Wineskins Contributor・07/29/19

What isnext?  What’s in the future for Churchesof Christ? Some would say that’s the million-dollar question.  I, myself, would like to know, too.  There are so many trends to observe.  There is a litany of directions we could go.The answer is, I’m sure, multi-faceted. I will not claim to have any answer,let alone the answer. 

What Ihope to do is to help direct our current culture’s aggression that haspermeated the church to a healthier place. I believe part of our future as a people is going to be found inmourning. Call me crazy, but there’s no shortage of things to mourn in our day.Instead of taking the world’s bait and responding in outrage, perhaps we oughtto join with our ancient brethren and regain the lost art of lamentation.

I’m not talking about just being “sad” at the state of the world.  I’m talking about learning how to re-enter into the middle of the messes of the world.  I’m talking about taking up the mantle of the ministry of grief again.  Co-suffering love is the cruciform symbol of our faith.  So, I believe part of the future in the Churches of Christ is relearning how to mourn with one another and for the world.

When Italk about mourning, grief and lamentation, I’m not speaking of the kind we doat a funeral. I’m looking directly at the paradox when Jesus says, “Blessed arethose that mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). I love how BrianZahnd translates this passage. It illustrates the depths that Jesus wasplumbing when he let this statement out into the world.  Zahnd writes, “Blessed are the depressedwho mourn and grieve, for they create space to encounter comfort from oneanother.” I like that.  I mean thatwe’re intentionally entering a space to give and receive comfort from oneanother. 

So, justwho are those who mourn? Scot McKnight says: “Those who mourn,” arethose who both grieve in their experiences of sin, tragedy, injustice, death –but also those who reach out to others in compassion when they experience sin,evil, tragedy, and death, too.” That blows the paradox wide open, doesn’t it?It adds a depth that I never realized before to what I thought wasself-explanatory.

Brothers and sisters, should we not mourn and grieve for our world and with our world?  There is no shortage of things to grieve over in our nation alone.  We should be falling on our knees, weeping that racism is still as prevalent, even in our churches, as it always has been.  We should mourn with the mothers struggling to feed their babies.  We should lament that our nation – the most prosperous and wealthiest in history – is tearing itself apart in anger and hatred. We should be knocked to our faces with the fact that people believe the church ‘hates’ anyone, whether real or perceived. We should mourn with those who mourn things we don’t understand – issues like race, equality, sexism, and justice.

Weshould sit in the candlelight vigils of those who are taken before their timein tragic circumstances. We should wail when justice is withheld because ofcorruption. We should mourn when people are exploited, children are trafficked,and drugs kill our neighbors. For too long we’ve sat in judgment of things weknow nothing of.  It is time to humbleourselves and admit that while we might be ignorant at present of many things,ignorance is not an excuse to ignore and avoid. To enter mourning means we mustfirst mourn the existence of our own prejudices and stereotypes.  To enter compassion, we must again embracethe ministry of grief.

Theprophet Joel records God’s message on how to get there: ““Even now,” declaresthe Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting andweeping and mourning.” 13 Rend your heart and notyour garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is graciousand compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents fromsending calamity” (Joel 2:12-13, NIV)

We mustreturn to grief – a chief ministry of the church – and we must begin withourselves. It is in the ministry of grief that we cut profundity into our soulsand make room to be filled with comfort from one another. In this way, grief isunderstood, not as a reality to be denied, but as a work to be attended to bythe church.

BrianZahnd puts it like this: “In a simple-minded, paper-thin, pseudo-Christianculture where banal happiness seems to be the highest goal, we don’t want toattend to the work of grief; we put it off as an unpleasant task or somethingbeneath our station.” That has costs. If we refuse to attend to the work ofgrief in our spiritual life and as a body of believers, our soul becomes a austere,infinite, dull wilderness – a kind of barren salt flat where nothing grows.

Maybethat’s been the problem. We’ve lost our ability to ‘feel’ the pain of ourselvesand our neighbors.  How then, can we lovethem if we refuse or forget how to enter the most sacred of spaces – grief andmourning with them. Our neighbors and brothers and sisters are mourning somuch:  marriages, prodigal children, lostcauses, broken promises, death, injustice, racism, prejudice, anger, discrimination,and so much more.

Perhapsmore, we should grieve the sin of ourselves and the world as we try and lullourselves into a state of plastic happiness. It is not our Christian duty to enforce a kind of dopey, all-is-well,I’m-just-fine, pretend happiness where we all say a shallow ‘hello’ and thentry and get one another to ‘buck, not for their sakes, but for our own becausewe’ve forgotten how to mourn.

Maybe ifwe set aside a few times a year to come together and lament – not complain – aboutthe state of the world, then perhaps we could learn to reinsert ourselves intothe vocation called ‘mourning.’ When we learn that again, I believe our futurewill be incredible bright because we will have relearned what it means to trulybe human.  We will reassume ourGod-ordained role of “grieving with those who grieve” and in that we will findthat we are the recipients of the incredible announcement that, “Blessed arethose who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”