Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
Matt 5:4 March 20, 2011
Intro:
Today, the second Sunday of Lent, our journey through the teachings of Jesus commonly called the “beatitudes”, brings us smack into the middle of a rather difficult teaching: “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
The concept of mourning is appropriate for the season of Lent, in which we prepare ourselves to come again to the cross and then the empty tomb – to walk again through deep grief and shock at the torture and execution of the God of the Universe for us, and then into the victory over sin and death that we celebrate on resurrection morning. In our celebration of Easter as a church, we work hard to not fast-forward past the ugliness of the cross to get to the empty tomb. We work hard to not portray an idea of cheap grace, of a salvation that came at little cost, as if our sin does not really matter all that much anymore. And on the flip-side, we work hard to really try to capture the joy of that resurrection morning, to truly celebrate the power and victory and resulting hope for now and for eternity that we now have because Jesus conquered sin and death, and to not stay wallowing in sin and despair at the cross but rather step into new life and power that we know at the empty tomb.
It is my conviction that we can’t understand how incredible the empty tomb is unless we have some idea how devastating the cross is. And, in the same manner, it is my conviction that we can’t understand how incredible the comfort of God is unless we accept our pain and mourn it.
“Blessed are those who mourn”… really?
In the beatitudes we have Jesus’ portrayal of the lives of those characterized by citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Last week we looked at the first, “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.” Jesus continues from there and says, “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” What is He really saying? We are going to have to dig a little bit together. We are going to have to work hard – with our minds and also with our hearts – to really allow the Holy Spirit to bring the kind of life He wants for us, because it is a challenging teaching.
We are going to dive into this with our minds more deeply after our time of prayer and worship, but we want to create some space to do some heart and spirit work first. We have to mourn things that are far out of our control, such as the losses we experience in seasons of grief, or the things we see on the news such as we see in Japan. These areas of grief are not caused by us, but they affect us nonetheless. And the appropriate response to those is to mourn over them, and as we do we experience the promise of Jesus that those who mourn “will be comforted”. Pastor Sue has chosen some songs and prayers, and crafted some spaces of silence, to lead us through this particular type of mourning. But just before we experience that, I want to make one suggestion/ask one question, for you to think about as we create that space.
Is the experience of comfort through pain better than to live without pain?
One of the great things about the beatitudes is that Jesus gives us a reason, and this one is clear: “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Those who mourn are blessed because “they will be comforted”. There is a similarity here with what we saw last week, that when we admit our poverty of spirit, our need for God, then we receive God’s amazing gift. Same idea here – when we accept and embrace our pain and loss, we are open to receiving the comfort of God.
Now, let’s talk about this comfort. We are tempted to see it as a minor thing – a small hug, a casserole, a compassionate ear, a shoulder to cry on – and while those are welcome and appreciated, we generally see them as somewhat small because they don’t solve the problem that caused the pain. Are you with me? When we offer comfort, most of us do so feeling somewhat inadequate, wishing there was “something more we could do” that would really help, that would actually make a difference, that would tangibly “fix” the problem and make the pain disappear. Sometimes we even wish we could take the place of another and take their pain for them. I know I often feel that way, sure I’ll visit at the hospital, say a prayer, bring a smile, read some Scripture, but I walk out the door feeling like I really didn’t do much except maybe bring a bit of comfort.
But what if we have that wrong. What if the goal of life on earth is not the elimination of pain, because that is impossible until Jesus comes back. What if the highest good in this in-between time is not that we never experience mourning, but instead that we do experience mourning and right alongside that mourning we experience compassionate comfort. What if that experience of comfort through pain is really better than a life lived without pain?
See, when I read the Bible and especially the promises of Jesus, I don’t see promises that life will always be great, God will solve all our problems and make all our pain disappear. What I read is that God will be with us through it all: “I will never leave you”… “I am with you always”… “take heart, I have overcome the world”… “I will send you another comforter, to be with you forever”… even “when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” (James 1:2-4).
And if those are the promises of God, then I think that makes my choice clear, and easier. I can try to deny pain and avoid it, or I can mourn. Jesus says, “blesses are those who mourn, for they will be comforted”.
