Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain. After he sat down his disciples came to him. Then he began to teach them saying... (Matthew 5:1-2).

Galilee was a region simmering with anti-Roman sentiment. While its soil was exceptionally fertile, the land was also densely populated and most people lived hand to mouth. Excessively high and often arbitrary Roman taxes increased people's burden and resentment. In 4 BCE, after the death of Herod the Great, a rebel named Judas, along with his followers, captured and burned down the city of Sepphoris in Galilee, just 4 miles from Nazareth, where Jesus grew up. After suppressing the rebellion, Roman Governor Varus had 2,000 of Judas' followers crucified in and around the city, attempting to instill fear and discourage further rebellion.

Because of such quelled attempts to expel the Romans, many of Israel's citizens placed their entire hope on the promised Messiah. When Jesus began talking about the kingdom of God, people started to wonder if their dream was on the cusp of being fulfilled. But what Jesus said about the kingdom was unsettling. Not only love your neighbor, but your enemy as well? Turn the other cheek? If a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, offer to take it another? If you hold onto your anger, it’s tantamount to murder? Bizarre! Ludicrous! But look at all the people who are being healed, the demons being cast out, the outcasts being welcomed to his table.

Most commentators agree that Jesus' going up the mountain with his disciples is a hyperlink to when, over a millennium earlier, Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the law of God. That event was part of the Exodus Story, when God’s people were rescued from slavery in Egypt, met Yahweh at Mount Sinai to form a covenant relationship, traveled through the wilderness for 40 years, and eventually entered the promised land.

Jesus made it clear that he came to set people free. God’s ways with people are ultimately redemptive. But he saw the human heart as the main obstacle – not just our enemy’s heart, but our own. In the Beatitudes, I see Jesus trying to set us free from the compromised desires and emotions that disrupt and harm the lives of people and nations. In other words, he’s trying to get at the root of things.

Laws don’t change hearts. The history of Israel up to that point was proof. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a series of hyperbolic moral, poetic teachings that, with the laser-like work of the Spirit, perform a kind of soul surgery – statements that can’t be reduced to formulaic rules. The Beatitudes themselves, the Sermon's "preamble," offer a carefully crafted journey to emotional maturity and freedom, which is essential for outer liberation. This is our Exodus Way, our deliverance from dysfunctional emotions and desires which can easily rule over our hearts and keep us from fulfilling our vocation as God’s vice-regents. The rest of the Sermon on the Mount performs the dual function of both surgically treating our souls and showing how we can begin to live in the new promised land of God’s kingdom now.

I discussed the first beatitude ("Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.") in a previous post. Now we come to the second:

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

I’m not sure there is a more critical beatitude for our time. There is so much airing of grievances, and so little grieving. This is true of the church as well as of the broader society. From whatever angle we view the world politically, for example, it’s hard not to be angry – all day, every day.

Jesus really zeroed in on anger. It’s the first issue Jesus addresses in the main body of the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder,’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment, and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council, and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire (Matthew 5:21-22). [Remember that Jesus often uses hyperbole to get his message across.]

Jesus knows where unresolved anger leads. Later in the same chapter, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you: Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also (Matthew 5:38-39).

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44).

Protracted anger almost always turns into some form of hatred – as contempt, loathing, condemnation, or derision.

What can we do with our anger? We can mourn.

Enlarging Our Souls

There’s nothing wrong with anger. It’s an inner alarm that alerts us to an injustice. The apostle Paul instructs his readers to be angry, but not to allow the anger to smolder past sunset (Ephesians 4:26). That’s not a rule, but a principle. Once anger becomes resentment, it becomes toxic.

For many of us, the temptation to be chronically angry has never been greater. Let's admit it: we're afraid. Caitlin Moran describes anger as anxiety brought to a boil. What's happening daily within the current administration is almost beyond imagining – the blowing through Constitutional guardrails (including due process), the disregard for facts and truth, the attacks on the judiciary (including judges Trump appointed) and on higher education and the media, the blatant racism behind the coerced cancellation of D.E.I. policies and revoking of international student visas, the exporting of non-criminal, documented immigrants to foreign hellhole prisons, the catastrophic cuts to medical research, health policies based on junk science, the appointment of incompetent, loyalist cabinet secretaries, legal retribution toward political opponents and former prosecutors, the corruption of the president’s family (the Trump family’s wealth has reportedly doubled since the election), the dissembling of our foreign alliances, the unconscionable abandonment of military support for Ukraine, the pandering to dictators and oligarchs, the supposed elimination of government waste that will likely cost tax payers $135 billion, the 300,000 people (mostly children) who have already died because of cuts to USAID, sending National Guard troops and even Marines to LA against the objections of state and local authorities, and the cult-like devotion of MAGA to a deranged, impulsive leader likely plagued with what Arthur Brooks calls a “Dark Triad” personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). All of this in addition to the unprecedented transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest and the multiple trillions of dollars increase in the national debt attached to the proposed “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

