  He loved his turtle so much!

But one day, my writing friend discovered that his turtle had died.  The turtle was no longer able to thrive inside that small enclosure.  In the essay, my writing friend described how heart-broken he was, how guilty he felt, how deeply he grieved not only his loss but his selfishness.  As an adult looking back, he concluded that if you love something, you have to be willing to let it go.  He wrote how he learned something about true love from the turtle—that true love seeks the well-being of the other over self.  He wrote how this experience prepared him for the inevitable disappointments and losses in life.  He was determined to face them honestly, to turn toward God in his pain, and to trust God with it all.  He never wanted to hold on too long again. He wanted all his grief to be good.

There are many kinds of losses that need to be grieved, losses you will find no card for at the Hallmark store.  But we can face each loss, knowing we never have to grieve alone.  We can remember how God has led us through the valley of the shadow of death in the past, and let that be an encouragement to bravely and faithfully face every loss in the future.  In this way, we can all “itinerate”—move from place to place, travelling from the old into the new, trusting in God to prepare the way ahead of us.

So feel your grief.  But remember, don’t ever stay in any one place any longer than you have to.  Feel your grief, and then move on.  Let God comfort you and lead you out of the old, into whatever new chapter God has in mind for you next.  Amen.