As we spend some time in song, prayer, and silence now, we’re just creating some space to mourn with the expectation that as we do, the Holy Spirit will bring comfort.
(Space to mourn, songs/prayers/silence)
What Jesus is Not Saying…
“Blessed are those who mourn”. Let’s rule out a few possible understandings right off the top, shall we? First, I do not believe for a moment that Jesus is saying, “happy are those who are sad”. That is not some profound mystery, it is an obvious contradiction. Second, I don’t believe that Jesus is saying, “it’s really great when you face loss”. Jesus never makes light of loss, is never callous towards the emotional suffering of others, and never teaches that death is no big deal. He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, even though He was about to bring Lazarus back to life, so I’m quite positive that in this beatitude Jesus is not suggesting that loss is an inherently good thing. Third, I don’t believe that Jesus is saying that mourning is no big deal because in the end it will all work out ok so just ignore/minimize it. In fact, if anything Jesus is saying the opposite – validating the experience of mourning and opening the door to the full experience of it.
If Jesus does not mean those things, what does He mean? I think the key lies in the answers to three main questions, one of which I addressed earlier in the suggestion that the experience of comfort through pain is really better than to live without pain. The remaining two questions are: what does it mean to “mourn”?; and what is the reality of life on earth?
What does it mean to “mourn”?
It seems an obvious starting point to dive into what it actually means to “mourn” if Jesus said “blessed are those who mourn”. Our first thought is that mourning is what we do when someone dies. This is true, of course, but we must go a little deeper or we are back to thinking that Jesus is saying it is a “good thing” when people we love die, which I have already rejected. Let’s broaden our understanding of mourning from only our response when someone dies or to other events outside our control, and see it also as the appropriate response to sin. We need to mourn things outside of our control, and also pain that we have brought upon ourselves as a result of our own choices to disobey God. Mourning as a response to sin is certainly a Biblical idea, two quick examples (of many) will hopefully be enough to convince you:
Isaiah 22: “12 At that time the Lord, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, called you to weep and mourn. He told you to shave your heads in sorrow for your sins and to wear clothes of burlap to show your remorse.” 1 Cor 5: “1 I can hardly believe the report about the sexual immorality going on among you—something that even pagans don’t do. I am told that a man in your church is living in sin with his stepmother. 2 You are so proud of yourselves, but you should be mourning in sorrow and shame. And you should remove this man from your fellowship.”
Can you wrap your head around mourning as more than grief and also as an appropriate response to sin? When Jesus talks about mourning here in the beatitudes, He does mean the natural response we have when someone we loves dies, but He means more than just that and in fact is talking about our response to any kind of loss including and especially the loss in our lives as a result of sin.
What is the reality of life on earth?
Understanding what “mourning” actually is leads to a second question – what is the reality of our lives on earth? This one is a little easier to understand, but perhaps more difficult to accept. Reality is that our lives on earth will have pain. We will experience loss. We all have sinned. And so we will need to mourn.
While we can understand that reality with our minds, it is more difficult to accept. See, we don’t like pain. We don’t enjoy loss. We don’t want to really look deeply at our sin because it will make us feel bad. So most people in our society, and maybe some of us, go to great lengths to ignore it. To pretend. To deny. The avoidance of pain and its opposite, the pursuit of a comfortable life devoid of risk, is a high societal value – where many people’s idea of the “perfect life” is having lots of money and being able to laze around in some beautiful setting. But that is not reality – reality is that “in this world you will have trouble”. There will be pain and sin and loss, and it will effect us all in profound ways.
So the choice is not whether we will live a life with pain or not. And if you became a Christian under some illusion that this way of life would be easier or have less pain, because you were told you could just pray and get everything you want including complete physical healing so you never have to suffer, I’m sorry but you were lied to. The way of Jesus is not some short-cut around the cross. The way of Jesus goes through the cross and then is victorious over sin and death and pain. So the choice is not whether we will live a life with pain or not – the choice is whether we will pretend the pain isn’t there, and deny it, or accept it and mourn it.
