Have you ever read anything in the Bible that you did not
understand? Duh! Stupid question, David. Some say it happens
to them all the time. One person once told me that she did not
bother to study the Bible because it was impossible to
understand, and she would prove it to me. She took her Bible
down from its shelf, let it fall open at random, and then began
to read just where her eyes fell on the page. It happened that
she began in the middle of one of Jesus' parables - she read a
few verses (which made no sense without a context) and then said,
"See, it makes no sense." Of course, no other book would make
any sense if one would read it randomly either, but to her, the
point was made: Bible study was useless because the book was
impossible to understand.
True, her reasoning was flawed and foolish, but I will
freely grant that there are things in scripture that are
difficult to grasp. One of them may be our text for today as we
encounter the second Beatitude: Matthew 5:4 - "Blessed are those
who mourn, for they will be comforted." Lovely words, and very
familiar words, but do they make sense?
Let us look at the words. "Blessed are..." - we understand
that to mean "Happy are..." or "Congratulations when..." or "How
fortunate you are..." and certainly any of those sound like
nonsense in connection with mourning. "Happy are those who are
unhappy..." Truth be told, they would have made even less sense
to Jesus' audience in the first century because funeral practices
way back when had folks weeping and wailing and putting dust and
ashes on their heads for a week when someone died. Who would
congratulate anyone caught up in that?
Perhaps Jesus is talking about a different kind of mourning.
One commentator says, "The antecedent to this second beatitude...
is Isaiah 61:1-4, where one is anointed with the Spirit to bring
good news to the poor and 'to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who
mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on
them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness
instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit
of despair...They shall build up the ancient ruins.' The
mourners to be comforted here are those despairing over the
devastation of Israel and the disobedience that brought such a
horrific punishment upon God's people. The message is that the
disobedience and devastation are not the last words, and the day
would come when God would restore the fortunes of the nation.
Is that the kind of mourning of which Jesus is speaking?
Perhaps. There would certainly be a 21st century application.
Our land has not been devastated and, by the standards of the
rest of the world, we are immensely prosperous. But we know that
the prosperity is not shared by all. It was the same in the
Israel of Jesus' day - there was a degree of prosperity, but it
was not equally shared. There was an enormous tax burden that
fell most heavily on those who could least support it (sound
familiar?), so it was not uncommon for a poor farmer or a day
laborer to sell members of his family into slavery to pay his
debts. As in our own age, it was easy for the affluent to be
unconcerned about the agony of the poor. There were many,
nonetheless, who mourned the injustice of a system rigged in
favor of the rich and powerful and longed for a change. The
message of this Beatitude then is that these mourners, then and
now, may be assured that the God of justice is not asleep. The
devastations wrought by human greed and thirst for power will be
remedied. (1) That is comforting. That is one interpretation.
Another says that the mourning of which Jesus speaks is over
our own sinfulness. It has been pointed out that the greatest
saints are devastated, even mournful, at their shortcomings.
Listen to one commentator:
If we read the journal entries of spiritual giants, we
find women and men who contemplate their sins and shed
tears of grief. Thérèse of Lisieux wept over the
slightest separation from Christ she felt. In the
shadow of the cross of Christ, an intense mourning over
the gaping hole in the soul, the yawning gap between me
and God, is entirely fitting. To those who grieve over
their sin, to those who lament their distance from
Jesus, our Lord says, "Blessed are those who mourn."
His mission was precisely to comfort sinners. (2)
Perhaps that is it. In generations past, worshipers could
come to the front of the sanctuary and sit on the "mourners'
bench" as they prepared to publically repent of their sins,
promise to turn over a new leaf, and anticipate the comfort of
divine pardon. These days, those burdened by guilt end up on
psychiatrists' couches or in counseling clinics rather than
mourners' benches. That's fine, as long as no one tries to gloss
over the fact that sin is the root cause of a wide range of the
problems we face.
So saying, I am hard pressed to quickly jump to some kind of
mourning other than the one we commonly understand, the kind of
mourning that comes following the loss of someone near and dear.
It is in that context that I hear, "Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted." How do we make sense of that?
For starters, remember what we have been saying about
understanding these Beatitudes. These are not SHOULD-BE
attitudes but rather WILL BE-attitudes. Yes, they are counter-intuitive. They reflect an upside-down, inside-out reality.
They are part and parcel of the gospel that says the last shall
be first and the first shall be last, the gospel that says the
greatest of all will be the servant of all. These statements are
reflective of what reality is for God's faithful and only begin
to make sense when seen through that prism.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
From a Christian perspective, this makes great sense. What do we
believe about death? It marks a time of separation, of course,
and that brings sadness, but we believe, with every fibre of our
being, that death is not the end. It is not the final word. It
is a comma, not a period. Indeed, death is seen as a doorway to
a new state of existence, a life where there is no more sorrow,
no more pain, no more tears, even no more death. All those
things that terrify us during our life on earth, gone. And one
day, sweet reunion with those who have gone before.
Years ago Henry Van Dyke wrote, "I am standing upon the
seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the
morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object
of beauty and strength and I stand and watch until at last she
hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come
down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says,
`There she goes.'
"Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just
as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my
side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the
place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says, `There she
goes,' there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, `Here she comes!'" That is the
perspective we take when we gather for a Christian funeral. Not
just there she goes, but here she comes.
