In 2010, in this great city of Toronto, there was the most meaningful debate. It took place at the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto. It was about one single topic: is religion a source of good in the world? In the debate, there were two articulate protagonists. On the one side, there was the Honourable Tony Blair, who had been the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He is an articulate, devout Roman Catholic, clear exponent of the views that he holds. On the other, was the erudite and controversial, humanist and atheist, Christopher Hitchens. He was wonderful in his writing, very deliberate in his prose, articulate. Two incredible personalities!
Each of them took up the mantle of the debate. It was fascinating. I must confess when it was beginning I did wonder how difficult it would be for the proponents that religion is a force for good to make their argument. It seemed that the burden of proof would have to go squarely on proving that religion is a force for good if the debate were to be successful on that side. On the other side of the argument, it seemed to me that a few anomalies could derail the whole argument that religion is a force for good.
So, the debate ensued. The two took their positions, and the consensus was, as I thought it would be at the end of the debate, that Tony Blair lost the debate and Christopher Hitchens won it. The more I thought about why that happened, the more I realized that the problem was actually in the question itself, for to use the term “religion” in a generic sense universalizes all religions, and that can take many and sometimes contradictory and diverse forms.
It is not as if all religions believe in one God or in God. There are a diversity of religions and religious writers, there are various and sundry beliefs within those religions. To try and pick out a religion and say this is a force for good in the world is a very, very difficult thing to do. So, it was doomed to fail when Mr. Blair got up and started the debate. I could frankly have done no better with the question that was there.
Therefore, I ask this question: how does one then make a case for the goodness of faith in the world? As is my custom, I go around and give lectures at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and I lecture in their Public Lecture series, which takes me all the way from Oakville out to Orangeville and to Oshawa. In these lectures there are of course a great variety of students, mainly adults, with great life experience.
After one such lecture, which was on the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and particularly his work during the early part of Hitler’s rule, a gentleman came up to me and he said, “I am intrigued, Reverend Stirling, I don’t have an opportunity to talk to a man of the cloth very often.” (That is a very old phrase isn’t it, “man of the cloth”?). I hardly understood what he meant, but he continued, “I am wondering, can you give me maybe just one reason why I should take Jesus and the Christian faith seriously?”
I thought about it and said, “Actually, yes, I can. If you are looking for one reason, then I would recommend (and I pulled out my little New Testament) Matthew, Chapter 5, verses 1-12.” Our scripture this morning: The Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to me that to make a case on the generality of religion being a force for good is a very spurious argument and one that is bound to fail, but specifically looking at a concrete example of something is much, much more powerful and winsome.
The Beatitudes of Jesus are in fact universally recognized as one of the great statements about the power of faith. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, looked at the Beatitudes of Jesus and he said that Jesus’ concept of “blessed are the meek” is one of the most revolutionary passages in the whole of human history. Leo Tolstoy, in moving towards to his conversion to Christianity read the Beatitudes and concluded that the simplicity of what Jesus had to say was so powerful and winsome and moving.
On the other side, it is fascinating that Friedrich Nietzsche made the opposite case. He hated the Beatitudes because he thought that they revealed a weakness. He was looking for the super-human, the great human, and he felt that the Beatitudes of Jesus were too weak to be worthy of following – a bit like the argument Hitchens made here in Toronto. It is interesting that the Koran only once quotes from The New Testament directly, and it quotes from the Beatitudes.
There is something about the Beatitudes then that reach into the hearts and the minds of people who are seeking and searching and trying to understand Jesus Christ. They are trying to understand how we live with one another and how we exist on this earth: trying to find the good in the midst of these prophetic words. My friends, they are there! The Beatitudes of course are at the beginning of the great Sermon on the Mount, and if you were to read it from beginning to end, it would be a very, very long sermon indeed! Maybe some Sunday I should preach it, and you will realize how short mine are!
