Hello my friends,

I hope you've had a wonderful week.

As I said last week, I have been spending time in the beatitudes and I can't help but see how relevant they are to our cultural moment today.

Today, I want to think with you about mourning and how it relates to what we are seeing in our culture. I think a lot of the upheaval we have seen in recent years can be connected to our inability or unwillingness to grieve and lament well.

But before we dive into that, here are some recent podcasts I have found to be very thought provoking.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

-One of my favorite podcasts, Throughline, recently did a wonderful podcast called "The Freedom of Speech." From book bans, disinformation, and the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a world they never could have imagined? It's a story that travels through world wars and culture wars. Through the highest courts and the Ku Klux Klan. What exactly is free speech, and how has the answer to that question changed in the history of the U.S.? I highly recommend this episode.

-Just like with the Bible, interpreting the constitution of the United States has many different "philosophies." Literally? Allegorically? Contextually? Originalism? There are so many ways of even thinking about interpretation before we even begin interpreting. In a recent episode on Fresh Air called "The SCOTUS Conservative 'Supermajority,'", constitutional lawyer and Brennan Center for Justice President Michael Waldman explores this concept, while saying that there's a growing divide between the electorate and the Supreme Court: "the country is moving in one direction ... the Court is moving fast in another direction." His new book is called "The Supermajority."

-Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) developed a perspective of "God's natural law" that has been one of the most influential perspectives that have shaped the Western World's conception of nature and sexuality. His view of the "natural order" is one of the main talking points against homosexuality, because "you don't see it in nature, therefore, it isn't a part of God's natural law." A recent episode of Radio Lab takes a very scientific yet personal look at this concept and the history of this perspective in the episode called "The Seagulls." I found it both thought provoking and moving as the host has a vulnerable interaction with the content at the very end.

-Lastly, whenever I have to wade into a conversation about abortion, I am always left wanting to understand the issue better. The most recent episode of the podcast More Perfect called "Part 1: The Viability Line," skillfully traces the origins of what has shaped the national conversation about abortion on both the left and the right since Roe v Wade. When the justices heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the landmark abortion case, one word came up more than any other: viability. The viability line was at the core of Roe v. Wade, and it’s been entrenched in the abortion rights movement ever since. But no one seems to remember how this idea made its way into the abortion debate in the first place. In this episode, you'll hear how an investigative journalist discovered how a clerk and a couple of judges turned a fuzzy medical concept into a hard legal line. This is a great episode if you are looking for some clarity in why we talk about abortion the way we do.

Okay, onto today's content.

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

My wife and I were talking about heartbreak the other day. How when we were young and got our heart broken for the first time, it felt like we were dying. It felt like we would always feel that way and never be happy again. It felt like an injury from which we would never recover. Yet, here we are. Somehow, we did.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

How can Jesus call an experience like mourning, “blessed?” How can he look at those who are in the midst of such deep sorrow and say, “blessed are you?”

As always, Jesus is saying so much in so few words here. He is evoking scriptures like Psalm 34, which says that “God is close to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Jesus is saying, “those places where you expect God to be the least is actually where God is the most.” The places like poverty, mourning, meekness, and peacemaking, where the world sees only lack of value and weakness, God is actually closest to those places, advocating for and strengthening those who inhabit them to set them free.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

I think this particular beatitude can strike us as passive and maybe even dismissive because we are so bad at grieving and lamenting well in our culture.

I would even go so far as to argue that we western Christians are particularly bad at grieving and lamenting well.

As the attendance of any Good Friday service compared to Easter Services will tell you, we have been conditioned to rush past grieving loss and just focus on the good to come. We fast forward through the death to get to the resurrection.

The crosses in our sanctuaries are empty after all! Thus our worship services will overly focus on joy, leaving little room for mourning to be expressed and heard.

This is to forget of course that Jesus came to defeat death, not deny the reality of death. We cannot defeat what we deny.

As historical fiction shows like Downton Abbey will show, our culture used to have intentional practices of public grief when a family suffered a loss.

They would not only have several days if not a week long wake, where the deceased would be in the room with everyone as they wept, shared stories, and supported one another.

After the burial, it was then custom to wear black clothing for every gathering after that for several months or a year, as a sign of their collective grief. They would then reduce it to a black armband for as long as they felt was appropriate to signify their grief.

As one who often journeys through the grief and loss of a loved one with families, it always strikes me at how little time we give for public grief.

There may be a short viewing of the deceased if at all, then there is one day devoted to a funeral and burial service. More often, it might just be a “celebration of life” focusing only on joy, giving very little focus to grief at all.

