8.3.8 – Hunger in the Mourning

Matthew 5:3-10
God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.
God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.
God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs. (NLT)

We’re talking about being blessed. Who thinks of mourning as a blessing?

I was asked to help with a memorial service for a man who died recently. He had been in hospice, but only for a few days, so this was quite a surprise (not a pleasant one).

How do we tell the family and loved ones of the deceased that those who mourn should feel blessed? Or, maybe even crazier, if you go back to the earlier version of the New Century Version (from 1993), you’ll find that it reads for Matthew 5:3, “Those who are sad now are happy, because God will comfort them.” Happy?!?

What about that next verse? “God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.”

Or what about “God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied”?

I’ve read the Beatitudes many times in my life, and had them read to me going back to Sunday school, so I’ve gotten so used to them that it’s sometimes easy to read right past them. But then I start reading these things one verse at a time and I realize that, if I weren’t used to them, they’d sound crazy.

This sermon, as I’ve mentioned over the last couple weeks, is how Jesus started his ministry. And word was spreading all through the Galilee area about this new teacher. But when the people came out to hear him, their first thought might have been, “This guy’s nuts!”

One woman’s probably thinking, “I’d loved to be blessed … with money, or an attractive husband or a bigger house. But who wants the blessing of mourning?!? I got enough of that as it is and it ain’t no blessing!”

“Humility a blessing?!?!” a man snorts to himself. “You want to get anywhere in this world you gotta assert yourself! You gotta grab life by the horns and show it who’s boss. Humble guys finish last!!”

“Justice?!?” the crowd probably screamed in unison. “Where’s justice under our crooked government? The people in charge only listen to the guys with money!”

Why did the crowds increase while Jesus preached (for now, anyway, they started decreasing later)? Was it just to hear the crazy man preach?
Maybe the Holy Spirit was working on their hearts and they didn’t even know it. Sometimes, when Jesus spoke, the people gave up and walked away. Sometimes they argued with him and sometimes they called him a drunk.

I think the Holy Spirit was a big part of it, but I think one factor was that what Jesus was proclaiming for these people was just exactly what they wanted, even if how he proclaimed they would get there seemed strange.

These folks knew what it was like to mourn, and here was a guy offering them comfort. It may have sounded weird or even impossible, but they knew mourning and were open to ideas. They really knew mourning. Their infant mortality rates were way higher than we experience in the U.S. Their elderly died without the blessings of hospice or any pain-relieving medication. They were in a country that had been conquered, making them little better than slaves. History tells us that right around this time, in the Galilean region, 4000 people had been crucified for suspicion of rebellion. Everyone in Jesus’s audience probably knew someone in that crowd. Maybe even someone innocent.

So their ears perk up when they hear about a relief from mourning.

Being the slave-like citizens of an occupied country, they knew humility. They knew what that if, at any time, a Roman soldier were to tell them to carry his pack for a mile, they had to drop what they were doing and carry it. No back talk. That may have been why some of those 4000 were executed: for talking back, for not being humble enough before the “superior” Romans.

So here’s a guy saying their humility will be rewarded, not just with a restoration of Israel, but the ownership of the whole earth!

And then comes justice and righteousness. They knew what it was like to hunger and thirst for it (and not get it) because they had been subject to a rule of whims. From the Babylonian captivity to the Greeks and the Romans, it seemed like with every generation the Jews were being overtaken by someone new with a new set of laws. They hungered for the justice of the unchanging Ten Commandments just like an animal who is thirsty: they’ll go through anything to get satisfied.

Here’s this guy saying that such hunger and thirst will be rewarded with just what they’re looking for!

It’s with that third thing that I begin to see (and maybe Jesus’s audience did, too) that Jesus isn’t talking about what we think he’s talking about.
When do we usually mourn? When someone dies, right? Why do people die? According to the Bible (in Genesis 3), we die because of sin. When someone dies of a heart attack, it sends some of us scrambling to our doctor for a stress test. When someone dies of cancer, we go to our doctor for a blood test. Why? We’re a little worried about death, too.

Jesus is saying, “You’re blessed when you know why you die.” It’s not just because of a clogged artery or infected lymph nodes or even a blunt trauma to something important. The Godly person—that person who in verse 3 has realized their spiritual poverty and reached out to God for rescue—that person has “seen the error of their ways,” mourned not just their weak heart but their sinful state, and found comfort in Jesus, who says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

Having seen their sinfulness and been rescued; having mourned their state and found comfort in the salvation of Jesus; they have approached his throne of grace with humility and found out that the world they so recently felt had nothing for them belongs to their heavenly father and is theirs for use in serving Him!

And a change has come over them. We went through the Psalms on Sunday nights this past spring and one of the things we talked about was the concept of Judgment Day in the Psalms. When you and I think of “Judgment Day” we may be thinking of the day when God smacks us around for everything we’ve done wrong. In other words, if Judgment Day is a court, we see ourselves as the defendant (hoping Jesus is the defense attorney. In the Psalms, the writers (who were Jews) were looking forward to Judgment Day because they saw themselves as the plaintiffs and God as the judge who would make things right and put the evil people in their place.

For you and I, things should be some different. We have realized our own sinful state and turned to God; we have mourned our sin and found comfort in Jesus’s substitution of his own life on our cross; we have been humbled on all this, sought the throne of God and found his grace. And now we—as Paul says—have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) and we seek out righteousness not to bring justice to ourselves but because right comes from God and we’re on his side.

When we seek to fulfill ourselves, we will always ultimately fail. But when we seek to fulfill the desires of God, we will succeed!

Do you see the progression here? God is building us up to make us a fit dwelling place for himself!

What do I DO with this?

Mourn for what’s “mournable” and be comforted.

Be humble and be shown what matter.

Seek God and know you will find him!