February 2026 – Pilgrim

BEREAVEMENT AND MOURNING: CREATING TOUCHSTONES FOR THE WORK

Welcome & Framing

Prayer: “Lord, you who reign over life and death, joy, and sadness; you who know loss and new beginnings, be with us now as we look collectively at sorrow.”

Turning to Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”

I want to turn to the poet Mary Oliver, who understood something essential about how we enter difficult territory. Her poem “Wild Geese” offers us an invitation – not a demand, not a prescription, but an invitation into this work we’re about to reflect upon.

She writes beautifully:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting…”

Oliver reminds us that we do not have to be good at grief. We do not have to perform it perfectly or follow someone else’s timeline. We only have to let ourselves love what we love – and when we lose what we love, to let ourselves grieve.

This poem aligns beautifully with the four touchstones we’ll explore today: 1) that mourning is normal and natural, 2) that it is about remembering our loved one on our own and in community 3) that mourning is ongoing work without a fixed endpoint, 4) that what we mourn, has many forms – thoughts, ideals, that what not was, that was seen and the unseen, the spoken and the unspoken.

Oliver’s words invite us into sacred work without demanding we have it all figured out. She reminds us that grief, like the wild geese flying home, is part of the natural world – part of being human, part of being alive, part of loving deeply.

Link to poem
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver • Read A Little Poetry

I want to begin by asking you to think of someone you’ve loved deeply. What bound you to them? Some things are easy to name – shared meals, conversations, laughter, the sound of their voice. But what about the rest? What about the way they understood your silence? The safety you felt in their presence? The unspoken knowing that existed between you?

This is the central paradox we’ll explore together today: There are parts of loss work that we can touch and see – photographs, belongings, memories of specific moments. But there are parts of what binds us in a relationship that cannot be seen, and perhaps that is the most difficult part of grief work. The invisible threads that held us to another person, to a cherished idea, to a way of making meaning in the world.

Some of you came today because you’re grieving someone who has died. Some of you are carrying losses of treasured ideas or meaning-making thoughts that once oriented your life. Some of you may be anticipating a loss that hasn’t yet arrived but already weighs on your heart. All of these losses are real. All of them are worthy of this sacred time together.

To guide us through this hour and a quarter, we’ll be grounding ourselves in four touchstones. These aren’t rules or stages – they’re landmarks to help us navigate the terrain of grief work. Think of them as a map for the journey we’re taking together:

Mourning is normal — how can it not be!
Morning is remembering – bringing loss into light, speaking what’s hidden (at your own pace)
Mourning is ongoing work – grief doesn’t follow a timeline
Mourning has many facets – death, collective losses, and anticipatory grief

This is sacred work we do together. We will hold space for all kinds of grief today.

TOUCHSTONE 1: MOURNING IS NORMAL — HOW CAN IT NOT BE!

Why This Matters: Counter-Narratives to Silence and Medicalization

Historical Context

Grief has been historically misunderstood and silenced across many contexts. Recent developments show how seriously the medical community takes grief: ICD-11 now includes “Prolonged Grief Disorder”; in the US, DSM lists it under “other specified trauma and stressor-related disorders.” The very existence of these frameworks proves the significance of grief – we don’t medicalize what doesn’t matter to us. These are attempts to honor the complexity of grief, even as grief itself often resists neat categorization. A diagnosis can carry both risk and gift—the risk of being labeled pathological, and the gift of having language for something real that we’re carrying.

Yet here’s the paradox: Society does give us permission to mourn – especially in ritual space. The funeral gives us time. We’re told mourning is normal. But then the implicit message shifts. In the workplace, you get three days for the funeral, then you’re expected back at your desk. The flowers fade. Life moves on. You should be moving on, too.

And some griefs aren’t publicly honored at all. A miscarriage is met with “you can have another”—as if the loss wasn’t real, as if grief for what might have been doesn’t count. An estranged relationship ends, and you’re told “you shouldn’t grieve someone you weren’t supposed to love.”

This is the problem Touchstone 1 addresses: Mourning is normal—how can it not be! We must reclaim permission to grieve beyond the ritual, beyond what’s publicly recognized.

We even see this biologically: grieving partners often die close to one another. They start walking the same way, using the same phrases, even looking alike. The bond is written into their bodies. Yet we still expect grief to have an expiration date.

Mourning is normal – how can it not be! Love doesn’t end when we want it to. And this is where Kierkegaard helps us understand what’s really happening.

Kierkegaard’s Perspective

But before we get there, it helps to understand why the old thinking about grief—the “stages” model—misses something crucial.

