Sermon by Pastor Seth - November 26, 2025
Sermons
Gratefully Grieving
Ezra 3:10-13
Spending decades in exile under the boot of the Babylonian Empire, the Jews return home by Persian decree and face the long road to reconstruction — the degree of decimation along Jerusalem’s rubble-ravaged streets enough to make anyone succumb to despair. Traumatized by displacement and surviving the violence of a foreign oppressor, still, we read that the Judeans come together to begin rebuilding the temple — a beacon of hope and resiliency amidst the desolation.
The book of Ezra recounts the events of the Jewish people in the immediate post exilic period. With the Babylonians defeated by the Persian Empire, King Cyrus of Persia allowed the captive Jews to return to their occupied land — what was left of it, that is. We enter into the story today some time after this return, attending a ceremony celebrating the laying of the new temple’s foundation.
As we hear this passage from Ezra, I invite us to consider what this text teaches us about gratitude and grief.
Congregational Response
What does this text teach us about gratitude and grief?
- The importance of giving space for our grief
- Gratitude is about openness, not forgetfulness
- Reliance upon God
- Gratitude can helps us through grief
- The healing that comes from being heard
Theological Reflection
Standing in shock and anguish in the wake of hurricane Helene, water up to our knees grazed by the tops of toppled trees, the level of sheer loss was unfathomable enough to render one paralyzed — uncertain of where to even begin on the road to recovery. Displaced and disoriented, panicked by scarcity, and losing sight of life as it was as it washed downriver and turned the bend, our hope hung on by a broken branch thrashed in the rapids of devastation. What was once a climate destination turned war zone late September, 2024, a respite in the mountains reduced to rubble and water-logged dry wall.
A thousand year flood with a death toll reaching into the hundreds across Western North Carolina and an estimated 50 billion dollars worth of damage done, Helene shook our community to the core. But it also revealed just how remarkable that core can be when we endeavor to come together. Folks lined up outside the Register of Deeds to volunteer for wellness checks; the neighbor down the road chainsawed her way through crisscrossing tree limbs to get to a trapped stranger; restaurants opened their doors for a free hot meal; cowboys rode horseback into the hills to deliver insulin; emergency crews worked day and night; food and water, clothes and diapers piled high for distribution; do-gooders showed up with shovels and masks to burrow out the sludge. In the midst of the tragedy and turmoil, I have never felt more proud to call Appalachia home.
I remember feeling a palpable sense of gratitude for the ways in which this community so beautifully cared for one another. There was no every-person-for-themselves-
On September 26 of this year, armed with a red megaphone on the Craven Street Bridge in Asheville, librarian Erin Parcel addresses a group of over 70 individuals gathered along the narrow sidewalk above the French Broad River. After counting down, Erin and the dozens of participants present face the river and proceed to shout a series of three of the loudest, most guttural screams that they could muster. Organized by the West Asheville Library, the inaugural meeting of the Primal Scream Club invited those impacted by Helene to join together as a community and let it all out. “We’re going to scream and just let it rip. Let all your feelings out, everybody. The trauma that we’ve had, the sadness, the joy of coming together,” Erin said, recorded in a news article for Blue Ridge Public Radio. Standing atop a bridge that was underwater a year prior, that’s exactly what happened.
Anger and anguish mixed with laughter and triumph, tear stricken cheeks and upturned smiles of thankfulness blended together in a symphony of emotion at what has been lost and found, destroyed and rebuilt over the last year. Eyes heavy lidded towards the past and hopeful towards the future, conflicting feelings and their diverse expression existing together simultaneously.
During the ceremony commemorating the laying of the temple’s foundation, the book of Ezra makes it a point to recount a particular moment in the ceremony’s proceedings, where the jubilation of celebration and thanksgiving along with the sorrowful cries of lament were rendered indistinct from one another. The memory of what was lost intermingled with the joyful expression of what has been recovered: “…the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away,” verse 13 says.
A few verses back, we read that this shout from the people was a response of praise to the priests “giving thanks to the Lord,” (v.11). But Ezra does not make a distinction between what constitutes praise what does not. The text seemingly lumps together the joyful shouts and the weeping alike under the umbrella of praising God — both existing together, equally valid, equal expressions of worship.
Especially this time of year, gratefulness is marketed as the ideal disposition one should have, commemorated with its very own holiday. We are flooded with images of homecomings and happy families sitting around tables of abundance taking turns sharing what they are thankful for with the push for positivity leaving little room for much else: “Just be grateful for what you have.” Of course, gratitude is important; it’s a profound practice of letting a little more light in to our shadowed places, a reminder to not take life and love for granted. There is nothing wrong with being thankful, but there’s also nothing wrong with grieving.
We’re led to believe that gratitude is the absence of grief, that one cannot exist alongside the other, that being grateful for what we have means forgetting what we have lost and suppressing the sorrow that accompanies. But that could not be farther from the truth nor could it be more biblically inaccurate. Our createdness is complex and layered, intersectional and messy, conflicting and confusing with a beautiful capacity for paradox that often goes beyond words. We are made in the image of a God whose depth and breadth cannot be contained by simplistic explanation nor limited by neat and tidy lines. So why is it that we try to contain and limit our own reflection of the Divine?
Expressing our gratitude does not have to take away from the depth of our sorrow; expressing our sorrow does not have to take away from the depth of our gratitude. Gratitude and sorrow, celebration and lament, are not mutually exclusive to one another. Both can exist together. In fact, giving ourselves permission to feel it all, all at once just means we are reflecting a more complete image of God, and that is a holy and healthy thing.
This holiday season, may we tend to our thankfulness, may we tend to our pain, and know that it is okay to hold them both just as God holds us in our multitudes — for the holiest expression of our humanity is that of our nuanced authenticity.