The first funeral I ever attended was for a great aunt. I don’t remember ever speaking to her. I don’t remember her ever leaving her room at my cousin’s house. It was a tiny room. She was always in bed. The TV always on to some old, unrecognizable show. I had no relationship with her, she was just the woman in the room. I was afraid of her.

Yet at her funeral I wept like I never had before. A gut busting cry. It was an open casket viewing with a full funeral and interment. I don’t remember much of the rest of the day save for the end of the day when everyone gathered and ate at my grandparents place. The adults didn’t police the desserts, and I could have as much as I pleased. I stuffed myself with pigs in a blanket, brownies, and poppyseed rolls. I got to hang with my older cousin Garry whom I really looked up to. He told stories of our aunt, as he was one door down from her.

Grief makes me hungry. I eat my grief. I think it stems from that first funeral. I think of funerals when I think of mourning but there are other layers of grief as well.

Grief also feels like that feeling you get when you walk into a room and forget why you did. You had a purpose a moment ago and then you cross the threshold and you’re wondering why you’re in the room and how you go there and what your purpose is. You’re lost, and frustrated and a little sad.

Grief feels like you’re standing behind yourself by about three-feet, numb. Everything is turned down. You feel nothing, and your thoughts just aren’t there at all. My mind usually has 4 tracks going, one is paying attention to what’s going on, the other is working on a sermon, the other is just a dinosaur/dragon filter, and that 4^th one is a music track. No idea why I’m like this, it just comes with the package of being me. Grief erases all of that to nothing. No noise. Not even static.

We all experience grief in our life. It’s not just when people or pets die. Sometimes it’s at a loss of a job. Sometimes it’s loss of ability. A diagnosis. When a relationship ends. When you’re facing a life change.  When you have to move. It could even come from very small things like when your favorite coffee mug breaks. When your favorite pair of jeans gets a hole in them. Grief comes in many forms. Not just major life changes, but the small ones as well. We can mourn a lot of things for a lot of reasons.

Jesus says in today’s gospel from Matthew, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” Mourning sure doesn’t feel like a blessing. The Gospel of Luke’s version is even worse. Jesus says in verse 21, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” And in verse 25, “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

This is the counter-intuitive nature of the beatitudes. I really feel it here. Yet I think I understand this more than the other ones. When I learn of wars, senseless violence, greed, and poverty, I mourn. I don’t like all of the injustice in the world, and that’s part of my call. Martin Luther King Jr says that the moral arc of the universe is long, and it bends towards justice. I’d like to think that it bends that way because good people are pulling on it. I want to be one of those people. I like that. But I mourn that it takes so long. I mourn that we have to pull on the moral arc at all.

I think that’s what Jesus is saying today. The people of God are uncomfortable with the state of the world. Too much division, hatred, ,and violence. They mourn. They are in the biblical tradition of lament and prophetic sadness. The great teacher of Ecclesiastes says “in much wisdom is much grief, and they who increase knowledge increase sorrow.” When I meet people with a ting of melancholy, I know I have found a friend. I know that these people get it. The world shouldn’t be this way and I feel happy to feel seen. Which reminds me of Bright Eyes’ singing, “Sad songs make me happier.”

Sad movies, too, which brings me to our film Up. Up is a Disney/Pixar film from 2009. It is a simple story, at least to start with. The setup is this: Boy goes to the movies. He sees his favorite adventurer, an Indiana Jones type who makes great scientific discoveries in a very dashing way. This hero leaves for Paradise Falls in South America, a land lost in time. His tag line is “Adventure is out there!” On the boy’s way home, he hears that phrase come from an abandoned house. There, boy meets girl.

They become best friends. Carl and Ellie eventually get married, fix up and live in the old, abandoned house. They are unable to have any children, which they mourn. They repeatedly pool their savings for a trip to Paradise Falls, but end up spending it on more pressing needs. An elderly Carl finally arranges for the trip, but Ellie suddenly becomes ill and dies, leaving him alone and lonely. All of this happens in the best 4 minutes and 21 second montage ever put on film (which you can watch by clicking here). This piece of art is so powerful that when it was in storyboard form, it made people openly weep.

Years later, 78-year-old Carl still lives in the house he shared with Ellie which is now surrounded by urban development. Carl refuses to sell. He ends up injuring a construction worker over his damaged mailbox. As a result, he is evicted from the house by court order and ordered to move to a retirement home. However, Carl comes up with a scheme to keep his childhood promise to Ellie: He turns his house into a makeshift airship, using thousands of helium balloons to lift it off its foundations. He then floats his house to Paradise Falls.

