Beatitude #2: Blessed are those who mourn

I remember a minister friend of my parents once shared a story with us from a family devotional book that dealt chiefly in stories of martyrs. This story was about a so-called "eccentric" preacher who seemed to be famous for spontaneously calling out "Glory!" at inappropriate moments. One such moment was when he was told the news that his wife had died and he responded with, "Glory! My wife has gone to be with the glorious ones," or something to that effect. He may not have said "glorious". That might have been overkill. But you get the idea.

Now, being only about fifteen at the time, I wasn't aware of just how unhelpful that story was. It really just sounded quite silly to me, but on reflection I feel that it gave a very false view of how Christians should deal with mourning. While it may be ideal for us to have our hopes fixed so firmly on heaven that we can rejoice to know our loved ones are there, I'm not sure that pure joy is the response that we should expect to feel at such times. That just isn't the reality of life, and one of the most wonderful things that we can discover about the Bible is that it is firmly grounded in the realities of life.

When Jesus first addresses the crowd gathered on the mountain, following up on his promises to the poor in spirit, he declared, as a key feature of his kingdom, that:

Blessed are those who mourn,

for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

Now, it does not mean that the act of mourning is intrinsically blessed. Far from it. We know from elsewhere in the New Testament that hopeless mourning is not to be a feature of the Christian experience:

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. (1 Thessalonians 4:12-13)

Note what Paul, the writer of that passage, does not say: he does not say, "do not grieve". But he does say, "do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope". We know for a fact that Christians can grieve. If Jesus is the model of the Christian life, the shortest verse in the Bible tells us that weeping over the death of a loved one, even one we know will be raised from the dead, is natural. But Jesus would not have wept hopelessly; after all, he knew how the death of his friend Lazarus would end: with life.

So why, then, are those who mourn blessed? Not because mourning itself brings blessing, but because mourning is never the final word. Refusing to mourn may seem noble, but Tim Keller has pointed out in a sermon on joy that refusal to mourn is pagan Stoicism far more than it is Christian. But we know for a fact that Jesus came to put an end to mourning: not by denying his followers the right to grieve when they lost those they loved, but by hoping in the life beyond all this mourning.

Is it any coincidence that, in the passage Mark presents as the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus quotes from a famous passage in Isaiah in which the time of mourning is declared to end with him?

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted...

to comfort all who mourn,

and provide for them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

This is why those who mourn are blessed: because Jesus promises them comfort - more than a pat on the back, more than a shoulder to cry on; the greatest hope a mourner could know. The knowledge that, in Jesus, death is never the final answer.

Song: Aaron Strumpel - Sixty One