Sighing and Crying
November 7, 2021 + All Saints Sunday + John 11:32-44 + Pastor Michelle Sevig
(Deep sigh) Oftentimes in my work as a hospital chaplain, when in the midst of trauma or tragedy, or being with someone whose loved one is dying or has recently died, I will invite them to take a deep breath–to sigh. (Deep sigh) And then I’ll paraphrase Romans 8:26, “When we do not know how or what to pray, the spirit intercedes for us, with sighs too deep for words.”
Our sighs are prayers too, and sometimes that’s all we can do, especially when we are grieving. Sighing and crying seem to go hand and hand in times of uncertainty and sorrow. When we are anxious about the future or regretting something from the past. When we’re frustrated or sad about a loss of a loved one, a job, a relationship, even a hope or an idea. Sighing and crying are our prayers too deep for words.
I’ve been sighing and crying a lot lately. A good friend of mine, diagnosed with an incurable cancer in March, will likely have her photo on our All Saints table next year. And sometimes I want to cry out in anger like Mary, “Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” Except my anger manifests more like, “WTF! Really? She’s too young. She’s been a faithful servant to you! Why her? Why not someone awful who deserves to die?” Yes, pastors ask awful questions sometimes. Maybe you too have been angry or doubtful in the face of death or illness in your families, with your loved ones.
Mary is weeping when she kneels at Jesus’ feet and questions him. The others with her were also weeping and I imagine sighing too. Jesus sees them in their deep sorrow, has compassion on them and begins weeping too. (sigh)
In many ways there is so much about this story I do not understand, it is full of mystery and unanswered questions, but the heart of the story, the part I do understand, the part I memorized from the King James version of the Bible…Jesus wept..not only makes sense, but gives me hope.
Because when Jesus wept he legitimized our human grief. Jesus–the human revelation of God-stood at the grave of a friend and cried. Grief took hold of God. When Jesus cried, he assured Mary not only that her brother was worth crying for, but also that she was worth crying with.
Through his tears, Jesus calls us into the holy vocation of empathy. Sighing and crying is a holy calling, when we become the body of Christ to another who is suffering. Sometimes we do that with another who needs us and sometimes we allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to allow someone else to be Christ’s presence to us. Either way, we need each other in times of sorrow and uncertainty, to be Christ’s holy presence in the world, to give us space for weeping and sighing, even if that’s the only prayer we can offer.
I have no idea if animals cry or sigh, but I do know from my own pets that they can be a great calming presence when I need a little cuddle. They can sense when I’m sad or sick, and my cat Melvin especially, will come lay right on top of me and give me some extra love. It’s as if they have a level of consciousness to interpret feelings.
On a PBS special many years ago called Inside the Animal Mind the documentary explored animals' consciousness related to their awareness of death. The abbot of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville writes, “In remarkable footage, elephants returned to a previous encampment where the skeletons of a few elephants lay on the ground. These big creatures spent a whole day there, touching the bones with their trunk, the skull, the leg bones, the rib cage. Clearly, they were recognizing their own, the remains of their own. It was an emotionally moving experience.”
In some ways that is what we do here on All Saints Sunday. We set aside one day a year to sigh and cry together as a community. To recognize our communion with those who have gone before us, the bond of affection, the tender quirkiness of the individuals we’ve loved and lost, the fragility of our own lives, the incredible amazing grace that has washed through our lives in these who were once in our midst. We recognize our unity with them and all the saints who live in God.
As the Church, the festival of All Saints is the day that we do the important work of naming, remembering, and being together. We light candles, and sing, and listen, and sit together with our grief as we remember those dear to us who are no longer among the living. Some years the work of remembering and naming is harder than others. This is one of the hard years.
We also take time to remember those whose lives passed with little notice - miscarriages, the homeless, those without close family or friends, the half million plus who have died of COVID who are numbered but not named individually here today. In doing so, we point out the expansiveness of God’s promises. Saints, to us, are not just those who have lived exceptionally holy or good lives. They are not just those who have been canonized by the Church or have icons in our space. Instead, this day we embrace the reality that, recognized as saint or not, people deserve to be remembered.
Because we all have more than our fair share of rough edges, of regrets and decisions we wish we’d made differently, of brokenness and sin. Each of us, by the grace of God, are both one hundred percent saint and one hundred percent sinner. Named and claimed in baptism, God’s promises for us are more powerful than anything we do or fail to do.
Today, along with all the saints, we are reminded that we are loved, forgiven, and held close by God in times of celebration and in times of grief. Together, we await that day when tears are wiped away, death is no more, and we are all gathered around the great heavenly feast. In the meantime, we come together to comfort one another in our grief, to sigh and cry together, to cling to God’s everlasting promises, and gather in hope around the table for a foretaste of this feast. Amen.
