Matthew Beatitudes: Blessed are Those Who Mourn

Well good morning.

So yeah, we're working our way through the Beatitudes, short scripture readings versus uh when we went through Exodus, right?

Uh you were standing up there for five, six minutes sometimes.

We read a long narrative.

So uh what we talked about last week is that that first Beatitude, um, blessed are the poor in spirit, and then today we have blessed are those who mourn or lament or grieve.

So last Monday, this past Monday, I went down to visit my granny.

Granny's been here a few times, maybe you've seen her.

Um she can't come anymore.

Her condition's gotten that poor, she's uh about 94 years old, I think.

I say about because either she's 93 or 94, and I couldn't remember.

Is she 94?

Is that right, Christine?

All right, Christy knows.

She's 94.

Uh but my mom had told me that she wasn't doing well on Sunday, so I went down on Monday to see her.

And when I walked in, she was in the little dining hall at um the assisted living place that she um she lives at, and she was at her table, and she's was very hunched over, and she was fiddling with something and not talking to the other lady at the table.

And I walked up and uh and just kind of rubbed her on the back and said, Hey Granny, um, you know, uh this is Russ, your grandson, Mary's son, Mary's your daughter.

I have to introduce all of that.

Um, and then she either pretends to know me or she knows me.

I'm not sure which it is, uh, but explained to her that I love her, and she had been fiddling and who knows how long to try to get a creamer open for her coffee, and so I was able to do that for her.

And I sat with her and we talked um just about the weather and about how horrible the meal was because that's what she likes to talk about, and those kinds of things.

And here's a woman uh who has incredibly smart, incredibly sharp, uh, and her mind is almost gone.

Um I mean, she's probably bought and sold more real estate than anybody else in this room.

Uh she always treated waitresses incredibly horrible, just really, really bad.

Uh just painful uh to sit there and watch it happen.

And she traveled all over the world, um, and now here she is.

Like this is this is this is it, like toward the end.

Um she's confined to this place, she can't leave.

Um, she'll probably never leave this place again because she's under hospice.

And it's a nice place, right?

Like she can't wander off, you know, relatively everything's cared for, her emergency needs are taken care of.

Uh well after lunch, they brought us some rescue dogs.

This was a big hit.

I don't know if you realize that.

Rescue dogs at the assisted living where most of most people are in dementia.

Big hit.

Everybody's in the room.

It was awesome.

And so we're in there, and I'm next to Granny, and this is a huge, I mean, this is awesome.

I mean, ecstatic, ecstatic for everybody.

Um, and and it's just it's it's sad though, um, at the same time.

Um, the the condition and sort of the pain at this time of life and the loneliness.

Uh, I mean, one gentleman who who knows how smart and sharp and with it and influential this guy had been, had urinated on himself, and is walking around, and there wasn't even shame for it because he wasn't even aware of it.

And um finally a nurse got around to him.

And all very incredibly lovely people, still, still lovely people.

And uh probably uh most of us will be there one day if we make it that far.

Uh and it's sad, right?

Like there's some mourning here.

There's mourning in that.

There's there's mourning uh because some are in pain, and there's mourning because some are lonely.

There'll be mourning when she passes.

There will be mourning when your loved one passes.

There'll be mourning when your friend gets sick and dies, or your spouse or you get sick.

There's mourning when you lose your job.

There's mourning uh when that wound from that person doesn't go away and you thought it had gone away, but it's not.

And then also this week, my little girl turned eight.

We had a birthday party yesterday.

Last Saturday, we went to Claire's at the mall.

Has anybody been to Claire's at the mall?

Don't go with three little girls.

Do not go in that store with three little girls.

Uh we went in with three little girls.

We came out with three also.

That was hard to get all of them out of Claire's.

Uh, most of you have probably haven't been in Claire's.

Just stop in next time you're at the mall.

And my little girl, my eight-year-old, she sat in a chair and she got her ears pierced.

This is a big deal.

All morning she'd been talking about it, right?

Like all morning she'd been talking about it.

