All Saints Sunday gets harder and harder as the years go by. There are more and more candles to light. There are more and more people to remember. When you are young, for the most part, the experience of someone dying is a distant sort of experience. Often, you do not know the person very well: an aunt in Utah or a second cousin in Missouri.
As your own years start to pile up though, the people we lose start to be closer and closer to our hearts. They look more like our parents, our dear friends from school, and our loyal coworkers. Each time someone else dies the process of grief starts over again with a new name and new details, but the same heartache.
Like tears in dirt that starts to form mud, the heartache starts to coalesce into words of pain. These words of heartache sound like the same painful words that flow from Job as he faces the loss of each and every one of his children in a tragic house collapse. When talking to his friends, who have supposedly come to give him comfort, the words out of Job’s mouth express how it seems that God has forgotten him; God has abandoned him.
This tragedy does not cause Job to stop believing in God. Nor does Job feel like God is unable to help. Job does not give up on God like his wife suggests he do as she too anguishes in the loss of her children.
Instead, Job poetically describes all of the powerful things that God can do, including moving mountains, shaking the earth, trampling the waves of the sea, and many other great things that he says are “beyond understanding, and marvelous things without number” (Job 9:10).
Job’s problem, then, is that God has not done any of those things for him.
This is the problem with people randomly declaring how blessed they are to everyone else; in doing so, they sometimes, unknowingly, cause someone near them to feel as if they are not blessed.
“Look at all that I have, I am so blessed!” But, what if you do not have ample food for the day for you and your children? Do you lack God’s blessing?
“I am healed! God has smiled down upon me!” But, what if your cancer gets worse rather than better? Has God run out of blessing?
“I am so glad that my children are safe and sound.” But, what if your child was not spared the horrors of a tragedy? Has God failed to care about you?
Job’s problem is that he sees all of the amazing things that God has done for creation, and he wonders why God has not done any of those things for him.
The Bible says that Job feels like God has walked right past him. Just as a corporate CEO, on his way to an important meeting, walks right past the janitor without even a single glance, Job feels as if God has walked right past him in order to fight the big battles and do the important things in the world. But, Job has things that are important to him too. Job feels as if he has been left behind and forgotten by God.
Job laments, “Look, he passes by me, and I do not see him; he moves on, but I do not perceive him. He snatches away; who can stop him? Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?’’ (Job 9:11-12).
One day, Jesus looks on a bunch of people who have felt like Job. They are the sick. They are the poor. They are the broken. They are the ones with tears of grief still dripping from their eyes. Jesus looks on this crowd and then speaks truth to his disciples on the mountain:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
they will be filled.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of
God.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and
utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
(Matthew 5:3-11)
Jesus tells his disciples that all of these broken and bruised people below the mountain have been given a promise. Those whose spirits are broken (the poor in Spirit) will get to live in the kingdom of heaven, that glorious garden of God where God walks with them and they walk with God. They get to be with God.
And, those who are pure in heart, those who focus on God and all that God cares about, will get to see God. They will be face to face with God.
All those who seek peace will get to be called God’s children, because they are God’s children. God will be right there with them as they seek ways of peace, even as others can only see solutions that lead to war.
I do not know if you see a pattern yet in what Jesus is teaching us, but in one way or another God’s presence is the reward. Broken and bruised people are promised the gift of God’s presence; especially those who mourn a deep, heart wrenching loss.
Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
Grief is such a hard thing. We want more than anything to not be alone. But, we also do not want people staring and doting on us. C.S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed, paints the picture of his own grief well as he explains:
“There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
Still, there is this yearning for someone to be there in our pain. And, those who mourn are promised by Jesus that the Lord is right there to comfort them. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
And, that seems to be what Job wants in the end. Sure he would like an answer to the “why” of his suffering, but even more than answers, Job just wants the Lord. He does not want to feel like the Lord has just passed him by with more important things to do. “I would speak to the Almighty,” Job says, “and I desire to argue my case with God” (Job 13:3).
It is not long before the Lord answers his desire and arrives to speak with Job directly. “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me’” (Job 38:1-3).
Then God goes on to ask Job if he knows anything about how creation works or what God does to make this world function? Job cannot answer the Lord, he has no idea. In the end, Job is given no answers from God that he can wrap his head around. His question of “why” is not answered. But, that seems to be OK with Job, because being with God is the answer for Job.
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you,” Job answers God (Job 42:5).
“But now my eye sees you.”
So often people wrestle with God, and doubt God, and worry that God has passed them by, if God was even there in the first place. But, here is the thing with wrestling with God: ask any high school wrestler, and you will find out that when you wrestle with someone, you cannot possibly get any closer to them. The person’s sweat and tears and breath are right there in your face. And, when you wrestle with God, God cannot possibly be any closer. Hear this truth again; when you wrestle with God, God cannot possibly be any closer.
Jesus does not forget you. Jesus does not pass you by. Rather, Jesus holds you in those wide-spread arms on the cross, grasping you with all of your suffering, and all of your sin, and all of your pain. And, Jesus is still grasping you as you struggle in the darkness of the grave. And, Jesus is still grasping you as he climbs out of that grave on the third day, pulling you into a new day, a new life, and a new opportunity.
Now, I understand that on days like today when we are reminded of our tears once again, it can seem like you are anything but blessed. But, Jesus has a promise for you.
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8).
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