alleluias on a cold November morning
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
What a promise, today especially as we remember the ones we have lost.
Mourning is something we cannot avoid. Loss is our companion on this earth - a painful companion who reminds us of the hope of heaven.
The promise of this blessing is not that the mourning will disappear, but that comfort accompanies it.
This is a reminder of who we are called to be as the church - we are recipients of the Holy Spirit, the one Christ calls Comforter, that we might comfort others.
If you are one who mourns, this promise is a delayed comfort. You will be comforted.
I hope it is today.
But sometimes, the comfort is farther in the future. And some days that might offer comfort in itself - you can return to this promise and it might alleviate some of the pain, knowing comfort looms on the horizon.
It might, but it might just make the hurt hurt more.
It might leave you feeling poor in spirit, and if that is so, you will be comforted, and the kingdom of heaven is yours.
These verses remind us that mourning and feeling poor in spirit, and meekness and hungering and thirsting do not place us outside God’s love, and do not mean we are forgotten by God.
Some of us today are mourning our loved ones who are even now in God’s presence.
Some of us are mourning other losses.
Maybe we’re mourning canceled family gatherings, and anxiously pre-mourning what Thanksgiving and Christmas will bring.
We mourn the persistence of the coronavirus and the lives that have been taken by it.
We mourn the divisions in our country that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and further exacerbated by politicians whose speeches can be described as the anti-Beatitudes.
Let me be clear that I include all politicians, this is in no way a partisan comment. Isn’t this how they divide us? By promising to protect us from the things Jesus calls blessings?
These divisions are certainly something to be mourned.
It is not at all the same as mourning a loved one, a beloved one, a parent, child, partner, friend.
Grief - suffering - cannot be quantified or compared.
But this is true, regardless of what your heart mourns today:
Our faith equips us for sadness and mourning.
Our faith equips us with Lamentations and Psalms and the Beatitudes and the reality of Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Yes, our faith also brings us to Easter Sunday, but on a cold November day it may be hard to imagine spring’s alleluias.
And that’s ok - there is an appointed time for every event under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to mourn and a time to dance.
We can no more rush through the season of mourning than November’s cold ground can bring forth spring buds.
It may be hard to imagine spring’s alleluias today, but today has its own alleluias:
O blest communion, fellowship divine, we feebly struggle, they in glory shine, yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine - alleluia, alleluia.
Observing grief isn’t wallowing in sadness, but sitting with the reality of loss and heartache - sometimes, that looks and feels a lot like wallowing in sadness.
But there is a difference, rooted in our belief in Resurrection, a belief that brings us into and through grief.
The reality of Resurrection doesn’t protect us from the sadness of loss but reminds us that even our sadness is moored in faith and hope.
We’re invited to bring our whole selves to wherever it is we may be - and let tears fall if they want to, and let grief, fear and sadness sit with us if they show up.
And we can worship.
We can hear God’s healing Word, and we can lift our hearts and voices in prayer and song, and we can name our grief while also joining with all the saints who have gone before and asking the question:
Death, where is your sting?
Perhaps today the answer to that question is: death’s sting is all too present.
If so, the gift of faith is the reminder that while death and grief are real, they are not the most real thing.
The most real thing is the love and grace of the Eternal, Risen God who did and does defeat death.
(This is an excerpt from a sermon on Matthew 5:1-12 for All Saints Day [11.1.20] )