And so finally, after hours of her talking about it, I just got to say, like, hey, um, how long have you been looking forward to getting your ears pierced?

Because this is quite an overflow of an excitement.

And she said, Dad, my whole life.

My whole life has been leading up to this.

And then yesterday morning, Christy made this sweet video of all these pictures of her over the past year.

And just so sweet, and just sit there and watch this, and I don't get that year back.

And there's mourning even there.

Right?

So there's mourning and the sad thing, but then there's also mourning and the good thing that progresses.

So we can grieve a job loss, but we can also grieve a job promotion.

Because you left some friends that were at the other job, as you all sat in cubicles and you're buddies, and you talked bad about the people that were above you, and now you're one of the people above.

And you can grieve, like you grieved having a small house because it was so small and you know it's horrible, and then you got a bigger house.

And now you're grieving it because it's more complicated and it's stressful.

So we can grieve the sad thing, but we can also grieve the good thing that progresses, and we don't just grieve the big things, we also, and we have to give ourselves permission for this, we grieve little things.

So here's a quote in your handout.

This is by Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, in his book, The Trauma of Everyday Life.

Trauma is not just the result of major disasters, it does not happen to only some people.

An undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence.

I like to say that if we were not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder.

One way or another, death and its cousins, old age, illness, accident, separation, and loss hangs over all of us.

Nobody's immune.

Our world is unstable and unpredictable and operates to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advancements outside our ability to control it.

Then he goes on to say daily life is filled with endless little traumas.

Things break.

People hurt our feelings.

Ticks carry Lyme disease.

Pets die.

Friends get sick and even die.

The first day of school and the first day in an assisted living facility are remarkably similar.

Separation and loss touch everyone.

Trauma is an iradicable aspect of life.

We are human as a result of it, not in spite of it.

Okay, so that sounds incredibly depressing on one level, but here's the thing.

Jesus says, Matthew 5, verse 4, blessed, fortunate, lucky are you those who mourn.

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are those who mourn, to lament, to grieve, for they shall be comforted.

Now, nobody wants to grieve.

Nobody wants to grieve.

Nobody's looking forward to grieving.

Like we would all prefer just to be at the writs and be laying by the pool, and people come around and they give us drinks and we hang out.

That's what we prefer.

Or we prefer just to sort of manage everything.

If we can manage all of our circumstances, then we won't be sad anymore.

Or some escape.

And we like these things and many more because they give that illusion.

They give that illusion of control or escape.

But see here, Jesus sort of flips the whole thing around and he says, hey, no, no, no, no, no.

Like don't avoid it.

Don't even try to control it, but you need to process through it.

And by the way, you have permission to do this.

Jesus gives us permission to feel something that is already in our lives.

See, he knows what Mark Epstein was going to write in this book, that psychology and psychiatrists will discover.

He knows that, that all loss must be mourned.

Not ignored or escaped from.

It has to be mourned.

Loss, any loss, big, small, the sad thing or the good thing that progresses has to be mourned.

Have you ever wondered why that person is like that?

I mean, that person that does something or is around you and you're going, how, why are they like, oh my gosh, driving me crazy?

Have you ever wondered why they're like that?

Have you ever wondered why you always go back to that urge or that tendency or that feeling?

Is it possible?

Is it possible there was a change in your life that you never mourned?

Is it possible there is a loss in your life that you never mourn because you just wanted to get on with it?

Something you never process through, you never let go, you never, as Jesus says, hey, hey, blessed are you if you mourn.

If you lament, if you grieve, if you get angry.

A few months ago, I heard a podcast with this guy named David Kessler, who is a grief expert, a leading grief expert, one of them in the United States.

And so he had studied, been around a lady named Elizabeth Keebler-Ross, who's a Swiss American psychiatrist.

She had the theory, she put together the theory, the five stages of grief, which are, if you remember from your psychology 101 class in college, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

So Kessler worked closely with her, and then he adds in a few points.

And here's what he adds in.

I put them in your bulletin there just so you can see them.

Here's what he says.

