Beatitudes: Like God are those who mourn...
Beatitudes: Like God are those who mourn...
...for they will be comforted.
Once we are poor in spirit, giving up our advantage, our ego, and all that makes us rich in our self, the immediate consequence is that we will connect with our true-self and others more deeply.
In my poverty of spirit, I become sensitive to the true life deeper in me and the lives of others, and at the forefront of life on this earth is pain - suffering.
Thus, as I become poor in spirit, I begin to mourn for all the pain in the world - my own and that of others.
But in mourning, community can build. Because in mourning, we open the door for others.
We make room in our lives to come along others in their pain, and we find others coming alongside us in our own pain.
In this process, a community is built. And in that community, comfort can be found in companionship.
But community and the comfort it brings takes work and time. Unlike the first Beatitude, the reward of this one is not immediate.
Comfort will come in mourning realized, joined into, and allowed to run its communal course.
Jesus mourned with the mourning. This is what God does, he feels our pain.
Upon arriving at the tomb of Lazarus, we read that “Jesus wept.”
“There is no shorter verse in the Bible, nor is there a larger text.” - Poet John Donne
I have heard discussions over the years about: “Why would Jesus cry when he was coming to bring Lazarus back from the dead?”
Jesus should have been excited to fix the situation and make people happy again.
But that isn’t how God operates - stoically removed from what is going on, untouched. No, God is Love, and Love is empathetic - vulnerable to the pain around it.
So, Jesus walks into a crowd of mourners, and he feels their pain, and he is pulled into mourning with them.
Jesus does not rip the people from their moment by ordering them to “Cheer up! Watch this!” and raise Lazarus from the dead. Instead, Jesus joins them in the communal moment opened up by suffering in loss.
In the miracle to come, as Lazarus is raised from the dead, the moment will become all about Jesus and Lazarus. The miracle will rip the community from their moment looking at and embracing each other, so turn them all in one direction to look at Jesus and Lazarus.
But God is not a glory-hound.
His moment of power can and will come, but he will not trump community. God, at his core, is community because he is Love.
So God will come - as Jesus - always vulnerable to pain, weeping with the weeping, setting his glory aside in his poverty of spirit, to mourn with us communally.
Personal thought: As I write this, I can’t help but think of the great temptation to be unlike God in moments of suffering and mourning.
To sit in the pain of others can be difficult, and I can be tempted to cheer them up by hammering at them with “happy thoughts.”
Or how often am I tempted to fall into the Charismatic/Pentecostal trap of charging like a bull in a china shop to intrude into a powerful, communal experience of suffering and mourning, with attempts to drive it to the glorious miracle?
God, in those moments of pain, may I never short-circuit our community by prematurely endeavoring to escape the discomfort of mourning together.
There is no way to “do” this Beatitude of Tears as it is truly envisioned - getting down into the muck of life’s sadness - if we have not first set aside our ego and advantages. Thus, the ladder or staircase builds, as the first step is to become poor in spirit, and the next is produced from the first, to mourn.
And as we mourn, we become like God, who is meek…