The first option is a common one, the second option is “blessed”. “Blessed are those who mourn.”
If Mourning is about Accepting our Lives, Envy is the Corresponding Sin
Our journey through Lent is two-pronged – the first is to explore the life Jesus offers and describes in the beatitudes as the way of the Kingdom of God. The second prong is to explore a corresponding sin that tries to suck the life of God out of us.
As we have explored “blessed are those who mourn”, we’ve seen that at the heart of that is the idea of acceptance. We accept the life God has given us, not avoiding or denying the places of pain and loss, but instead mourning those places and then receiving the comfort that Jesus promised in this beatitude. So what sin would undermine the experience of accepting our lives as given by God, good and bad?
Envy. Envy is about looking at the lives of others, and wishing we had their lives instead of ours. It is deeper and more sinister than simply wanting what others have – that is what we call covetousness, and is also a sin, but envy goes deeper. We don’t just want the material things others have, we want to be them. We want to be beautiful like them, talented like them, pain-free like them. Of course, the obvious lie is that that their lives are perfect and wonderful and have no struggle or pain. But we don’t usually see that… envy sneaks in and starts to whisper some attractive lies: “don’t you wish you were like person A?”… “look at their life – pretty great, isn’t it? bet you wish that was you…” and even, “wow, God must really love that person, look at how great their life is and how lousy yours is in comparison… too bad God doesn’t love you as much as He loves them…”
As pastor Sue and I were planning and working through this morning, she offered to share a personal testimony that might help illustrate this for us – both how this sin is destructive and also how much better is the life of God instead.
Conclusion:
Last week I concluded the sermon part with the words of Moses in Deuteronomy as he called the Israelites to a choice – the way of life or the way of death, the way of blessing or the way of cursing. I’m going to close that way this week also. The way of life, as described by Jesus, is to embrace the lives we have been given by God and accept the reality of pain and loss and mourn it. That leads to comfort, and this is what it means to live in the Kingdom of God. The way of death is the road of envy – of comparing our lives to the illusion of perfection and the illusion of the absence of pain in the lives of others around us, and reject the lives God has given us in the futile attempt to be someone else. This is envy, and it kills the life of God inside of us. The choice is ours, which way do we want to live?
Deut 30:
6 “The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live!...
15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.
19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!”
Adult Education Plan:
1. Open in prayer
2. Stories from last week’s reflections
3. Overview of this week’s plan
4. Mourning grief and mourning sin: reflections on our worship experience today
5. Anyone willing to share a story of a deep experience of comfort?
6. Mourning sin: Let’s go a little deeper with this idea, and make it a little more personal. Do we really tend to see our sin as a loss, and thus mourn it? I’m not sure this is very present in our practical theology of sin or our Christian experience of it. I think we are far more likely to do one of two things (on opposite sides of the spectrum): we either minimize it, rationalizing it away as not really a big deal, no one is really hurt if I have a lustful thought or a prideful heart or an envious response to the “perfect” life someone else seems to have; OR we feel some shame at our sin and so quickly and generally confess it just so we can get rid of the feeling of shame and guilt and forget about it (and then generally go right back and commit the same sin only a short time later). The Bible, on the other hand, says we should mourn our sin. Maybe a practical example will help drive this home – anyone want to volunteer a particular sin to help illustrate my point?
explore the one volunteered; or: Let’s take the everyday example of the glossy magazine at the grocery store checkout line. I won’t name one, but let’s say there is a beautiful woman on the front with blemish-less skin, appealing curves, and not a lot of clothing. First, let’s recognize upfront that the entire photo is a lie – the woman does not really look like that, her image has been altered almost completely by computers. It is a good example because the men who see this magazine will be tempted to lust and the women tempted to envy. Both are sin, and both happen in our minds and hearts as we wait for our groceries to be checked through and paid for. Assume the sin happens – the men let their minds and hearts wander freely down the path of imaging what it might be like to see and touch and enjoy that woman, and the women allow their minds and hearts to wander freely down the path of longing for that skin and that shape and that youthfulness. We have given in to temptation, and sinned.
