“Bible promises: Blessed are those who mourn”
Matthew 5:4
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I’m not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep swallowing.”
So wrote C. S. Lewis in his book, A Grief Observed.
Born in November of 1898 in Belfast, Ireland, Lewis served in the first World War, and then became a professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University. In time, he wrote more than thirty books including The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, and, probably his best known, The Chronicles of Narnia.
But what you might not know is that, for the first fifty-seven years of his life, he was a bachelor--never married. That’s when he met and married an American poet and writer named Joy Gresham. And from that moment on, his life would never be the same.
But just a year later, while she was standing in the kitchen, her leg suddenly broke. When she was rushed to the hospital, tests showed that she had cancer, and that it had spread. She would die three years later, in July of 1960, at the age of forty-five.
And as Lewis remembered his Joy and all she meant to him, he wrote of the grief he felt in his heart. He said, “Where is God? Go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence…Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in times of trouble?”
But even in our grief, no matter how deep or dark it might be, the Bible has a promise. And we find it in the words of Matthew chapter 5.
It’s been said that Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is the greatest sermon anyone has ever preached. It’s the Magna Carta, the “great charter” of the kingdom of God. When poet and pastor John Donne preached on it back in 1629, he said, “All the articles of our religion, all the canons of our church, all the injunctions of our princes, all the homilies of our fathers, and all the body of divinity is in these three chapters, in this one Sermon on the Mount.” Luther wrote, “If you do not want to have the Gospel or be a Christian, then go out and take the world’s side. Then you will be its friend and no one will persecute you. But if you want to have the Gospel and Christ, then you must count on having trouble, conflict, and persecution wherever you go.” And he wrote, “Therefore, bid goodbye to the world and all that harm us, in the name of their lord, the devil, and let us sing this song and be cheerful, in the name of God and Christ.” And another wrote, “Christ’s Sermon on the Mount is countercultural, unsettling, dangerous, and outrageous. It’s simply impossible! And while it takes only fifteen minutes to read, it takes a lifetime to live.”
And it’s no surprise, for it’s in this sermon that we find words like these: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3)...”Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5)...”You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” (Matthew 5:13). And it was in this sermon that Jesus taught us how to pray, saying, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name” (Matthew 6:9).
Even more, not only did Jesus speak, He spoke with authority! He said in chapter 5: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you…” (Matthew 5:21-22)...“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you…” (Matthew 5:27-28)...and “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you…” (Matthew 5:38-39).
It’s no wonder then that, when His sermon was done, the Bible says: “The crowds were amazed, astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29).
So it was in the words of our text. As Jesus said: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
Now if we could, let’s take a look at the original language for just a moment, because it’s important. For you see, when Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” He used a very special word. In fact, out of the nine different words He could have used for grief and sorrow and mourning, He chose the strongest and most severe word of all.
So when Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn,” it’s the kind of grief Abraham knew when he lost his wife Sarah (Genesis 23:2), when Jacob lost his son Joseph (Genesis 37:34-35), and David lost his son Absalom (II Samuel 19:1). It’s the kind of grief the people of Judah and Jerusalem knew when they lost their king, King Josiah (II Chronicles 35:24). And it’s the grief Samuel knew as he grieved over Saul and his failure to obey (I Samuel 15:35).
In the words of commentator William Barclay, “This is the kind of grief which takes such a hold on man that it cannot be hidden. It’s not only the sorrow that brings an ache to the heart; it’s the sorrow that brings unrestrainable tears to the eyes.”
Grief is inevitable. It’s universal. Sooner or later everyone has to pass through it. It touches young and old, rich and poor, male and female--none are exempt. Everyone grieves because everyone, at some point, experiences loss.
And mourning isn’t limited to the loss of someone who’s died. We mourn the loss of relationships and the way things were. As one author wrote, “Every goodbye could be your last, because before you know it, it will be your last.”
We mourn the loss of jobs and careers--something that you once lived for and poured your life into is suddenly gone.
We mourn the loss of the world around us. Things are not the way they used to be.
And we mourn the sin that’s inside of us. In the words of David Brainerd, a missionary to the Indians, “In my morning devotions, my soul was exceedingly melted, and bitterly mourned over my exceeding sinfulness and vileness.” And Christina Rossetti said in her poem Good Friday: “Am I a stone and not a sheep, that I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross, to number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss, and yet not weep? Not so the sun and moon which hid their faces in a starless sky. A horror of great darkness at broad noon--I, only I.”
But what did Jesus say? He said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be,” what? “They shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
Let’s stop there for just a moment.
Did you know that the world’s most beautiful Christians aren’t the young, the rich, the educated, the successful, or the influential? Don’t get me wrong--those persons might be happy, but their lives are shallow, because the Sculptor hasn’t yet picked up His hammer and chisel.
So who are the world’s most beautiful Christians? They’re the ones who have deeply suffered and come through it with their faith in God still intact. They might not laugh as much as others do and their faces are lined with care. But the beauty of Christ is in their eyes, and their voices testify to God’s amazing grace.
And you know, those are the very Christians who are superbly qualified to minister to others. They’re the ones who have been deeply hurt by the trials and troubles of this life, yet through it all have discovered that God is faithful.
No one understands cancer like someone who has been through it. No one understands divorce like someone who has been through it. No one understands the pain of a miscarriage like a mother who has lost her child. And no one knows the pain of losing a job like someone who has been told, “You’re fired.”
And those who have been there and know it have an important message to share. With conviction, they can say, “I know that God will take care of you, because He took care of me.”
As Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
Back in the mid-1900s, author and pastor A.W. Tozer wrote an article called That Incredible Christian. Part of it went something like this: “The Christian believes that in Christ he has died, yet he’s more alive now than he ever was before and fully expects to live forever. And though he walks on earth, his home is in heaven.
“He loses his life to save it, and is in danger of losing it if he attempts to keep it. He’s strongest when he’s weakest, and weakest when he’s strong. Though poor, he has the power to make others rich. And he has the most after he’s given most everything away.
“He feels overwhelmed and undone in God’s presence, yet there’s no place he would rather be than in that presence. And though he knows he’s been cleansed from all sin, yet he’s painfully aware that in his flesh dwells no good thing. He feels that he is nothing, yet believes, without question, that the Eternal Son of God became flesh and died for him on the cross of shame.
“He’s both a confirmed pessimist and a confirmed optimist, the likes of which can’t be found anywhere else on earth. When he looks at the cross, he’s a pessimist, for he knows that the same judgment that fell on the Lord of glory condemns all the world of men. Yet he knows that, if the cross condemns the world, the resurrection of Christ guarantees God’s ultimate triumph of good.”
And that’s what makes Christians so incredible!
One more thing--not quite eighty years ago, back in 1948, artist Andrew Wyeth painted a picture of what he would call Christina’s World. Set in a stark landscape of coastal Maine, it depicts a young woman, seen from behind, wearing a pink dress, and lying in a grassy field. And though it seems as if she’s sitting in the grass, actually, she’s trying to crawl.
You see, Wyeth’s neighbor, a girl named Anna Christina Olson, was born with a disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which meant she was never able to walk, even as a child. And since she was firmly against ever using a wheelchair, she crawled everywhere she went, using her arms to drag her lower body along.
So why did he paint a picture of her? He said, “The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.”
And in many ways, isn’t that just what we are? People who are extraordinarily conquering life when most would consider us hopeless, all by the grace and the power of God.
As Jesus once said in His Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
We thank You, Father, for the hope, joy, strength, and comfort that only You can give. Keep us firm in our faith as we seek, through all our trials and troubles of this life, to follow You. This we ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen