Unraveling Grief
A sermon on 2 Samuel 3:7; 21:1–14, preached at University AME Zion Church, Sunday, April 25, 2021.
I don’t know about y’all, but I have some questions for what happens in what I am calling the “after times.” The times when social distancing, mask wearing, and sheltering in place will be but a memory. How will we be with one another? How will we treat one another? I’m specifically calling this time the “after times” because I can’t say that it’s going back to “normal.” Because when people make the statement of, “I just want things to go back to normal,” I have even more questions.
- What is “normal”?
- Who gets to define what is “normal”?
- What if “normal” was great for some, but not for all?
For those who do not have power and privilege in these current days, those good ol’ “normal” days weren’t a whole lot to brag about either. People have been dehumanized in the worst ways. Human bodies have been commodified in the worst ways. We didn’t need the coronavirus to tell us these things, that the more things change, the more they actually stay the same. Even in this peculiar time, we know that those in power want to maintain their sense of “normal,” the status quo. That those in power need to have folks be lifeless cogs to keep the idolatry machine going to turn us away from God and from life abundant for everyone, not just a selected few.
That Black and Brown communities, the communities that bear the brunt of being cogs in the idolatry machine, the bodies that are deemed as “less than,” have also paying the ultimate cost in this time of pandemic. That it is Black and Brown communities where there are the most extreme forms of policing. That it is Black and Brown communities where there are a lack of economic and medical resources. I am so extremely grateful for Reverend Kaloma’s role and leveraging his leadership in the community to make University a vaccination site for the community. I am so grateful to University for continuing in Operation Continuous Generosity during the pandemic, making sure people are literally fed. But not every Black and brown community has their own Reverend Kaloma looking out for them. What does “normal” look like when you don’t have someone or a community to advocate for you?
And folks want to go back to “normal”?
“Normal” wasn’t that great for everyone; there is a desperate need to point towards a collective effort and involve people, especially those who do not have privilege and power, to chart what a better, not “normal” reality can look like where all have life abundant.
“Normal” wasn’t great during the times of the Hebrew scriptures, either. If you’ve been part of Tuesday Night Bible Study at University, you’ll know that our current series is called “Bad Girls of the Bible.” We talk about what has made these women “bad”… and who gets to make that definition, what’s good and what’s bad and what’s in between? We’ve been looking at women in Scripture that have “reputations.” Some of these women are well known. Some of these women have been forgotten about, not really remembered… or their stories too hard to talk about. But I also believe that if it is in Scripture, there’s something there where God wants us to read it, to study it and to figure out how to be more connected to God and to one another. One of the harder stories that doesn’t often come to the pulpit or to Bible studies is the story of Rizpah.
Life unravels for Rizpah, who we meet in today’s scripture. Rizpah, a human being created in the holy image of God, points out that whatever is deemed as “normal” for those in privilege and power does. Not. Work. For. Everyone. She is a concubine in Saul’s court. Not his wife, but his side piece. Being a concubine in the king’s court has some privilege, yes, but it doesn’t guarantee her protection and safety.
Our introduction to Rizpah today is as a secondary character, almost an afterthought. Abner, one of Saul’s trusted advisers, is accused of having some form of relationship with Rizpah. There is a high probability that this “form of relationship” was not consensual.
Rizpah’s grief, sadly, is nowhere near over. What happens to her unravels her very existence, her very reality. Those who Rizpah holds near and dear, her own children, are treated as afterthoughts, as careless objects as well. Early in David’s reign, there’s trouble affecting all in the land. There’s a famine, where there isn’t enough for everyone. David turns to God, wondering how to alleviate the damage this famine is causing. God gives a rather vague response, stating, ““There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” What happens next between David and the Gibeonites, and a decision David makes, has real consequences. David may be protecting his power and privilege in what he chooses to do next, but those choices put blood on his hands.
I wonder if David knew that if we went to the Gibeonites, that the Gibeonites would ask for retribution for what was done unto them by Saul?
And because at this point, Saul is dead, they want to enact their retribution upon Saul’s heirs… who could also challenge David’s rule? David and the Gibeonites have determined the course of Rizpah’s future: she has none as a woman defiled and her children murdered. Rizpah’s world unravels.
The world could have very well ended for Rizpah at this point, when David handed over her sons to the Gibeonites to not just be murdered, but also displayed for the entire world to see. The bodies of her sons and Saul’s grandsons were to show everyone, the Israelites, the Gibeonites, and anyone who passed by, that the house of Saul had no future. It pointed to what was supposed to be the end. Any possibility for Rizpah to have some “normal” life has completely and utterly unraveled.
