Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Discovering A Beatitude Filled Life, "Blessed are those who mourn", By Rev Steven R Mitchell, for Mountain View United, CO 2/16/2014


Discovering a Beatitude Filled Life

“Blessed are those who mourn…”

By Rev Steven R Mitchell

Mountain View United Aurora, CO 2/16/2014

Bases on Matthew 5:4

 

        When I was just about 4 yrs old, my grandfather became very ill.  I recall our visits to see him at the hospital and then one day he was able to come home.   There seemed to be no joy around his being dismissed from the hospital.  In fact, there was a hospital bed set up in the dining room waiting for his return.  I recall what a long summer it was, and how my relationship with Grandpa had dramatically changed.   He was no longer able to walk with me along the streets, in fact, when I came to visit, I had to keep extra quiet, for even the sounds of my walking across the dining room floor seemed to upset my grandfather.  This went on for what seemed to be months, but I think it was only a few weeks, and then one day, the hospital bed was empty.  Grandma was very sad as were all the grownups around me.  My grandfather had died.

        At four years old, I of course didn’t understand what it meant to die, other than I realized that grandpa was no longer around.  He wasn’t there to take me on walks, nor to talk with when I would come over for my daily visit.  I knew that I missed him and that there seemed to be a big black hole at their house.  Then one day after weeks of my moping around, as my grandmother and I were swinging on the swing on her front porch, she asked me what was troubling me so much.  I looked up at her and with tears in my eyes, I blurted out that I didn’t want her to die and leave me alone.  In her wisdom, grandma held me close and replied, “Is that what I have been so worried about?  Why Steven, I’m going to live a long time.  I’m going to live long enough to see you have children.”   At 4 yrs old, I didn’t know how long that was going to be, but to me it was going to be an eternity.  Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.  This was my first cogitative memory of death but it hasn’t been my last.  My grandmother kept that promise to me, for she didn’t pass away until my youngest child was about two years old.  I share this story with you this morning as an example in the power that comes through comfort.  For me, I never ever thought again about the possibility of my grandmother leaving me.  I was truly freed from that fear of separation. 

There is a variety of ways in which comfort comes to those who mourn.  In my last year of my serving in Rock Springs, WY, Hospice came and asked if they could use the church for a candle-light ceremony for those people that they had worked with during the past year.  It wasn’t a worship in a traditional sense as many of those attending would not classify themselves as Christians or affiliated with any particular church or denomination, yet it was a worship.  This was a worship designed to help those people who had lost a loved one during the year come once again and find support and comfort in their grieving process.  We do this as well with the worship we call “Blue Christmas”, where we take time to honor our feelings of loneliness, grief, and anger in the loss of someone who is very dear to us during the Advent Season.

        There is a philosophy within the prosperity teaching churches that says, “all you have to do is believe in Jesus, and all your troubles will disappear; you just have to believe hard enough and you will live in comfort, joy, and prosperity.”  I am here today to tell you, that it doesn’t matter how much you believe in Jesus, or how much trust you have in God, we still live in a Good Friday world.  A world where there is evil, pain, death, and injustices. 

I would like to share two stories where Jesus was confronted with death.  One was with the daughter of Jairus, who had come looking for Jesus to heal his sick daughter.  Jesus agrees to go with Jairus to heal her, but before they get to their house, they receive word that she has died.  Along with Peter, James, and John, Jesus continues to Jairus’ house and only the parents and the three companions enter into the young girls room, where Jesus takes time and mourns with the parents before he commands that she rise up out of bed.

        The second more famous story is that of Jesus being called to the bedside of his friend Lazarus who was also quite ill.  Upon Jesus’ arrival to Bethany where Lazarus home was Jesus was greeted by one of Lazarus’ sisters Martha sharing the news of Lazarus’ death and burial.  Again Jesus weeps for the loss of his friend Lazarus, and then brings him back to life.  The common thread in these two stories is community.  Jesus doesn’t do his weeping alone in silence, but with friends.  Jesus doesn’t bring these two people back to life in secrecy but in public, in community.

        We have grown into a society that doesn’t wish to deal with pain or loss.  When the World Trade Towers were attacked on Sept 11, 2001, a stunned and grieving nation went to our churches, synagogues, and temples to grieve and find comfort.  But within a few days after the attack our government officials through their wisdom urged us to go shopping to take our minds off of what had just happened.  We do not give the time to grieving that should be given.  We have work policies that give just “X” number of days to deal with it, then we are somehow suppose to magically get back into the saddle and resume life as if that loss had never happened.  Friends may tolerate our grieving for a month or so, but after that time frame society considers it inappropriate behavior and we somehow are supposed to go back to the way life was prior to that major loss.

        The loses that I have been speaking about are about people that are dear to us, but there are other losses life other than those we love.  We can lose our jobs, our homes, a leg or an eye.  All of these can give great cause for grieving and the act of mourning.  Yet as a society we fear lose and thereby do not wish to give loss its due respect.   We are urged to be stoic, told “to buck up cowboy” and get back into the saddle.  Become disengaged.  How many times were you told as a child, “no use crying over spilt milk?”  It’s true, crying over something that has happened will not change the event, but why not cry over the loss of whatever it is that needs to be cried over?

        There is a very tender scene in the play Torch Song Trilogy where Arnold the son and his mother had been having a huge argument where Arnold was once again justifying his life.  Mom then turns to Arnold and inquires about his deceased partner who had been murdered some months earlier, “Do you still love him?”  Arnold with tears in his eyes says, “I miss him Ma.”  His mother replies, “good” because it is through the pain that keeps him alive in your heart.  You don’t want to ever forget him do you Arnold?”  It was in this moment that Arnold was able to let his mother into his life at a level that he for the first time was able to be comforted by his mother.

        Although Jesus was speaking to a crowd of people who was very poor and knew the reality of hardship that daily living gave, Jesus was also speaking beyond their immediate environment.  Jesus was implying a more spiritual level of mourning as well.  Jesus was recalling prophets of the past who cried out to Jerusalem to turn back to the God of their father Abraham. “O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem, How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,…” Matt 23:37 He is speaking about the ability to mourn for a world that turns its back on God’s basic law of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

        As time has progressed, and with the death of Jesus we have been assured by Jesus that he would send a comforter to us.  We call this comforter, the Holy Spirit.  And how does the Holy Spirit bring comfort?  I believe in a practical sense, the Holy Spirit can be experienced most fully in community.  When we go about the work of sitting with people and listening to their pains of life, when we sit at the hospitals and read magazines to those who are ill, when we pray in unity for a broken world, we are in a sense mourning with those who are grieving loss, and it is through that community where comfort is found. 

Like the comfort that I found in my grandmothers promise to live until she saw all of my children which freed me from the fear of losing her at that point of my life, so Jesus tells us that it is through our mourning that we are open enough to receive the comfort of God through the Holy Spirit, which may come in the form of human angels.  A comfort that will allow us to heal, a comfort that allows us to connect more deeply to one another and with humanity and with our world.  It is through the comforting that we are able to look forward with hope.  Amen

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