Saturday, July 4, 2015

"Blessed Are Those Who Mourn" - July 5, 2015


Jeremiah 31:15-17


            It feels kind of odd to be preaching about how those who mourn are blessed on a holiday weekend.  The sound of fireworks and Sousa marches are still in our ears, and people’s minds are on potato salad and burgers.  Wave the flag and blow the fire sirens!  That’s what this weekend is about.  Yet the history of any nation, ours included, has a lot of grief attached to it.  Run down the road to Valley Forge.  For us it is a familiar place for a long walk or a picnic, to listen to the bells from the carillon, or just a shortcut from Paoli.  The reason there’s a National Park there, of course, is that Washington’s troops froze and starved there while the British were secure and comfortable downriver in Philadelphia.

           Not every nation has known the healing or has been able to put ancient hurts behind them.  The Serbians and the Croatians are not likely to trust each other very soon and the Macedonians and Albanians are going to keep an eye on both.  Can you blame them?  On the other hand, what happens if you don’t at least begin to seek healing?

           In some cases, the grief is kept alive by ritual observance.  When some of my friends who are Jewish were setting the date for their wedding, they had to rule out the day they really wanted because it turned out to be, in the Jewish calendar, the ninth day of the month of Av.  That is an annual observance of national calamity, like Pearl Harbor Day and 9/11 rolled together, when they are supposed to fast and mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  That was, certainly, a terrible day.  It was what Jeremiah spoke of when he said,

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
   lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
   she refuses to be comforted for her children,
   because they are no more.
[Jeremiah 31:15]

            Time passes, though, and life moves on.  We are not fighting the Revolution anymore, and people even get all excited when a new prince or princess is born in London.  Pain and loss and grief, on the national scale as well as on a personal level, can become something else.  It may not go away, but it can be changed. 

           It isn’t just time, though, that makes the difference.  People have to own up to the grief that they experience and not to hide from it.  Ann LaMott has written:

“…the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. …I’m pretty sure that only by experiencing the ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way do we come to be healed – which is to say, we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.”[1]

In other words (in Jesus’ words):

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

            Grief can sneak up on you, but so can God’s grace.  You’re in a friend’s kitchen talking, and she knocks a mug off the counter onto the floor, where it smashes into forty-seven pieces.  She breaks into tears, and you want to say, “That’s okay, everybody gets clumsy sometimes,” but it’s a good thing you don’t, because before the words are out of your mouth she’s telling you that the mug was her father’s and he died last year and it’s like one more piece of him is gone, and one more piece of life that will never come back.  Suddenly you are looking into a far deeper depth than a cup of tea.  You get a glimpse of another person’s heart and soul.  So you comfort your friend the best that you can, and listen and maybe there’s a tear or two, and if things are right, then by the time you leave you are closer to one another and the revelation of loss has led to a deeper friendship.  As Joni Mitchell sang, “Something’s lost but something’s gained in living every day.”[2]

            The past few weeks have highlighted some of the dark side and some of the pain of our own national life.  We have been reminded how much of this country was built up by slave labor in a land that was settled by displacing the people who were here first.  The early history includes epidemics of smallpox and yellow fever and the later history includes people coming from Europe to work in dismal conditions in the mines and factories, and it never has been easy for the farmers who grow those amber waves of grain.  All the reminders of that stuff have been piling on for months, and if you haven’t felt the weight of it, maybe you just haven’t been paying attention.

            I am convinced, though, that the mourning does not come without a blessing, some kind of comfort.  Honestly, I’m not entirely sure yet what that will be.  Nevertheless, I will express a hope and a speculation about what God may have in mind.  It’s something that I believe God has in mind not just for this nation, but for every nation.  It includes comfort not just for one person who mourns, but for all who carry grief in their hearts.  I think it’s the discovery that we have within us all, by God’s grace alone and not by our own nature, the ability to ask for and to offer forgiveness and to demonstrate the kind of caring that sees each human being for who they are, one who carries the image of God, and who is therefore worthy of dignity.  I think that we have finally started to do what Abraham Lincoln put before the Union only about a month before his death.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”[3]

           It is, after all, “a patriot’s dream that sees, beyond the years, our alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears”.  It is a patriot’s dream that God will look not only upon our nation but upon our world and “mend her every flaw, confirm her soul in self-control, her liberty in law”.  Blessed are those who mourn, for in that day they will be comforted.

            So,

“Keep your voice from weeping,
   and your eyes from tears;
for there is a reward for your work,
says the Lord:
   they shall come back from the land of the enemy; 
there is hope for your future,
says the Lord.” [Jeremiah 31:16-17]




[1] Anne LaMott, “Ladders” in Small Victories (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014), 29-30.
[2] from “Both Sides Now”
[3] Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address” http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html


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