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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