Why Stages Thinking Is Limited

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, working in the 1960s, proposed five stages of grief: shock/denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The model offered a corrective to a time when grief wasn’t acknowledged at all—it gave people permission to name what they were experiencing. That was important. But the model implied a sequence, a pathway through grief that everyone should follow. Later, Kübler-Ross herself indicated the stages aren’t sequential or linear—but by then, the damage was done. The stages had become gospel.

And here’s the problem: the stage model can make people feel like they’re “not doing grief wrong” if they’re not progressing in the expected order. It doesn’t account for how grief is unique to each person—shaped by who died, how they died, the support around you, your own history. Some people never feel anger. Some cycle back through denial months later. Some experience acceptance early and then lose it again. The stages can’t hold that complexity.

This is why we need frameworks that honor grief’s complexity without boxing it in. This is why Worden’s tasks matter—and why we need community to hold us through them. But first, let’s understand what grief actually is, at its core. This is where Kierkegaard becomes essential.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), philosopher and theologian
Saw grief differently than most: Grief is the essence of love
His most powerful insight: “When one wants to make sure that love is quite selfless, then one can remove every possibility of reciprocation. But this is just removed in relation to a deceased. If then love remains nonetheless, then it is in truth selfless.”

Pause “If then love remains nonetheless, then it is in truth selfless.” This is the heart of Touchstone 1.

What Kierkegaard grasped was something profound: when someone dies, we don’t just grieve them. We grieve the invisible bonds – the way they saw us, the future we imagined, the version of ourselves that existed in their presence. Their death forces us to see clearly what we truly had in them – not the idealized version, not what we wished for, but what actually was there between you.

And here’s the sting of it: there can be no reciprocity anymore. The relationship is frozen now, one-directional. You can still love them, still speak to them, still carry them – but they cannot answer back. They cannot reassure you, cannot forgive you, cannot tell you it’s okay. The love you give now goes into silence. It cannot be balanced, returned, or completed. This is what makes grief ungrateful work – the only place you will connect with the deceased, and yet the deceased cannot reciprocate.

This is why grief is both sacred and so difficult. It’s sacred because it reveals love in its purest form – love that continues even when there’s nothing to gain, no comfort to receive, no response to hope for. And it’s difficult because we are left holding something that can never be resolved, only carried.

And yet. Through the work of remembering, through the testimony of community, through the slow internalization of the deceased’s love into our own being, something shifts. We begin to sense a new kind of reciprocity – not in the words exchanged, but in the ways their love continues to work in us, shape us, move through us into the world. This takes time. This is why grief takes longer than we expect: as we work through it, we access deeper layers of connection that the deceased’s presence in our lives created. But this cannot happen alone – it happens in the presence of witnesses who help us see how the deceased continues to live in us.

This is why mourning is normal: because you cannot grieve what you don’t love. The very fact that we grieve proves the love was real. Grief is the proof that the love was real.

The Invisible Dimension

This is exactly what Kierkegaard grasped: What makes grief “normal” is that love itself is partly invisible
We grieve not just the person we could see and touch, but the invisible bonds – the way they saw us, the future we imagined, the version of ourselves that existed in their presence
These invisible dimensions are often the hardest to name, and yet they’re what we’re actually mourning

Reflection question for the group: “What are you grieving that you cannot photograph or point to?”

[Facilitation note: Silent individual reflection (2 minutes)

“Some people find they’re grieving the way someone made them feel seen, or a future they’d imagined together, or even the version of themselves that existed in that relationship.” Then return to silence and wait.]

If mourning is normal, then we must learn to speak it, to bring it into consciousness. And speaking what we hold – that is remembering. That is how we keep the invisible bonds visible.

TOUCHSTONE 2: REMEMBERING AS PRESENCE

Carrying Loss in Community, Listening While We Grieve, Being Witnessed Without Words

The Bridge: Why We Cannot Do This Alone

But here’s what matters: we don’t do this remembering alone. The speaking, the listening, the carrying of invisible bonds – this requires witnesses. This is where community becomes essential architecture, not optional comfort. Mourning is normal, yes. But it cannot be held by one person in isolation. We need people who will hear our story, who will sit with us in silence, who will understand that grief takes time and cannot be rushed. The congregation is not a luxury – it is the necessary structure that holds what we carry.

Kierkegaard: “Remember the deceased and you will receive the blessing that is inseparable from this act of love.”

The Heart of the Relationship

So let me ask you something: What is the heart of the relationship? When someone dies, what is it we’re actually losing? Because here’s what the research tells us now—death ends a life, but it doesn’t necessarily end a relationship. Klass, Silverman, and Nickman wrote about this in 1996, and it changed how we understand grief. The person becomes both absent and present. They’re gone, yes—but they’re also still here, woven into who we are.