After these one or two days of public grief, it is then like nothing ever happened. Those who have experienced loss are almost expected to grieve privately and quietly. If they do speak about it, it is to their closest of friends and family or maybe just in their journal.

Especially for those who live on their own, grief and loss can be such an isolating and lonely place to inhabit.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

While mourning is so often spoken about in the context of death, death isn’t the only thing we mourn.

We mourn broken relationships. We mourn job loss. We mourn the immobility and health loss. We mourn dreams being broken. We mourn over the life we used to have. We mourn over a future that will never be. We mourn over change.

So much of the grief expressed to me as a pastor is grief that many feel like they would be ridiculed or mocked if they expressed it publicly.

It’s deconstructing Christians mourning the loss of the community and the certainty they once had.

It's Christians mourning the loss of integrity within so much of public Christianity.

It’s former Christians mourning the loss of their Christianity.

It’s conservatives mourning over the picture of the United States they thought they knew.

It’s progressives mourning over the future of the United States they think may not come.

It’s people who mourn over particular votes they cast in previous elections.

It’s women mourning over the medical freedom they feel they no longer have.

It’s women mourning over a pregnancy they had to abort.

It’s women mourning over the pregnancy they may never have.

It’s LGBTQ Christians mourning the loss of some relationships they had when they were closeted.

It’s the parents of LGBTQ kids who recently came out to them mourning the loss of the future they thought their child would have as they are trying so hard to accept the new future ahead.

It’s teachers who mourn over the loss of the sense of safety and stability they once felt in their classrooms.

It’s veterans mourning over the war they were sent to fight but being made to feel they must always celebrate their service.

It’s pastors who mourn over being incredibly misunderstood.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

In our polarized culture, so many who are genuinely mourning, especially when it’s connected to something deemed “controversial,” feel they must do so in isolation.

Because to express it publicly in any way would invite dismissal, mockery, shame, or even hostility rather than comfort.

I feel like this is so much at the heart of the cultural upheavals we witness.

I can't help but look at those who commit mass shootings as those who had so much grief over something, yet was unwilling or unable to express it in a healthy way. With many of the perpetrators being straight, white men like myself, looking at what led them to their actions, you can almost always see how they had feelings of isolation, purposelessness, and displacement, that were then radicalized into hate against others in an online chatroom.

I can't help but look at January 6th as the culmination of stoking political grievances through conspiracy theories, lies, and fear mongering, much of which was directed towards white conservative Christians. Imagine if instead, political leaders and faith leaders just named the reality that our country is changing rapidly. It is not only growing more diverse and its needs are changing, but there are minority groups in our country who have long been silenced and oppressed who need to have an equal voice in this change. Imagine if they just names that rapid change like this can be very difficult for some, even something they may mourn and they wanted to hear their mourning. Imagine if they just named how the pandemic amplified and accelerated the need for these changes. How the impact to our economy, relationships, health, and loss from covid would not be easy for anyone. Maybe then we would be better equipped as a culture not to fight against the reality of this change, but to see that no matter how hard these changes may be, we will find comfort in knowing we are stronger when we are unified together and marginalized voices are heard. We are all in this together. Maybe January 6th would have never even happened.

Unexpressed grief on a collective level will be expressed one way or another. When individuals and communities cannot grieve change or process loss openly, they are left susceptible to bitterness and outrage.

Power hungry authoritarians then can sweep in and promise “comfort” by politicizing their grievances toward others, which only lead to further pain and mourning for those their grievances are directed. When what they really need is to lament well. To process grief well. For only when we express our mourning are we able to be open to receiving comfort.

For me as a pastor, this idea has deeply challenged me and caused me to wonder if I am truly making a place where people feel safe to express their grief and seek comfort together.

I believe that if anyone should be the bringers of comfort for those who are mourning, it should be those who claim to follow Jesus.

We should be heard with Jesus saying, “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted!”

Because you do not have to mourn alone.

Because no matter what you are mourning, you will be listened to rather than shamed.

Because your grief matters to God and to us.

Because we have things we are mourning too.

Because we want to be a source of comfort for you.

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.

Now I want to hear from you. How do you feel about this dynamic of mourning I described here? Do you feel like this is accurate? Do you have different thoughts? What areas of mourning have you found comfort? Send me a message and tell me about them.

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Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Ben​

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PREVIOUS NEWSLETTERS

​"Faith Over Fear"​​

​Why Fighting About Rainbows Isn’t “Biblical.”​

​Hate Masquerading As Christian Love​​

​How Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21 Defines "Church."​

​After The Culture War​

​Thoughts and Prayers vs Fruit of Repentance​

​The Gospel Comforts the Disturbed and Disturbs the Comfortable​

​Symbolic Christianity vs Substantive Christianity​