Jesus’ sermon was a long sermon. Maybe it was put together by different sources at a later date into the form that we get it, so maybe it is artificially long, but it sounds long when you read it. Jesus, like a great rabbi, is sitting on a hillside in Galilee, and he gathers the crowd around him and he begins to preach. Like a great prologue, like magnificent prose, he begins with the Beatitudes: “Blessed are...” And, the blessedness that he is speaking of, especially when you read it in its original language is in the indicative. By that I mean it is a description of the way things are for those who mourn or who are meek or who are merciful or who are peacemakers.
It is not an imperative. In other words, you do not have to go out and be poor or mourn or be merciful in order to be able to have the benefits of what God offers. Rather, it is indicative: it is a promise that to those who are meek and poor and mourn and desire peace, then God will pour out his blessings, then they will have their inheritance, and then they will experience the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus is describing a state of living in his grace, and when you live in his grace, and then you have this incredible gift and this incredible power.
If I am going to be true to the point I am trying to make here, I must be more specific than that: not just talk about the Beatitudes, but maybe from the midst of that pull one of the Beatitudes out and focus on it, and then you will see the power of the single thing that I want someone who is questioning the faith to grasp. I have chosen from amongst these great teachings the one line “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.” The reason I have chosen the word “mourn” is because the nuance in the text is that there are different ways you can hear and read that word.
For those who were gathered on the hillside in Galilee and those who were listening to Jesus, some would listen and hear that and say one thing, and another would hear it and say something different. But, combined they speak of the incredible power of the faith that we find in Jesus: “Blessed are they that mourn.” For sure, it means what most of us think it means: blessed are those who mourn someone’s death or passing.
If you look at the Greek in the Old Testament version, the moment that Jacob realizes that Joseph has died, we read that he mourned. “Mourned” that is the word; he “mourned” the death of his son. The grief was so great and the wrenching on his heart so incredible, Jacob felt the pain of grief. That is why I think all the ministers and most churches, when we have a funeral, actually begin with the words from the Beatitudes, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” To those who are grieving death, we give these words of hope. They are words that reveal recognition of the broken-heartedness that comes from that grief and from mourning.
As you know, I love Robbie Burns, and in the last week or so there have been celebrations of Robbie Burns. I was at one on Friday night, and his immortal words say it all, and I have said them here before, but they are worth repeating:
Had we never loved so kindly
Had we never loved so blindly
Never met or never parted
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.
Jesus knew that people who mourn are broken-hearted.
A few years ago, I received a call from a gentleman in the church who had lost his dear wife of many years. I arrived on the scene and was a relatively new minister in the church. He invited me to his house for tea, and I felt that I should go, because I think it was maybe the first anniversary of her death. She had been gone at least a year. This poor widower was sitting in his home alone, and had made a cup of tea and a cake for me – and they were terrible actually – but I didn’t come for the tea, thank goodness!
I went to sit on what I thought was the most comfortable chair there. He said, “No, no, no! You can’t sit on that chair.”
I said, “Okay, show me.” And, he sat me on a really uncomfortable chair.
So, I had an uncomfortable chair and a rotten cup of tea. It wasn’t going well! Then, I realized something more was going on with this man. And so, I asked him finally in the conversation, just naturally, “What is it about that chair? It looks solid enough.”
He said, “No. That is where my wife sat, and I never want anyone ever to sit on it, because that is where I imagine her being.”
Sometimes, you mourn so deeply, so deeply you don’t let go. Jesus says, “Look, for those who mourn, they shall be comforted.” The faith is not just a faith that celebrates mourning. In fact, I pity those who have no support or strength or faith, and face death and loss. I worry for them. I grieve for them. This is because what Jesus is saying, and he is saying it through the whole of the Sermon on the Mount, is that he will bear the Cross of our suffering and our loss. He will take it on himself.