And this means we’re not looking for closure. We’re not trying to “say goodbye” and move on. What we’re doing is finding a way to sustain an ongoing connection. That connection lives not only in our speaking—though speaking matters—but in our presence. In prayer. In liturgy. In the company of others who understand what we carry.

The Work of Remembering

Because remembering—real remembering—is not only speaking aloud. It’s presence. It’s attention. It’s listening. Sometimes we carry our grief into the congregation without naming it. We sit with others, and our loss is present in our body, in our attention, in the way we hold ourselves. And we are held. The work of remembering happens in silence as much as in speech. We bring our whole selves—our grief-carrying selves—into the room, and that is enough. That is the work.

The Congregation as Sacred Container

So when you carry invisible bonds into worship, they come with you. When we gather together, we are not alone with our grief. The congregation becomes a vessel for remembering—even when losses remain unspoken. Others may not know your specific loss, but they know loss. You are all grieving together, in different ways, in this shared space. God is present in the gathering. The congregation witnesses together. This is not performance or testimony—it is simply being present with what you carry. The invisible bonds are held even when they are not named.

Listening While We Grieve

And here’s something I want you to hear: listening is not avoidance. It is a form of remembering. We can hold our own grief while still receiving the service, the liturgy, the community’s care. We remain porous, not closed off. We grieve with our attention still turned toward others, toward God. This is the sacred paradox: we are held while we hold what we carry.

Let’s take a moment here. A brief silence to honor what is present in this room – spoken and unspoken. [Pause]

Remembering is not a single act. It is ongoing work – sometimes in words, sometimes in silence, always in the presence of others.

TOUCHSTONE 3: MOURNING AS ONGOING WORK

Why This Work Requires Community

Here’s something I’ve learned sitting with people in grief: it takes so much longer than any of us expect. We think we know this going in—we’ve heard it said—but when you’re in it, the length of it still catches you off guard. You think you’re making progress, and then six months later, a year later, something small breaks you open again and you realize: oh, I’m still here. I’m still doing this work.

And the work itself – it’s not one thing. It unfolds in layers. There are dimensions you don’t even see at first. You’re grieving the person, yes, but then you start to notice you’re also grieving the future you thought you’d have with them. You’re grieving the version of yourself that existed in that relationship. You’re grieving all the small daily things—the way they said your name, the sound of their key in the door. Each layer reveals itself in its own time.

What I want you to hear is this: there is no “completion” in the way we might hope for. Grief doesn’t have a finish line where you cross over and you’re done. It changes, yes. It softens in some ways. But it remains. And this is where community becomes essential—not optional, essential. Because this ongoing work cannot be held alone.

We need witnesses. We need companions who don’t abandon us when grief takes time – and it will take time. The frameworks we’re about to explore aren’t just theories; they show us the actual architecture of mourning, why it requires others. Not because their presence “solves” anything, but because the work itself is relational. You cannot do it by yourself. You were not meant to.

Let me show you what I mean. When we begin to process one loss, it often surfaces other losses we’ve been carrying—sometimes for years. Grief begets grief. A current loss can open doors to earlier losses: a childhood grief we thought we’d moved past, a relationship that ended badly, a version of ourselves we had to leave behind when life changed. This isn’t a detour. This isn’t your grief “getting worse” or “going wrong.” This is part of the sacred work.

Each loss we’ve experienced is connected to others through invisible threads. When you pull on one, others come into view. This is why grief feels so complex, so non-linear. You may come to grieve one person and find yourself grieving many things. And this is exactly why we need community. When one strand of grief pulls another into view, we need people who understand the complexity and don’t try to “fix” it. We need witnesses who will stay present as the layers unfold, who won’t rush us, who won’t say “I thought you were doing better.”

This is normal. This is how grief works. We hold space for all of it – together.

The Golden Gate Bridge Metaphor

Think about the Golden Gate Bridge for a moment. Those enormous cables that hold the bridge—they look like single, solid structures from a distance. But when you get close, you realize each of those thick cables is actually made of hundreds of smaller cables woven together. And grief work is about looking at each of those cables, one at a time.

Some cables are visible. These are the tangible memories, the specific losses we can name and point to. But some cables are invisible—the unspoken bonds, the ways we held each other that can’t be photographed or pointed to. The way someone knew what you needed before you asked. The rhythm of your days together. The future you were building. These invisible cables held the bridge too. Their absence is felt even when we can’t see them.

