Blessed: Those That Mourn - Matthew 5:1-2, 4
Have you ever looked out into the
world and just wanted to cry? I’m not
talking about being unhappy with the politics of the time, because if you’re a
Democrat, chances are you’re unhappy with the way things are going in North
Carolina, if you’re a Republican, chances are you’re unhappy with the way
things are going nationally. What I am
talking about is looking out at those who are truly hurting in the world—the hungry,
the homeless, the sick, the abused, the addicted, the enslaved, the
forgotten—and really just had your heart break for them?
That's what this week's beatitude
addresses.
We started this series last week. We
considered that while as a kid we might have liked having our world turn upside
down, with the exception of pineapple upside down cake, as adults we usually
don't like it when things are flipped upside down. Yet Jesus is always about
turning the world upside down. We
discussed that Jesus comes in and calls those blessed that we and the world
would not normally consider blessed. I tried to clarify last week that we
should not take blessed as happy, because being happy is simply an emotional
state. Being blessed, as Jesus uses it, is more than simply not feeling sad.
Jesus is not talking about an emotional state, but a state of being, a condition
of existence. To be blessed, remember, is to be considered fortunate, well-off,
fortunate, or privileged. Last week we
began be hearing Jesus tell us that we fortunate if we understand that we are
not and cannot be self-sufficient, and are wholly and completely dependent on
God.
This week we hear Jesus say blessed
are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. For many years, I grew up
thinking that Jesus was talking about those who had lost a loved one, and that
the comfort came in those that surrounded them in their grief and in the hope
and science of the resurrection to come. However, I could never reconcile that
with that old notion of blessed being interchangeable with being happy. How
could you be mourn the loss of someone you cared about and be happy at the same
time? Of course now that I have been in the ministry for nearly 18 years, I can
understand how there are families who feel happy that a loved ones pains and
struggles have come to an end and that the loved one is now at rest with Jesus.
Yet with our new understanding of blessed being privileged, well-off, or
fortunate, that kind of slips away. Many
of us might say, and I’ve heard it said many times, “that they are in a far
better place.” They are the ones who are blessed, privileged, well-off, and
fortunate. It would make sense to us if
Jesus said “blessed are those who have died,” but Jesus said, “Blessed are
those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
Jesus must mean something different or something more than those who
have lost someone for whom they cared deeply.
And as I alluded to earlier, Jesus is
meaning something more than the loss of a loved one. Jesus is pulling on the traditions of the
Psalmist, Isaiah, Jeremiah and other biblical writers who are mourning not the
loss of a someone they cared about, but are actually mourning the fact that the
community of God’s people have lost the vision of what it means to live as the
People of God and that the world itself has fallen and is not what God has
designed. In a sense it is about a
death, but not the death of a person, but the death of creation and humanity as
we were meant to be.
The Psalms are full of laments, for
example the Psalmist writes:
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart
all day long?
How long shall the enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the
sleep of death, and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed;” my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.[i]
Jeremiah’s lament is probably the best
known of the entire Old Testament, as his sorrow fills the book of
Lamentations We can catch a brief
glimpse of his sorrow in the opening of the book:
How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was
great among the nations! She that was a
princess among the provinces has become a vassal.
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all
her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt
treacherously with her, they have become her enemies.[ii]
Matthew even records a lament of Jesus
later in his Gospel:
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those
who are sent to it! How often have I
desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her
wings, and you were not willing! See,
your house is left to you, desolate. For
I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who
comes in the name of the Lord.’[iii]
My brothers and sisters, the question
comes to us, how do we feel when we see the pain and need of those in the
world? Unfortunately sometimes we tend
not to look at it as Jesus sees it.
Sometimes we look at it
judgmentally. We think that addict made
their choices and it serves them right that they are bound by that sin. We look at those living in poverty and think
they should have worked harder. We look
at the hungry begging on the street and figure they have spent all their money
on booze. We look at pregnant teenagers
and condemn their loose morals.
Maybe it is not judgmentalism that
comes from us but a sense of uncaring callousness. We have been hit so many times by so many
images and it does not seem to be getting any better, and so we just stop
feeling anything. We stop feeling and
stop caring.
Others of us live by the exact
opposite of what Jesus says and believe that ignorance is bliss. We turn a blind eye to all the hurt and pain
and simply focus on our own happiness.
Yet Jesus calls those who identify
with the poets, prophets, and himself, those who lament the condition of the
world and those living in it, those who mourn, blessed, fortunate, well-off,
privileged. While Jesus doesn’t come out
and say it, He strongly implies that those who sit in judgment, those who have
become callous, or those simply ignoring the struggling in the world, are not
blessed, that they may be the ones to be pitied. Why?
Well, God’s concern is for the weak, the hurting, the struggling, those
in pain, and those enslaved. His heart
has always been moved by their plight and their plea. To find ourselves mourning is to find
ourselves on the side of God—to have any other response is to find ourselves
aligned opposite Christ.
However, it is not finding themselves
on the side of God is not the reason that Jesus says those mourning are
blessed. Jesus says they will be comforted.
Jesus offers to those who see and ache on behalf of those who are
suffering, struggling, and lost in the world, know that your sadness and sorrow
has been seen and God will respond.
Looking closely at the laments of the Psalms and the Prophets, will they
begin in sorrow, they always end in the hope and assurance that God is going to
come and act. God is going to make
everything right. For those who mourn we
will find comfort in the realization, assurance, and witness of God coming in
and restoring things to the way they should be—things may be bad, things may
get worse, but we live as people who may ache, but ache with the hope that God
is going to act—knowing as the old saying goes, “that it is darkest before the
dawn.” We believe that the dawn will
come, the Son has risen and will return again, and the day will come where
“Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more….”[iv] Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, you will
weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain
will turn to joy…So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts
will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”[v]
So, my brothers and sisters, find
yourself on the side of God, mourn with Him at the pain and suffering in the
world, but know that comfort is coming, He will act, and rejoice!
In the Name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit! Amen.83
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