Blessed Are Those That Mourn

 (This sermon was originally preached at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Nashville, Tennessee, November 1, 2020, but was preached again at Believer's Baptist Fellowship in Hendersonville, TN on November 7, 2021 after the death of their first pastor, Tim Rayborn.  You can view the St. Philip's service, HERE. The sermon begins at 14:27 or hear audio of the Believer's Baptist Fellowship Sermon on Soundcloud HERE.   The Gospel Reading for the day was Matthew 5:1-12. The focal passage is Matthew 5:4)

I had actually been working on a different passage and a different sermon for today, but I changed that this week.  Though “All Saints Day” is actually November 1, many churches around the world are honoring that day today.  All Saints Day is a day that we set aside to formally remember those in larger church family and in our lives who have set an example of faith for us. We recall those who have demonstrated a faith worth emulating. We give thanks for an example that helps us envision what a life well-lived looks like. Last year was the first All Saints Day that I experienced without my father, Doug O’Rear. He died of COVID on July 30, 2020. My dad had many wonderful qualities that are certainly worth of remembering, honoring, and emulating.

I changed my sermon for today, however, because I know that today the members of this congregation are remembering their first pastor, Tim Rayborn, and grieving the loss of him this week. I served with Tim in the Tennessee Cooperative Baptist Fellowship years ago and appreciated his kindness, his gentle demeanor, and his friendship.  I know that each of you have your own stories of Tim and how he cared for you and this congregation over the years. He is remembered for his love of God, his kindness, and his openness to other’s ideas. He was kind and caring. Like my dad, Tim too had many wonderful qualities that are worth of remembering, honoring, and emulating.

A day like today might also cause us to reflect on those in our lives and history who have not been good examples to us or who might have actually hurt us in one way or another in our walk of faith.  Either way, a day like today can be a day of sadness. Our passage today is from the collection of Jesus’ teachings that call “The Sermon on the Mount”. In these teachings, Jesus covers many topics, 0ne of these statements is about those who mourn. Because this day of remembering those who have gone before us in faith, I thought I might focus today on this teaching from our reading this morning.

My friend, Dr. Bruce Vaughn, describes what he calls a “dialectic of grief” that can be simply stated that in the moment when we feel most connected to something or someone we have lost, we simultaneous feel the joy and gratitude of the memory and the deep sadness of their absence in our lives. On a day of remembering, like today, we can experience deep gratitude as we remember those heroes of our faith and we can experience the simultaneous awareness that these people are now physically absent from our lives. I have heard it said that grief is simply learning to love in the absence of those we have lost. This seems true and is beautiful to me; grief is simply learning to love in the absence of those we have lost.

Many Bible Scholars note that when Jesus says “Blessed are those who mourn”, he is not necessarily thinking of those who have lost a loved one or those who are grieving the loss of someone, but have suggested that Jesus is speaking to those who look at the world in its current state and grieve how far we are from God’s ideal for us.  As we look around us, even today, we see many things to grieve as we continue to see those who struggle economically and those who will go to bed tonight without sufficient food or a decent place to sleep. We grieve when we continue to see mistreatment of people in our country simply because of the color of their skin. We should grieve when we see the division and lack of love in our political system, when people are seen only as their political party and not as human beings. There is a sadness we should feel when any person is reduced to one aspect of themselves and treated as less than a child of God because of that one thing. You and I could add many things to this list of things to grieve because there are so many ways that our world does not reflect the kingdom of God as we read about it in scripture. How odd that Jesus says we are blessed.

The same Bible scholars who suggest that the grieving Jesus is talking about is how much our current world misses the mark, would also suggest that Jesus’ blessing and promise of comfort is a promise for the future, leaving us with our grief regarding the world as it is now. We know that our faith and our tradition certainly hold a belief that God will someday set the world in order and God’s Will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We read in Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”  This is clearly indicating that the comfort promised will definitely come at some point in the future.  However, I think there is an application of these teachings of Jesus that we call the “Beatitudes”, including, “Blessed are those who mourn” that has to do with how we live our life until that unknown time in the future.

