Blessed are the wealthy, because they can have anything they want.
Blessed are the popular, because people love them.
Blessed are the well-fed, because they’re not hungry.
Blessed are the happy… of course.
I don’t know if these are my core values, but they are values that are deeply ingrained. They are values that are a given in our culture—“Blessed are the happy;” that is what we’re supposed to strive to be. Happy.
Jesus seems to disagree. Five years ago, in the two week span before Christmas, four people in my community in Idaho died. A teenage girl, two fathers, each in their forties, and a grandmother. Separate families, separate incidents, not related. None of the four were members of my congregation, but it was a small town, and their families each contacted me and asked if I would officiate at their burials.
Those of you who have been invited to similar situations know what a blessing it is to be invited into those moments in peoples’ lives, and to have a stranger hand you the soft flesh of their heart, and say, “Hold this.” It’s beautiful. It also comes with a cost. During those two weeks before Christmas, I buried a sixteen-year-old girl, two fathers—their teenage children were in the front row at the services—and a grandmother.
Then, there were four services on Christmas Eve. By the time Christmas was over, I was absolutely spent. And a week and a half later, Mike died.
Mike was someone special. He was the owner of an eatery that was probably the most popular breakfast and lunch place in Sun Valley, and Mike worked the door. Mike knew everyone, greeted everybody by name, and visited with people while they were eating. Mike had lived in Sun Valley for ever—he was a “local local.” He wasn’t a member of my congregation but he would sometimes sit with me and give me advice on how to be a priest. I remember one of the first things he said to me was, “Don’t take this personally, but we’re not really going to accept you until you’ve been here ten years.” He meant that people often just come and go through Sun Valley, and the locals want to know that you’re really committed to them before they give you their hearts.
My friendship with Mike grew, and his wife was a very active member of my congregation, for whom I had a great deal of affection. Mike was also one of the most active hospice volunteers in this small community, and was involved in the lives and deaths of many people. In that capacity, he had touched the lives of pretty much everyone in that community.
About a week and a half after Christmas, Mike killed himself. None of us knew, except perhaps his wife, of the depth of his depression or the demons with which he was struggling. Mike’s death ripped me apart. I remember he died on a Tuesday. I remember every day between Tuesday and Saturday, the day he was buried, going to his wife’s house. Gail’s house was always filled with people, and I would walk in—sometimes it was clumps of people, talking in hushed voices; sometimes it was a single group of people sitting in a circle; sometimes we would be crying, sometimes we would be telling stories of Mike and laughing…
I was pretending to go to Gail’s house in order to be the minister, because that was my job; but the real reason I was going to Gail’s house was because I could not be alone. I needed to be in community. My heart was broken. Something happened between Tuesday and Saturday, after I went, every day, to Gail’s house. I was reborn. There was something about being in that community, and being vulnerable, and being broken, in that community, that brought me alive. It didn’t make me less sad; it didn’t take my pain away; it didn’t make me happy. But I was more alive.
Now it just happened, one of those happy accidents, that the following Sunday, I got to preach on Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes. Blessed are those who weep; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are those who are heartbroken. I hadn’t had any idea of what that Beatitude might mean before that week, the week that Mike died. But because of that week, because of Mike’s death, because of being made whole in this holy community in Gail’s house, I knew in my heart how blessed it was to weep, and to mourn, and to grieve.
I also knew how vacuous it could be to think and to live as if “blessed are the wealthy, blessed are the popular, blessed are the comfortable.” I think, for me today, the Gospel message of blessing could be translated into, “Blessed are the empty; blessed are the vulnerable; blessed are the broken.” Because it is in that place that true community can happen; it’s in that place that we can be truly connected, soul to soul and heart to heart. The blessing is not when life is beautiful all the time, when we’re laughing and playing, as much as when we’re together and our hearts are broken.
That is very counterintuitive. I want to switch gears and talk about things practically. I want to talk about how, in a practical way, this plays out in our lives if we believe “blessed are the happy” versus if we believe “blessed are those who grieve.” Now, because I’ve been trained to think “blessed are the happy,” I want everyone around me to be happy. If I have someone near me who is sad, I think it is my job to help them be happy. If I myself am sad, I think it’s my job to pretend I’m happy so that I don’t make people around me sad, because of the expectation that “blessed are the happy.”
This kind of works in normal life, but it doesn’t work as well when someone you love dies. When someone you love dies, you’re sad. You’re heartbroken. One of the things people struggle with when a loved one dies is feeling alone and isolated. What they need are people to be present with them in their grief. Our normal reaction often isn’t to be present with someone in their grief. Our normal reaction is to want to make them feel better, so people say things that make sense to them at the time, but often are the opposite of helpful. “You’ll be OK.” If a child dies, sometimes people will say, “Thank goodness you have other children,” which makes intellectual sense, but it doesn’t let the heartbroken person know that you are present with them in their grief. If a woman’s husband dies, people may say, “You’ll find another husband.” Or, “I’m sure God wanted this child,” as if God could want this child more than their mother does.
I’m sure that these kinds of comments let the heartbroken person know that the person who is speaking has no clue of their pain, and is really further away, not close at hand.
Another reaction is for people to go away. You’re walking down the aisle at the grocery store, turn the corner, and see someone whose spouse has just died, and you turn down the other aisle, away from him or her, because you don’t know what to say. Six months later you still turn down a different aisle, because you don’t want to remind them that their heart has been broken—as if they’ve ever forgotten. And the grieving ones become more and more isolated, because we think “blessed are the happy.” Here’s an unblessed person, and I don’t know how to make them happy; I don’t know how to make them blessed, so I stay away.
So, here’s the practical part. I’m going to tell you what to do. It’s really simple.
Step number one. Don’t turn away from this person, this heartbroken one.
Step number two. All you have to say is, “I’m so sorry.”
That’s it. That’s all you have to do. “I’m so sorry.” It’s that simple. Then they have a companion in their grief; then the both of you can be blessed.
Now, if you’re a Type A person, and you can’t stop with just “I’m so sorry;” if you feel you have to do something, then you get to add another sentence. Here it is.
“I’m so sorry. How can I help?”
It’s that simple. Then you get to be blessed too; you get to enter into the blessedness of authentic community; of being connected, heart to heart, and soul to soul; to live life more deeply, more fully, more richly; and to be reborn.
Blessed are those who mourn, and weep, and blessed are we. Amen.