Yet this is Scripture; things aren’t over when those who think they have power are deemed that they’re over. The offering of Rizpah’s children to end the famine didn’t happen. Rizpah then takes the grief of what has happened to her; She unravels the grief from within. She takes the gried from the inside, and she releases it outside of her. It’s a practice of having her insides match her outsides.
She puts on sackcloth and journeys to where the bodies of her children and Saul’s grandchildren have been put on display for the world to see. She protects the bodies with her life. She does this publicly for months, when the harvest begins to when it ends, even in the midst of a famine, where people are trying to grow and gather, but to no avail. Were you to see her, you might think, “Whoa, what’s happened to her has caused her to unravel, to just spill out.”
Rizpah’s unraveling grief and sadness tell her (and us) that there is another way. That in donning sackcloth, by keeping watch over Saul’s family, her family, Rizpah points unrelentingly to the injustice that has been done to her and her sons. “Here is my family, see what has happened to them, and see how I still care for them even though their lives have ended!” She shows that grief and lamentation do have a place in the world, that the world has to acknowledge the injustices that have happened to her family, to her lineage. She will not give up. Her unraveling shows that what happened to her should not happen to anyone else. Rizpah’s grief points to another way. David maybe realized his role in Rizpah’s tragic reality, I honestly don’t know. But when he heard of her public grief taking place for months, something compelled David to go to her, to take down the bodies of her sons and Saul’s kin, and to give them rest with Saul’s and Jonathan’s bones.
It is only then, when a broken woman’s grief has been acknowledged, that the famine ends in the land.
Grief is real; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It tears our realities apart, our expectations apart, of all that could and should have been is no longer. I cannot help but think that as the verdict was being read at the Derek Chauvin Trial in Minneapolis, there were so many emotions. So many. Some felt relief. Some felt sadness that it took this long for a conviction. Some felt anger that it took this long for a conviction. Some felt everything. Some felt nothing. Some didn’t know how to feel. There was an unraveling of sorts, the moment after we were holding a collective breath, waiting and wondering if a small step towards any form of accountability would be taking place.
Yet there wasn’t even time to catch a collective breath after knowing the verdict. Duante Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant, Andrew Brown Jr., and Adam Toledo joined the communion of so. many. saints. who should be here with us today. There are so many names we don’t know, who won’t experience any form of public accountability or apology. Yet these feelings… It’s not just national, it’s also local. It’s personal. We also have our personal griefs that tear us up inside.
It is a. lot. of. grief. and it is very, very, very real. If we truly acknowledged our grief, if we all wore sackcloth and ashes around one another to realize we are all finite and beloved, could we point to another reality where our grief and love could point to another way for the people who come after us?
Grief can point us to another way, a way a world could be, not the “normal” way it has been for those who have the privilege to call it normal. Collective grief has pointed out to the powers of the world, “this isn’t right.” This is a powerful unraveling, where those who tightly grip on to whatever power they think they hold unravels. Grief makes people uncomfortable and uneasy; you know what, if your insides were torn in two, you’d be uncomfortable and uneasy as well. What is difficult about grief is that we cannot return to what once was. That is the hardest part. To return to a time when beloveds were alive again, when things weren’t “normal,” but they weren’t awful. Grief is holy and righteous. God ends the famine when justice was grated to Rizpah, when her beloveds were laid to rest. Her unraveling showed those around her that there is another way.
God grieves with us. God laments with us. Because God does this with us, alongside us, and shows this to us in the person of Jesus, we know this is a holy emotion, even if the world wants to tamper down, to tell us to get over it, to move on with our lives. It’s not pretty. Grief and the emotions that come with it doesn’t come with a finite resolution with everything tied up in a bow. Grief leaves us raw and exposed. It tears us up inside. Sometimes grief has the power to unravel us. There are other times where grief is powerful enough to unravel the systems that bind and constrain people in place. Where Jesus’s grief upon the death of his friend Lazarus freed Lazarus from the death shroud in which he was wrapped up in. Jesus’s grief unraveled death. God’s grief unraveled the way the powers of the world play with us; God tells us, “I will unravel your system that binds and constrains. You bound Jesus to a cross. You constrained him in a tomb and rolled the stone in place. Let me unravel this for you and show you there is another way to be in the world with me and with one another.”
Grief tied to love showed us a different way. This is a place for us to stop, to point to what has torn up our insides… our grief points to another way, a far from “normal” way, that the world could be, to the way God intended. Because sure as all get out, the world isn’t right as it is now.