Yet there’s a problem. Young Adventure Scout Russell is trying to earn his “assisting the elderly” badge. Russell just happened to be on Carl’s porch when he lifted off and is now in Paradise Falls with Carl.

They meet a giant bird, a talking dog, and the adventurer from Carl’s childhood who turns out to be evil.

There’s a moment in the film where Carl just wants to give up. “I never wanted this! I never wanted any of this!”

He sits down in his house and opens Ellie’s scrapbook. The title is “My Adventure Book.” Carl never got past the page that said, “Things I’m going to do.” He thinks the rest of the book is blank because Ellie never got to go to Paradise Falls. Yet he discovers the rest of the pages were filled with pictures from their life. On the last page, Ellie wrote, “Thanks for the adventure. Now go have a new one!”

This spurs Carl on to save the day.

Carl didn’t want any of this. He wanted his wife. He wanted kids. He wanted to take her to see Paradise Falls. He got what he wanted, just not how he wanted it. Carl goes on an adventure. He comes into his own, he becomes the person Ellie always knew he was. Carl discovers Ellie’s love is still with him, propelling him on his adventure, giving him strength and endurance. He befriends Russell. He mourned the state of the world, but had a new adventure and discovered that life is a gift. There’s still surprise and delight to burst forth from God.

Carl could have become trapped in his grief. I’ve seen this many times in my life. Folks get lost. They only see what they’ve lost, and they get stuck. A friend of mine has been stuck since his high school relationship ended in the late ‘90s. He’s been there ever since. I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind.

I’ve seen folks just give up on life after their spouse dies and become bitter shells of themselves. I understand that. I think I would have a long period where I was bitter should I lose any member of my family. I would hope that their love would come back in other ways and propel me forward to give a better testament to their love. I hope my actions would be rooted in joy that our lives overlapped, and I take it as my responsibility to tell their stories as long as I’m able. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Scholar M. Eugene Boring states that, “the Beatitudes use two verbs: are and will. Each beatitude begins in the present tense—’blessed are…’ and moves to the future tense ‘for they will…’”

Blessed ARE those who mourn. Why? Because what is wrong will be righted. What is causing us grief, God will validate and give us cause for celebration when the kingdom comes in its fullness. We shall be reunited with those whom we are missing.

Christianity is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose weight, get rich quick, or keep us from getting sick or anything like that. Christianity is a way of living based on Jesus’ view that love and righteousness and peace will prevail. That God holds the future, the values of Jesus are the way, and the Holy Spirit will guide our steps on the path. In John 14, my favorite chapter in the Bible, Jesus says in various verses that I am paraphrasing, “And you know the place to where I am going…I go to prepare a place for you, if it were not so, I would not have told you.” I take great comfort that God awaits me at the end of this earthly path where all God’s people are gathered. I think that if heaven is outside of space and time, then we all get there at the same time. Because it would not be heaven if our loved ones weren’t there.

I don’t know how it exactly works, for my mission isn’t to get to heaven but to get heaven here. I have certain and sure faith that there is a heaven, but the details are fuzzy for I walk by faith and not by sight.

This means that while I can mourn the state of things, I can also push God’s vision where all people gather in peace. No hate. No fear. Where every tear will be wiped from our eyes. Where we view each life, each person, as a child of God, a gift from God. Not an inconvenience. Maybe we can view life not as a test or something to be endured, but an adventure that we are embarked upon together.

There are those who laugh when they hear such talk. “You can’t change anything,” they say. “Things don’t change. Let’s just keep things the way they are…” Those are usually the ones benefiting from how things are. “It’s less painful this way…” they say. But there is pain in life, and anyone who says differently is selling something.

Maybe you feel you’re pretty happy. You aren’t understanding this sermon at all, you’re happy you think and you might be lying. Maybe you’re apathetic to the needs of your neighbor… Present company excluded I guess, I don’t want to be judgy about you but I know that I can get callous, and I need to continually learn and practice empathy for my neighbor. I have encountered folks to know the state of the world but have such faith in God’s future they act with mercy and not cruelty. Blessed are those who live this life now, even when such a life seems foolish, for they will, in the end, be vindicated by God.

Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those whose hearts can still be broken. For they will find community, they will speak their grief; and then they will get to work. And things will change. And they will be comforted. Thanks be to God. Amen.