Hilton Head Island, SC – March 4, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
John 11:1-16; John 11:28-37
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. – Matthew 5:4 (RSV)
BLESSED ARE … THOSE WHO MOURN
The death of those we love is one of the most difficult and painful adjustments we humans ever face. For many people, it is the hardest adjustment.
Some of you have had two or more pets at a time. When one of them dies, or when a member of your family died, besides the grief you felt personally, that other pet or pets likely grieved for a time as well. I have read that experts in animal behavior claim that animals definitely experience grief, much the same as people do. However, apparently it does not last as long for animals as for people, and it probably is not felt as deeply, say the experts.
In any event, grieving or mourning is a very real and very painful emotion for most human beings. The most serious mourning is usually the result of the death of someone who held a unique place in our lives: a spouse, a parent, a child, a close friend, even a public figure we did not know personally, but whom we greatly admired. Some people are not yet over the deaths of John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan.
I will come back to the primary source of our grieving, namely, death, but I want to suggest there are other factors which lead to grieving as well. Some people, men in particular, go into a major decline when they retire. Others are delighted to pack it up occupationally, but for many it is a big trauma. What shall I do with my time? What will I do with my spouse? Of greater significance, perhaps, what will my spouse do with me? Now that we will both be around the house all day long, will we survive one another? It isn’t a laughing matter in many cases.
When the last child goes off to college, it can cause kind of grieving for many, though not all, parents. Some are delighted to install them safely in the freshman dorm, and then drive home to a blissfully quiet house. Others are their wits’ end when the nest empties.
Good athletes mourn the loss of their ability to excel in various sports as the years pass. The professional quarterback cannot do at 32 or 38 what he did at 22 or 28. The female tennis player who was ranked No. 1 in the world at 21 may be No. 57 at 28. The Most Valuable Player in the league at 23 may be forced out of the game by injuries or age at 31. Ordinary golfers who had a handicap of 6 at 26 probably have a handicap of 26 at 56.
Have you ever wondered where your keys are, and you search every room in the house, only to discover in the last room in which you look that you forgot what you’re looking for? People chuckle about that, but usually they aren’t the people to whom that happens every other day. Then the laughs are over. My father took up needlepoint in his late 70s to try to keep his arthritic fingers nimble. He made the cover for a pillow which wryly declared, “Old Age Is Not For Sissies.” Indeed it isn’t, as a sizeable number of folks in this older-than-average congregation have discovered.
But it isn’t just the loss of mental acuity which grieves us. It is also the loss of physical abilities we have taken for granted which may prompt us to mourn.
The last chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes describes this in memorable if sardonically poetic words. “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come, and the years draw nigh, when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light, and the moon, and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain; in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few…and desire fails…and mourners go about the streets” (Ecclesiastes 12:1-3,5).
We should be glad for our younger years when we are younger, because it is likely our older years shall be more difficult, and we shall begin to mourn the loss of abilities we once had and took for granted. A few escape that kind of grief, but not many.
“The sun and moon and stars are darkened”: for nearly everyone, if we live long enough our vision starts to decline. Few go blind, but most can’t see as well as they once did. My oldest brother had extraordinary eyes up until the last decade or so. He probably had 20-10 or even 20-5 vision. He could see a quail blink its eyes under a thick bush at 50 yards. Now he has macular degeneration and what the optometrist calls a retinal pucker, whatever that is. He has had a couple of eye surgeries, and will probably soon have another. But it will never again be like it was. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“The keepers of the house tremble”: the sense of hearing falls off. Lois told me for years that I was no longer hearing well, and I knew it. But I didn’t want to pay several thousand dollars for hearing aids and then have them not help. I have heard too many such complaints from too many parishioners through the years. Finally I broke down, though, and my hearing aids have been a great boon since I got them two or three years ago. But I still don’t hear nearly as well as I did before I got them. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“The strong men are bent”: arthritis and orthopedic problems cause joints and bones to deteriorate. Measures can be taken to slow the process, but no one has yet come up with a skeletal transplant, nor shall that happen - - - ever. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“The grinders cease, because they are few”: whoever thought teeth were so important until we start to have problems with them? Besides costing thousands of dollars to fix, defective teeth can be an ongoing issue for years. A bridge fills a gap between teeth, but it may feel like a bridge to nowhere. Is it better to put teeth in a glass at night, or to go with a toothless grin all the time and eat baby food? According to Shakespeare, the seven ages of mankind end in “second childishness, and mere oblivion.” “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“Desire fails,” says Ecclesiastes. It is a particular kind of desire that is being talked about here, and it is probably an older man who was writing about it. Perhaps older women mourn less because of that, but almost older men are thrown by it. That’s why they sell so many of those new pharmaceutical products which promise in flashy television ads to overcome the problem. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
“And the mourners go about the streets.” In Chardon, Ohio, these days, countless people, particularly high school students, are going about the streets, grieving the loss of three of their own, and the injuries to two others. No doubt some are enraged because of the shooter, while others mourn the young man who did the shooting almost as much as they mourn those he killed. As the students sing in Les Miserables after the soldiers have killed many of their revolutionary friends at the barricade, “There’s a grief that can’t be spoken, there’s a pain goes on and on.” Grief carries us to the very depths of human experience. And the question is this: Can we emerge from our grief, sadder but wiser perhaps, or preferably, wiser and less sad?