Mourning is not something we like to do but mourning comes to us about a number of things in our lives.  We can certainly mourn the loss of a person that we have lost to death, but we might also mourn the loss of a relationship, a job, a house, a pet, a dream, or any other thing we may have lost. Many, if not most of us, have experienced some grief during this time of COVID as we have been forced to change our plans or miss gatherings with friends and family in order to keep ourselves and others safe from the virus.  Our lives are not going as we imagined that they would and that loss of how we expected things to be is a form of mourning. Mourning the loss of anything or anyone is emotional, and the more connected we are to that person, thing or idea, the deeper the sadness that we experience.  If we are deeply connected to another person, the grief we feel can truly feel like our heart is aching. We can feel as if we have lost a piece of ourselves. The depth of sadness can be so big that we feel we cannot bear it. We may fear overwhelming our friends with our sadness or we may fear that if we allow ourselves to feel sad, there will be no end to the sadness. For this reason, people often try to avoid the feelings of grief. People may try to distract themselves with extra work or mindless activities or they may try to numb themselves with alcohol or other drugs.  They may adopt a false attitude of positivity because they believe that they are being “strong” by not showing emotion. Unfortunately, our culture has reinforced this cowboy image, especially for men, that sees sadness and tears as weakness and rewards emotional stoicism.  However, grief is hard, and grief is painful, and grief cannot be avoided without some complications.

When Jesus announces a blessing for those who mourn, perhaps he is saying that there is truly a blessing in allowing ourselves to mourn that we do not receive if we try to avoid mourning. Blessed are those that can let themselves feel the depth of their sadness. Blessed are those who acknowledge their feelings and let themselves cry.  Blessed are those who make space in their lives to recognize losses and identify the grief that follows. You might say to me, however, “Chris, crying never solved anything!” or “Crying doesn’t change anything.” 

And, I would partially agree with you.  Crying and feeling sad does not bring back what is lost, that is true, but it does honor the deep love we have for what has been lost and it honors the deep connection with that which has been lost. Our expression of grief does not change the present situation, but it honors the significance of the past. If we do not allow ourselves to openly grieve; if we try to avoid grief or deny grief, our grief will catch up with us. Unexpressed grief can ferment into depression. Grief that is not recognized, can fester into resentment. Unexpressed grief can grow up to become anger. We deny ourselves the opportunity for full living if we do not express our grief and grief that is not expressed can be compounded and become more intense with subsequent losses.

There is another way that grief is tied to living life to its fullest. Some people, consciously or unconsciously, recognize that the deeper they are connected to another person, the bigger their feelings of grief and the deeper their sadness. Because of this, they may try to limit how close they allow themselves to get to others. They tend to keep people at an arm’s length, emotionally speaking. They tend to downplay the importance of other people and may treat relationships and people as if they are disposable and unimportant. Living life this way, leads to shallow connection and subsequently deep loneliness. The resulting feelings can lead to anger, depression, and resentment. Some people may wish to avoid the disappointment and grief that comes when life is not going as they think it should and so, they seek to control situations and people to get the outcome they desire. But a manipulated outcome is ultimately unsatisfying and attempts to control others regularly result in resentment and frustration on the part of those are trying to be controlled. Again, the resulting feelings can lead to anger, depression, and resentment. This is not a life lived in fullness and freedom. It is not a life of abundance. 

It seems paradoxical to say that grieving is part of an abundant life or that grief could be part of the kingdom of God, but as we understand the nature of grief, it seems clear that it is. If we can grieve well, then we allow ourselves to get emotionally close to others. If we can grieve well, we allow depth in our relationships. We allow ourselves to be known deeply and intimately as we seek to know others in the same way.  When we can acknowledge our grief about things not going as we thought they should, we become more accepting of life as it is – struggles and all. I want to be clear about something, however.  Taking our feelings of grief and sadness seriously is not the opposite of hope. Grief and sadness are not things we feel instead of hope. We can have hope for the future, and we can believe that God will be present in our future and still allow ourselves to feel our deep feelings of grief, sadness, and disappointment. Deep joy in life, fullness of life, is directly tied to our ability to recognize and express our grief. There is no way to avoid grief. We either actively deal with it, or our grief will deal with us.

So, while it seems nonsensical at first, Jesus speaks wisdom to us. Blessed are those who can allow themselves to grieve and to feel their deep sadness.  They will be comforted by the memory of those with whom they have shared deep connection. They will be comforted by the deep and meaningful relationships in the future. They will avoid the discomfort of depression, resentment, and destructive anger. Those who can grieve well are truly blessed. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.  

 Amen.   

If you are interested in knowing how best to respond to a person who is grieving, read my post from March 2020 HERE.  

Old Heaters & Extra Doorknobs

I recently opened a new  counseling office at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in the Donelson area of Nashville.  (I am not doing counseling there myself, but am renting that office to other therapists.)  I did the re-decorating of the office myself.  When I first went to the office, it needed a little work.  There was peeling paint, missing trim on the walls, and old light fixtures.  There were also some peculiar things in the office.  The remnants of an old wall heater remained attached to the wall and oddly, there was a second doorknob on the door to the office.  I could see why the heater had been abandoned and why it would be a challenge to remove from the wall without having to do major repair to the wall, but that extra doorknob, I could only imagine how that might have come to be.  Only one of the two doorknobs actually worked.  So, I imagined that at some point the original doorknob had stopped working and was replaced, but the knob was not replaced in its original position, but a new doorknob was placed above the first on the door.  I could not remove the non-functioning doorknob without replacing the whole door.  So, I painted around them both.  

