I want to understand why Jesus should have said, in his first recorded discipleship training session with the twelve, that those who mourn are blessed.
I'm speculating, just for the sake of mulling things over, that this beatitude goes beyond a promise of comfort to those who mourn, but honors the mournful with blessing because the heart of the mourner is in some sense even desirable.
Why do I say this? Well, simply because I take that to be the sense of the other beatitudes that surround it. There is a quality about being “poor in spirit” that God honors. Meekness is quite possibly like this also, and certainly hunger and thirst for righteousness, peacemaking, and all the others are as well. Why should this one beatitude be otherwise?
Okay, that's a thought, as they say. But does this mean that God prefers us to go around sorrowful and burdened all the time? What could possibly be so valuable about mournfulness?
It would be good to remember at this point a simple rule of thumb: all the promises of God are delivered to us through Christ. Got that? Let's just set it off in a blockquote for good measure:
All the promises of God are delivered to us through Christ.But let's make that a tad more specific:
All the promises of God were purchased for us by Christ at the cross.So whenever you see a promise in the Scriptures, think to yourself, that promise was purchased for me by Christ with is very lifeblood.
OK: so here is Christ speaking to his disciples, and kind of enumerating some of the major blessings of the kingdom—the kingdom he's been proclaiming from the very start of his ministry, saying it was near at hand—and among those blessings are comfort for those who mourn. But remember, the disciples don't understand (yet) what we understand—that Christ himself will deliver on that promise of comfort by taking the wrath of God at sin upon himself.
To put it another way, then:
The cross comforts those who mourn.But I started this post by saying that there was something about mourning, even as there is something about, for example, hunger and thirst for righteousness, that God will honor. In other words, mourning may reveal a quality of heart that is receptive to the blessings of the kingdom.
Maybe so, but why? I would say because it helps to position us to carry our our calling as ambassadors of Christ in a broken world. I suggest that God has a kingdom purpose in aligning his children with the broken-hearted. Remember, the beatitudes are a part of a training-session for Christ-followers. The kingdom comes to such as these: the poor in spirit, the broken-hearted, the meek, the hungry for righteousness, the peacemakers, etc., and then, as kingdom representatives, they offer the kingdom to others. When we, not standing aloof but entering into the brokenness of the world as broken ones ourselves, but holding out the word of life, the light of the Gospel, we are then true to our calling as disciples.
3 comments:
i think that there is truth to these words and they were especially good to read today.
the peace of God be with you.
Your point about Christ's death purchasing blessings for us was well said. Great job. It's up to us to use them but Christ has bought them.
If a person does not mourn it's because they don't see pain and pain which leads to death (the wages of sin), is what the Gospel answers.
That's a key point that I fear I didn't make strongly enough. Even when we mourn the death of a loved one, whether we know it or not we are mourning about sin. But it is when we do know it--the death is the wage of sin--that the cross becomes the source of our comfort.
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