But here's the deal: grievance makes us hardhearted, while grieving leads to brokenheartedness. Author and pastor Drew Hyun says that grieving enlarges our souls, while grievance shrivels our souls. Mourning expands rather than diminishes our capacity for compassion, and even gratitude and joy.

When we become hardhearted, we view the situation through a narrow, binary lens. When we allow ourselves to be brokenhearted, the lens widens to include the complexity of people and events, including the multiple reasons people voted for Trump. (Some argue that he is the wrong answer to the right questions.)

Jesus has sometimes been called a man of sorrows. While how Jesus died demonstrates this, there were many points in Jesus’ ministry when he chose grief over grievance. He grieved over the political execution of his friend and forerunner John the Baptist. He grieved when he came to the tomb of his friend Lazarus. (Here we find the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.”) Jesus wept over Jerusalem when its leaders rejected his path to peace (Luke 19:41-44). Sometimes Jesus got angry, but anger’s not where or how he lived.

During Paul’s ministry, the apostle was repeatedly tortured and imprisoned, often because of actions against him by his fellow Jews. Yet, listen to what he writes in his letter to the Romans:

I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel (Romans 9:1-4a).

The world, in its current condition, is both beautiful and tragic. The tragic parts hit us especially hard because we know how beautiful life could be and sometimes is. So the ‘poverty of spirit’ talked about in the first beatitude contains a double whammy: the suffering of pain and loss alongside the ache for a new and better world.

In these first two beatitudes, Jesus opposes a Stoic approach to life (popular in Roman culture) that attempted to be emotionally detached from one's circumstances. As our Creator, Jesus knows we aren’t brains on a stick. Denying our emotions can have unhealthy consequences for ourselves and others. Trying to maintain a stiff upper lip calcifies and hardens our hearts. As David Hyun says, if our suffering isn’t transformed, it’s transferred. Whatever we stuff down will eventually come out sideways.

Some theologians have spoken of God’s “impassibility” or emotional detachment from human suffering. Nothing could be further from how the God of the Bible is portrayed. Listen to how God uses the prophet Jeremiah to grieve his people’s waywardness and the resulting injustices:

My joy is gone; grief is upon me;

    my heart is sick.

For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken,

    I mourn, and horror has seized me (Jeremiah 8:18, 21).

The message of the cross is that God not only feels our rebellion and suffering but takes it on himself. 

Learning how to mourn is especially important for the current moment. On many fronts, our democracy is under siege. Autocrats often capitalize on ordinary resentments and grievances. Most people aren’t political philosophers. They just want things to be better.

They Will Be Comforted

The Beatitudes promise that things will be better. For example, the blessings following the first and second beatitudes can encourage us and provide the courage we need to mourn:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn,

    for they will be comforted.

As I read through the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, I’m struck by how these early believers were constantly aware of the Coming Age. Instead of bucket lists, they focused on the already/not yet kingdom of God and the New Creation. They knew that whatever they encountered in this life was temporary. As Paul writes,

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

It’s easier to grieve when you know whatever situation or loss you are mourning isn’t the end of the story, and that the end of the story is quite wonderful and will last forever. (See the previous post on Jesus’ resurrection.) These early believers breathed the rarified air of the kingdom: FHL3 – faith, hope, and three-way love (i.e. love from God, love for God, and love for one another). In his letter to the Colossians, Paul refers to “the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven....” (1:5).

The second beatitude presents us with a choice: Will we allow ourselves to become hardhearted or brokenhearted? If we choose hardheartedness, our options going forward will be few and likely destructive. If we embrace brokenheartedness, the rest of the beatitudes outline a path to emotional maturity that leads to a rehabilitated heart and our becoming compassionate peacemakers. Mourning ensures that the actions we choose will more likely arise from love for our neighbor – both the victim and the victimizer – than from a desire for revenge.

What's Wrong?

