Grieving through praise

This is an excerpt from my reflection this Sunday.

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Psalm 71, I think, encourages us to turn the corner from deep grieving through supplication alone to deep grieving that includes praise. Yes, deep grieving through praise. I am not presenting this to you as a theory or a theological concept. I am sharing with you out of personal experience. Grieving through praise comes about both out of your own will and strength as well as through the will and strength of the grace of The Divine Beloved. It is a powerful act of grieving. It is also an act of faith.

Grieving is a complicated emotion. Grieving through praise is even more complicated. Using praise as a means to express grief may seem contradictory and counter-intuitive. Personally I find the experience to be teeth-clenchingly difficult, cathartic, and strange. But ultimately it is grace-filled and rewarding in all my spheres of being – spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual. It is rewarding because I have given all of myself to the experience.
The psalmist is determined to praise The Holy “continually.” One of the lines that captured my heart years ago is verse 23, “My lips will shout for joy when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have rescued.” A heart and soul that shouts for joy … that’s the image. The most common interpretation for this line is that the heart and soul are shouting because of the joy that they feel. I have not always read it this way, though. In a time of almost complete despair, I read this psalm and received a different interpretation. At the time I had no joy. I didn’t believe that I had been rescued from anything. I was trying to find some meaning and I came across this psalm. I read these words and knew that my lips and my soul could not shout because of joy, but I could shout for the joy. I could shout to attain the joy. My praises became the calling down of joy.

I won’t kid you … I didn’t feel joy right away. If I remember correctly I bawled through the whole thing. Since then my experiences have been quite varied. But to this day there are times when I shout and praise to call down joy – to call down a rescuing. It’s as if my decision to praise through the grief creates an opening within my soul to receive something from my Divine Beloved. I have to make a decision that I even want joy – and in times of grief sometimes joy just isn’t want you want. And that’s ok … for a time. I take the grieving process very, very seriously. I think it’s vital to totally fall apart sometimes. But I also think it’s vital to not get stuck in that place of brokenness. For me, praising through the grief helps me move beyond that place of brokenness to a place of hope and joy. Being able to be broken and then move from there to hope and joy requires a great amount of vulnerability. I mentioned expressing joy as being a vulnerable place last week too. Sometimes just opening up to the possibility for joy makes us feel vulnerable.

Forgive and Retain

John 20:19 - 23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the religious leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

It takes freedom to forgive sin. It takes freedom in your soul and in your heart. It takes freedom in your mind and in your spirit. It takes a freedom in your body as well. The kind of forgiving and retaining that I believe Jesus is referring to is not the holier-than-thou-I-am-doing-this-for- you-to-make-you-a-better-person type of forgiveness. That is not the kind of forgiveness that Jesus practiced. Jesus forgave sins of others so that they could be empowered – often for their own healing. It was an empowerment of faith. As I consider the many times that Jesus referred to forgiving someone it was never for his own betterment or status. It was one path of healing – a healing that was presented to him as a need. This is a cyclical thing, I think – forgiveness which evokes healing which evokes empowerment which comes around again back to forgiveness.

Is there a time to retain sin? I like to think not. Maybe there is. Jesus seems to indicate by his words that there is, but he also cried out on the cross prayers of forgiveness for his persecutors. What’s interesting about that, I think, is that Jesus was crying out a prayer for his Father to forgive them – he did not say that he forgave them. He forgave lots of people – why is it that he didn’t just cry out, “I forgive you. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Did Jesus not cry out his own forgiveness because at that time it was inappropriate? He was the one being abused … oppressed.

When a person is being abused by their partner and comes to me for counseling there is no way I am going to tell them to just forgive their abuser. I’m going to tell them to get out of there. When we are marching in the Pride Parade and some fundamentalists hurl hateful and abusive words at us, I am not so much standing in forgiveness for them. Rather, I am ready to fight – non-violently fight. I will take their abuse for the greater good sometimes, but it will be for my part an act of non-violent resistance, not simply passivity. I am digressing a little, but it is to the point that there seems to be a time to retain sin as opposed to forgive. Oppression, abuse, and all their ilk are not tolerated by Jesus and neither should they be tolerated by us. Maybe receiving the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breath of Christ, is also an empowering of discernment – to know when to forgive and when to retain.

Jesus said, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I send you.” How did the Father send him – that’s my question? We have the power to forgive or retain sin. As people who have received the divine breath of the resurrection, I believe we can experience rejoicing and pass that on to others along with the forgiveness of sin. It does not mean that we tolerate oppression and all its evils. That would not at all be how I understand the Father sending Jesus.

Ultimately, even in the face of all these questions and uncertainties, the message of the resurrection is a message of joy and freedom. It is a message of empowerment and forgiveness. It is a message of holy spirit-breath. Forgiving or retaining sins is not a power trip. I think instead it is for empowering to participate in enacting freedom.