Sergei Rachmaninoff was one of the greatest composers of the early 20th century. But his career was not marked by going from one striking success after another. When his first symphony premiered in 1897, it was a colossal disaster. It was an inept pick-up orchestra which performed the work in St. Petersburg, not the city’s leading music ensemble. The man who conducted the work was probably drunk at the time. Rachmaninoff wrote of the experience, “There are serious illnesses and deadly blows from fate which entirely change a man’s character. This was the effect of my own symphony on me. When the indescribable torture of the performance had at last come to an end, I was a different man.” For several years the Russian master stopped composing altogether, and devoted himself to being a pianist and conductor. In time, however, he came back to writing music, and he joined the pantheon of 20th century greats.
The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the most spectacular of the many miracles recorded in the Gospel of John. In the 11th chapter, Lazarus is identified as the brother of Mary and Martha, two sisters who were friends of Jesus. They lived in the village of Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. Mary and Martha are also mentioned in Luke, but not Lazarus. Why that is so, and why Luke did not record Lazarus’ resurrection I can’t say.
It is obvious from the narrative that not only Jesus but also the disciples knew and loved Lazarus. When they heard Lazarus was sick, Jesus mysteriously did not go immediately to Bethany to see their friend. Then he told the twelve that Lazarus had died.
When Jesus and the disciples arrived, they went to his friends’ home. The text says of Martha, “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” Then they went to the tomb, and John records the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
Jesus wept. He too, like us, knew grief. He too mourned. Presumably his father Joseph died before Jesus became an adult, because we read nothing more about him, and likely other relatives and friends had died. Life was much more tenuous then than now, and death was common, as therefore was grief. Jesus wept. Even though he intended to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus mourned the death of his friend. Death leaves a gaping hole in our hearts.
But remember this: The Beatitudes declare present blessings, not future ones. Because we mourn, we are blessed - - - now. Because we grieve, because we feel pain over the death of those we love or over the loss of abilities we once had but have no longer, God blesses us here and now by means of our grief. As does nothing else, mourning allows us to hear the still sad music of humanity.
Robert Browning Hamilton wrote,
I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she,
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me!
Sometimes we encounter God most fully in the most difficult of circumstances. Grief and mourning are such circumstances. I have known a number of parishioners through the years who have grieved the death of a loved one more profoundly than all others I have known. Usually it has been a spouse, but sometimes it is a child or a parent. Is the depth of their mourning the result of their personality, of the particularities of the death, or of the uniqueness of the one who died? I cannot say, but I can assure you their grief is both real and very profound.
In a previous sermon I said that Johannes Brahms was moved to write his German Requiem at the time his mother died. He had great regard for her, and all she had done to prepare him for life. And so he began his requiem with the Second Beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” From the first words of that opening movement to the last words of the seventh movement, “Blessed they,” psychologically and theologically he was working through his own sense of loss. In so doing Brahms gave us one of the greatest choral works ever composed. Could it have happened had his mother not died at that point in his life? No one can know for certain, but I suspect not.
Jesus was telling us that because we mourn, we shall be comforted. We can experience the deepest comfort only through the greatest grief. It is one of the ironic truths of human life.
The Beatitudes are not about blessings which shall come to us in some future eternal reality. These blessings shall come to us here, in this world, and immediately, right now. Faith in God assures us of this astonishing truth. If we don’t think God is a God of countless blessings, we will never feel blessed. But if we trust that in the midst of our greatest traumas God is there to pour out His blessings upon us, then we shall not only feel blessed, we shall be blessed. You can count on it.