In my ministry, I have officiated at more funerals than I
could possibly recount. Some things happen routinely, one of
which is a family member or close friend coming up to me and
saying, "I don't know what I would do right now without my faith.
In fact, I don't know how anyone could get through something like
this without faith." Amen. This second Beatitude has kicked in,
this WILL-BE attitude - "Blessed are those who mourn, for they
will be comforted."
In probably 95% of those funerals, I have quoted the
immortal words of Dwight L. Moody, that great evangelist of a
previous generation. He said, "One day you will read in the
paper that D. L. Moody of East Northfield, Massachusetts has
died. Well, don't believe a word of it. I shall have gone up
higher, that's all, out of this old clay tenement into a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And at that moment,
I shall be more alive than I have ever been."
Joseph Bailey, a wonderful preacher and an author, writes
that one Sunday afternoon, while speaking at a convalescent home,
he had many people gathered around him in wheelchairs. Some had
to listen from their beds. Several people were in their 90's or
late 80's. One lady was nearly 100, and she was weeping. She
whispered into Bailey's ear, "I'm afraid to die."
Bailey responded to her concern by addressing the group.
"If I could promise to take you from this home to a beautiful
springlike place where you could be forever free from all your
aches and pains; where you could walk and even run, hear and see
without man-made devices; never have any more loneliness or
sorrow again, but I had to take you through a dark tunnel to get
there, how many of you would be willing to go?" All over the
room the hands shot up. "Death is that tunnel," Bailey
explained. "And it is not to be feared, if we trust Jesus,
because he will take us through it to heaven."
That is what we believe. And that is why the Apostle Paul
could write to the Thessalonian church, "Brothers [and sisters],
we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or
to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope." What prompted
this little lesson was the fact that the Lord's Second Coming,
which the early church expected at any moment, had not occurred
yet. Meanwhile, life was keeping on keeping on, and, since death
is a part of life, death was keeping on keeping on for those
folks too. It made grieving family and friends wonder what was
to become of believers who had "fallen asleep" while the wait
continued. Were they going to miss out?
Paul instructs, first of all, do not grieve as those "who
have no hope." He does not say do not grieve. Grief is one of
God's good gifts to help us deal with painful events. Anyone who
has ever shed tears of sorrow knows what a wonderful catharsis a
good cry can be. Paul does not say do not grieve, but rather, do
not grieve as those who have no hope.
What hope? Listen again: "We believe that Jesus died and
rose again..." That is the basis of our faith. Death - the
event that elsewhere Paul called the final enemy - does not have
the final word. "...and so we believe that God will bring with
Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." Death did not have
the final word with Jesus, nor us either. These friends who have
died are not going to miss out on the glorious future that
awaits.
The language that Paul uses to describe the day is
magnificent. "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven,
with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the
trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up
together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
And so we will be with the Lord forever." Glory! The sound of
an enormous celestial Reveille - as the old spiritual has it,
"that great gittin' up morning."
Marvelous poetic imagery. The trumpet - the traditional way
to announce the arrival of a royal figure. The notion of
"meeting the Lord in the air" speaks the language of power. The
Greek word for "meeting" that Paul uses (apantesis) is used of a
ruler paying an official visit or the return of a conquering
hero. This dignitary receives tribute, not as he approaches the
city gate, but "in the air," a signal that his dominion is not
that of an earthly ruler. Unlike the Roman emperor, he is not in
charge of particular territories. He is in charge of all
territories. (3) Power!!! Wonderful. So he concludes, "Therefore
encourage each other with these words." The word rendered here
in our pew Bibles as "encourage" can also be translated,
"comfort." In fact, it is the very same word that we hear from
Jesus' lips when he said, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they
will be comforted."
More than 400 years ago, in a time of great theological
conflict - the Reformation raging, people fighting and even dying
in defense of their beliefs - two young men (one a pastor, the
other a professor in the local university) were asked by their
German Governor to put on paper just what Reformed Christians
believed. They were asked to write in simple terms so the next
generation, the youth, would not have all this trouble.
We still have the results of their work in our Presbyterian
Book of Confessions. It is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a
series of 129 questions and answers that provide an overview of
the faith. They are all helpful, I suppose, but for me, the very
first question and answer make the whole thing worthwhile: "What
is your only comfort in life and in death?" The answer:
That I belong - body and soul, in life and in death -
not to myself, but to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ
who, at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for
all my sins...that he protects me so well that, without
the will of my Father in heaven, not a hair can fall
from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his
purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for
him.
The question raised at the beginning of this comes again:
Have you ever read anything in the Bible that you did not
understand? No doubt. But for people of faith, this second
Beatitude is not in that category. This is a no-brainer.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted," and we
have been. We remember that our comfort is in the fact that we
belong to Jesus, and nothing can ever change that, not even
death. And you can take that to the bank. "Blessed are those
who mourn, for they will be comforted."
Amen!
1. Douglas R. A. Hare, "Matthew," Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and
Preaching, CD-ROM edition, (Louisville, KY : Westminster/John Knox, 1993)
2. James C. Howell, The Beatitudes for Today, (Louisville, KY : Westminster/John Knox,
2006), p. 42
3. Beverly Gaventa, First and Second Thessalonians, Interpretation series, (Louisville :
John Knox, 1998), p. 66
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