And here’s what matters: we must examine both the visible and invisible cables, one at a time. But we cannot do this examination alone. We need others to witness what we’re seeing, to hold steady while we pull each strand into the light.

Worden’s Four Tasks: Relational Work That Needs Witnesses

William Worden, writing in 2008, describes grieving as an active process involving four tasks. And I want to be clear—these are not individual checklists you work through in isolation. These are ongoing relational work that requires community. The first task is to accept the reality of the loss—both the visible loss and the invisible one.

What Grief Actually Requires: The Work We Cannot Do Alone

When you sit with someone in fresh grief, you notice something: they keep telling you the story. Over and over. How it happened, what they saw, what they didn’t see coming. They’re not being repetitive—they’re doing essential work. They’re trying to accept what feels unacceptable. And here’s what I’ve learned: you cannot accept reality alone. You need people who will hear your story the tenth time, the twentieth time, who won’t rush you past the shock or the denial. The congregation holds space as you come to terms with what is gone—both what you can see and what you can’t.

And then the pain comes. Not all at once, but in waves. Sometimes it’s the visible pain—the crying, the sleepless nights. But often it’s the invisible pain: the loneliness that hits at 3pm on a Tuesday, the way your body still turns toward the door when you hear a sound. This pain needs to be witnessed, not hidden. Community allows you to feel without performing strength. You need people who can sit with your pain without trying to fix it, who understand that feeling it is part of the work.

Over time – and it takes so much time – you begin to adjust to a world without them. Internal adjustments: learning who you are now. External adjustments: figuring out how to function in new ways. Spiritual adjustments: wrestling with God, with meaning, with why. These adjustments require support. You need companions as you learn to navigate this changed world, people who will adapt with you, not ahead of you.

And eventually – though “eventually” might be years – you find a way to stay connected to the person you’ve lost while also building a new life. This is sacred work. The relationship doesn’t end; it transforms. You need people who will let you remake meaning, who understand that the bond continues even as life moves forward. The congregation we talked about in Touchstone 2—they hold this space. They witness your ongoing connection. They don’t make you choose between remembering and living.

William Worden named these as four tasks of mourning, and he identified seven factors that shape how this work unfolds: who the person was to you, the nature of your attachment, how they died, your own history with loss, your personality, the support around you, and what else is happening in your life. All of these factors are held and witnessed in community. This isn’t work you can do in isolation.

Stroebe & Schut’s Dual Process Model: Why Community Must Understand Oscillation (4 minutes)

Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut describe grief as an oscillation between two modes:

Loss Orientation: Emotion-focused coping, exploring and expressing emotional responses, dwelling on the loss itself, confronting the invisible bonds that have been severed.

Restoration Orientation: External adjustments required by the loss, diversion from grief, attention to ongoing life demands, and building a new life.

Stroebe & Schut (1999) write: “This model identifies two types of stressors, loss and restoration-orientated, and a dynamic, regulatory coping process of oscillation, whereby the grieving individual at times confronts, at other times avoids, the different tasks of grieving.”

They also note: “It needs to be done, the cognitive business needs to be undertaken, but not relentlessly, and not at the expense of attending to other tasks that are concomitant with loss. It needs dosage.”

Early in bereavement, loss orientation dominates; later, attention turns more to restoration. But here’s what matters for community: When someone leans away from grief, it’s not avoidance. It’s rhythm. It’s the necessary oscillation that keeps grief from becoming unbearable. Community that understands this won’t push someone to “process” when they need to rest, and won’t let them disappear into distraction when they need to feel. We hold the space for both.

Historical Context: Freud’s Insight on Complexity

Sigmund Freud wrote “Mourning and Melancholia” in 1917, during World War I – a time when industrialization and individualization were reshaping how people experienced loss. He was writing in the midst of mass death, collective trauma, and the fracturing of traditional communities that had once held grief together.

Freud gave us something crucial: permission to grieve more than just people. He recognized that we mourn abstractions—ideals, country, liberty, the future we thought we’d have. This was radical. It meant grief wasn’t only about the person who died; it was about everything that died with them.

Freud initially wrote about grief as “letting go of attachment” – withdrawing emotional energy from the deceased and reinvesting it elsewhere. But modern understanding has evolved significantly. The current view, supported by contemporary grief research, is that death ends a life, but not necessarily a relationship. The bond continues; it transforms. We don’t “let go” – we find a way to carry the person forward.

And here’s what neuroscience has shown us: grief isn’t only about the brain’s pain centers lighting up. It also involves the craving centers—the same neural pathways activated when we long for something we need. Grief engages neurons governing long-term gratification and attachment. In other words, grief rewires our brains because the bond was real. The invisible connection Kierkegaard described isn’t metaphorical—it’s neurological.

