PsalterMark

1. As Blossoms Smitten by the Rain
When did you last shed a tear? Was it a tear of joy, sadness, or some other emotion. I am prone to well-up when something gets to me in terms of humour. Tim Vine—a contemporary English comedian—in particular gets to me. When I listen to him, the first joke produces a wry smile, the second a chuckle, the third a loud laugh and by the fourth the tears will start. One Christmas I was given a Tim Vine Joke book and by lunchtime I could not speak to explain why I found the book so funny and could not see my brussels sprouts through my tears and steamed up glasses.

The other thing that gets the water flowing is cinema—especially when a character I’ve invested in has a really terrible time and then eventually everything comes good for them. So, tears of joy are a regular thing for me.

Does this mean I’ll get the harsh end of Jesus’ woe in Luke 6?

Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Luke 6:25b, NIVUK

In my defence, like the majority of people on this planet I’ve known tears associated with mourning. The last day I saw my biological father, the day the police broke down my best friend’s door to find out why he wasn’t answering his phone, being two of the worst.

Are such tears—mourning over family and friends—what Jesus has in mind in the beatitudes?

Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Matthew 5:4, NIVUK

Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Luke 6:21b, NIVUK

Some interpreters in the past have seen such mourning and tears as the repentance, so important elsewhere in the Bible as our appropriate response to our brokenness and sin.

Are there two options for understanding Jesus here? Our common experience of the loss of those we love versus remorse for our failings before God. Well no. It is not a choice between these two. It is rather that these two forms of mourning are symptomatic of something bigger.

We can see this when we realise that Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61:2 in Matthew 5:4. This is the same passage that he quoted as he announced the start of his ministry (see Luke 4:16–20):

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion –
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendour.
Isaiah 61:1-3, NIVUK

The context for Isaiah, and for Jesus, is the wider brokenness of humanity and our need for reconciliation with God. This is nothing less than the gospel. Each of the beatitudes is a window on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They each reflect on the twin “now and not yet” dynamic of the good news. We have a foretaste now, and know in part, but await the fullness in the age to come.

2. The Power to Look within the Veil
It is not that God wants us to mourn but rather that we, the human race, collectively chose the hard path of disobedience; subjecting God’s good creation to sin and death. But all things work to good in Christ—even our tears, mourning and pain can be refracted in God’s grace.

William H. Burleigh the Victorian poet captures this in his poem, Blessed are they that Mourn:

O, deem not that earth’s crowning bliss
Is found in joy alone;
For sorrow, bitter though it be,
Hath blessings all its own;
From lips divine, like healing balm,
To hearts oppressed and torn,
This heavenly consolation fell —
“Blessed are they that mourn!”

As blossoms smitten by the rain
Their sweetest odors yield —
As where the ploughshare deepest strikes
Rich harvests crown the field,
So, to the hopes by sorrow crushed,
A nobler faith succeeds;
And life, by trials furrowed, bears
The fruit of loving deeds.

Who never mourned, hath never known
What treasures grief reveals:
The sympathies that humanize,
The tenderness that heals,
The power to look within the veil
And learn the heavenly lore,
The key-word to life’s mysteries,
So dark to us before.

How rich and sweet and full of strength
Our human spirits are,
Baptized into the sanctities
Of suffering and of prayer!
Supernal wisdom, love divine,
Breathed through the lips which said,
“O, blesséd are the souls that mourn —
They shall be comforted!

The pain and mourning we all know, can be used by God. William Burleigh captures an aspect of this in his phrase: ‘The power to look within the veil’. We are in a sense veiled, we only see in part the glory that is to come. But in our journey with pain, tears and mourning the scales can be lifted a little more—piece by piece—from our eyes. How else can the Son of God, dying on a cross, be understood other than through experiences of pain, sorrow, anguish and mourning?

Is it any coincidence that the mystics who have the most profound insights into Christ knew immense suffering?

We, like them, need to be open to this possibility that such mourning brings in its wake potential blessing. Even an improved sight of the way things are—of how Christ took all mourning upon himself that, here and now, we glimpse better through a veil, thinned by connection to our saviour. Can we not find comfort and strength in that ironically our journey through darkness helps us see the light that awaits us all the better?

3. We shall be comforted
Whatever might befall us here in the Vale of Tears, we know something of the glory that awaits. There is something of the now in Jesus’ comfort. Jesus is not suggesting that we should know only tears now. This would be a misreading in an unhealthy direction. The beatitudes, of course will to an extent be a measure of all true Christian faith and experience. And yet it is also the case that some Christians throughout time and space know more of the darker side of the beatitudes, more of tears and mourning. Whilst they might know greater comfort in due course, we who mourn less are still to found in Jesus and benefit from his comfort on the Day of Days.

The beatitudes are not just to there to explain and prepare us for the way of mourning. Do we know what it means to mourn?

Like all humanity, are we pained by the loss of those we love? Does such grief cause us to despair, or to fix our faith, all the more, on Christ who will comfort us?

Do we know the pain we bring God as we wander lost, trespassing where we should not go, and missing the goals that God would have wished for us? Do we mourn for our weakness and folly? Do we repent?

Do we weep for those who do not know God? Do we mourn for those who know only injustice? Do we care when God’s children are swept away by the floodwaters of a broken dam? Do we cry out when another boat of people seeking a new life find only death? Do we mourn with those who have only ever known life in a refugee camp?

Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Luke 6:25b, NIVUK