Matthew 5:1-4
1When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:
3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Sermon: “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn”
A few years ago, my little 5-year-old next door neighbor came over to tell me that her cat had died, and long story short, I ended up conducting a funeral for the cat in their back yard. At the funeral, family members and friends shared stories and prayers and poems. It was actually quite moving. We even sang an adapted version of a song by Cat Stephens, no pun intended, “Moonshadow.” The five-year-old had changed the words to, “I’m being followed by a kitty shadow, kitty shadow, kitty shadow.” We ended the service with that song, and it made everyone smile despite their tears over losing their beloved pet.
But, humor aside, such losses—whether of a beloved pet, hope, dream, or person-- are painful. Rabbi Earl A. Grollman, a pioneer in the field of crisis intervention, writes, “Grief is unbearable heartache, sorrow, loneliness.” When you are in deep mourning, Rabbi Grollman says, “You find no pleasure in anything or anyone. You feel naked, unprotected.” (Living When a Loved One Has Died, p. 14 & 43.)
We have all felt that raw feeling of mourning a loss, haven’t we?
Today is the second week of a sermon series I am doing on part of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” called the Beatitudes. Today we are looking at the second beatitude--or blessing, found in Matthew, chapter 5, verse 4, where Jesus says, “Bless-ed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
This is a tough beatitude to read, I think. I have to admit that my first response--my gut response-- to Jesus’ words in this verse is bewilderment, disbelief, even anger. How can mourning--how can feeling deep sorrow--be connected to blessing? To even suggest that connection almost feels like Jesus is glossing over the pain of grief, like he is glibly uttering some kind of platitude like, “Don’t worry, be happy… Chin up--It’s not that bad... Tomorrow’s another day.”
But, thanks be to God, that is not what Jesus is saying. The actual meaning of his words becomes clearer when we look at them in the original language that Jesus spoke, Aramaic. What I’ve learned about the Aramaic words of Jesus comes from this little book by scholar and mystic, Neil Douglas-Klotz, and the companion CD that goes with it. Last week we noted that Aramaic was an ancient language spoken by people in the middle east and still spoken in some parts of Syria to this day. Aramaic words have multiple meanings, and it is hard to convey all of those meanings in just one English translation. So, this week, we will look into the various meanings of the words used in verse 4, in order to get a fuller picture of what Jesus said.
First of all, to give you a sense of what the beatitude sounds like in Aramaic, let me read the words. Let me ask Steve to put up a slide so you can see the phonetic pronunciation: Tubvayhoon La-wi-lay, dih-hih-known net-bye-yoon. [Note: the phonetic spellings listed here are my adaptations of Douglas-Klotz’ phonetic spellings listed on p. 50]
- Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
- Let me repeat that a couple of times. [M: REPEAT 2X]
(Thank you, Steve! [STEVE TAKES DOWN SLIDE]
Let me delve into the meaning of the three key words in this passage.
First of all, Tubvayhoon. We looked at this word last week, but it’s worth a review. Tubvayhoon, translated into English as blessed, does not simply mean “happy” or “favored,” which are the most popular English definitions. In Aramaic, Tubvayhoon has multiple definitions, and the fullest meaning of the word is reached when we put all of those definitions together. “Blessed” in Aramaic also means,
- “Healthy,”
- “Healed,”
- “Aligned with the One,” [aligned with God, God’s love, God’s values. Like aligning tires on your car…J]
- “Tuned to the Source.” [Tuned to God, like you would tune a musical instrument so it would be in tune with itself and others…]
The next Aramaic word in this beatitude is La-wi-lay, which Neil Douglas-Klotz says, “can mean ‘mourners’…but in Aramaic it also carries the sense of those who long deeply for something to occur, those troubled or in emotional turmoil, or those who are weak and in want from such longing.” (D-K, p. 51) Hearing these definitions of the word La-wi-lay made me think of Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting Christina’s World. I’ll ask Steve to put it up on the screen now for a minute. I bet you know the painting I’m talking about--a website refers to it as “one of the best known American paintings of the middle 20th century. It depicts a woman, Anna Christina Olson, crawling across a treeless field, looking toward a gray house, a barn and various other outbuildings on the horizon.” (artsnfood.blogspot.com) Even though you do not see the woman’s face, the longing in her body language is palpable as she leans and reaches toward home.
- Thank you, Steve! [steve takes down slide]
The final Aramaic word in this beatitude is net-bye-yoon. Douglas-Klotz says, “netbayun can mean ‘comforted,’ but also connotes:
· being returned from wandering,
· being united inside by love,
· feeling an inner continuity, or
· seeing the arrival of (literally the face of) what one longs for.” (D-K, p. 51) Going back to the analogy of the Wyeth painting, it would be the woman finally arriving at the house, seeing the faces of her loved ones, and being swept up into their arms.
So, taking these expanded definitions into account, Neil Douglas-Klotz offers several possible translations of Tubvayhoon La-wi-lay, dih-hih-known net-bye-yoon.
The four that spoke most to me were:
· Healthy are those weak and overextended for their purpose; they shall feel their inner flow of strength return.
· Healed are those who weep for their frustrated desire; they shall see the face of fulfillment in a new form.
· Tuned to the Source are those feeling deeply confused by life; they shall be returned from their wandering.
· Aligned with the One are the mourners; they shall be comforted.
(D-K, p. 51)
Being in the state of mourning--or longing deeply for something--can, paradoxically, make us more open to God. It can be one avenue through which we can connect more deeply to God and to each other.
We know what that’s like, don’t we? We know what it is like to experience a deep pain, to mourn a loss, and, in our mourning, to share a deep connection with the people around us, in whose faces we see compassion and recognition. I dare say that is part of why we come to church. We come because we know that we are not alone. We know that the people in the pews around us--and those who participate on line and share prayer requests-- have also experienced both the pain of loss AND the joy of healing. We know they walk with us in faith and understand what we are going through. In worship, we experience together the joy of smiling through our tears because we believe in God’s promise that death, that loss, is not the final end of things. Bless-ed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
There is an old Swedish proverb that goes something like this, “Joy that is shared is doubled; sorrow that is shared is cut in half.” We know that to be true, don’t we? Even when we are feeling raw, we trust that when we share our sorrows with the God who loves us, and with our brothers and sisters in faith, our sorrows are cut in half and our joys are doubled.
One of the difficulties of this Covid pandemic that we have been living through is that our normal way of connecting face to face with each other was severely curtailed, and sometimes completely cut off. We have been mourners, la-wi-lay, those who long for each other’s faces. We have had to be creative and find new ways of connecting virtually, and it hasn’t been easy.
As we transition out of this pandemic and learn to live with an endemic, may we continue to seek the comfort of God’s face in each other. May we not give up connecting, even when it is hard. May we continue to look for and find opportunities to comfort one another-- in-person, on-line and through note-writing and phone calls.
And may we proclaim the truth of Tubvayhoon La-wi-lay, dih-hih-known net-bye-yoon.
Healed are those who weep for their frustrated desire; they shall see the face of fulfillment in a new form.
Rev. Dr. Marlayna Schmidt
Franklin Federated Church
Franklin, MA
Note: Earlier versions of this sermon were preached in Manchester, NH in Feb ’17 and Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA in Feb 19.