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As someone who is busy re-building the foundations of their spirituality, it can be a challenge in a bible study to not show off the bits I’m re-examining and trying to see if they still fit. None of the other attendees know what I’m taking myself through and wouldn’t approve either. But sometimes I catch myself leaving clues.
We’ve just started trundling through the Sermon on the Mount and looked at the first three Beatitudes last night. You the ones: “Blessed are the poor in spirit… blessed are those who mourn…” Apart from how idiomatic the Greek is (how surprising), someone asked ‘What did Jesus mourn?’
Well, what did Jesus mourn? What did he lament as ending or missing that he wanted back or different? My immediate answers were “injustice and inequality”, but another member of the study, who is a more conventional Christian than I, said “people turning away from God”.
My answers were perhaps a sign of my re-evaluation. But do others think?
AnonymousHe lamented people’s absolute own-age by world systems from what I can tell. Whichever those systems might be. Today I believe he truly mourns the “American Dream” propogated so much by the “American Church.” Back then it was the Roman society and slavery and nonsensical rules that created a sort of spiritual slavery to legalism.
I think he also mourned the horribly unbalanced society that left the average Jewish farmer surrendering over half of his crop to various rulers above him, ranging from the local synagogue all the way up to whichever Roman puppet was in power this month.
AnonymousWell – I thi we see it with him weeping over Jerusalem. A city that stoned the prophets. That he loved to the point of hurting that he longed to comfort everyone and gather everyone together like a mother. And that he was rejected. What I see is him bein sad as whatever happened for anyone that was harmful. And he sttod like a gentelmen wating to be invited in, not forcing himself in although he had every right and freedom to do so to rescue people fomr their own misery.
I think he grieved similarly from the “Roman puppet in power”, the “Jewish farmer surrendering half his crop” to opressive Roam power. I think he mourns the “American dream” when it has deprarted from him as with the “world systems” who hasve done similar.I thin he mouns about “injustice and inequality” and “people turnign away form God”.
I think he mourns when I and when you do something to hurt ourselves and others either throught the thoughst we embrace, or the actions we take.
I thik he is consumed by love and willingness to give of himself so much that rather than me suffereing, he would choose to do the suffering for me. Even thougth he would have every rigth to have judged me and made me pay for what I have done And that is why I am in awe of him and love him, because he loved me first.
I think he mourns because of the all the violence, all the discrimination, the alienation and the countless injustices done in his name. I think he mourns over the fact that Christianity and the cross has become a symbol of oppression for many. I think he gave the Sermon on the Mount knowing that all of this would happen, further justifying why he had to make the sacrifice he did. He had to save us from ourselves.
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