Christian salvation and the Beatitudes #2: Those who mourn

I’ve started a series looking at Christian salvation through the lens of the Beatitudes, the blessings that open Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. Previously, I covered the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Today we will look at the second one: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

For centuries, Biblical interpreters have debated the meaning of the Beatitudes. There are two basic ways to interpret them. One way is to see them as words of comfort for downtrodden people. The other way is to understand them to be commending a particular set of virtues. Some beatitudes seem to fall more in the first camp, some fall more in the second camp, and others are completely ambiguous. In the case of the second beatitude, is Jesus comforting those who mourn or is he saying that it’s good to mourn?

When John Wesley read this beatitude, he decided that the object of mourning must be sin. If the purpose of this verse is to teach virtue, that seems like a fair interpretation. People who mourn their sin are on the path to salvation because they yearn to be holy and they are not resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Much that I wrote about the advantage of being poor in spirit could be applied to mourning given this spiritual interpretation.

However, it seems pretty obvious to interpret this beatitude as primarily offering words of comfort. It’s a promise Jesus is making to people who have suffered tragedy. It’s a promise of restoration, although we don’t know exactly what that restoration will look like. What does it mean to be comforted? I kind of wish that Jesus had said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for everything they lost will be restored exactly as it was.”

I’m worried that the comfort from our mourning will somehow take the form of no longer caring about the people we used to mourn, especially if our lost loved ones are “unsaved.” Do we receive some kind of spiritual lobotomy in heaven that turns us into serene harp players with no memory? That’s one of the questions C.S. Lewis ponders in his Great Divorce. He seems to suggest that it’s actually God whom we’ve been loving all along through the interpersonal relationships we have with other people so that when we see God “face to face” the other people will cease to matter.

It’s so easy for me to go down these hypothetical rabbit trails wondering what heaven will be like. What I do know is that mourning generally has to do with a loss of belonging, whether it involves the death of a loved one, an adolescent’s transition from the family home to a college dorm, or the end of a season of rich community. My son has been mourning our move from Virginia to New Orleans because he doesn’t feel like he has as many friends here. He felt like he belonged in Virginia.

Whatever it ends up looking like, we will belong in God’s kingdom. I hope that this means that all the beautiful moments we wish we could have back will simply be present to us in a kind of eternal now. I desperately want to see and be in the living presence of both of my grandpas again, not just the Southern Baptist one but the atheist one too. All I know is that somehow God will comfort me, so I guess that’s the best I can have for now.

Of course, another angle to take with this beatitude is its challenge to Jesus’ followers to fulfill his promise. If Jesus has promised that those who mourn will be comforted, what will we do to make sure that his promise is kept? It’s not good enough to comfort people who happen to cry in our presence. We must be proactive in seeking out the mournful. We must be intentional in reaching out to those who have withdrawn from our communities. We must be patient in sitting with them long past the time that the world considers reasonable to grieve.

My friend Jonathan Martin once asked a mentor, “How long will I mourn?” and his mentor said, “Until you’re comforted.” I do know that when I’ve mourned for various different reasons, those are the times when I really felt God’s arms around me. It’s very easy to lose track of God when you don’t need him, but when you’re mourning, he will be there to comfort you.

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