Minimization is the first option: it is very very easy to think this sin doesn’t really matter. To think no one is harmed. To think it is no big deal. To think it has no effect on us at all, and thus minimize and rationalize it away. In fact even as I relay the example I bet many of you are thinking that very thought. But if we believe it doesn’t matter, we don’t believe Scripture – I quote Titus 3:3 just for simplicity because both sins are specifically mentioned in the same verse: “3 Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other.” Now, if we get past minimization we might go to the opposite extreme and feel some shame and guilt and so quickly confess so we don’t feel badly or like we are “in trouble with God”. That isn’t really much better, because it doesn’t deal with the real issue but rather only with the unpleasant emotion that we want to end.
To deal with sin Biblically, we need to neither minimize nor placate our unpleasant emotion with a hasty “oops sorry god please forgive me”. We need to see how sin destroys the life of God within us. We need to see lust as a poor substitute for intimacy, one that creeps in and creates desires within us for someone else, which distances us from the imperfect people who do love us by supposedly pointing out the flaws in the people who love us with the false promise that something else would be better. Likewise envy, which denies the goodness of God in our lives now and our acceptance of the life and/or body God has given us and replaces it with some desire to be/have something different. This brings death to us because it convinces us to see ourselves through the eyes of some fake magazine rather than through the eyes of God. So when we get to this point in our minds, in response to our sin, the next step is critical: we need to mourn how this experience of lust or envy has choked life out of us. Then we see sin exposed for what it is. Then we truly regret it, hopefully even hate it. We mourn what it did to our spirits as it pulled us away from the perfect love of God. And then we confess it to God, thankful for His promise of mercy and His power to fight and overcome it, and we return to God and experience His comfort and peace and forgiveness and restoration.
Now, if we’ve gone through that process (rather than minimization of a quick “forgive me Lord” prayer mostly so we don’t feel guilty anymore), what is going to be a more likely response at the checkout line the next time we see a glossy magazine? “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”.
7. Did Pastor Sue’s testimony about the destructive power of envy resonate with you? How so? Are there other places you have seen envy destroy?
8. If, as we have suggested, the practice of mourning our losses is part of the battle against envy, what other spiritual practices might be effective?
9. Close in prayer
Personal Reflection Questions for the 2nd week of Lent:
1. Jesus said “God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Where have you experienced mourning in your life, and what comfort did you experience? Take some time to reflect and remember how God brought comfort during past seasons of mourning, and thank Him.
2. Are there places in your life now where you are experiencing loss? If so, create some space and time to mourn. Allow the feelings to come, borrow the words of the Psalmist if you want some help in putting those feelings into words (see Ps. 5, 6, 13, 22, 38, etc…)
3. Spend a few moments meditating at the foot of the cross. Remember what Jesus has done for us, imagine Him accepting the sin of the world and atoning for it, especially meditate on Is 53:4-6. Allow the Holy Spirit to whisper words of comfort and peace to you as a result of what Jesus has done for us.
4. Reflect on your life today, and answer this question: whose life do you wish you had?
5. What do you tend to envy in others – wealth, success, relationships, spiritual gifts, attitudes, apparent absence of struggle?
6. How does nurturing those feelings of envy benefit you?
7. How does it kill the life of God inside of you?
8. Take time to really understand the impact envy has on creating dissatisfaction with the life God has given you. Get deep to the root of it, mourning how this has robbed you of joy and ability to see God’s goodness to you. Spend enough time that you actually get to the point of hating this sin. Then confess and repent.
9. Thank God for His forgiveness and power. Hear Him speak words of affirmation, acceptance, delight, and forgiveness.
Discussion with a trusted friend or spouse:
Share the thoughts you had to the personal discussion questions, however much you are comfortable. Allow the circumstances of your life at the moment to guide your conversation. Perhaps one/both of you are in a place of mourning over things outside of our control: if so create space to mourn and receive comfort. Perhaps the material on mourning sin, and routing out envy is more applicable: if so, concentrate on those areas. Most importantly, spend some time in prayer for one another.