Three Categories We’ll Hold Today

Let me name three kinds of grief we’ll hold space for today. Not as categories to memorize, but as experiences you may already be carrying – perhaps without having words for them yet.

The first is the grief we recognize most readily: when someone we love dies. You know this one. The empty chair at the table. The phone that doesn’t ring anymore. The way your hand still reaches for theirs in the dark. But even here, even in this most visible form of loss, notice what we’re actually grieving. Yes, we grieve the person—their voice, their presence, the way they said our name. But we also grieve something invisible: the way they knew us. The safety they provided. The version of ourselves that existed only in that relationship. The future we thought we’d have together.

But there’s another kind of grief many of us carry, and it often goes unnamed because there’s no body to bury, no funeral to attend. I’m talking about collective losses. The loss of ideals we once held. Freedoms we thought were secure. Ways of life that have disappeared. The country we thought we lived in. The future we believed our children would inherit. These losses are profoundly real, and yet they’re often invisible – no one sends casseroles, no one marks the anniversary. You can grieve the loss of democracy, the loss of safety, the loss of a world that made sense, and people will tell you to “move on” or “stay positive” because they don’t recognize what you’re mourning as legitimate grief.

And then there’s a third kind of grief that catches people off guard because it arrives before death does. Anticipatory grief. You’re sitting with someone you love who’s been diagnosed, and you find yourself grieving while they’re still here. You’re grieving the future that won’t come to pass. The conversations you won’t have. The milestones they won’t see. The version of them that’s already slipping away as the illness progresses. Or maybe you’re the one facing mortality, and you’re grieving your own future – the grandchildren you won’t meet, the books you won’t write or read, the ordinary Tuesdays you won’t get to live.

These three kinds of grief – death, collective loss, anticipatory grief – they’re all real. They all deserve space. They all deserve witnesses. We are the ears for each other.

This is the architecture of true holding. We become a community that can truly hold one another through loss – not by having all the answers, but by expanding our capacity to witness all the ways that love leaves us vulnerable, all the invisible bonds that tie us to what we grieve. We hold each other’s grief, including the parts that cannot be spoken. And this brings us to our final question: So what does this require of us? What is the community’s specific role in this sacred work?

Final Reflection

We acknowledge:

The invisible bonds that we grieve—they were real
They held us, shaped us, made us who we are
In grief work, we honor both what we can see and what we cannot
We do this work together

The-Mourners-Bill-of-Rights.pdf

Closing: Moment of silence or prayer

“I Lift Up My Eyes:” A Lenten Journey Through the Mountains

Text: Psalm 121

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

The Question That Haunts Us

There’s something deeply human about the opening words of Psalm 121. “I lift up my eyes to the mountains.” It sounds almost peaceful, doesn’t it? Poetic. The kind of thing you’d find on an inspirational poster with a sunset backdrop.

But this is no peaceful contemplation. This is a cry born from trauma. This psalm emerged from the crucible of Israel’s exile – a people torn from their homeland, their temple destroyed, their identity shattered. They were a traveling people, displaced, uncertain, and afraid. And now, standing at the edge of another journey, the psalmist looks up at the mountains ahead and asks the question that haunts every human heart in crisis: “Where does my help come from?”

Those mountains weren’t just geographical features. They were symbols of everything that threatened to destroy them. The steep paths where your foot could slip. The hidden places where robbers waited to ambush travelers – remember, the Good Samaritan’s parable of the man beaten and left for half-dead plays out in these very mountains. The scorching sun by day could strike you down. The mysterious moon by night, which ancient peoples believed could cause epilepsy, leprosy, and even madness. And perhaps most terrifying of all: the pagan belief that gods dwelt in those mountains, gods who demanded tribute and offered no mercy.

The mountains represented separation, limitation, and danger. They were the obstacles still blocking the path forward. They were the “hurdles” that God’s people still had to cross on their way to the end. Before reaching their destination, the struggle still lay “like a mountain” before them.

Our Mountains in Lent

We know something about mountains, don’t we? As we journey through Lent toward Good Friday and Easter, we too are a traveling people. We, too, face mountains that loom before us, blocking our view and threatening our progress.

What are your mountains today? Perhaps it’s an illness that won’t relent – the diagnosis that changed everything, the chronic pain that grinds you down day after day. Perhaps it’s a relationship that’s crumbling despite your best efforts – the marriage that’s dying, the child who’s walked away, the friend who betrayed you.