Most scholars agree that the Sermon on the Mount is about the Cross. It is about the bearing of the Cross. It is about the suffering for those who mourn in order that they might be comforted, in order that through the Cross they might celebrate the eternal life, even more, that they many finally experience what is known in the New Testament as the “paraclete” the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. Before I ever bring a family into a church here for a funeral, before they enter the nave, the one last thing I pray for is the comforting power of the Holy Spirit. You are not alone in your mourning; someone has taken it upon himself and he is raised and has risen above it. “Blessed are those that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”
That is not the only meaning. To mourn is to mourn the suffering that you find in the world. It is recognition of the suffering in the world that you have. That is why the Beatitudes are so powerful. Jesus wanted those who were sitting around the hillside to have an ultimate community, a community that is different from the way of the world. Rather, it is one that identifies with the suffering: those who are the victims of violence, those who do not receive mercy, those who do not experience meekness, those who are poor. He doesn’t say, “Become like them.” He says, “Identify with them!” “Blessed are those who are poor and who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Jesus is driving us towards that. That is why I love the passage in the Book of Romans, Chapter 12, where it says, “Christians should mourn with those who mourn; rejoice with those who rejoice.”
This week I got a great note on LinkedIn from a gentleman I met a year ago in Oxford who was at that time doing his viva for his PhD thesis. It didn’t go very well. In fact, I took him out for tea that evening, although we had just met. My heart went out to him! We had tea, and he shared all the corrections that were needed to receive his commendation for the degree. He was given a year to work on it. So anyway, I get a note this week from Miguel saying he’s getting it – he’s done it! He’s made the revisions. I was ecstatic for him!
Why was I really ecstatic for him? Not because he got a degree, but because of the circumstances in which he had done it. You see, Miguel works throughout the world – in Guatemala, in Colombia, in Asia – with churches that are caring for orphans on the street: the street urchins of Bogota, the street urchins of the big cities of the world. He helps create churches, places of redemption and hope for poor children. His agony was that having set aside time to do his academic work, he worried about how he would be able to care for these poor children, and at the same time finish his work, which he felt committed to.
He was torn, and a year ago he had no idea how he would do it. But he kept his eyes focussed on the main thing. And the main thing is he Beatitudes! “Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those that mourn.” He suffered with those who suffered, and in the midst of this found renewed inspiration and encouragement and even time to finish his work. He kept first things first: Putting the needs of those street children foremost in his mind. God bless Miguel! I rejoiced!
That is what Jesus had in mind. That is exactly what Jesus had in mind. “Blessed are they that mourn, for they will receive comfort.” Be with the sufferers, care for the sufferers. Is that not what Stephen Ministry is all about and why we are going to be commissioning in a few minutes our Stephen Ministers? It is to give them the blessing of this church to go and to care for those who are in need. Whatever the need may be, blessed be those who care for them and blessed be those who receive their care, for this is the work of the kingdom.
The last thing that it means really gets to us, and that is the need to mourn our losses in our life, and by losses I mean the things for which we repent and say sorry, the things that we need to give up if we are to be truly faithful to God. The world goes by with its whizz and its bang and its speed and its excess and its accumulation and the disciples stand back and they mourn the fact that those things no longer really mean much. To the world of the frivolous and the silly, the profane and the lustful, they are the things that often drive the spirit of the Age. But, to those who believe in The Beatitudes, there is a whole other level of things to which we are committed.
We grieve. We grieve because we have to let go of those things. As people of faith, we have to be willing to grieve and acknowledge the wrongs that we do. Even when we try to do good at times we fail. Our sins either of omission or commission; it doesn’t matter, we are imperfect. This brings me back to the debate, and the problem that Mr. Blair had in that debate. How do you make the case for the goodness of religion in the world when in fact at the very core of it is a confession of our inability to do exactly what God wants us to do?
The Beatitudes are not about the super-religious person. The Beatitudes are about those who know they throw themselves on to the grace of God. The argument is never “Oh, look how great and wonderful religion is and how the world is a better place because of it.” Rather, the argument is “Look what Jesus said is the blessed life and follow it. They are quite different! This is because the standards by which the world judges success and the way that the Beatitudes do are very different indeed.
So if you are asked, like I was, to say one thing to take Jesus seriously, all you have to think of is “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” And, the rest will be up to God! Amen.