“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” -Mt. 5:4
Being human is—among other things—hard. We suffer losses, disappointments, and fears on a daily basis. Granted, life is easier for some than for others because of various types of privilege, but one common attribute we share is that sooner or later, we come to know this truth very personally: life is hard.
We live, however, in a culture that tries day in and day out to avoid the basic condition of suffering. Countless dollars are extorted from people through manipulative advertisements to help us forget how hard our lives are. And these dollars are consistent day after day, year after year, because forgetting is so tempting.
But 2,000 years ago, Jesus started his teaching ministry with some radical truths on a mountain top, and he wasn’t interested in teaching us to forget life’s difficulties. The beatitudes—as the gospel passage today is known—are crystallized, timeless messages. We could talk for years and never plumb the depths of meaning contained here, but let’s consider just one simple verse: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Jesus is not saying that those who mourn are blessed because they are mourning, in some sort of sadomasochistic way. And he’s not saying that the present mourning is okay because one day it will all be made better, in an other-worldly way. In other words, Jesus does not dismiss or diminish our hardships. He does not rush us through them or offer comfort and blessing as a substitute for the reality of human life. No, the depth of struggle in our lives cannot be short changed or sugar coated if we are to be whole people. Instead, Jesus is saying that when we have the courage to mourn—however long it may take—God will transform that mourning into blessing.
Jesus’ words are both timeless and timely because we live in a time when mourning is most certainly justified:
- Public political discourse is both shallow and divisive.
- Mistrust within communities is common.
- Economic inequality is increasing.
- Environmental destruction goes on unchecked.
- Messages about the inadequacy of our bodies and our worth are everywhere.
And yet, we have unparalleled ability to avoid, deny, and numb over the sufferings in our midst. We can oftentimes very effectively insulate ourselves from pain. Jesus’ words, “Blessed are those who mourn,” speak to us today in part because we have so many resources at our disposal to avoid the faithful response of mourning.
Mourning is a faithful response as Christians because it requires a basic trust that some other being actually exists who will dig out the clay of our pain, mold it, fire it, and then hand it back to us as a beautiful piece of pottery. This may take far longer than we would like, and the pottery may not be in the shape we had imagined. But believing that there is indeed a potter at work is faith at work in us.
Mourning is also a faithful response because there are so many alternatives, for example, revenge. I watched an episode of The Walking Dead recently because I was interested in a particular character. The character’s family had been murdered by a psychopath. He wanted to get revenge on the guy, so he built a cage, kidnapped the man, and locked him up. He then proceeded to starve the man to death. As he told his story to another character he concluded by saying, “You know, killing that man did not bring me peace. It was after that that I decided I would never kill again.” This man ultimately found his way to mourning, and experienced the blessed comfort that comes from God.
Another alternative to mourning is addiction. With addiction, some substance or sequence of behaviors takes the place of dealing with life on life’s terms. One of life’s terms is hardship, suffering, and the feelings that come with them. Consequently, some of the heart of recovery from addiction is the practice of acknowledging and experiencing one’s feelings, rather than covering over or avoiding them through the addictive behavior.
There was a 13th C Persian poet named Rumi who drives home this point about welcoming even the difficult feelings of our lives. In a poem called The Guest House, he says,
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
In the midst of our struggles—both collective and personal—it can be very difficult to see how mourning can be a helpful, much less an essential response. Mourning can seem passive, quietistic, disengaged. We are used to solving problems using a linear framework, which identifies causes and effects, isolates variables, etc… This is the methodology of science and there is much to be said for this way of engaging the world. But a great swath of human experience is misrepresented within a linear framework. Our lives are too complex, too interrelated. We need some guidance from people like Rumi, from the Walking Dead, and above all from Jesus, to show us the way.
There are many things to mourn in this world, many things that make life hard, and one of these things is the loss of healthy ecosystems, clean air, quiet spaces, flourishing oceans. The climate crisis has been on my mind recently because of governmental movements to further entrench the fossil-fuel industry into the heart of our economy. And yet, scientists the world over agree that we need to be using less, not more, fossil fuels if we are to have a chance at stabilizing global temperatures and thereby pass to our children a home that will thrive, or even survive. Recently, governmental scientists declared 2016 as the hottest year on record. Unfortunately, 2015 and 2014 were also the hottest years on record. When we mourn the losses of our ecosystem home, while trusting in God’s transformative power, a creative blessing will come.
In a context such as the global climate crisis, our linear, problem-solving minds find it hard to believe that the transformative power of God will take our mourning and create something beautiful. Perhaps this is the foolishness of the cross, of which Paul speaks.
The cross seems foolish because it appears to be impotent in the face of imperial Rome on Good Friday. But the cross is shown to be full of God’s transformative power on Easter Sunday. Without God’s life and promise, claiming that those who mourn are blessed becomes shallow and dismissive. It might sound like making space for mourning is passive, quietistic, or inconsequential, but the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal that picking up the cross is anything but impotent.
Christ does not wish for us to forget the difficulties of life as so many deceptive advertisers do. Indeed, Jesus’ own life is filled with hardship, especially the hardship of abandonment, torture, and crucifixion. But God embraces our hardships, holding space for us to mourn, so that this planet home—and all its beings—will experience God’s creative, beautiful, blessing.
