- You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. Matthew 5:4
This is something like what was going on with Jesus the teacher and those who attended Jesus’ class on the mountain. We are in week two of a five-week message series on the Beatitudes of Jesus [5:3-12] from the Gospel of Matthew. Beginning with the nine Beatitudes was Jesus’ way of introducing his class to his teaching in the entire Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ class comprised two groups. His 12 disciples were those who really wanted to hear and live by Jesus’ teaching [those who wanted “to get their money’s worth”] because they had already made a strong commitment to follow him. Then there were those who were on the edge auditing his class – perhaps some were casually listening and others listening only to critique what Jesus said. They had enough interest to spend time listening to Jesus because he was an unusual teacher. Some were impressed he spoke with such authority, the Scripture says – apparently, quite different from the other religious teachers they usually heard. Matthew framed the Beatitudes and the entire Sermon on the Mount in the following manner. Hear how The Message Bible begins Matthew 5 and then concludes Jesus’ sermon in Chapter 7, verses 28 and 29:
“When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions….What is significant to consider here is that the disciples and the crowd are drawn to listen to the teacher Jesus and not merely to another religious teacher. He was the extraordinary one who was worth listening to and, for some, worth their personal commitment. We only have to read the first four chapters of Matthew’s Gospel to see how extraordinary the person of Jesus is: his genealogy, his birth, his baptism, his temptations and his life of light and hope and healing for the entire world. No wonder people wanted to know more about Jesus and what he taught. So they sat down with him to listen and to ponder how to respond to such a teacher and to such teachings.
“When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. [Not only his disciples heard Jesus teaching but so did the crowd with them.] They had never heard teaching like this. It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying -- quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.”
It intrigues me Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount with blessings rather than commands. But these “blessings” may have sounded a little startling at first. The disciples and the crowd would hear about his commands and his ethics soon enough but, first, Jesus wanted them to experience God’s grace and love. With the Beatitudes, Jesus laid a foundation of God’s grace upon which his 12 disciples and the others who followed him could respond to his often difficult commands. For instance, those who are “the poor in spirit” are those (then and now) who realize their spiritual poverty – that they do not have adequate goodness of their own to stand before a holy God. They know they need God’s own goodness! They realize they are blessed in God’s presence -- or in God’s kingdom -- solely because of God’s grace and love for them shown in the death of Jesus on the cross for them. As they grow in their understanding of God’s grace, they will become increasingly careful of the way they relate both to God and to other people. They know God’s grace extends not only to them but to everyone they encounter, both friend and foe. And if at times they fail to live God’s way or miss the mark or sin, grace means God also forgives them and forgives them and forgives them. And they will learn that Jesus calls them to forgive others as they have been forgiven.] So they get up and keep on loving others, themselves and they keep on being open to God’s love.
This morning we heard Jesus’ second blessing: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This is a paradoxical or counter-intuitive blessing. It sounds as if Jesus is saying, “Happy are those who are sad.” Or, as The Message Bible puts it, “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you.” Or “loss is gain” as I titled this message. G. K. Chesterton once defined a paradox as “truth standing on its head calling for attention.” That is certainly true here. Jesus states one of the essential truths of the life God blesses in such a way that it cries out for all to come and take a good long look at what he means -- a look that can bring life to them.
I think there are two things going on in this Be-Attitude for living. First, Jesus says that the attitude of being brokenhearted, grief-stricken and in mourning is the attitude God blesses. Jesus was not at all explicit about what the circumstances might be that cause someone to mourn. But just as Jesus spoke before of spiritual poverty he is now speaking of mourning spiritually. Jesus wanted his hearers to feel in themselves that God comforts those who are brokenhearted and filled with deep sadness. As theologian Dale Bruner translated this verse: “Blessings on the brokenhearted, because they will be comforted.” [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.154. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.].
