Transcript
(music)
Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good For his steadfast love endures forever Let the redeemed of the Lord say so come let us worship God
(congregational singing)
Let us pray Let the good news come now our Father not only in word but in power in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance Through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen Hear the word of God as it is
read from the gospel according to Matthew the fifth chapter from the first verse Seeing the crowds He, Jesus, went up on the mountain and When he sat down his disciples came to him and he opened his mouth and taught them Saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven Blessed are those who mourn For they shall be comforted Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy Blessed are the pure in heart For they shall see God Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God This is the word of the Lord The second beatitude must be understood in relation to the first There Jesus began by telling us that happiness is not the goal of our lives It is rather the byproduct
that comes to us from pursuing something else something more important something more worthy of our lives than happiness The true goal and purpose of our lives is the kingdom of heaven the kingdom of God the sovereign love of God for us Which comes to us through Jesus Christ? Happy indeed are those who know they belong to the kingdom of God's love in Christ and who know that God's love in Christ belongs to them Here in the
second beatitude Jesus goes on to tell us that happiness is also the dividend of comfort the comfort of God The comfort of God that comes to those who mourn Happy are those who mourn God Will comfort them in Luke's version of this beatitude Jesus says happy are those who weep now For you will laugh Now think about that for a moment Those who know the reality of God's sovereign love in their lives are nevertheless those who
are in need of God's loving comfort They are those who need God's comfort because they are those who are exposed to the world's pain and sorrow in other words, there are tears in the kingdom of God and That surprises us those who know God's love are nevertheless those who mourn and That shocks us We are surprised and shocked because our logic tells us that the reality of God's love Excludes the need for comfort it tells us
that if God really loves us we will experience no pain We will know no sorrow and thus we shall have no need to mourn Not so Jesus declares God's love is real Nevertheless those who know God's love Will have occasion to mourn In fact those who know God's love will mourn even more than those who do not know his love and they will mourn for different reasons We see that in Jesus himself The one who knows
the love of God in full measure The one who loves the world for God is the very one who mourns with the world and over the world As evidence the Gospels give us two stories in which Jesus wept They record two instances in which our Lord broke down and cried One is found in the fourth gospel in the story of the death of Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha John portrays Jesus standing before the tomb
of Lazarus, and he tells us simply but plainly Jesus wept Now let's take that seriously It's not easy to do because we live in a society that hates to see a grown man cry Every male in this chapel this morning has grown up believing That real men don't cry at least not openly and never publicly My own father was a perfect example of this cultural dictum As a child and a teenager growing up in his home,
I never once ever saw my father shed a tear and I still remember vividly the story my mother told me of how my father reacted at the news of his youngest brother's death My uncle Alec and my dad were the youngest in a family of 12 Not only were they close in age. They were very close in friendship During the First World War Alec was on a troop ship heading for France when it was torpedoed and
sunk by a U-boat in the North Atlantic His body was found washed ashore on his native Scotland coast When the telegram came from the War Department my father left his mother and his sisters and rented a room in downtown, Los Angeles and There for a week he dealt with his grief alone and in private But Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus and wept openly and publicly Frederick Buechner describes our response to the scene this
way he has no form or calmliness about him that we should desire him and As one from whom men hide their faces we turn from him To see a man weep is not a calmly sight Especially this man whom we want to be stronger and braver than a man and The impulse is to turn from him as we turn from anybody who weeps because the sight of real tears painful and disfiguring Forces us to look to
their source where we do not choose to look Because where his tears come from our tears also come from I If we are ever to take Jesus seriously, we must take his tears seriously. We must look at him and ask where they come from Why does Jesus weep before the tomb of his friend Lazarus? Some in the crowd standing there understood at least a part of the reason they said see how he loved him Now Jesus
did love Lazarus John says so in fact he makes a point of saying so clearly in the telling of the story and That tells us that Jesus himself knew something of the agony and the anguish that comes from losing a loved one to death But Jesus also loved Martha and Mary John makes a point of telling us that as well And when he saw Mary weeping and the friends of the family weeping he was deeply moved
