Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
Sermon
And Then Came the Angel
Gospel Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."
In her novel Come and Go, Molly Snow, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall gives an account of Carrie attempting to come to grips with the loss of her eight-year-old daughter, Molly Snow. Carrie is a fiddler, but in the wake of this tragic loss she says, "The music doesn't rise up in me right now."1 In the months that followed, Carrie listens to homespun wisdom and begins the first steps of coming to grips with the absence of Molly Snow and the presence of a deep, dull ache which had taken her place. At one point Carrie remarks, "Sometimes STILL HERE seems stranger than GONE."2
Carrie finds it is as hard or harder to deal with being left behind as it is to deal with Molly Snow's being gone. Most anyone who has lost some significant person in his or her life knows that feeling. Without the person we loved, STILL HERE no longer carries the same meaning and joy it once did. When a wife dies, a part of the husband dies, too. When a child dies, a part of the parent dies, too. STILL HERE just isn't the same without them. The plans we made are rendered obsolete. More than that, we wonder how we will go on without the person in whom so much of our lives found their identity and meaning. Stuck in the STILL HERE, Carrie wants to know what is going to happen next. Even as she begins to put her life back together, she admits, "I'm not brave, just cried-out."3 Finally, Carrie comes to this realization, "I'll always have this grief in the center of me, but my life will grow around it. My life will be real. It will have its moments. It will have music in it."4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We hope so. Carrie isn't the only person ever to have the music stop on her just when it sounded the prettiest. We know what it is like. We have come home and looked in our late husband's chair and expected him to be sitting there. We have wanted to tell a parent about some fantastic achievement in our lives, but had to settle for telling someone else who was not nearly as interested or proud as our parent would have been. We have wanted to call our best friend and talk sports and politics and a hundred other topics that always came up just so we could stay on the line with each other, but no matter how hard we strain we will not hear that voice again.
We know what it is like to mourn. We are not talking about waking up in a bad mood. This is not about a mild disappointment. This is even beyond being sad. We are talking about mourning. When Jacob was given the false report that Joseph had been killed, Jacob put on the uncomfortable garment of sackcloth, which was a sign of hopelessness and despair. When his family tried to comfort him he refused to be comforted (Genesis 37:34). King David was able to move beyond the death of one child (2 Samuel 12:20-23), but the death of Absalom brought weeping and mourning so deep that he could not fulfill his responsibilities. He even cried out that he wished he had died in Absalom's place (2 Samuel 18:31-19:4). When Lazarus died and Jesus was with his sisters and other mourners, Jesus was so moved and disturbed that even he cried (John 11:33-34). In scripture, mourning is characterized by a neglect of appearance, by withdrawing from those close at hand, and by deep, relentless grief.
We recognize it in our own tears and stunned silence and this persistent ache which will not go away. We are talking about mourning, the kind of shaking of the foundations which C. S. Lewis described in A Grief Observed. Lewis wrote of his wife after she died of cancer, "Joy's absence is like the sky, spread over everything. There is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss."5
In writing about the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann says that the Psalms are written by and for people who are caught in "the rawness of life."6 Rather than language that is safe and mundane and socially acceptable, the Psalms employ language that voices our deepest pain. The Psalms are not about denying our losses in the name of keeping things running smoothly. They are concerned instead with people who need to express their anger and grief and heartache. Brueggemann warns against making these Psalms too religious or pious by reminding us that many of them are not courteous or polite. These are the cries of people who have been caught in "the rawness of life." "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?" (Psalm 13:1-2). "O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 88:14). "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest" (Psalm 22:1-2).
We know what it is like to mourn, but in this society people who talk the language of the Psalms, people who reveal they are living in the rawness of life, make other people feel uncomfortable. It is much easier to deny the pain than to speak honestly about it.
Perhaps there is value in mourning. Perhaps there is something good that comes out of mourning, even before we get to this promise that those who mourn will be comforted. Rabbi Harold Kushner, in When Bad Things Happen to Good People, tells of families asking him if they have to observe shiva, which is the memorial week after death when family and friends come to be with those who have lost a loved one. It is similar to visitation at a funeral home or a wake. "Do we really need to sit shiva, to have all these people crowding into our home?" they ask. "Couldn't we just ask them to leave us alone?" Kushner writes, "Letting people into your home, into your grief, is exactly what you need now. You need to share with them, to talk to them, to let them comfort you. You need to be reminded that you are still alive, and part of a world of life."7 Certainly a valuable part of mourning is found in allowing the community of which we are a part to enter our pain and share our loss.
