Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
The Festival of All Saints, 11/02/2014
Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12, by Richard O. Johnson
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely[b] on my account.
12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5.1-12 [NRSV]
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." I suppose of all the upside-down things that Jesus says in the Beatitudes, this one is the most difficult for us to swallow. We have all had the experience of mourning, and it does not seem like a blessing to us. "No one ever told me," C. S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife, "that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning." [C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (HarperOne, 2009), 15] We have known that sense, haven't we, when we have walked through the death of someone we love. It is a sense of discomfort, of disorientation. We use images and phrases at times like that which reflect this: His world fell apart. Her heart was broken.Yes, we've known that sense.
And yet Jesus says that those who mourn are blessed because they shall be comforted. Whatever can he mean? Where do we find comfort, as Christian people, when those we love have died? Let me suggest three things.
First, I believe we find comfort in the very experience of being in the depth of sorrow. There is no other moment in life that we recognize so deeply and so profoundly our helplessness. And so for people of faith, there is no other moment when we are able to case ourselves so securely and confidently on the mercy and love of God.
Ask any pastor which he or she would rather do, a wedding or a funeral, and I can guarantee you that something over 95% will respond, "Why, a funeral, of course!" Lay people perhaps find that a little disconcerting, but I can assure you that it is true. There are many reasons; when one presides at a funeral, there are no arguments about who sits where, no bridesmaids in matching seafoam gowns, no ring bearers in diapers, no bossy mother of the bride and no pouting mother of the groom-and then, as I sometimes tastelessly put it, when you marry someone, you never know how it's going to end up but when you bury someone, they generally stay buried!
Asking important questions
But there's a much deeper and more important reason why most pastors prefer funerals to weddings. It is because at a funeral, everyone is asking the same important questions, the questions about life and death and purpose. When we confront death, we cannot help but ask those questions. And for Christians, you see, those questions always lead to Christ. The Psalmist cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"; but that Psalm ends with the confident declaration, "I shall live for him!" The deeper the sorrow, the more completely and firmly we cast ourselves on Christ; and of course that is where we find comfort.
We find comfort as well in the glimpses that we are given into what lies ahead for those who love Christ. Glimpses -that's about all we get, really. Often we try to say more than we know about eternal life. A few years ago ABC news ran a poll about whether people thought there would be animals in heaven. Some 45% said yes, there will be animals in heaven; 41% said no, that heaven is for people only; and 14% said they didn't know. It was that 14% who had the right answer! We don't know. "What we will be," John writes, "has not yet been revealed."
And yet there are these glimpses. In our first reading today, we see saints in white robes, surrounding the throne; no more hunger or thirst; God, wiping away tears. It is an image which tells us that we need not be afraid, that in God's presence all is well. And so we are comforted when we mourn the death of those we love-comforted by the assurance that those we love are in the care of the One who loves them even more than we do.
One great fellowship
There's one more source of comfort I want to mention, perhaps one you haven't thought much about but one which is a precious and wonderful thing. We Christians believe that there is a moment and a place where we are particularly connected to those who have gone before us and are at rest. It is here, at the altar of God, at the Table of Christ.
We are pretty familiar with the idea that when we come to this Table, we come as part of one great family that stretches throughout the world. "In Christ there is no East or West, in him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love through the whole wide earth." Perhaps we don't always keep that in our mind, but at least we understand that idea. Here, at this Table, God's people come together as one.
But you see, this fellowship is one that transcends not only geography, but also time. "O blest communion, fellowship divine, we feebly struggle, they in glory shine, but all are one in thee, for all are thine." It is what we mean, you see, by the "communion of saints." We are united in one company, one body, not just with those whose faces we still see, but with all those who have gone before us.
And it is precisely here, at the Lord's Table, that this reality comes most clearly into focus. It is part of our eucharistic prayer: "And so, with all the choirs of angels,with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven . . ." I love the older words even more: "Therefore with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven . . ." we sing praise to God. All the company of heaven-here, joining us in our feeble but heartfelt praises.
The meeting place
Berthold von Schenk, a twentieth-century Lutheran pastor, put it this way: "Of course I miss my loved one. I should miss her if she took a long holiday trip. But now, since she is what some people call dead, she is closer to me than ever. Of course, I miss her physical presence bitterly. I miss her voice and the sound of approaching footsteps.But I have not lost her. And when my sense of loss becomes too great, I can always go to our meeting place at the Altar where I receive the Body and Blood of my Lord that preserves my body and soul just as it has preserved her unto everlasting life. Do learn to love the Altar as the meeting place with your beloved who have passed through the veil. . . . At the Altar, the infinite is shrined in the finite: Heaven stoops down to earth; and the seen and the unseen meet." [Berthold von Schenk, The Presence (Ernst Kaufmann, Inc., 1945), 132]
And that is our comfort. We mourn, of course we do, when one we love has died; but as Paul puts it, we do not grieve as others do. We know that in our sorrow, God draws especially close to us. We know that our loved ones are safe in his keeping. We know that indeed, when we come to Christ's Table and receive his Body and Blood, we draw near not only to Christ, but to all those who are part of the communion of saints. In all these ways, God graciously comforts and blesses those who mourn. May he always so comfort us.