Perhaps your mountain is economic. Perhaps you’ve received the pink slip, the layoff notice, the sudden termination. Perhaps you’re watching your industry collapse, your skills become obsolete, your decades of loyalty rewarded with a severance package and a locked-out email account. Perhaps you’re lying awake at night calculating how many months your savings will last, wondering how you’ll pay the mortgage, terrified of losing not just income but identity – because for so long, your work was who you were. “What do you do?” the stranger asks at a party, and suddenly you don’t know how to answer. The mountain of unemployment doesn’t just threaten your paycheck; it threatens your sense of purpose, your dignity, your place in the world. It whispers lies: “You’re not valuable anymore. You’re disposable. You’re failing your family. You’ll never recover from this.”

Perhaps it’s financial ruin staring you in the face – the debt that keeps growing, the bills that keep coming, the impossible choice between medicine and groceries. Perhaps it’s the crushing weight of depression that makes even getting out of bed feel like scaling Everest, made worse by the knowledge that you can’t afford therapy. Perhaps it’s simply the accumulated weariness of living in a world that feels increasingly hostile, chaotic, and unmoored – where the ground beneath your feet keeps shifting, where security is an illusion, where the future feels terrifyingly uncertain.

Or perhaps your mountain is more subtle but no less real: the gnawing fear that God has forgotten you. That He’s sleeping while you suffer. That you’re utterly alone on this treacherous path. That when you finally reach the bottom, there will be nothing but emptiness waiting.

The psalmist’s question echoes across the centuries into our Lenten journey: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from?”

It’s a desperate question. An urgent question. A question asked on the boundary between worship and life, between the warm atmosphere of the sanctuary and the cold, naked reality of the road ahead.

The Answer That Defies Our Expectations

Listen carefully to the answer: “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

This is not the answer we want to hear. We want God to say: “Don’t worry, I’ll remove the mountains. I’ll make the path smooth. You won’t suffer. You won’t struggle. Everything will work out just fine.”

But that’s not what God promises. Not here. Not anywhere in Scripture, if we’re honest.

The psalm doesn’t promise that we’ll cross the mountains without wounds. It doesn’t promise survival – not political survival, not economic survival, not even physical survival. God doesn’t promise to protect us like porcelain dolls in a glass case, carefully preserved from every scratch and bruise.

What does God promise? He promises protection in distress. He promises His presence through the suffering. He promises resurrection to His church.

Martin Luther understood this deeply. He said that Psalm 121 promises “absurd, unbelievable, and impossible things.” The human heart responds to these words and says, “These are empty lies. Is this really ‘protection’ – when we’re thrown into prison, when the Son of God is crucified, when John is beheaded?”

According to the flesh, according to what we can see and measure and control, God appears to be One who neglects His people. But according to the Spirit and His promises, He is the Protector-in-need, the Deliverer-from-sin. This is precisely what Psalm 121 confesses.

The traveler stares fixedly at the mountains, but is invited to look beyond them, to look through them, to the Protector and Deliverer of Israel. The traveler’s eyes must not be cast downward, and especially not anxiously focused on oneself. He must not look around searching for help from people, powers, or gods. His eyes must be directed upward, to God.

The God Who Doesn’t Sleep

“He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”

This is revolutionary. The pagan gods slept – remember Elijah mocking the prophets of Baal: “Perhaps your god is sleeping and must be awakened!” (1 Kings 18:27). Human beings sleep. We close our eyes. We lose consciousness. We become vulnerable. And in that vulnerability, we fear abandonment.

This is the terror that haunts us in the dark hours. When you lie awake at 3 a.m., unemployed and terrified about tomorrow, you feel the weight of your aloneness. When you sit in the hospital waiting room, when you receive the diagnosis, when you stand at the grave of someone you love – in those moments, the question becomes unbearable: Is anyone watching? Does anyone care? Am I utterly alone in this?

We fear falling into emptiness. We fear that at the moment of our greatest need, when we slip and stumble on the mountain, there will be no one there. We fear that we will die alone, forgotten, unseen – that we will gaze into nothingness and find nothing gazing back. We fear that God, like the pagan deities, has turned away, closed His eyes, and abandoned us to the void.

But listen: “He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.”

The God of Israel is not like the gods of the nations. He does not rest. He does not turn away. He does not forget. While you sleep, He watches. While you weep in the darkness, His eyes are open. While you face the mountains – the unemployment, the illness, the loss, the approach of death itself – He is awake. He is present. She is watching.

This is not a distant, impersonal surveillance. This is the vigilance of a Father who loves His children. This is the wakefulness of a Shepherd who knows Her sheep by name. This is the constant, redemptive attention of the God who will not let you fall into emptiness or abandonment.