He says, I the five stages, most of us have heard those.

If not, you just heard them.

And he says, let's think about these, but a few key points.

Number one is this grief doesn't have to be linear.

Like it's not like you go through those five perfectly, one to the next.

It doesn't have to be linear.

And you don't always experience all the stages.

Maybe you grief something, but you you're never depressed.

Maybe you grief something, but you're you never bargain with God.

So grief doesn't have to be linear.

Grief is unique.

Like it's unique to you.

Like you can't compare your grief to somebody else's grief.

It's just yours.

And I would add that you can't compare your pain to somebody else's pain.

It's just yours.

It's your pain.

And it's your grief.

And the third is you have to go through grief.

We don't want to.

I already said that.

We don't want to.

But it's already there.

And so you have to go through it.

You can't get around it.

The saying, I guess, in kind of counseling worlds, you can't heal what you don't feel.

You can't heal what you don't feel.

And maybe you say, well, I don't feel.

Like that's not me.

That's not my personality.

Like I'm just not like a big feely emotional person.

And maybe part of that's personality, maybe part of that's kind of leaning towards how you grew up.

Maybe you grew up religious, and maybe you heard, like, you know what?

Like, or at least you felt this.

Like, you know what?

There's starving kids in Africa.

You can get your act together.

Like, like, God doesn't care about that pain in your life.

There are kids starving.

There are kids being trafficked around the world.

How dare you feel like that?

The problem with that is it doesn't do anything for the fact that you're still in pain.

Your pain's still real.

And it has to, you have to go through it.

Maybe you uh grew up kind of stoically.

Like you grew up in a stoic home.

You weren't you weren't allowed to feel.

You weren't allowed to be unhappy.

You weren't allowed to be sad.

Like you can't show.

Maybe it maybe it would have been a bad, you know, maybe your family could have been looked down upon if you didn't have your act together.

And so, you know what?

Put the smile on.

We're showing up at Christ's Redeemer, at Walker Preschool, you better get your act together, you know, or else everybody's gonna think so poorly about us and so stoic.

And meanwhile, uh, if we grow up those ways or we act those ways, we can become a very cold, uh, agitated person.

So here's the big point, it brings us back to Jesus' statement.

You can't receive anything.

You can't receive anything until there's space to receive it.

Right?

It turns out that mourning creates space.

Mourning creates space.

A friend of mine's digging a big hole in his backyard to put in a swimming pool.

I've been watching this happen.

I've been thinking about this.

Mourning creates space.

That backyard's a disaster right now.

I mean, it's horrible.

I mean, if you look back there, you're like, that is a construction zone.

And eventually it's gonna be great.

Mourning creates space.

Something else can go in the space that's created.

There's this entire book in the Old Testament called Lamentations.

Most of us never read it.

If you read it, it's kind of depressing.

I mean, it's incredibly sad.

It's a whole book of lamenting, it's a whole book of mourning, grieving the situation they are in.

Jerusalem's been sieged, it's been destroyed, and the book communicates.

It's these people communicate how defeated they feel.

I actually read this in my devotional this week.

It came up this week, Lamentations 3, 14 through 18.

I have become the laughing stock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long.

He has filled me with bitterness.

He has sated me with wormwood.

He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes.

My soul is bereft of peace.

I have forgotten what happiness is.

So I say, my endurance has perished, so has my hope from the Lord.

Right?

Just raw, real mourning, grieving, lamenting, anger.

So Jesus says, Fortunate are you if you do that.

To grieve, to lament, to be angry over that thing for a season.

Fortunate are you.

So just a few points.

Some of these are summarizing what I already said.

Number one, you have permission to mourn.

Jesus gives you permission to mourn.

It's okay to not be okay.

You actually need to not be okay in order to begin to be okay.

And you're free to mourn.

And it doesn't mean you're not spiritual, it doesn't mean you're not mature, it doesn't mean you're not growing spiritually.

It is the path towards comfort and healing.

Number two, point number two, you are blessed if you mourn.

So not only is he giving you permission, he's saying you're fortunate if you do this.