Another reason we should take the time to mourn the loss of a loved one is the way in which it pushes us beyond the denial and into the grief. No one likes to cry, but denying what has happened will hurt us more deeply in the long run than crying. When we mourn we begin to work through our loss. Mourning does not bring instantaneous healing, but it does create a space where healing might happen. A lack of mourning leaves the doors closed to healing and hope. Jesus may have been saying, "Blessed are you who have not given up yet, who continue to live with pain, who keep going even though you miss your loved one more than you can say. Blessed are you who are willing to walk through grief and not around it, for you will be comforted in your honesty."
Still another reason to mourn, especially in those losses which can only be called tragic, is to release our anger. When a person lives a full life, even though it is hard to let go, it does not offend our sensibilities as much as when a young person gets cheated on the seasons. What a horrible thing we have done to healthy anger by looking upon it as a social taboo. We are taught from an early age that polite people control their emotions. More than that, some Christian people were raised with the idea that questioning God is wrong. In scripture, the people who cut loose on God were those who finally were comforted. Something happens when we break down and demand a hearing in the presence of God. It is not a matter of blaming God, though some will. It is not a matter of God's being absent during our greatest need, though some will think that. It is the fact that when we cry out at God, even in anger, all the barriers we have constructed between God and us come tumbling down. In our crying out we are embraced, and in our mourning we are comforted.
A fourth value in mourning is that it gives us the chance to remember. Usually mourning is not a time to make drastic decisions about one's future, but rather a time to reflect and remember and celebrate. These may be the last things we feel like doing, but so many people are moved to thanksgiving when they remember the times spent with their loved one. This is not a ploy to take our minds off the present situation, but an opportunity to recall why the hurt is so deep. It is a chance to consider the difference the person made in our lives, and to recognize that a big part of who we are is wrapped up in this person whom we mourn. Mourning often is painted as a time when all is lost, but this act of remembering calls to mind that not all is lost. We remember the time we spent with the person, both the little incidents that would only mean something to us and the significant events of our lives, and we are reassured that those times can never be taken from us.
Yes, there is value in mourning, but these words from the lips of Jesus promise us more. Jesus promised that those who mourn will be comforted. We just aren't talking about readjusting. We aren't speaking merely of getting by. We are talking about more than simply making it. We are talking about being comforted.
This does not mean we quit crying, or that we no longer miss the person, or that we have somehow gotten over the loss. No, it means quite the opposite. In fact, there are some things we may never get over, but we can learn to live with them. Comfort is not the erasing of a memory, but having our pain soothed to the point that we can remember. Comfort is not a drying of the tears, but a peace that allows us to remember and give thanks even while we cry. The promise of Jesus as he gave his farewell address to the disciples was that God would send to them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We too are promised the Comforter, whose constant breath of new life empowers us to continue living in ways that would honor the memory of the one we have lost.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described five stages through which a terminally ill patient might pass, though not all of them pass through all of these stages. Those five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Most families and friends make similar treks, though not all of them reach acceptance either. It is important to note that the stage of acceptance is not a happy time in which all is suddenly okay, but rather a time in which fear and despair no longer wield control over us. Acceptance is not about saying that things worked out fairly well after all, but rather living peacefully and hopefully in the face of a set of completely unsatisfactory circumstances. It is not a giving in to the tragedy, but an overcoming of its grip on us.8
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Part of that comfort comes as we openly and honestly mourn the loss of someone we hold dear. Part of that comfort comes through the presence of God's spirit. Part of it surely comes through the gift and power of love. We would not be mourning if we had not loved so deeply. The love which caused the pain to be so great is a love capable of giving us an equal measure of comfort, and therein lies the good news for all who mourn this day.
____________
1. Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Come and Go, Molly Snow (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 18.
2. Ibid, p. 120.
3. Ibid, p. 219.
4. Ibid, p. 268.
5. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: The Seabury Press, 1963), p. 11 and p. 40.
6. Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms (Winoma, Minnesota: St. Mary's Press, 1986), pp. 17-22.
7. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Avon Books, 1981), p. 120.
8. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 99-106.
In her novel Come and Go, Molly Snow, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall gives an account of Carrie attempting to come to grips with the loss of her eight-year-old daughter, Molly Snow. Carrie is a fiddler, but in the wake of this tragic loss she says, "The music doesn't rise up in me right now."1 In the months that followed, Carrie listens to homespun wisdom and begins the first steps of coming to grips with the absence of Molly Snow and the presence of a deep, dull ache which had taken her place. At one point Carrie remarks, "Sometimes STILL HERE seems stranger than GONE."2
Carrie finds it is as hard or harder to deal with being left behind as it is to deal with Molly Snow's being gone. Most anyone who has lost some significant person in his or her life knows that feeling. Without the person we loved, STILL HERE no longer carries the same meaning and joy it once did. When a wife dies, a part of the husband dies, too. When a child dies, a part of the parent dies, too. STILL HERE just isn't the same without them. The plans we made are rendered obsolete. More than that, we wonder how we will go on without the person in whom so much of our lives found their identity and meaning. Stuck in the STILL HERE, Carrie wants to know what is going to happen next. Even as she begins to put her life back together, she admits, "I'm not brave, just cried-out."3 Finally, Carrie comes to this realization, "I'll always have this grief in the center of me, but my life will grow around it. My life will be real. It will have its moments. It will have music in it."4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We hope so. Carrie isn't the only person ever to have the music stop on her just when it sounded the prettiest. We know what it is like. We have come home and looked in our late husband's chair and expected him to be sitting there. We have wanted to tell a parent about some fantastic achievement in our lives, but had to settle for telling someone else who was not nearly as interested or proud as our parent would have been. We have wanted to call our best friend and talk sports and politics and a hundred other topics that always came up just so we could stay on the line with each other, but no matter how hard we strain we will not hear that voice again.
We know what it is like to mourn. We are not talking about waking up in a bad mood. This is not about a mild disappointment. This is even beyond being sad. We are talking about mourning. When Jacob was given the false report that Joseph had been killed, Jacob put on the uncomfortable garment of sackcloth, which was a sign of hopelessness and despair. When his family tried to comfort him he refused to be comforted (Genesis 37:34). King David was able to move beyond the death of one child (2 Samuel 12:20-23), but the death of Absalom brought weeping and mourning so deep that he could not fulfill his responsibilities. He even cried out that he wished he had died in Absalom's place (2 Samuel 18:31-19:4). When Lazarus died and Jesus was with his sisters and other mourners, Jesus was so moved and disturbed that even he cried (John 11:33-34). In scripture, mourning is characterized by a neglect of appearance, by withdrawing from those close at hand, and by deep, relentless grief.
We recognize it in our own tears and stunned silence and this persistent ache which will not go away. We are talking about mourning, the kind of shaking of the foundations which C. S. Lewis described in A Grief Observed. Lewis wrote of his wife after she died of cancer, "Joy's absence is like the sky, spread over everything. There is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss."5
In writing about the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann says that the Psalms are written by and for people who are caught in "the rawness of life."6 Rather than language that is safe and mundane and socially acceptable, the Psalms employ language that voices our deepest pain. The Psalms are not about denying our losses in the name of keeping things running smoothly. They are concerned instead with people who need to express their anger and grief and heartache. Brueggemann warns against making these Psalms too religious or pious by reminding us that many of them are not courteous or polite. These are the cries of people who have been caught in "the rawness of life." "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?" (Psalm 13:1-2). "O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 88:14). "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest" (Psalm 22:1-2).
We know what it is like to mourn, but in this society people who talk the language of the Psalms, people who reveal they are living in the rawness of life, make other people feel uncomfortable. It is much easier to deny the pain than to speak honestly about it.
Perhaps there is value in mourning. Perhaps there is something good that comes out of mourning, even before we get to this promise that those who mourn will be comforted. Rabbi Harold Kushner, in When Bad Things Happen to Good People, tells of families asking him if they have to observe shiva, which is the memorial week after death when family and friends come to be with those who have lost a loved one. It is similar to visitation at a funeral home or a wake. "Do we really need to sit shiva, to have all these people crowding into our home?" they ask. "Couldn't we just ask them to leave us alone?" Kushner writes, "Letting people into your home, into your grief, is exactly what you need now. You need to share with them, to talk to them, to let them comfort you. You need to be reminded that you are still alive, and part of a world of life."7 Certainly a valuable part of mourning is found in allowing the community of which we are a part to enter our pain and share our loss.