Even in death – especially in death – you will not look into a void. You will not gaze into nothingness. You will look into the eyes of God. You will be known. You will be seen. You will be held.

The God of Israel is beyond our seasons, beyond our small existence. And yet – and this is the gospel of Psalm 121 – God is also there, in every part and detail of our lives, in our seasons, in our small existence. He is the Creator of heaven and earth. Every centimeter of the earth belongs to Him – and He is protectively and redemptively present in every aspect of our existence, even to the threshold of eternity itself.

Notice how the psalm moves. It starts with the individual’s anxious question (verse 1), but the answer comes through the covenant community—through the priest who represents the fellowship of faith. The individual is not separated from the covenant; he is being schooled in “liturgical discipline” with a view to the road that lies ahead. The individual is strengthened within the space of the covenant community to depart.

The psalm has a funnel structure. The question of verse 1 is answered by drawing the circle progressively tighter: God helps as Creator and Protector of Israel, as Protector of the individual, but always within the broader context of the covenant. The psalm “begins with despair and uncertainty and… ends as a triumph song of trust.”

Christ: Our High Priest on the Mountain Road

But we cannot stop with the Old Testament answer. We who live on this side of the cross must see how Psalm 121 finds its complete and final fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the ultimate traveler, the ultimate pilgrim. He too faced mountains – literal and figurative. He climbed the Mount of Transfiguration, where His glory was revealed. He prayed in agony on the Mount of Olives. And He was crucified on Golgotha, which means “the place of the skull,” a hill, a mountain outside Jerusalem.

Jesus is the one who truly understands what it means to cry out, “Where does my help come from?” In the Garden of Gethsemane, He sweated drops of blood, pleading with the Father. On the cross, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And here’s the stunning truth: God’s Son did not “survive.” He was so dead they had to bury Him. But He was resurrected! He stands as eternal High Priest, guaranteeing God’s protection. He vouches for it. What no angel or saint could do, He has done. He stands in for us. This is ultimately His blessing, His farewell conversation that Psalm 121 prophesies. His farewell word is: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). His name is, after all, “Immanuel, God with us.” This is the gospel of Psalm 121!

God doesn’t handle the world at a distance, like a skilled surgeon with a scalpel. He doesn’t cut out the evil. He comes and takes it upon Himself, in Christ. Christ, too, did not “survive,” but He was resurrected. For us.

This is not the cheap “prosperity gospel” that promises health, wealth, and smooth sailing. This is the costly gospel that promises God’s presence in the valley of the shadow of death. This is the gospel that says: You may not survive, but you will be preserved. You may die, but you will be resurrected.

New Eyes for the Lenten Journey

To see this – to truly understand God’s promise – we need new eyes. Eyes that see the invisible God (Hebrews 11:27). Eyes that don’t fixate on mountains or people or powers or anxious hearts that tremble when the slightest leaf rustles. We need eyes that look upward to God, only to discover that He is closer to us than our own heartbeat.

Think about what we naturally see when we lift our eyes. We see the mountains – the unemployment that looms before us, the illness that won’t relent, the losses that keep accumulating. We see threats. We see our own smallness in the face of forces beyond our control. We see anxiety written across the faces of those we love. We see a world that seems indifferent to our suffering. We see emptiness waiting at the end of the road.

But faith gives us different eyes. When we lift our eyes in faith, we don’t see emptiness – we see a Face. We see God’s eyes already fixed upon us. We discover that while we were anxiously searching for help, God was already watching. While we were afraid of falling into the void, God’s gaze was holding us. The psalm invites us to stop looking at the mountains and look through them, to see that we are being seen. We are not alone on this road. We are not invisible. We are not forgotten.

This is what Christoph Blumhardt meant when, in the deepest misery of his life, he could still cry out: “Überall ist Licht!”—”Everywhere is light!” He didn’t mean that the darkness had disappeared. The suffering was real. The mountains were still there. But his eyes had been opened to see what was beyond the darkness: the presence of God, the light of God’s face shining upon him even in the depths. He saw light because he saw God – not as a distant power, but as a presence that penetrated every shadow, every valley, every moment of despair. The light he saw was God’s eyes, looking back at him with love.

We need eyes that don’t fixate on mountains or people or powers or anxious hearts that tremble when the slightest leaf rustles. We need eyes that look upward to God, only to discover that He is closer to us than our own heartbeat – and that His gaze has never left us.

This is what Lent is about. It’s not about giving up chocolate or social media – though those disciplines have their place. Lent is about receiving new eyes. Eyes that can see God’s presence precisely where we least expect it: in suffering, in weakness, in death itself.