Number three, you are blessed because you can then be comforted.

So in Lamentations, there's no glossing over how these people feel.

I mean, it's just raw.

This is it.

It's already in me.

I might as well let it out.

There's no stoicism here.

It's just what it is.

It's like here I am, I'm angry, I'm angry as a hornet, and under that, I'm actually sad, and under that, I'm actually quite broken, and I'm exhausted of trying to escape it or control it.

And Jesus comes along, he says, so graciously.

Yeah, I know.

I know, there's a lot.

There's a lot of sadness and sin and junk that other people do to you and you do to other people, and things that happen in a broken world, and in broken people, and broken relationships, broken families.

And you know what?

You should mourn.

Some things are big, some things are little, it's a sad thing, it's the good thing that progresses, and you should mourn it.

Because then you'll be comforted.

The space will be created for healing to come in.

So last year I was at my father-in-law's house uh and I was trying to make myself useful, and the car battery is dead, so I'm gonna be helpful to son-in-law, and so I go get a new battery and I'm putting it in the car, and I'm uh going to tighten down the bolt that you know puts the battery down in there.

It's about all I can do with a car, I'll be honest, is replace the battery.

And I slip and I just I just gash the inside of my thumb.

Nasty blood flowing, and so I just I grab it, I run inside, I do what my dad taught me, and that is you get a bunch of paper towels, then you get duct tape.

Like I don't know why my dad taught me that, and then you duct tape it, and that's that's the seal you need, is that duct tape.

But I bleed through that, and it just keeps bleeding, and uh, we're out of town, so I don't want to go to a hospital and get stitches, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

So I'm like, I there's gotta be something, right?

There's something that solves this.

Somebody's figured out this problem.

Bad gash, you know, stubborn man doesn't want to go to hospital to get stitch, like two stitches.

Like, what's the solution?

So I uh, you know, put new paper towel, new duct tape, drive up to the CVS, bleed my way through the CVS.

Turns out there is this wonderful product, product placement here.

I'm no endorsement, I'm under no contract, wound seal.

And it says powder, I find it on the shelf and I read it, I'm like, stops bleeding instantly.

This is me.

Instantly, it's gonna stop the bleeding.

And so I I I pay for it.

I walk outside, it's this little powder, and I'm just bleeding, and I'm just I'm like over a trash can and bleeding, and I pour this powder down here, and I just watch, I mean, instantly stops bleeding.

It's actually worked.

It was amazing.

Windseal, in case you're wondering, by the way.

I mean, absolutely amazing.

We've all seen products like this, right?

Like cut a five-day cold into two days.

I don't know about all that, but I can vouch for this, at least in my situation.

But here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

I needed to bleed at first, right?

I needed what whatever else got in there, you know, like when it got cut, the blood, the blood needed to like pour out and like push out all the impurities.

Like I needed to bleed.

Um sometimes, sometimes you need to bleed.

And sometimes you need to mourn, sometimes you need to grieve, sometimes it, sometimes that it just needs to come out.

And Jesus is saying, lucky, lucky if you mourn.

Surprisingly, right?

Surprises us all, surprisingly, in that process.

Maybe not later this afternoon or later this week or like by the end of the summer, maybe it's in two weeks or two months or two decades.

I don't know.

The timeline here is not linear, there's no equation, but in it there is comfort.

And then in Lamentations we get this.

Later on, this guy's been just lamenting, letting it rip.

And then he says in chapter 3, 21 and 23, but this I call to mind.

And so I think we have to do that when we're grieving and mourning.

We have to call truth to mind.

And therefore I have hope.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

So he's saying this in his grieving, he is saying this.

He's calling it to mind.

We've we've had two suicides, a part of our lives since we've started this church.

I've actually mentioned this a good bit.

And I think I mention it because I don't want to not mention it, I don't want to not mention it.

Like that's not something to brush under the rug and pretend like never it happened.

One was a part of our church and one was just a very, very close friend of ours.

Last night we actually sat around, we Christy and I talked about her for a while.