The Work of therapy is not unlike the office.  Like the new office bore the marks of those who had inhabited it previously, our lives and relationships do bear the marks – positive and negative – of our previous experiences.  When we take time to tend to the needs of our internal world, there is much work that can be done to bring about change.  We can replace things that used to work, but no longer work.  We can add things that are missing – new skills, new understandings, and the like.  The work that we do on ourselves can radically change who we are. I could have written about how sometimes, we avoid working on things in our lives because the task seems too big or we fear it will cost too much to do the work we think we need to do.  That might have been a valid reflection, however, I began to think about how in the work of therapy, there are sometimes things about us that just do not seem to change.  For an individual, there seem to be some things about our core personality that remain true no matter what.  John Gottman, in his study of marriages, has noted that two-thirds of the things that couple’s fight about are things that cannot be resolved.  They are issues that cannot be changed or issues that have no easy resolution. 

Part of the work of therapy, is realizing that some things about us or our situations cannot be changed. Such things must be examined and understood as best as possible, but the work of therapy becomes acceptance of the given reality and to working with it.  This can be challenging depending on what the issue is.  However, we can learn to accept and adapt.  We cannot always remove the extra doorknobs of our lives or repair the ones that are broken.  We cannot always remove the things that no longer work without doing more damage or creating more difficulty.  So, we learn to make peace with what is.  We stop fighting against what cannot change and learn to accept.  This may mean accepting certain things about ourselves or about those close to us that are difficult, but it is possible to learn to make peace or adapt. 

If you would like to see before and after pictures of the office, visit https://www.counselingatstphilips.com/news

 

Grief: What Helps and What Does Not

Life is filled with many kinds of losses.  We obviously lose loved ones, pets, and friends to death, but we can also grieve the loss of homes, jobs, dreams, hopes, and function or ability.  When talking with someone about any loss and difficulty it is sometimes difficult to know what to say.   Below is a list of common things that should not be said to someone who is grieving and list of things that may be more helpful.

Things Not to Say

• “I know how you feel” (Even if you have been through something similar, you cannot know exactly what this person is feeling and most people will feel anger at such statements because they want to feel their feelings and express their experience. There is no place for comparing experiences at this point.)

• “There is a reason for everything” or “It’s all part of God’s plan”. (The person may be able to find meaning in their loss later, but may not. Either way, that is something they have to come to on their own.)

• “He/she is in a better place” (While the person grieving may believe this themselves, this does not change the fact that they miss the presence of what is lost.)

• “You can always…remarry, have another child, get another pet, etc.” (One thing can never replace something that is lost.  We can learn to live with our loss and we may learn love and connect again, but we will always miss that which was lost.)

• “This is behind you now; it is time to get on with your life” or “That was so long ago, aren’t you over that yet?” (Grief takes as long as it takes for a person and each person grieves in their own way.)

• “You should do this” or “You shouldn’t feel that” (Any statement of this sort is more about our discomfort and/or need to try to fix the problem and is less about the grief of the person.)

Things to Say (and do)

• “I don’t know how you feel, but I am here to help anyway I can.” (Do not offer to help if you don’t really mean it.  It is better to offer to do specific things because those who are grieving can’t always think about more mundane needs.  Either way, let the person feel what they feel, express it how they need to, and for as long as they need to.)

• “I wish I had something to say that could make it better, but know I care about you.” (It is better to say that you don’t know what to say than to just say something that you think might make someone feel better.  You probably can’t make it better and the person just needs someone with them at that moment.)

• Say nothing (Instead of trying to say the “right thing”, just offer someone a hug.  If you sit with someone, but comfortable with silences; don’t try to fill it.  Allow them to tell you the story of how their loved one died or about their loss.  Every telling of that story helps.)

• Don’t rush grief (Grieving takes as long as at takes and people express grief in many ways.)

• Mind the special occasions (The first year after a loss can be particularly difficult with the “first” holiday, birthday, etc. without the loved one.  Offer extra support at those times and over time.  Remember most people will offer care and support until after the funeral. )

 For additional resources on what to do and say and what not to do and say, check out the following websites:

www.helpingguide.org/mental/helping_grieving.htm

www.grief.com

www.griefspeaks.com