The sun may still “strike” us by day. The moon may still “harm” us by night. We may still stumble on the steep paths. The robbers may still attack. But through it all – through it all, not around it – God is there. “The LORD watches over you – the LORD is your shade at your right hand.”

This is not a military term or a legal term. It’s a technical expression indicating God’s helping and protective presence. God is your shadow, your constant companion, so close that He moves when you move, present in every step of your journey.

The Church’s Song: From Fear to Faith

And here’s the beautiful thing: we don’t have to sing this song alone.

Psalm 121 was meant for liturgical antiphonal singing – a call-and-response, a dialogue between the anxious traveler and the covenant community. When the individual still doubts, the others join in. The entire priestly choir joins in. The church of all ages joins in. The “cloud of witnesses” joins in.

Then the fear-filled question of verse 1 becomes jubilation. Then the ecclesia pressa – the church under pressure – becomes again and again the ecclesia triumphans – the church in victory. This is the song that the church, as church, between farewell and second coming, must “betray” to the world. And this is the song that must form the fundamental tone of our Lenten journey.

We are not solo singers. We are a choir. When your voice falters, mine will carry the melody. When I forget the words, you will remind me. When we all feel like giving up, the saints who have gone before us – the great cloud of witnesses – will sing so loudly that we cannot help but join in.

This is why we gather for worship, especially during Lent. Not to escape the mountains, but to be strengthened for the journey through them. Not to pretend everything is fine, but to confess together that God is faithful even when everything is falling apart. Not to sing a shallow, happy song, but to sing the deep, costly song of resurrection faith.

Going Out: From Liturgy to Life

“The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”

The psalm ends with a sending. The traveler must leave the sanctuary’s warm atmosphere. The concrete mountains must be climbed. Covenant grace must now be concretely experienced. Life must be sanctified. Liturgical isolation must be broken through. Now life must become liturgy, and liturgy must become life.

“Your coming and going”—this refers to everyday. Your doing and leaving undone, your coming and going, your sitting and standing. God is there. Every day includes crisis moments: moments of damage, separation, and shame. But it also includes joy, prosperity, and vistas of hope.

Our whole life is indeed a “coming in” and “going out,” a movement, a process. And through it all – the births and the deaths, the weddings and the funerals, the celebrations and the catastrophes – God watches over us.

This is why Psalm 121 has been proclaimed at weddings and baptisms throughout church history. This is why it has been used as a word of comfort to the dying. God protects even our final departure, the decisive crisis and separation of our life, and our entrance into the holy city, the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2), of which it is reported that there is indeed an entrance, but no more exits are needed (Revelation 21:25). There “the sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat,” but the people of God will be before the throne of God and serve Him day and night (see Revelation 7:15-16, which quotes Psalm 121). In this – in the praise (service) before the throne of God – Psalm 121 finds its complete and final fulfillment.

Conclusion: The Triumph Song of Trust

Brothers and sisters, we are in the season of Lent. We are on the road to the cross. The mountains loom before us – both the mountains in our personal lives and the mountain of Golgotha that stands at the center of our faith.

We will not cross these mountains without wounds. We may not “survive” in the way the world defines survival. But we will be preserved. We will be resurrected. Because our help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth, who sent His Son to walk this road before us, to die our death, and to rise in victory.

So lift up your eyes. Not to the mountains – they’re still there, still threatening, still real. Lift up your eyes beyond the mountains, through the mountains, to the God who made them and who is infinitely greater than them. Lift up your eyes to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

And then, with new eyes that see the invisible, join your voice with the church of all ages and sing the triumph song of trust: “My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip – He who watches over you will not slumber. The LORD watches over you – the LORD is your shade at your right hand. The LORD will keep you from all harm – He will watch over your life. The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”

It may sound like empty lies. It may sound like an idle song. But it is true: God is Immanuel, God with us… now, and forever.

Amen.

Benediction: Going Out Under God’s Gaze

(A brief silence)

In a moment, you will leave this place. You will walk back out into your mountains – the unemployment, the illness, the losses, the fears that wait for you. The sanctuary doors will close behind you, and the road will stretch ahead.

But you do not go alone. You do not go unwatched. You do not go unguarded.

For fifteen hundred years, the church has sent its people out with this ancient prayer of protection. Not protection from the mountains, but protection through them. Listen now to the words of St. Patrick, and let them become your armor for the journey.

(Music cue: Bill Evans’ instrumental “Blue in Green” begins softly)

I arise today,
through God’s strength to pilot me,
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me.

(Pause, letting the music hold the space)

Go now in peace. The Lord watches over your coming and going, both now and forevermore.

Amen.

(Music continues as the congregation departs)