What do we mourn? We mourn our own sins and the sins of others. We mourn about our own and each other's situations and circumstances. Both sins and circumstances can be enormously challenging, and biblically speaking, both can be helped by grieving. As far as circumstances are concerned, David Hyun talks about clean pain and dirty pain. Dirty pain is suffering caused by our own sins or the sins of others. Mourning dirty pain ideally leads to repentance, forgiveness, and making amends. Clean pain is suffering that is beyond anyone’s control – e.g. a child's death, diseases, tsunamis, tornadoes (e.g. recently a storm brought 75 mph winds – a neighbor's tree fell on our fence and the tall locust tree in our backyard came down on the corner of our three-season room; oh, and Sharon broke some bones in her wrist last week.)

We all contribute to the dirty pain – the brokenness and chaos of our world. Based upon the NRSV translation of 1 Corinthians 13, one of my favorite explanations of sin is that it is “insisting on one’s own way.” We all do it. Even the most generous of us can get pouty at times. None of us likes to be crossed or denied.

How to Mourn

Is there an art or skill to mourning? Elizabeth Oldfield says there is. In a recent Substack article, she writes:

The name I use for myself is “Psalming It”. The Psalms are a book of poetry or songs in the scriptures of both Jewish and Christian communities. There are a lot of them, and they aren’t all the same, but many of them follow a distinctive pattern.

1. Complaint

2. Lament

3. What else is true?

[Step 1] Be honest about what is hard, ideally with others, then [Step 2] let yourself feel the feelings that come up. Give them time. Express them. They might not be pretty. They are often not in the Psalms. That is ok.

Once I’ve “gone down,” I am usually already feeling better. Emotions are designed to be passing states. When we can accept them, they move through us. The third and final step is where I come out into steadiness. The psalms of lament often end with an ascent, an expression of trust in God, and something like the phrase “and yet I will praise him”.

We're All Wrong

In our current political climate, there is plenty of blame to go around. In fact, we are all wrong – maybe not equally, but wrong nonetheless – in one or more of the following ways:

1. What we believe (i.e. in what we've gotten wrong or what we're leaving out)

2. The weight we give to what we believe (too much or too little)

3. How we communicate what we believe

4. Our attitudes and responses toward people who believe differently

5. Whether we practice what we believe

6. What we are neglecting or avoiding because of what we believe

I'll admit it: I can have a short fuse. Anger builds walls, while mourning can melt them. Anger fosters accusation, while grieving allows for empathy and self-reflection. Again, there’s nothing wrong with anger. It can be a healthy initial response to what's wrong and spur us to action. However, shifting from grievance to grief, from being mad to sad, is necessary to fulfill Jesus’ command to love our neighbor as ourselves. Mourning is itself a way to love.

A related biblical word I've been thinking about lately is to groan. The Greek word literally means to sigh. Paul says that "we who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). He even talks about "the whole creation...groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (8:22), and the Holy Spirit interceding within us through "wordless groans" (8:26). I love the image of the groaning that accompanies childbirth. Is something new wanting to be born within our nation, within the church, within other nations, and even within creation?

It takes courage and vulnerability to mourn. It can also take time. Mourning with friends or in community can help. As the Psalms demonstrate, it’s okay to complain, but it's best to try not to allow your conversation with God or others to end there. Express what you observe (complaint) and what you feel (lament), and then, without overreaching, say something positive that’s also true; not just some platitude, but something you actually believe, or want to believe, or something that gives you hope and comfort. This is where a robust understanding of the kingdom of God can be especially helpful.

Meanwhile, let's not neglect our own little gardens – the spaces where we live, work, play, and learn – planting seeds of love, joy, and peace, sometimes watering the seeds with our tears, while contributing what we can to the common good until that Day....

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good thing you do or say (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).

Eternal comfort and good hope. Some of that hope involves hungering and thirsting for justice (fifth beatitude) in this life and age. I believe the battle for this country's soul is anything but lost. I love it that so many non-Christians are quoting Jesus these days and find hope in Jesus' call to extravagant love and justice.

Jesus is Lord not only of the future but also of the present. As his first disciples discovered, his ways aren't always our ways. Contempt for others never settles a conflict, but love can be surprisingly contagious, if we are patient (next beatitude).

I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them; I will remove the hearts of stone from their bodies and I will give them tender hearts (Ezekiel 11:19).

Here's a song I've written about the second beatitude. (There may be a short delay at the beginning.) These songs are stylistically different than anything I've written before. But then, there is nothing like the Beatitudes.

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