Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)
The second beatitude feels as strange as the first: blessed are those who mourn? Blessed are those who are poor in spirit? This doesn’t seem to make sense at first.
Walter Brueggemann writes about grief saying, “…that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right.”1
How have you experienced grief as the beginning of healing? Is that an experience you’ve ever had? How can lamentation lead to joy?
My best friend died on June 10th last year. He was 36. It was completely unexpected, pushing a whole community into grief. This year on the anniversary of his passing, I spent hours talking to mutual friends and asking them to share stories about him.
We laughed and cried together. We remembered him well and thought about the impact he is still having on so many of our lives. Without the grief of losing him, I am certain I wouldn’t have spent the day exchanging amazing memories and lessons learned. Without the loss and heartache, I would not have felt so close to the people I spent time with that day. Without the visceral experience of mourning, there would not have been deep comfort.
How can grief lead to a deeper sense of “comfort?” What is “the work” of grief? By that I mean, is there some way(s) we are invited/asked to enter into grief to experience comfort, joy, hope? I am imagining if I had just done what I wanted to on June 10th, just lay down and tune out. Be sad, alone. But instead I called every person I could think of that and that connection, that communal grieving, that was what changed the day and gave me a boost of life — of love.
“… for they will be comforted.”
Notice Jesus doesn’t say “comfortable.” I wish he did, that would seem more helpful. But Jesus says they will be “comforted.” The Greek word here is parakaleō. It can also mean “to call to one’s side” or “to call near.”
What if Jesus was saying those who mourn will not be alone? Those who have been hurt, oppressed, afflicted, those who are at their lowest low, they don’t have to be by themselves. They are not by themselves. That is where Jesus was. That is where God is.
I wonder if it’s possible that the blessing of those that mourn may be that in their grief, they are somehow moving closer to God’s presence. The pain lifts them to a closeness, a by-the-side-ness, with God and from God.
God sees those who are devastated: by the world, by their choices, by what has happened to them. God sees, calls them blessed, and is with them right where they are (Romans 8:38-39).
May you be blessed with joy today, and always. But when you are blessed by grief, by mourning, by suffering, may you be blessed with full presence to it. May you be blessed with the presence of God in grief. May that blessing of presence come in the form of cakes and dinners, calls and texts, people showing up for you in just the way that you may not exactly be open to, but that heals. May you be blessed with giving presence, with a seeing of grief, with an openness to heartache around you. May you be blessed with a new imagination that sees mourning as the doorway to possibility, and also that mourning is awful. May you not rush through your or anyone else’s pain. May we be together, drawn to God’s side. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
- Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 11. ↩︎
coledarren 