Bruner also said something important when he wrote:
“Jesus [blesses] mourning, not moping [or pouting] (cf. esp. 6:16-18). He does not counsel the long face. He does, however, bless real sadness, a state that can as easily coexist with an outwardly happy life as do all the other normal contradictions of living. (The deepest joy may reside in persons with the deepest sadness.) Sadness and joy are not mutually exclusive; they are often cause and effect. (Much folk music lives from this strange but strong combination.) Jesus lends his authority to the perception that it is those for whom sadness is deep that God is real (cf. Ecclesiastes 7:2-4).But we also want to know more about the kind of circumstances that break peoples’ hearts – what causes such deep personal sadness. Those listening to Jesus might recall what the prophet Isaiah said (Isaiah 61:1-2): “He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted … to comfort all who mourn.” Or someone else who knew the Scripture well may have remembered Ezekiel 9:4: “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” Another person might have remembered the words of the prophet Amos 6:6: “Woe to those who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of [their country]!” In these Old Testament Scriptures, Jesus’ listeners – who were really paying attention -- could sense how injustice, societal evil and sin would cause deep wounds in people’s spirits. These wounds would break the hearts of people sensing God’s heart because those who could help to heal the wounds of hurting people in a selfish and unjust society did not care enough to do so. These wounds would grieve peoples’ spirits sensitive to God’s Spirit because such evil and injustice and sin seemed to go on all around them.
However, when we ponder our human experiences, and are also aware of what is happening in our society and in the world, do we not realize that what breaks our hearts is not only what’s wrong with society or the world, but also what’s wrong with us? If we connect Jesus’ first beatitude – “Blessed are those who know they spiritually poor” -- with the second one – “Blessed are those who mourn” – then we may see one more circumstance that may cause us to be brokenhearted: our own tendency to fail and to miss the mark of God’s good intentions for our lives. We call it sin.
One speaker said it like this:
“We twist the truth to get out of a jam. We say hurtful things to people we love. We commit adultery in our hearts. We spend on ourselves what we could give to others. We lose our tempers and look down our noses. We spread gossip, and we wallow in envy. We do these things knowing they’re wrong, that they’re hurtful to others and to us, and that they fall far short of the good things God created us to do and be.” [Bryan Wilkerson in his sermon “The Heartbreak Gospel,” PreachingToday.com]Rev. Andy Stanley points out that we need to take care we do not call our sins “mistakes.” There is a big difference between the two. A mistake is an error, a blunder, a slip-up, an oversight or a miscalculation. We both regret and apologize for a mistake. We try to make amends for our mistakes. But we don’t mourn a mistake. What we mourn is the fundamental flaw in our character that compels us to think or say or do the wrong thing. What we mourn is a twist in our spirit that consistently takes us in the wrong direction. We were made to be generous, but we tend toward greed. We were designed to treasure our sexuality, instead we trash it. We were wired to worship God. Instead we worship other things – even something good like nature or ourselves. As Stanley puts it, we are not merely “mistakers,” we are also “sinners.”
Jesus said “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” And the blessing and the comfort are from nowhere else but God!
Those listening to Jesus in his day would have understood that and so must we in our day. To mourn over the evil and the injustices in our world is a good thing. I hope our mourning will cause us to act, if at all possible, to be generous givers and sensitive but strong peacemakers – to be part of the solution and not part of the ongoing problem. God wants us to be healers with Jesus of the wrong in our world.
If we listen to Jesus in our day and mourn over what is wrong in ourselves, Jesus promised us the blessing of God’s comforting presence with us. In John’s Gospel – especially chapters 14 to 16 -- Jesus makes us more than aware that the One who guides us into truth, who helps us and who comforts our spirits in this life is God’s Holy Spirit.
But we are pondering the blessing for those who mourn. Let me be clear that Jesus’ blessing and God’s comfort embraces all mourning, whatever loss we face in our lives. The Message Bible has it right when it states: “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One [that is God] most dear to you.” But I also believe that the mourning Jesus blesses and for which God will provide comfort extends even to people who grieve about their seeming difficulty to believe. One commentator put it this way:
“Sometimes one seems unable to believe, [but] there is faith in this very longing [to believe] …. Such mourners have already pressed into the second [Beatitude]…. I think it was Teresa of Avila who said: ‘I do not love you, Lord; I do not even want to love you; but I want to want to love you.’” [Matthew A Commentary Volume 1: The Christbook. Revised and Expanded Edition, p.165. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, Mich.]My friends, if you are mourning today, then be prepared to be embraced by the grace and love of God in Jesus and to be comforted by the gracious presence of the Holy Spirit. If someone you know is struggling to believe that Jesus Christ has come to bring them new life, then trust that God’s grace and love is there for them to receive in Jesus. Pray that, in their struggle, they will come to experience the blessing and comfort of God’s presence in their lives as Jesus promised. Pray that they will want to want to love God.
May this be so for you and for me.
Rev. Chris Miller
October 17, 2010
OYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
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