Blessed Are Those Who Mourn in Community

No one likes to grieve. No one feels lucky to mourn. So when Jesus tells an eager gathering of disciples “Blessed are those who mourn”  I’m not sure church growth gurus would see that as the strongest recruitment strategy.   

Mourning in the Jewish imagination is not a foreign emotion.   Mourning has deep historical connotations for the Hebrew People of God.  The majority of the time mourning is spoken of in the Old Testament, it is intrinsically connected to the absence of God.  Lamentations 1 - “Zion's roads mourn, for no one comes to her, All her gateways are desolate, her young women grieve, bitter anguish is her voice. Her children have gone into exile with no one to hear their cries. The Lord has left us in grief.”  or Psalm 22 - "My God, My God why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my cries of anguish? I cry out by day but you do not answer me?"  

There are numerous snapshots of this theme running through the drama of God’s people.  Mourning has more than a modern definition found in Webster’s dictionary it is symbolic of vivid seasons of exile and isolation from God.  To be in a place of mourning is more than grieving the loss of something, it is grieving the loss of God's presence.

In the ethos of a subterranean-community that plummets below the surface, we need to cultivate together-space that gives room for mourning the distance of God.  These words “Blessed are those who mourn…” are an invitation to participate in building for the Kingdom of God; but more so these words point to the life of their teacher.  Jesus steps into the skin of his teaching when he exclaims at the center of the passion “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus is not play acting or putting on a theatrical show.  Jesus is genuinely experiencing the depths of human psychological suffering: the unexpected distance of God.  This is a timeless cry of staring into an empty abyss.  John Stott once said “I could not believe in God, if it were not for his human struggle.  In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”  

We do not live in this Holy City yet.  Rev 22 - "I saw the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will live with them. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more mourning for the old order of things has passed away.”  We are caught in the tension that King Jesus has triumphed but God is not fully here yet.  We cannot wear plastic pretense or fashion cryptic theological systems to convince ourselves God is always right by our side.  We can not be lazy in parceling out supporting verses to meet our need to cope.  I don’t think Christian culture is comfortable with this dark space.  Much of our language about God is tangled up with unmitigated optimism, positive thinking, absolute confidence in progress and the obsession to have certainty to control all aspects of life. 

God’s proximity is unpredictable.  I spent some time in remote parts of Kenya  investigating refugee children who were part of the LRA.  Many times I was consumed with the inner question  “God, why don't you stop this?” as I took in the deformed faces of children butchered in the brutality of war.  Mourning is intertwined in the desperate longing for God’s arrival.

I don’t believe that mourning the absence of God should be extrapolated to typify the whole of the Christian life but I do think we need to understand that the cruciform-life includes leaning into this piece of the Sermon on the Mount.  Mourning is not spiritual immaturity.  Mourning is growing up in Jesus.  Mourning is not a denial of Christ's Resurrection victory but it is an appropriate response to beholding the awfulness in the world.  Experiencing the absence of God is a fundamental part of a being tethered to a disciple-community.  Jesus is calling us to come and follow.  Together we will smack into this mystery as Jesus himself did.  In his book The Crucified God, Jürgen Moltmann stated so well - "For whatever reason God allows mankind to be limited and vulnerable to suffering but he had the courage to take his own medicine in Jesus."

Our comfort comes in our immersion with a Jesus-shaped community that is hospitable to mourning. 

The Messiah has come and has lived, breathed and bled these words.  He willingly downloads his presence into a Kingdom-community.  Here we can discover God's earthy, tangible grace.  We will not apprehend supernatural comfort alone in isolation, solo in private prayer, buried in Bible verses.  Jesus put himself at the center of the trial of human existence.  We too must embrace that this precedence of incarnation becomes the form for finding soul-care when God is seemingly on the other side of the world.