in spirit and troubled He recognized their pain and their sorrow the kind that comes not merely from the death of a loved one But a death that comes too soon a death that cuts a young man off and the prime of his life and that compels us all To ask the question about the justice of life and the goodness of God and if you haven't asked that question yet, you will Jesus not only recognized their agony
of heart. He shared it with them and Yet his tears came from an even deeper source from within his soul He weeps not only because Lazarus has died and he has lost a friend He weeps not only because Martha and Mary are hurting and he shares their pain Jesus weeps because of their unbelief. I Am the resurrection and the life he announces But all Martha can say is Lord if you had been here my brother would
not have died and Mary says the same Lord If you had been here, my brother would not have died He loved them and they know it they love him and he knows it but their love is limited by the restrictions they place upon his love for them They realized and believed his love was sufficient to heal Lazarus They did not believe it was sufficient to raise Lazarus from the dead Death they believed was the limit that
Even God's love in Christ Could not transcend That is why Jesus wept He cried out of frustration For his love is always frustrated by our unbelief He shed tears of pain for love always hurts when it's rejected The other story in which we find Jesus weeping is told in the third gospel Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for the showdown with the people of God Luke tells it like this and when he drew near and
saw the city he wept over it Saying would that even today you knew the things that make for peace But now they are hid from your eyes For the day shall come upon you when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you and hem you in on Every side and dash you to the ground you and your children within you and they will not leave one stone upon another in you Because you
did not know the time of your visitation Here again, we see the source of his tears Jesus has come to Israel in the power of God's redeeming love He has visited them in the grace of their God, but they have rejected him and they will reject him yet again completely and finally upon a cross Jesus weeps because of their unbelief. He weeps because of the inevitable consequences of their unbelief He knows they are on a collision
course with the Roman Empire He recognizes what the inevitable outcome of that collision will be he loves this people. He loves this city He offers both the love that makes for peace and they reject him Yet he loves them still and because he loves them still he weeps for them yet Now it is this Jesus the Jesus who loves the world for God the Jesus who loves us in the world for God The Jesus who mourns
over the world because he loves the world it is this Jesus who declares to us Happy are those who mourn God will comfort them But how how will God comfort those who mourn first by standing with them in their pain and sorrow by sharing their agony And their grief the Greek word for comfort is paraklesis. It means literally standing beside someone When Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit in the fourth gospel He called the spirit another
comforter another parakletos who would stand with the disciples in the time of his absence even as he had stood with them in the time of his earthly life Standing before the tomb of Lazarus Jesus was the parakletos the comforter who stood with Mary and Martha Standing before the city of Jerusalem He was the parakletos the comforter who stood with the people of God and even so he stands with us today He shares our sorrow. He makes
our pain his own. He bears it with us and he bears it for us and Yet there is more For he who stands with us is he who invites us to stand with him He who shares our sorrow and makes it his own is he who calls us to share his sorrow and to make it our own In this second beatitude those who mourn are not merely those who suffer the pain and the sorrow of life
in this world They are also those who choose to share the pain and the sorrow of Jesus over the unbelief of the world Have you ever looked at your city and cried because it does not know the things that make for peace Because it does not know the day of its visitation Have you ever looked at your church and shed a tear because it continues to put limits upon the love of God Well, that is what
it means to mourn with Jesus Second comfort comes from the assurance of the victory of God's love over the world and over unbelief Jesus himself was comforted by God in his resurrection from the dead and There's no comfort like life over death and Jesus promises to share the comfort of his victory with us Happiness is knowing with assurance that you share in Christ's victory It is of this happiness that the Heidelberg catechism speaks in its answer
to the question What is your only comfort in life and in death? The answer is That I belong body and soul in life and in death not to myself But to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ Who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil That he protects me so well that without the will of my father in heaven not a
hair can fall from my head Indeed that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation And therefore by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and Makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen
(congregational singing)
(Recording ends abruptly)