“The Beatitudes of Jesus are eight wisdom sayings that stand at the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. They are not moral teachings as much as they are soulful riddles that invite the hearer into a new way of being human. They are an invitation to see, from the inside of our lives—from our souls—what it could mean to be truly human. At this time of such a massive reassessment of human life on this planet, the Beatitudes, what I call, "Novel Attitudes," could point the way to a better way of life for our communities and our world.
The sermon reflects on the necessity of embracing our more unwelcome feelings, and especially grief, as a way to open ourselves to what has never been before, liberate our creative energies, and help rebuild a better world. The readings are taken from Matthew 4.23-5.4 and a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 (translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows).
1.
The Bible likes to talk about the “light,” but it’s also full of light’s opposite. It has as much sadness as it has joy. In fact, I think it meanders through more of the so-called negative emotions than it does the more positive ones. For all the love, compassion, joy, wonder, happiness, and courage, there’s also an abundance of fear, anger, doubt, pessimism, despair, loneliness, and grief in the Bible. That’s because the Bible is utterly human; it bears the Word and Wisdom of God, but it also testifies to the full anatomy of the human soul.
The Bible is a sign that one of the main purposes of religion is not only to make good feelings possible, but to help us through the ones we don’t necessarily like.
There are, of course, people in the world who say that religion is unhelpful, that it keeps us immature. It’s a crutch that keeps us from the bravery we need to face the world as it is. There may be forms of religion that do that, but that’s not what religion is for.
Carl Jung, the great psychiatrist, unlike some of his contemporaries, found that religion, rather than getting in the way of a person’s growth, was a very important part of what it means to become a fully flourishing human being.
“Among all my patients in the second half of life,” Jung wrote in 1959, “every one of them fell ill because they had lost what the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain a religious orientation. In our civilization this spiritual background has gone astray. Recovery and wholeness requires concentrated attention, much mental work, and above all, patience, the rarest thing in this restless and crazy time.”
In the sixty years since Jung wrote those words, religion has declined further, while our civilization has fallen further into dis-ease. It’s drifting without what Jung says is needed for our wellbeing as persons and as societies. Jung taught that “if we do not find our souls, we will lose our minds.”
2.
Christianity, as a religion, has too often been concerned with the institution of the church, with doctrine that helps us know who’s in and who’s out, what’s right and what’s wrong, and with the power to enforce its views and rules. Christ’s church has been too little concerned with the lived experience of ordinary people, too uncomfortable with what’s messy, too unwelcoming of what comes from the margins—from people who aren’t in power, and from what arises from the hidden depths inside each of us.
This kind of religion has defended itself from what could keep it soulful, supple, open, real, and human. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Religion is made up of people like us, and there are powerful parts in each of us that are uncomfortable with what’s messy, parts of us that aren’t at all interested in welcoming the stuff around us or inside us that we’d rather avoid, parts of us that really don’t want us to find our souls.
There’s increasing evidence now that we need forms of religion that do. Religions that don’t take us into the depths are no help to us now.
Jesus was trying to reform religion when he said: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” He was trying to help us find our souls.
With this Beatitude, this Novel Attitude, Jesus pushes us to face and experience what we would rather avoid and bury deep inside us. Jesus pushes us into the vulnerable, frightening place of facing the reality of grief so that we can open up to what has never been before, liberate our creative energies, heal our lives and create a better world.
If we don’t, we’ll stay stuck, one foot always in a past that’s unresolved, unhealed.
3.
On Monday, among other things, I started to work on this saying of Jesus. But I was struggling. I was having trouble thinking. I felt all gummed up. I felt oddly exhausted. And that irritated me. I had a huge list of things I needed to get done this week. What’s more, I continually feel the weight and urgency of this crisis. But, because of this Great Pause, I essentially had the weekend off—something I haven’t had (outside of vacations) in nearly three decades as a pastor.
“So,” I said to myself, “what’s wrong with you? Pull yourself together. You don’t have time for this!”
Then, just as my inner Pusher was giving me a lecture, a reminder popped up on my phone. It read: “Mom's death day (4/27/1994).”
My mother died on April 27th twenty four years ago. What’s more, two days earlier, I’d marked the one year anniversary of my brother’s tragic death.
Two death anniversaries, two of my closest family members, only two days apart.
Right, you can tell me, can’t you, why I was messed up on Monday?
I’d forgotten it, or ignored it, but my body hadn’t. Something in my head wanted me to forget. Something in me didn’t want to deal with the emotion. I wanted to ignore the grief, bury it. Honestly, I’ve had enough loss in the past ten years to last a lifetime. But the loss I’ve experienced isn’t just deaths of half a dozen people very close to me; the loss is also the magnitude of change I’ve slogged through.
Do you know that every change we experience is a kind of loss? Even good things, changes we want, can cause a grief-response inside us.
A new child coming into a young couple’s life means change—something gained, something lost. Graduation means change—something gained, something lost. Retirement means change—something gained, something lost. At each of these moments, we stand upon the threshold of something gained and something lost. And the loss, regardless of how wonderful the gain may be, brings with it an experience of grief. But few of us pause to experience the grief. We don’t allow it. We don’t want it. We don’t, as I told myself on Monday, think we have time for it.
And when the losses accumulate over time, buried for one reason or another, grief gets stuck inside us, we get all gummed up, we get irritable, depressed, and the animation of our lives, our vital life energy, wanes.
4.
On Monday, I finally woke up to what my avoidance of grief was doing to me. And so, not fully wanting to, I lit a candle for my mother. I lit another for my brother. I took a long evening walk with my wife (even though a voice in my head told me I didn’t have time for such frivolous things). She let me talk. My daughter brought me chocolate.
And then I returned to the poem which was part of our earlier readings. It’s a Ranier Maria Rilke poem and one of the wisest invitations to the redemptive power of grief I know. It has hints of Jesus’ Beatitude, the Novel Attitude that’s part of our way forward in these trying times. Hear it as an invitation, friend, for you to practice what Jesus preached, to find your grief and by doing so, find your way into a better future.
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell.
As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
5.
Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, those who don’t bury their grief, those who bring it forth—for when they face their grief openly and honestly, they can then move into a new place. Otherwise, they stay stuck, one foot always in a past they cannot change.”
It’s a Novel Attitude today that, if practiced, could help save you, could help save us all.
Jesus also said, “If you bring forth what’s inside you, what’s inside you will save you; if you don’t bring forth what’s inside you, what’s inside you will destroy you.”
The psychiatrist, Carl Jung said that “recovery and wholeness requires concentrated attention, much mental work, and above all, patience, the rarest thing in this restless and crazy time.”
I’d add “relationships” to Jung’s prescription for wellbeing. “Recovery” and “wholeness” require communities like this church where the shared values and spiritual practices of “concentrated attention,” “inner work,” and “patience” are shared and cultivated.
These are difficult times. How much more necessary, then, that we do the inner work, that we face loss and grief, and that we open ourselves to what we feel? How much more needed, then, is an authentic religious community, a church like this one, that can help each of us and all of us do that work?
For if we don’t bring forth the feelings that are inside us—the uncertainty, the fear, the grief and loss—the buried feelings will cripple us. If we say, “I don’t have time for this; come on, get with it; move on; move forward; you have work to do,” we’ll stay stuck, one foot in an unresolved past. And our society will stay stuck in a past that could destroy us.
But if we mourn, if we learn to lament our losses, if we feel what’s deepest inside us, we will be comforted, we will find ourselves opened to what has never been before, we will liberate our creative energies, we will help rebuild a better world.