Whenever a member of our congregation loses a close loved one, our Care Ministry makes a visit. A pastor, elder or deacon will come over to listen, encourage and pray. This is how our local expression of the body of Christ bears each other’s burdens, in this situation, the burden of grief. Grief can take us to so many different places and it is good to have a community that is looking out for us when we are vulnerable. My father and my wife’s father died in the same year. Our Care Ministry Elder visited us over the course of a year. She helped us along our journey through grief.
We do this ministry because of what Christ has done for us. During Lent we learn that Jesus was the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. One feature of his work is that he took up our sorrows and griefs.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. Isaiah 53:4 ESV
One of the deepest griefs that humans carry is that of sin. We sense that we lost something when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and went their own way. We lost a relationship with God and now we feel the grief of separation from God.
The good news is that Jesus took our sorrows, our griefs, our sins and he bore them on the cross. He took the punishment that we deserved upon himself. In its place he gives us his righteousness.
As we approach Good Friday we are drawn more deeply into the mystery of faith. Somehow the deepest grief we bear is no longer ours to bear, but Christ’s. And somehow we now are free to live in a relationship to God again. Somehow we are now drawn to each other to bear each other’s grief.