Those who Mourn — Listening to the Global Church

Greatly honored are the mourners, for they will be comforted. --Mt. 5:4

Greatly honored are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

But shame on you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. --Lk. 6:21b, 25b

 

Much is said today about listening to the voices of the global church. And yet, when our sisters and brothers from the rest of the church speak, it can often leave us uncomfortable. We are often unprepared to hear their grief, their anger, and their calls for justice because it makes demands on us and our way of life.

So it is with the Accra Confession, the confession that the World Alliance of Reformed Churches passed back in 2004 and the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) affirmed in 2010. All told, the WCRC represents 80 million Reformed Christians, most of whom live in the global south.

Listen to what they say:

The annual income of the richest 1 per cent is equal to that of the poorest 57 per cent.

24,000 people die each day from poverty and malnutrition.

The HIV and AIDS global pandemic afflicts life in all parts of the world, affecting the poorest where generic drugs are not available.

The majority of those in poverty are women and children.

The number of people living in absolute poverty on less than one US dollar per day continues to increase.

As Christians, what should be our response to these realities? How do we hear Christ's beatitudes when this is the state of our world?

When we read Jesus' teaching to the disciples—“Greatly honored are the weepers and mourners”—it is easy to envision Jesus speaking to those in our own communities who have lost loved ones, jobs, homes, pensions.We see those recently affected by the floods and winds of Hurricane Irene and the earthquake in Virginia. Surely we see those in our own churches who have difficult times and can find no comfort.

And, in two weeks, on September 11, 2011, we will remember a time of great mourning in our nation, a time in which thousands of people died in New York and Washington DC and Pennsylvania; a time when Muslim sisters were afraid to walk in public in head coverings; a time when we went to war.

I honor our need to mourn all of these sorrows. None of them is unimportant. None of them is insignificant to our Triune God who sees our sorrows and knows our cries.

But if we seek to honor only those mourners we see, we may be missing a call to live as the whole body of Christ in the world. After all, as Paul says, "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'" (1 Corinthians 12:21).

Perhaps the call to us from the second beatitude is not a call to choose which mourners we will honor, but to listen, to be challenged by, and to honor all those who mourn: families of dead men, women and children on both sides of conflicts; the hungry here and in Somalia; women, men and children who die from HIV and AIDS, regardless of whether they contracted it from heterosexual sex, homosexual sex, drug addiction or blood-infusion; those who are losing their livelihood in this country, and those who, because of our policies and the policies of the richest nations of the world, have never had a real livelihood in nations all over the world.

For Jesus does calls us to take sides, but not in the right/left, conservative/progressive categories of our current debates. Rather, Jesus teaches his disciples on the mountain that the way of Christ is to take sides with the victims—those who mourn, who refuse to stop mourning, who find no comfort in this world and no hope for comfort in the future. Jesus calls us to side with the professional mourners and the weepers, those who raise their voices in sorrow and protest, not because they are sinless but because we are Christ's disciples.

Not to do so is to risk becoming those who laugh—those who laugh because they do not see any pain in the world or any need for tears; and those who laugh mocking those who weep as somehow deserving of their pain. It is against these laughers that Jesus pointedly issues his charge: "Woe to you", or as KC Hanson has argued, "Shame on you who are laughing now."

In 1966, reformed theologian Karl Barth said:

"The Pastor and the Faithful should not deceive themselves into thinking that they are a religious society, which has to do with certain themes; they live in the world. We still need - according to my old formulation - the Bible and the Newspaper."

Perhaps that is one way we may honor those who mourn. Perhaps, as people of faith, this month we should read every newspaper article, watch every television program, listen to every radio program with this verse of the Bible in mind. And as we read, or listen, or watch, perhaps we should pray, "Lord Jesus, show me those who mourn and teach me how to honor them."

For the world of mourners is bigger, and the sound of mourning is greater, than anything we can hear even in the world around us. But God hears this sound, and God calls the church, as the body of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit, to pay attention.

In the Accra Confession, Reformed Christians from around the world are trying to do just that. Will we listen? Will we honor those who mourn, as Christ commanded us?

 

We believe that God calls us to hear the cries of the poor and the groaning of creation and to follow the public mission of Jesus Christ who came so that all may have life and have it in fullness (Jn 10.10). Jesus brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry; he frees the prisoner and restores sight to the blind (Lk 4.18); he supports and protects the downtrodden, the stranger, the orphans and the widows. —Accra Confession, 28.

(PS: One of the best resources for understanding this beatitude is the excellent skit by Gusti Newquist on the Horizons website. Look for it as the second of the Role-Playing skits, titled "The Faces of the Beatitudes: Skits from the Time of Jesus".)

Comments

[Debra Circle at First Presbyterian Church of Farmington MI]

Debra Circle discusses each lesson. One person takes notes and writes a confession which is OK'd by the whole circle. Our second confession follows.
Confessing the Beatitudes Lesson 2: Greatly Honored Are the Mourners!
When we take time to notice the great beauty and diversity of the natural world at peace, on our walks in our daily lives, we are awed into reverence for God. We are comforted by the beauty and diversity and by the belief that God is always with us in our lives—that God’s presence never leaves us even when we experience loss of ones we love, loss of our own health, loss of senses, or other loses over which we mourn, weep and grieve.
We confess that styles of mourning, weeping and grieving are influenced by cultures, which are also diverse. We confess we do not always understand, or sometimes even sympathize with, the many diverse cultures of humanity and their traditions of showing mourning—but we know we must if humanity is to survive.
Through God’s grace, we live in a world that is farther along than ever before in coming to understand our human diversities. We confess that we are baffled by what to do about the still-existent malnutrition, stereotyping, terrorist threats, and shameful accepting of profits and bonuses with blindness to how these were obtained. We confess we can begin by putting these conditions before God in our prayers with confidence that God ultimately governs in the affairs of humanity.

[Brenda Hendricks]

This was a wonderful Confession that you have written. I live in a Retirement Community in Fl. and I have become so comfortable to our lifestyle that I have not wanted to know of the outside problems in our community,Country and World. I pray that God forgives me for this blindness on my part. My confession is to be aware of the community, Country and the Worlds needs and to pray for the mourners and to ask God to give me a way to enrich as many lives as I can.

[Abbie Watters]

1.I believe God honors the poor and destitute in the world, and will not forget the injustices of the rich when they make the lives of the poor even worse.
2.I believe God honors those who mourn, calling my attention to the injustices and ills of my society, my country, and my world. This merciful God is comforting the mourners, and will deal harshly with those who mock them.
3.I see, in the Faithful Budget campaign, an attempt to influence our government to remember the needs of the least, the last, and the lost in this country and around the world.
4.I see, in the Occupy movement, a broad spectrum of society, mourning the loss of justice, equality, and hope, as the rich grow ever richer, and the poor are mocked and put down.
5.I understand that I have not always given sacrificially to the poor, both in my community and throughout the world.
6.I know I own stock in some of the big corporations through my IRA and mutual funds. I help support the banks and corporations who, after taking public funds, have NOT dealt fairly or honorably with their customers and the public at large.
7.In order to live faithfully, I will increase my donations of food and goods to the local food bank, and to the outreach closet at the church. I will send e-mails and make phone calls to my representatives in the government to protest any attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, both in our country and around the world.
8.I will begin the process of removing my money from the largest and most predatory banks, and will make a conscious effort to purchase goods from smaller, local firms who do not engage in exploitative manufacturing. I will spread the word about movements for justice, and I will refrain from poking fun at political figures on all sides.