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Blessed Are They That Mourn
(Matthew 5: 1-12)
I said in the last sermon that each Beatitude from Jesus’
Sermon on the Mount is a key—a key to the kingdom of heaven.
The first key to the kingdom is poverty—“Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs’ is the kingdom of heaven.” We are all poor
in spirit. We have nothing; we are nothing without God-inChrist in our life. When we realize that such poverty exists in
our lives and we ask God to come into our lives through Jesus,
and God will, and God does—then we are “blessed,” as Jesus
says—at one with God—the highest state of happiness.
The second key to the kingdom of heaven according to
Jesus is mourning. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall
be comforted.”
Mourning is even less attractive to us than poverty, isn’t it?
No one wants to be poor—to be in need—to desperately be in
want; but no one certainly wants to mourn—to be sad—to
grieve. But grief is very much a part of life, and is Jesus’ point
here—only those who can still feel can mourn. Only those who
will still allow themselves to feel can grieve. Only those who
mourn can be comforted, for if you can feel the hurt, you can
feel the comfort from loved ones and God. Those who will
allow themselves to mourn are blessed, says Jesus. Those who
will not allow themselves to feel the pain anymore—those who
refuse to mourn—to grieve, have lost themselves somewhere
along the way and will not be comforted.
I have known people in my life who have no sympathy or
empathy for others. They feel no emotional connection with a
hurting individual or animal. I am acquainted with a nurse who
has absolutely no compassion for people who are of other races,
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nations, creed and politics—no compassion for anyone who is
different from her. She speaks of her patients, who are nonAnglo, as sub-human. I would not want her to be my nurse if I
were in the hospital. People who cannot empathize, sympathize,
and are non-compassionate, are people who cannot mourn.
Something has died within them.
The island of Molokai is one of the Hawaiian Islands. It
lies just northwest of the island of Maui, and is very small,
comprising just 259 miles in total. It may be a wonderful resort
now, but for most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
it was a leper colony. Joseph de Veusten Damien, known as
Father Damien, was a Belgian-born Roman Catholic Priest who
lived from 1840 to 1889—a short lifespan of only 49 years. The
last thirteen years of his life were spent as a missionary to the
leper colony on Molokai. Father Damien contracted the disease
while ministering to the diseased. He continued his ministry
even as the disease progressed in his body. One morning,
Father Damien accidentally spilled boiling water on his bare
feet. But there was not the slightest pain even though the burns
were fairly severe. He knew then that he was doomed—that
death had come to his body and little by little had taken
possession. A hundred times better would it have been for him
if that boiling water had brought pain. But the nerves in his feet
and legs that normally would have brought the message of pain
to his brain were deadened by the advanced stages of Leprosy.
He could not feel the pain and he knew that he was as good as
dead.
Are we really living if we have no feelings for certain
people? And what does such a sad condition do to one’s sensing
of God?
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Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians (4:19), tells of certain
people who were past feeling and had therefore lost their way.
He writes: “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated
from the life of God because of their ignorance due to their
hardness of heart; they have become callus and have given
themselves up to sin, greedy to practice every kind of
uncleanness.” It didn’t matter any more to them about a good
relationship with God and others. (And by the way, you can’t
have the one without the other). It didn’t matter to them any
more if they were whole human beings or not. Spiritually
speaking, they were past feeling and as good as dead.
We can become so callus to the draw or pull or nudge of
God-in-Christ in our life, that it becomes easier and easier to
ignore God, and eventually renders us uncaring at all about a
higher power in our life or how we treat our neighbors, family,
church-family and friends. It is not that God has given up on us,
but we have given up on God. We have become so insensitive
to God-in-Christ knocking at our heart’s door, that there is
nothing else God can do, and we are as good as dead; for the
choice is ours.
“Blessed are those who mourn” (who can still feel), for
they allow themselves to be comforted. May God have mercy
on those who can’t or won’t feel—mourn. May God help those
who can’t or won’t allow themselves to feel—mourn. There is
comfort in mourning.