Another reason we should take the time to mourn the loss of a loved one is the way in which it pushes us beyond the denial and into the grief. No one likes to cry, but denying what has happened will hurt us more deeply in the long run than crying. When we mourn we begin to work through our loss. Mourning does not bring instantaneous healing, but it does create a space where healing might happen. A lack of mourning leaves the doors closed to healing and hope. Jesus may have been saying, "Blessed are you who have not given up yet, who continue to live with pain, who keep going even though you miss your loved one more than you can say. Blessed are you who are willing to walk through grief and not around it, for you will be comforted in your honesty."
Still another reason to mourn, especially in those losses which can only be called tragic, is to release our anger. When a person lives a full life, even though it is hard to let go, it does not offend our sensibilities as much as when a young person gets cheated on the seasons. What a horrible thing we have done to healthy anger by looking upon it as a social taboo. We are taught from an early age that polite people control their emotions. More than that, some Christian people were raised with the idea that questioning God is wrong. In scripture, the people who cut loose on God were those who finally were comforted. Something happens when we break down and demand a hearing in the presence of God. It is not a matter of blaming God, though some will. It is not a matter of God's being absent during our greatest need, though some will think that. It is the fact that when we cry out at God, even in anger, all the barriers we have constructed between God and us come tumbling down. In our crying out we are embraced, and in our mourning we are comforted.
A fourth value in mourning is that it gives us the chance to remember. Usually mourning is not a time to make drastic decisions about one's future, but rather a time to reflect and remember and celebrate. These may be the last things we feel like doing, but so many people are moved to thanksgiving when they remember the times spent with their loved one. This is not a ploy to take our minds off the present situation, but an opportunity to recall why the hurt is so deep. It is a chance to consider the difference the person made in our lives, and to recognize that a big part of who we are is wrapped up in this person whom we mourn. Mourning often is painted as a time when all is lost, but this act of remembering calls to mind that not all is lost. We remember the time we spent with the person, both the little incidents that would only mean something to us and the significant events of our lives, and we are reassured that those times can never be taken from us.
Yes, there is value in mourning, but these words from the lips of Jesus promise us more. Jesus promised that those who mourn will be comforted. We just aren't talking about readjusting. We aren't speaking merely of getting by. We are talking about more than simply making it. We are talking about being comforted.
This does not mean we quit crying, or that we no longer miss the person, or that we have somehow gotten over the loss. No, it means quite the opposite. In fact, there are some things we may never get over, but we can learn to live with them. Comfort is not the erasing of a memory, but having our pain soothed to the point that we can remember. Comfort is not a drying of the tears, but a peace that allows us to remember and give thanks even while we cry. The promise of Jesus as he gave his farewell address to the disciples was that God would send to them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We too are promised the Comforter, whose constant breath of new life empowers us to continue living in ways that would honor the memory of the one we have lost.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described five stages through which a terminally ill patient might pass, though not all of them pass through all of these stages. Those five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Most families and friends make similar treks, though not all of them reach acceptance either. It is important to note that the stage of acceptance is not a happy time in which all is suddenly okay, but rather a time in which fear and despair no longer wield control over us. Acceptance is not about saying that things worked out fairly well after all, but rather living peacefully and hopefully in the face of a set of completely unsatisfactory circumstances. It is not a giving in to the tragedy, but an overcoming of its grip on us.8
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Part of that comfort comes as we openly and honestly mourn the loss of someone we hold dear. Part of that comfort comes through the presence of God's spirit. Part of it surely comes through the gift and power of love. We would not be mourning if we had not loved so deeply. The love which caused the pain to be so great is a love capable of giving us an equal measure of comfort, and therein lies the good news for all who mourn this day.
____________
1. Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Come and Go, Molly Snow (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 18.
2. Ibid, p. 120.
3. Ibid, p. 219.
4. Ibid, p. 268.
5. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: The Seabury Press, 1963), p. 11 and p. 40.
6. Walter Brueggemann, Praying the Psalms (Winoma, Minnesota: St. Mary's Press, 1986), pp. 17-22.
7. Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Avon Books, 1981), p. 120.
8. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 99-106.
