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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, 2 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? 3 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. 4 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 5 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! 6 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.