I recently picked up a copy of C.S. Lewis’s little book called A Grief Observed, in which Lewis reflects on his grief after his wife passed away due to cancer. Lewis begins with the observation that grief feels like fear. C.S. Lewis means that grief creates this paralyzing emotion that seems bereft of hope. Such grief becomes so pervasive that something as simple as taking a shower can feel like an arduous chore.1
In today’s parlance, we speak of fear as depression, which many of us can identify with. The source of such fear, or depression, will differ. For Lewis, it was the death of his wife. For my wife and I, it was the death of our son. For you, it may be the death of a spouse or child, but it may be something different. Chronic health problems have a way of imprisoning people in depression, with a fear of when the subsequent surgery or bout with pain is coming again. Other people are imprisoned by traumatic childhood events, struggling with the lies someone convinced them to believe about themselves. Other people are imprisoned by past sins and regrettable decisions that have left them with shame, making them feel as if their biggest failures will forever judge them.
Over time though, as Lewis observed, we can learn to live, but the grief remains with us. For most of us, on most days, we can get up and go about our days, but the fear of what we’ve lost, of what we endured, or what we did, and what that means for us lingers with us.
How do we experience joy in the midst of a life where we still live with grief?
This Advent season reminds us of the joy received in the Lord's coming. Yet the fullness of such joy also requires waiting. For now, we live between the first and second coming of the Lord. The between stage is one in which we have received the joy of the Lord yet still endure grief. In such a stage, we must wait even though waiting seems especially hard once “Earth's joys grow dim; [and] its glories pass away,” as the Anglican minister Henry Francis Lyte wrote in what would become the hymn Abide With Me.
The prophet Zephaniah says, “The Lord, your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zeph 3:17).2 Although we still struggle as we wait between the reception of joy and the fullness of joy, Zephaniah wants us to know that the Lord isn’t finished. Our struggles aren’t the end of the story. Whether our struggles spring from grief, illness, sin, or so forth, it’s not the end. God hasn’t abandoned us to a hopeless plight.
The coming of the Lord in the birth of Jesus Christ is the emergence of hope, God’s act of love and promise that he is righting the wrongs. This is the basis for our joy, but such joy is something meant to be experienced. So how do we experience joy in the midst of a life where we still live with grief? This question reflects the tension between the existential joy we can experience in Christ now and the eschatological joy we have in Christ now but await the full experience in the second coming of the Lord.
Speaking specifically to the practice of youth ministry, Lauren Calvin Cooke suggests that existential must be physically experienced rather than just philosophically understood. In other words, experiencing joy requires “an embodied knowledge and experience of joy. It is not enough for young people to know about joy; they need to feel joy.”3 When joy is felt, the eschatological future becomes existentially present. Such an experience can keep us from falling into despair as we still struggle with grief in our present life (which I can attest to personally).
My concern here is two-fold. First, we need to experience the joy received in Christ, but we also can’t ignore the grief we still experience. To negate the former is to abandon Advent while negating the latter will only deepen the pain of our grief. So what practice might there be for us to experience the joy we receive in Christ but still live with the eschatological tension of joy already received but not yet known in fullness? Cooke calls our attention to the Eucharist (the Lord’s Supper) in which the “contradictions” of joy and grief are held together.4
I realize that in many churches the practice of the Eucharist amounts to simply receiving a small piece of bread and a sip of wine. But we must remember that this bread and wine represent the body of Christ broken for us and the blood of Christ poured out for the forgiveness of our sins (Matt 26:26-28). In other words, eating this bread that signifies the body of Christ and drinking the wine that signifies the blood of Christ is a physical reminder of God’s promises to us in Christ. When we receive the bread and wine, we also proclaim the death of Jesus Christ until he comes (1 Cor 11:26). By receiving the body and blood, we are also proclaiming the eschatological victory we have in Christ that extends joy to us.
In many churches, participating in the Eucharist or the Lord’s Supper is also called communion, but communion is fellowship. Therefore we cannot reduce communion simply to receiving the bread and wine. We must learn to see the entire assembly, our gathering together as Christians, as communion, and the receiving of the bread and wine as a culmination of our communion. In this aspect, everything from greeting one another, praying with each other, singing together, and everything else we do when gathered together is part of coming together to share in the Eucharist with Jesus through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Then our gathering together and sharing in the Lord’s Supper together become physical experiences of our joy in the Lord and the joy encountered again during the Advent season.
As a pastor and personally, I know that many people are living with grief. No amount of seasons jolly will eliminate the pain of such grief. However, I’m thankful we can gather with our churches and share in the Eucharist together. As we do, I pray that we will feel the joy we have in Christ and will one day experience in fullness when Christ comes again. May this joy that Advent proclaims sustain us even as “Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994 (Orig. pub 1961), 3-5.
All scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition Bible, copyright © 1989, 2021 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.
Lauren Calvin Cooke, "Finding Joy in an Unjust World: Practicing Deep Joy in Youth Ministry," The Journal of Youth Ministry 17, no 1 (Spring 2019): 77. As the subtitle indicates, Cooke is addressing this matter within the sphere of youth ministry, but the suggestion applies to all aspects of church ministry and Christians of any age.
Ibid, 82.