Good Grief and Tisha B’Av
My wife and I lost our three surviving parents over 18 months, one quite suddenly, the others less so; each a loss. In the aftermath of death’s onslaught our too-busy lives resumed, and Sunday became grief-day.
On Sunday, the grief that was pressed down through the week by family, ministry, work...found space to emerge. Sunday-grief was never showy or loud. It was a wistful-teardrop-grief conjured by familiar smells, a favorite song, or random memory. Things present released a fragrance of the past, and with it a reminder that loved ones are missing.
Yet, Sunday-grief is good grief; it serves me well. At first bitter, it drives home the catastrophe of death – the ones once intimately attached are present now only as phantom limbs of my being. But then the loss blossoms sweet in anticipation of reconnection – because the Infinite One spans time and space, reunion is real. Messiah makes Sunday-grief good because in Him the catastrophe of now is just that, now, and not forever. With His return comes reunion with our loved ones who knew Him in this life.
The Jewish fast day Tisha B’Av shares in this Sunday kind of grief. Tisha B’Av (literally “9th of Av”) is the ninth day of the fifth month, Av, in the Hebrew calendar (e.g., Zechariah 7:5, 8:19). This year the fast begins at sundown on July 26th and ends the next evening.
Tisha B’Av commemorates the destruction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and by tradition the 70 CE destruction of the second temple by the Roman army under Titus. The 9th of Av is also associated (according to tradition) with multiple catastrophes throughout Israel’s history ancient and modern (a full list is presented at https://ohr.edu/1088). The day is set aside for mourning expressed in fasting, reading the book of Lamentations, and reciting kinot (mournful poems, elegies). In Jerusalem many mourn at the Kotel (a.k.a the Western/Wailing Wall) in the very shadow of the missing temple. The grief of Tisha B’Av is real because something precious is missing.
Tisha B’Av’s grief can also serve us well. The day, slow with mourning, allows the grief of remembrance to surface in our hearts – something is missing. There is a two-millennia deep void at Jerusalem’s heart. Yet the hope of reconnection transforms this grief as well. God said, “The fasts of the fourth, fifth (the month of Av), seventh and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah” (Zechariah 8:19). Messiah Himself brings about this reversal of grief when He returns and establishes His kingdom on earth.
Both Tisha B’Av and Sunday-grief remind us that in Messiah the grief of now is not forever; ultimately it gives way to God’s grace. What is gone now becomes the world’s center when the Eternal One is present in the new Jerusalem in the forever temple and our place of ultimate reunion.
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it (Revelation 21:22-24).
Please pray for the Life in Messiah staff during the Tisha B’Av season as they mourn with those who mourn in the Jewish community. May God use their witness to draw many to Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) and the goodness of God’s grace in Sunday-grief.
Written by Dan, Life in Messiah Board Chair
What are you grieving over?
What would it look like to join the Jewish community this week in grieving over the temple?
For other blogs on this fast day, check out: Time to Talk Temple, Mourning Over One Greater Than the Temple, and Hatred Without Cause.