Tips for What to do When Entering the House of Mourning

There is a saying from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes: "Fools dwell in the house of mirth, but the wise in the house of mourning."

Granted, the book this statement is from has not always been popular among Christians, who mostly account for its "wisdom" (it is counted among the books of Old Testament wisdom literature) as being in some way pre-Christian. That is, this was the way men of God thought before the full revelation of God in Christ. Many pastors and teachers I have known have also tended to do a little ad hominem number on the presumed author of this book, saying that it was written by King Solomon after years of engaging in pleasure and forgetting God.

Yet I'm not always sure that these statements take in the whole picture. There is wisdom, however sad it is, to be gained from dwelling among the mourning, but the truth is that we Christians (I include myself here) are not usually very good at mourning. Most of our talk is chipper. We have scriptures to help us get through virtually everything we face, and we don't like downers or those life events we face that don't quite fit a scriptural principle. We are aligned, in our Easter Sunday triumphalism, as one friend of mine has put it, and when we encounter someone facing loss, even though we believe in the resurrection, we don't always "know what to say." We do not spend much time in the house of mourning. We don't even really like to stop by it or even go past it.

When we do enter, we are very honest to say, "I don't know what to say." This is better than someone who enters having a scripture ready to cover the situation. The reason is because most of those scriptures usually leave the person in mourning feeling as though they have failed to have faith.

Regardless of our comfort level, the message of Ecclesiastes is clear. The wise dwell in the house of mourning. Job's friends, made famous for their dubious advice, did start out rather wise with their "no word" policy. They spent a long time simply mourning with him, and as we pause on the rightness of this response on their part, I would add that there seems to be a rather strong tradition within Judaism that gives Jews the form to know how to mourn. Passages in the New Testament show mourners at work. There is the story in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus sends the flute players and mourners out, telling them that the dead person is only sleeping. They laugh at him.

Job's friends only seem to go wrong when they stop simply sitting with Job in his misery and begin arguing with him, telling him why horrible evil has befallen him. Some of their reasoning might even fit. In Job's case, they are wrong. The evil has come because of a heavenly wager about how much the good man can take.

At my son's memorial service four weeks ago, I found myself wondering about that. Why did we lose him? Was it a heavenly wager? Did I sin or my wife sin? Did we lack faith? During the service, a family member sang a Jewish song of mourning. And it really fit with where I was sitting. It reached me deeply where I found myself--missing my son and wanting him back--wanting the impossible--wanting something that goes beyond our frail mortality.

Over the past seven weeks, my wife and I have found so many in our church coming to us to comfort and provide wonderful meals for us. I am not pointing a finger at anyone I know when I write these words. I do know that I have occasionally made people uncomfortable because of my sadness. People don't want to say the wrong thing. They don't want to make matters worse. And really, what they'd like is to make things better. "If there's anything I can do," they say, "please call me." I know that they mean this.

But going through this, and coming to dwell as a mourner, I've thought about that passage from Matthew, where Jesus chases out the mourners and raises the dead. It hit me that as a Christian I have sometimes wanted to do that to people who were mourning the loss of a loved one. I've wanted to walk in and kick the mourners out. The big difference here, of course, is that I was never able to do what Jesus did. I couldn't give those in mourning their loved one back.

None of us can do that.

So in my own grief, I've stumbled upon a text I would use for a sermon on this problem people like me suffer from when it comes time to dwell in the house of mourning. The truth is, this is where we encounter people in the midst of deep loss, who want their loved one back. And this is a reason to mourn, to be sad, to recognize our mortality. As much as we want Jesus to show up and restore what was lost, that is not how he works. He's not showing up.

We must continue to mourn.

I don't know if I've made much sense in this. I don't mean for it to sound as though I lack all faith. Of course Jesus does show up. He just doesn't show up in the way we want him to. Instead, we are asked to, as Paul puts it, "mourn with those who mourn."

This doesn't mean we or anyone else lacks the proper faith. Please don't make that mistake about those who mourn. What it really seems to mean is that we recognize the deep sense of mortality that we all share in and all must face.