Hebrew Scripture Reading—Genesis 23: 1-9
Abraham knelt beside Sarah and mourned. It has been said that the death of a spouse can leave one feeling as if there is a corner of one’s soul that will forever remain empty. There is a loss that cannot be replaced. Such was the loss Abraham experienced. With Sarah, he had formed the deep bonds that come from experiencing life in all its vast dimensions. Together they had been through the peaks and valleys of joys and hardships. Together they had left their homeland and journeyed to the foreign land of Canaan. Together they had fled the famines for Egypt. Together they had conspired to deceive the Pharaoh so that Abraham’s life might be spared as Sarah was passed off as his sister. Together they had anguished over Sarah not being able to bear children. Together they had to deal with the hurt and anger Sarah felt toward her competitor Hagar. Yet, together with the birth of Isaac they ultimately celebrated their long-lived dream of having their own child.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah and mourned. The book of Genesis leaves no account of the latter years of Sarah’s life. The aborted sacrifice of Isaac is the last story told in Genesis before the account of Sarah’s death. We might imagine that together Abraham and Sarah devoted a great deal of energy and love to raising Isaac.
A shared enthusiasm for this task is not hard to see in the mind’s eye. Isaac was the miracle child born after Sarah had lived well beyond normal childbearing years. Isaac was the one born after Sarah had laughed at God’s promise of a child. He was not only the unlikely, joyfully received gift from God, he was the one who would give rise to great nations. The closeness of Sarah and Isaac is revealed when Genesis tells us of Isaac’s need for comfort in mourning his mother’s loss. One can thus imagine the fondness with which Abraham would have watched the deepening relationship of mother and child over the years.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah and mourned. What a flood of tender memories must have passed through his mind as he wept by her side. Sarah’s name meant princess, and now Abraham’s princess, his life-long companion, was gone. It has been said that death often comes as a loss of life’s meaning and that grief, as painful as it might be, is the process by which we struggle to find meaning again. How daunting and difficult this task must have seemed to Abraham in that moment. He was in a foreign land. He had been there long enough to have gotten to know the people and their customs, but he still faced some basic problems. As a foreigner, he had no land on which he could bury Sarah, no special plot to lay her to eternal rest and commemorate her life.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah and mourned. He was in an uncertain moment. How would he be received by the community around him? Would they give him land to bury his wife? According to the customs of the time, acquiring such land would be a step toward “establishing legal residence.” In other words, Abraham would be taking a crucial step in making the land of Canaan the recognized and enduring home of his family for generations. While in the depths of sorrow, had the time come for this to happen? There was the sad and cruel irony that this step toward laying claim to the land promised to them came precisely because of the death of the one who had accompanied him all those years.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah and mourned. Even if he had wanted to fall into a paralysis of grief, he couldn’t. He had to act in order to see that she received a proper and just burial. Abraham knelt beside Sarah, and then he rose. It is said that grief over the loss of a loved one is something that you have forever. You do “not ‘get over’ the loss…you…learn to live with it. You…heal, and you…rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.” Having a place to bury and memorialize Sarah’s life was the necessary first step for Abraham to rebuild his life around her loss.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah, and then he rose. It was then that he first experienced God’s unexpected grace. He found the strength he needed. He arose, and somehow he managed to find words to speak. He confessed he was a stranger and alien among them, but somehow he still managed to ask them for help. Abraham rose up. He overcame whatever despair or fear he might have had and made his heartfelt request.
Then, came more unexpected grace. The Hittites embraced Abraham as one of their own. They accorded him the highest esteem. Our translation says they called him “a mighty prince” among their people. Another translation says they called him “one lifted up by God.” The Hittites offered Abraham “the choicest of their burial places.” They offered him any burial ground he desired. Abraham rose up, and he was greeted with unexpected grace. He was embraced and affirmed by a community. In his time of greatest need, he was given their large hearted support.
If we were to continue reading the rest of the chapter 23 in Genesis, we would read a description of what is at first a puzzling transaction between Abraham and the owner of the cave where he desired to bury Sarah. By our modern understandings of how a transaction takes place, the bargaining makes little sense as the two go back and forth, but it turns out that the two were following a ritualized legal process. Rather than it being some cold or manipulative bargaining process, the transaction was more akin to a comforting rite of passage. The people of Canaan were allowing Abraham to take a key step in officially declaring their land his home in both its physical and spiritual dimensions. The ritual was simply part of their embrace, part of their community surrounding Abraham as one of their own.
Abraham knelt beside Sarah, arose, and met God’s unexpected grace. It has been said that grief, as rough as it may be, as unending as it may be, can also be “an emotional, spiritual, and psychological journey to healing.” In our own journeys, God’s unexpected grace can still be experienced. Part of it can come from the often unanticipated strength we find in times of need. It might be the courage to keep on living. It might be the courage to reach out to others. Then, part of the unexpected grace can also come from the support of the community that surrounds us. It might be family and friends. It might be a hospice chaplain. It might be a grief support group. It might be the deacons of this church. And, finally, part of the unexpected grace we find on our journeys can come from ritual, ritual that allows us to seek God’s healing touch. For us, the simple ritual act of lighting a candle can be a way in which we seek the experience of God’s grace.
Grief is one of the common denominators of life. At some point, all of us will experience the loss of someone we love. At some point, all of us will find our selves kneeling as Abraham did. At some point, we will find ourselves mourning and weeping at the side of a loved one. At such times, we may feel paralyzed, we may feel overwrought with despair, but our scripture holds out for us this hope: we can rise and we can experience God’s unexpected grace. In this unexpected grace, we can discover strength. We can discover community. We can discover the healing power of ritual. May all of us experience the consolations of God’s loving embrace. Amen.