I believe that God is revealed to us in many ways. One
way is through our conscience. Socrates described a man’s
conscience as: “the wife from whom there is no divorce.” I
suppose that Socrates’ wife would describe the husband in the
same way. Maybe we can’t divorce our conscience, but we can
sure stifle it until its voice is completely stilled.
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A man whose feet were amputated told of his experience.
He was caught in a bitter blizzard in the far north. So long as his
feet pained him he was happy, but after a while the pain was
gone, and he knew then that his feet, and perhaps he, were
doomed. The pain diminished as his feet froze.
When the feeling is gone we are as good as dead. It is true
physically, mentally, morally, ethically and spiritually.
So, you don’t have a good relationship with God-in-Christ
and others? Does it hurt? If the answer to that question is “yes”
then be glad. Jesus said you are blessed. You will be
comforted. You will do the right thing. You will yield to the
grace of God-in-Christ and repent.
How can one feel again? How can one mourn once more
and be a whole human being after they have somehow lost their
way? Look to Jesus. Jesus marks the way! Remember his great
sacrifice for you. Feel his cross for you. If that won’t work, feel
his resurrection for you. That’s the point—the significance of
the Christ-event, anyway—The Resurrection.
In Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of Christ,” the trial,
beating and crucifixion of Jesus are presented in as violent a
way as possible—probably very close to what actually
happened, except the nails would have been driven through his
wrists, not the center of his hands. There is not enough bone in
the center of the hands to support the weight of the body. And
the nails (spikes, actually) would have been driven through the
ankles, not the feet. Hollywood never gets the Bible right.
The rational for the brutality of the movie was purported
to emphasize the very high cost Jesus paid for our sins (and it
was a high cost). What troubled me was the possibility of
people coming away from the movie thinking that God did all
that violence to Jesus. God didn’t. Human beings did. God is
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not violent. Human beings are. And I grow weary with the
association of God with violence, in the Muslim world and ours.
In Mel Gibson’s film, the cross was seen as absolutely
necessary for us to be forgiven. That is not necessarily so. God
is God, and God’s grace could have been dispensed in any
number of ways. In professional theological jargon we are
talking about atonement—substitutionary atonement. And there
are many theories of atonement. I have never found one to
adequately explain how God’s grace in the Christ-Cross event
works. How can you explain such a thing? How can you put
God’s grace in the Christ-event into words? It’s too big and
wonderful.
Let me give you another theological perspective. Consider
this: the cross carries no magical properties. It was simply one
form of execution…a particularly cruel one. God did not
require a cross, or for that matter, a beating such as the one
portrayed in Mel Gibson’s film. In fact, God did not orchestrate,
cause or condone Jesus’ death at all. God allowed it, and
brought good out of it. The cruelty of the beating and the cross
were strictly human events that took place as power structures
and powerful people were threatened by the way Jesus lived and
by what he taught—just like it is today.
The symbol of the empty cross is significant precisely
because it is empty. It is resurrection that is the act of God.
Not the violence visited upon Jesus. It is the resurrection that
demonstrates that there is life after death—after the worst that
human beings can do and cause—the cross. It is resurrection
that says, “In spite of it all, sins are forgiven and there is new
life. God will not and cannot be overcome by sin and death.”
The cross was man’s doing. The resurrection was God’s
response to it!
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If you can get your head and heart wrapped around that,
you can feel again. You can mourn how absolutely evil people
can be, and yet God loves us in spite of it all. God’s grace in
Christ is unexplainable. We accept it by faith. And when we
do, we mourn the evil in our lives and in the world, and are
comforted by God’s grace in Christ, and we mourn the sad
plight of others—we see them as we see ourselves.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Freely translated: Blessed are those who can still feel; for they
are human.
Amen.
Charles Lee Hutchens, M.Div., Th.M., D.Min.
Bethany United Methodist Church
Lexington, N.C.
June 13, 2004
I preached this sermon again at Main Street UMC, Reidsville, NC on May 30, 2010.
I preached this sermon again at the Bethlehem UMC, Climax, NC on September 1, 2013.
Source: Charles L. Allen’s book, God’s Psychiatry, Old Tappen, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell
Company, 1953.