The Hope of Christ in Heartbreak

By Amanda Bell
Director of Christian Education
St. Patrick’s Anglican Church

On Sunday, March 26th, I sat in our beautiful children’s chapel with a half dozen or so of our youngest parishioners and dove into the gospel reading for the day. I love talking about Scripture with children, but I will be the first to admit that sometimes the lectionary offers up readings that don’t exactly feel child-friendly at first glance.

If you’ll remember, the gospel reading two Sundays ago was from John 11 and recounted the death of Lazarus, walking us through Jesus’s encounters with Martha and Mary – grieving sisters who both pointed out to their friend and Lord that, if he had been there, their brother would not have died – before allowing us the joy of seeing Lazarus trip over his grave cloths as he stepped back into life to answer Christ’s call. I don’t know about you, but there is a way that it just doesn’t feel right to me to talk to young children about death, particularly an untimely one, which common sense tells us Lazarus’s first death was. In an account like John 11, I am sometimes tempted to skip right to the eucatastrophe, as J.R.R. Tolkien would put it, the moment when Jesus takes things that are not as they ought to be and rights them. But, in our reading the other Sunday, that would have meant looking past at least twenty-six verses in favor of only two. It would have meant ignoring most of Jesus’s words, missing the depth of his compassion for those who mourn, and overlooking our Savior’s tears. It would have meant losing what turned out to be a very timely moment to talk with some of the children of our parish about what to do in the face of tragedy, heartbreak, and grief.

So, instead of skipping to the good part, we dug into some harder aspects of our gospel reading. Instead of looking at what Jesus did at the end, we watched what Martha did right in the thick of it, and the Holy Spirit was gracious enough to lead us to three observations that I think might be good for all of us to hear as we continue to process what happened at The Covenant School in Nashville last week.

The first thing we noticed was that, when Martha heard that Jesus was on his way to her home, she didn’t sit still and wait. No, she got up and ran to her Savior, which is, of course, the best possible thing to do when one’s heart is breaking. (One of our sweet little ones was astute enough to remind us all that, since Jesus is always with us, we don’t actually have to go very far. Indeed, and thanks be to God for it!) Martha was surrounded by friends who had come to comfort her and her sister, yet she sought not simply comfort in her grief but hope. We hear the confidence of that hope in her declaration to Jesus, “I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask” (v. 22). We will not see in every heartbreak the same type of miracle that Martha saw, but, if we, like Martha, will run to our Savior, we can walk in tragedy and grief with the same confident hope she had, the same certainty that Jesus will work some sort of miracle in our circumstances, that, somehow, he will act for our good and God’s glory.

The children and I also observed that Martha believed what Jesus said to her. “‘The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she replied, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God…’” (v. 26-27). It’s been my experience that tragedy and heartbreak are almost always accompanied by fear, and we all know that fear very often is a liar. I’m sure there were dozens of fears calling out to Martha, an unmarried woman living in the ancient world, in the days following her brother’s death. She chose to believe the true words of Jesus instead of any lies whispered by fear – no small feat in the face of death.

Finally, we looked at what Martha did immediately after speaking with Jesus: she went to someone else whose heart was breaking with grief, and she shared her hope. John’s gospel tells us that, when Martha left her house that day seeking Jesus in her grief, “Mary stayed at home” (v. 20). Mary, the one who sat at Christ’s feet in such rapt attention to his teaching that Martha became cross with her for neglecting her work. Mary, who loved her Lord so deeply and humbly that she poured perfume on his feet and cleaned them with her hair. This same Mary seems to have been so trapped by the weight of grief that she could not get up and go with her sister to meet Jesus. It wasn’t until Martha returned, telling her, “The teacher is here… and is asking for you,” that Mary was able to lift her head and move her feet, which John makes a point to tell us twice she did quickly (v. 28-31). Friends, heartbreak is heavy. It bows our backs and threatens to crush our spirits. When it presses in, no matter how deeply we have drunk from the Lord’s teaching and how often we have poured ourselves out in worship of him, sometimes we need a brother or sister to take us aside and whisper a reminder that Jesus is here and is asking for us. Martha shared her hope, and it pointed Mary to the one who could restore hers.

This was the Holy Spirit’s lesson to me and the children in chapel two Sundays ago: When we encounter tragedy and heartbreak, we run to Jesus. We believe what he tells us. We go find someone else whose heart grieves, and we share our hope.

As I began to process the horror that unfolded at The Covenant School barely twenty- four hours after that chapel lesson, I knew that, as a parent and a teacher, part of the aftermath of this tragedy would involve talking to my son and to other children about it. How do you help a child make sense of something that is definitively senseless? How do you help a child feel safe when other children so close to home have been attacked? How do you help a child face tragedy and heartbreak without falling prey to fear or anxiety? As I asked myself these questions, I realized that, as he so often does, the Lord had already answered them. When we encounter tragedy and heartbreak, we run to Jesus. We believe what he tells us. We go find someone else whose heart grieves, and we share our hope. What better help is there for my son and the children I see at school and in our parish than to run to our Savior, to believe Him, and to share Him with others? I can think of none.

Here is the other thing I realized on Monday. Our children already know that tragedy, heartbreak, and evil roam this world. If, by some grace, they have not yet learned this, we know that these ills will find them or those they love one day. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s observation about children’s literature: “Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”1 Yes, the ills of our fallen world will find our children; let’s be sure that, when they do, we have already told our little ones where their Savior is in tragedy. Let’s be sure they know he is right there in the heartbreak, and he is asking for them. Let’s exhort them from their earliest days to run to him and to believe what he says. Let’s remind them that the hope of Christ is the greatest comfort there is, and it is always meant to be shared.

1 C. S. Lewis, On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature

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