Matthew 5.4

The first 12 verses of Matthew 5 teach what some call The Beatitudes, others The Sermon on the Mount, and what is called perhaps the most difficult and perplexing of all of Jesus’ teachings to all who have ever carefully considered these words. It is after a close examination of the words of this message of Jesus’ that Mohamed Gandhi infamously (to us) expressed the idea: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ." And he was right. The closer I look at these words the further I feel I am from living as a part of them.

Before we jump into this I want to encourage you to look at this carefully. Look at Jesus Christ carefully. No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, and even if you don’t feel you are on a spiritual journey at all, this glimpse of Jesus is worth your time. I want to encourage you to focus on looking past everything you’ve been told about Jesus and everything you’ve interpreted by studying people claiming to represent him and simply consider what he has to say. Does it ring true with how the world all around us operates? Is his way a better way?

Each of these verses plays an important individual role in creating a bigger picture that Jesus is illustrating for us here but each verse can stand on its own—can be examined on its own. With that being said I want to make the disclaimer that I will not necessarily be teaching these verses in the order they appear in your Bible. Jesus had his reasons for teaching these in the order he did because of who he was teaching. I have my reasons for changing that order slightly because of who I am teaching. Now if you would please join us in Matthew chapter 5…

Matthew 5:4
God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

I’d like to get started in this by first unpacking the actual syntax of this verse. I think it’s going to be important to do this with every verse in this list. That is, I think we should start by actually breaking down the sentence structure so that we understand everything it could possibly mean from every possible angle before getting started. It’s tempting to look at difficult teachings like this one and try to exempt ourselves from doing what it clearly calls us to by trying to blur the lines. Many of us look at things like this and say it was strictly metaphoric or strictly legalistic and either way you have to force something to happen in the words. I think that by carefully breaking down the sentence containing the TRUTH we’ll find that there just aren’t that many angles. It means what it says but it’s still important for us to proceed with caution. Here’s my breakdown:
1. We should—mourn.
2. God blesses—those who do mourn.
3. And those who—mourn will eventually have no reason to mourn anymore (i.e. they will be comforted).
So, for me, this brings on these questions: What does it mean for me to mourn (i.e. what is Jesus getting at)? For what/whom does Jesus want me to mourn?

In order to start answering this question I think it’s important that we get a solid definition of what it means to mourn. To mourn is first and foremost to express sorrow or grief over any undesirable circumstance—most often it is associated with death. Here in Jesus’ words death could mean a literal or spiritual lack of life. When Jesus says we should mourn he means that we should hurt when there is reason to hurt—when we see others hurting. It should bother us when we see the hopelessness of unbelievers or the hurt of our believing brothers and sisters. It should bother us that people are hungry, cold, sick, depressed, injured, etc.

For a better understanding of what this kind of mourning looks like, consider Jesus arriving at the tomb of Lazarus. Here we find every Sunday school child’s favorite Bible verse: “Jesus wept.” He mourned. But why? Does Jesus cry here because he misses his friend Lazarus? Of course not. I know this because Jesus knows that Lazarus is not gone forever (John 11:11) why would he mourn over someone he knows he’ll see in 10 minutes. Jesus mourns here because he looks around at all of the people he cares about, and they are hurting—they’re shattered. John 11:33 says Jesus saw the mourners and a deep anger welled within him and he was deeply troubled, then he wept in verse 35. Jesus saw things that were just so painful that it made him angry—the bible says it troubled him deeply—and it’s for this that he mourns.

So when Jesus says “God blesses those who mourn” he means that we should be aware of our surroundings. We should know who’s hurting and why. And we should care. He’s calling us to open our eyes to the people all around us, our friends and enemies, strangers and family, and when our eyes are opened he’s calling us to take on the weight of their hurt. In the Kingdom of God no one is alone and certainly not when they’re hurting.

I hope you can recognize that through this study of the Beatitudes I’m going to try to focus much less on what we should do—how we should look and feel and act—and focus much more on what the Kingdom of God is like. We don’t have to try to act or feel or look a certain way, we can just be a part of what God is doing in the world all around us. And from what I can tell God is comforting the mourners and Jesus mourns beside them so let us mourn as Jesus does. Let us join the Kingdom of God.