By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
We’re in the very beginning of a series on the Sermon On The Mount which I consider the penultimate teaching on how to live a Christ-like life in an evil world.
Jesus isn’t looking for people who already have it together, he’s looking for people willing to be shaped into this kind of Believer. For instance, the 8 Beatitudes we are currently working on aren’t 8 separate types of people, they are 8 characteristics of the kind of person Jesus is trying to shape us into through the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The concept is similar to the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Love, Joy, peace, etc. are not for 9 different people but they are the result in each of us of Christ living in each of us.
The second thing to keep in mind is that “Blessed” isn’t about being happy, it’s about God giving us his blessing for living life as he is describing in the Beatitudes. Somewhat like God being our cheerleader. “ Now you’re getting it. Good job. Be Blessed.”
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt 5:4) Too many of us live in a world where we believe Christians shouldn’t be unhappy. Where we are always supposed to be “fine. I’m just fine.”
If that were true, then this Beatitude seems out of place. It shouldn’t even be here if we are always supposed to be joyful and never sad, never in need of comfort. If you’re old enough to read this newspaper, then you’re old enough to know that life comes in all colors and sadness, loss, mourning are just some of them. No one escapes life without loss.
Maybe loss of a loved one, or a dream, or a job. But we all suffer losses and need to mourn over those losses. This Beatitude gives us not just permission to mourn but assurance that when we do, we will find comfort in his arms.
So, what is Christ telling us here? First, that we don’t need fake smiles and platitudes to be a Believer. If we stuff our grieving deep down inside, it turns into a hard heart. It escapes in the form of depression, anger and bitterness. Instead of it maturing us into a person the world can admire, it turns the world off on a life with Christ.
I found it interesting that the tense in the Greek is “present, perfect” which means we live in a constant state of mourning. That caught me off-guard because I thought of mourning as over specific events that once mourned, would lead to a time without mourning.
One author, Matt Chandler, pointed out that the on-going nature of mourning has a lot to do with our sin. When we come to Christ, we are led into a season of conviction where we begin to see our sin and are offered the chance to ask forgiveness. Part of that process is mourning that our sin caused him to die on that cross.
Repentance involves mourning our past behavior as well as committing to walk more carefully with Christ. And, as we have discovered, that season of conviction is without end.
The longer we walk with Christ, the more conviction we feel over all those deeply hidden sins we have never even recognized until we grew closer to the Light Himself.
Conviction is not a bad thing. It is an invitation by the Holy Spirit to a closer walk with Jesus and a healthier life in Christ. Mourning means that we are in need of our Father’s comfort and his promise here is that if we will recognize our need to mourn and turn to him, we will find the comfort we need.
Whether the mourning is over a loss or a conviction, if He is where we turn, He is delighted with us, congratulating us on our choice to come to Him, blessing us for knowing that our comfort is not in a bottle or a drug or a lifestyle but in Him.
There is another reason that mourning is a constant in our lives and that is the state we find our world in. We are to mourn over our sin, but we also find the world so evil that we mourn over the lives going to Hell without the knowledge of Christ’s grace and the lifestyles so far from Christ’s desire that people are in denial of their sin, just like we used to be.
Christ doesn’t want us screaming at the world, yelling at how sinful it is. He desires that we love the world so much that its sin and brokenness cause us to empathize to the point of hurting over it.
We can’t reach the world from anger but from love. Our abuse and scorn will drive them further away. Love will transform our enemies. Love will show them that there is a better way. Love will draw them to Christ.
That kind of love only grows out of a closer walk with God until we have his heart. And his heart is so broken over their loss, that he mourns for them as Jesus did over Jerusalem.
We do not have to pretend to be “Fine”. We can admit that we suffer loss, we can admit that we are convicted of our sin, we can admit that the brokenness in the world causes us to grieve. This beatitude gives us permission to grieve as Christ grieves.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.