Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

Blessed are Those Who Mourn

Invitatory: “In the Arms of God” 
Text and Music: Tony Alonso © 2009 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students

Opening Prayer and Call to Worship
Led by David Conhoff, Grace Erickson, Heyab Robel, and Westen Fields

God’s Greeting 
Led by Kathy Smith

Song: “My Shepherd, You Supply My Need” (Psalm 23)
Text: Isaac Watts, PD
Music: Funk’s Compilation of Genuine Church Music, 1832, PD; arr. Tony Alonso © 2019 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students

Prayer
Led by Anneka Bos

Song: “I Will Lift My Eyes” (Psalm 121)
Text and Music: Tony Alonso, arr. Chris de Silva © 2014 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students

Prayer
Led by Anneka Bos

Song: “Bienaventurados / Blessed and Beloved” 
Text and Music: Lourdes C. Montgomery, English trans. Diana Macalintal © 1999, 2000, 2019 Lourdes C. Montgomery.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students 

Prayer for Illumination, Scripture Passage, Sermon, and Prayer of Application 
Led by Elizabeth Conde-Fraizer

Song: “Sometimes Our Only Song is Weeping” 
Text: Adam M.L. Tice © 2015 GIA Publications, Inc.
Music: North American Traditional, PD
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students 

Intercessions of Lament and Confession with “Como busca el ciervo / Like a Deer that Longs” (Psalm 42)
Text: Leccionario Edición Hispanoamericana © 1970, 1972 Conferencia Episcopal Española; The Abbey Psalms and Canticles © 2010, 2010 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; English Trans. from the Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997 International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation
Music: Tony Alonso © 2021 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students 

Assurance of God’s Love and Forgiveness 
Led by David Conhoff

Canticle: “Lord, Let Your Servants Go in Peace”
Text and Music: Michael Mahler © 2004 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students 

Blessing
Led by Elizabeth Conde Fraizer

Song: “How Can I Keep from Singing”
Text: Robert Lowry, 1826-1899, PD
Music: Traditional, arr. Tony Alsonso and Gary Daigle © 2018 GIA Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. OneLicense.net A-703303.
Led by Tony Alonso, with Calvin University staff and students 

Sermon by Elizabeth Conde-Frazier 

Elizabeth Conde Frazier Please join me in prayer. Thank you for words of life in song, in scripture, in prayers. May they wake and heal our lives. May you take my words and make them enough to share with others, Bread of life. Amen.

Hear the words of the Lord from Matthew 5:4. I will be reading bilingually. “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” “Bienaventurados los que lloran porque ellos serán consolados.”

Boston is one of the cities in the United States with the greatest amount of colleges and universities. However, most of the youth in the urban schools of Boston will not get to attend these schools because they have not been adequately prepared to do so by their high schools. The grand Boston Public Library has an entire floor of information for how to seek and apply to a college. It has SAT, ACT, GRE prep books, information about every and any kind of scholarship, and of course, filling out your FAFSA. In order to take advantage of these resources, the immigrant churches in Boston started the Boston Educational Collaborative, and they partnered with the public Boston Library. As a result, on this particular day in the fall, the schools had bussed almost nine hundred high school students to The Community Church for a college fair. Knowing that this was the first time that they had ever attended such an event, the church leaders created a small team of persons who were going to prepare the youth for what awaited them. So in the midst of the roaring, ear-splitting blast of nine-hundred-plus voices, one voice came over the microphone, saying, “You are the future global leaders of the world.” It was a convincing and authoritative voice which pierced every young soul, and they fell into a sudden silence. The speaker continued, “You are bilingual. Good! In a global economy you need to know more than one language. You are poor. Even better! It means that you have had to survive and that you know how to problem-solve and be a critical thinker. That is a must for future global leaders.” The speaker took every seeming disadvantage of their lives and turned them into punches of assets. She upended their self-belief system, and now they looked into an expanse of immeasurable possibilities.

It reminds me of another occasion, when Jesus, seeing the multitudes, went up into a mountain, and he opened his mouth and he taught them, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Blessed, blessed, blessed. And on and on he went, turning their present realities upside-down and letting down climbing ropes of hope into the deep caverns of his listeners’ depression, apathy, and dispiritedness. Amidst our COVID-stricken reality of a plethora of losses, I can hear Jesus saying, “Blessed are they that mourn, for you shall be comforted.”

Grief is an internal experience of a loss which includes sadness, longing to be with the person who was lost, thoughts and memories of the person, anxiety, and even anger. Loss can be more than the loss of a person. It can be the loss of our dreams, our hopes, our place of dwelling, our jobs, our internships or mentorships, the opportunities to make memories, to make and to have friends, to become what we had hoped. But the world has changed, and it ain't going back. I have to redo my dreams, but I'm still mourning.

Blessed are they that mourn. For real? What's so good about mourning? The process of mourning allows us to form long-term memories of a loved one. But we remember without all the hurt. Learning to cope with loss is an important emotional process. Healthy coping can include sharing memories of a loved one, of a lost dream. It includes self-reflection, talking with close companions, or focusing on positive emotions and aspects of the lost relationship or experience. It includes adapting and learning new ways to carry on without the original design of our ambitions and aspirations. Active, healthy mourning requires balance: balancing the time that you spend directly working on your grief with the time that you spend coping with your day-to-day life, balancing the amount of time you spend with others with the time that you spend alone.

Blessed are they who mourn, or happy are they who sorrow. Huh? This is a complete variance with the world's logic. We shrink away from mourning. We don't say, “Awesome, dude; bring it on!” We seek to assuage, to dull the pain, mask it, deny its existence, or maybe even to self-medicate. But it continues, and it will fester if we do that. You cannot heal what you refuse to feel.

Blessed are they who mourn, because the Spirit of God is doing a work of grace within them. OK, wait. So what is grace? It seems to be a word that's used when religious people want to explain a mysterious process, and they tell you that it's grace. Grace is love that comes from God in just the right way that we need it, no matter who we are, what we have or haven't done, what you believe or what you don't believe. Grace is a deluge, a torrent of streaming cascades of love, surging into our lives, our wounds, our pain, our unresolves. It takes a different form in accordance to what it is that the grace is touching in us.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Grace becomes a journey that ends in our being soothed, consoled, cared for, and healed. God does not leave us at the point of our brokenness. We shall be comforted. This is a verb of assurance of a truth that is so true that we can say it now as if it has already come. The grace is mourning, not alakadabra magic, for it is a journey that allows us to free up energy that is bound to the lost person, object, or experience so that we might reinvest that energy elsewhere. This energy of grace results in an ability to remember the importance of the loss, but with a newfound sense of peace rather than searing pain. It is saying goodbye, ritualizing our movement to a new peace with the loss.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. They shall be healed. Benny was on his way to the Olympics. He was the fastest man in the 100-meter dash in the US. They had already tailor-made his shoes for the Olympic trials. But one day in the middle of a practice, his left leg stopped and just seemed to dangle limp from his pelvis. After much to-do he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The day of his diagnosis, he looked at his shoes now not to be ever worn, and he read to himself in a solemn tone, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” And he laid before God his burden of grief. Among his sobs, he whispered in an almost inaudible voice, “I see your grace of comfort.” His journey of grace led him to do camping ministry with urban kids. It was a journey towards meaning and purpose, the reinvestment of his energies, the peace with his loss. It was fulfillment.

Blessed. Today, right now and here, blessed are we that mourn, for we shall be comforted. And so we can lift our hearts and say, “We receive your grace, O Jesus, your bliss, your benediction. Thank you.” Blessed, blessed, blessed are we who mourn, for we shall be comforted. Blessed. Amen.