And we miss our friends.

We grieve them.

I think about I think about them often, not every day, not all day, but a good bit.

I'm not done grieving them.

Right?

Some days I'm a little angry.

Uh some days I'm just sad.

Some days I'm just confused.

Uh I don't I don't I don't I'm not as like Grieving and sad as I was a year ago or two years ago.

I don't know if there's an end to it where I won't be angry at certain times.

Because you see their children.

And you go, how couldn't all these questions start back up?

It's just I'm grieving.

I have permission to grieve.

You have permission to grieve over whatever it is.

You have permission to grieve.

You're free to grieve.

You know what?

I also grieve the fact that my dryer wasn't working.

Sounds silly.

I didn't like it.

I had to figure out like a two or three hour time period where I was going to work on this stupid dryer.

I don't want to work on a dryer.

You don't want to work on a dryer.

Like nobody wants to spend their like after work, like you've been working all day.

Like, I can't wait to get home and work on the dryer.

Nobody wants to You know, so there's like some frustration there.

You know what?

I also have bony shoulders.

I've had bony shoulders my entire life.

There's some mourning there.

Right?

And it's not to say, it's not to say we should obsess over little things or big things.

It's just to say they're real.

They're there.

To pretend like they're not doesn't do anything.

And we go through them.

We process through them.

And we live in the grace of Jesus that gives us space to do that.

And what I love about the Lamentations is they're voicing it to God.

They're dealing with it with God.

They're not escaping from God, they're voicing it to Him.

And in that there's space being created for God to come into it and to heal, to comfort.

That word comfort, this word is the idea of God coming alongside to give strength.

So the strength comes from outside.

So in the grieving, in the mourning, what we recognize is we're not that strong.

We're not that strong.

And we need strength to come alongside us from outside of us.

And in Jesus, we're given this great respite, this place where we come to grieve as long or short as we need to, as often or as frequent as we need to.

And our ability to be healed by next Sunday or Wednesday or next year is not a reflection about how secure you are with God or how spiritual you are.

See, all of that, this is where the respite is.

All of that has already been settled.

Because it's not on your work to have your act totally together, to be perfectly healed.

Because Jesus took all your imperfections, all your doubt, all your confusion, all your anger.

He took all sin on the cross, and he takes his perfect righteousness.

All that you should be and I should be, all the ways that we should be able to get our lives perfectly together and react perfectly to every circumstance.

He took all of his righteousness and he deemed it to you.

He put it on you forever.

So your identity as his child, as righteous, is secure and forever.

So, my brothers and sisters, be at peace in the space God gives you to not always have it all together.

May you mourn all that needs to be mourned.

May your eyes be wide open to the world and to your own heart, that you might know God's great grace and security, which He extends to you in the person of Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you do not send us down a path of control or escape, but you walk with us as we try to do it that way.

And that is our sin, to self-save by control and by escaping.

And for that we are sorry.

God, we even acknowledge that sometimes a lot of our anger within mourning is sin.

And for that we acknowledge and ask for forgiveness.

But we're still angry, so we still voice it.

And we need a lot of grace from you when it comes to mourning.

Because we don't understand all things and we don't have your sovereign knowledge.

We are your creatures in this world, in a broken world.

And so there are people here this morning who need to mourn things.

That life has not turned out the way they thought it would.

That things have been done to them or around them.

They've seen things.

They need to be angry for a season.

They need to voice it to you.

They need to be sad for a season.

God, I pray that this grace that you give, blessed are those who mourn, would create great space in our hearts, and we would not fill it with control or with escape, but we would go to you.

And in our inability to understand all things, we would at least be open-handed to say, you are still steadfast.

You are still faithful.

I don't get it.

I don't get it right now, but you are.

And would we receive healing and comfort when we begin to let go of our control?

God, we thank you for the gift of Jesus, his words, and the path that he has provided for us, where we do not have to pretend we're something we're not, but we can come right as we are.

And we can look to the cross to know that all we should be, and we are not, has been put upon him.

And we are secure as your children based on his work for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.