Epiphany 4 Year A 2026: Matthew 5:1-12

My husband and six-year-old took advantage of the bitterly cold weather last weekend to finish playing the Legend of Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom together. She loves to backseat game with him. She has many questions about the plot and many suggestions about what he ought to do. At one point in the game, Zelda swallows this stone that turns her into an immortal dragon, incapable of human thought and feeling. The dragon embodies her innate light, allowing her to live until the Master Sword and Link are prepared for the final battle. Zelda sacrificed her personhood to immortality to save her kingdom. My husband said the first time he played Tears of the Kingdom, that scene almost brought him to tears.

This experience of Zelda has got me thinking about ways in which immortality is presented in stories. Typically, whoever is immortal is not to be envied, but rather pitied. Those who strive for immortality typically don’t receive it, or they do so in such a way that makes them instantly regret that decision. Those who receive immortality without trying to get it - like the Face of Bo in Doctor Who, tend to be presented as sages whose wisdom is sought and admired while those who strive for it - like vampire fanboys in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, are presented as fools who are willing to trade their souls - literally, in the Buffy lore - simply to continue to live. It’s hard to talk about immortality in works of fiction because there is always so much lore involved in explaining how immortality works in that world. What happens with our human bodies that are meant to return to dust when they can no longer do so?

But when we talk about eternal life, as Christians, we aren’t talking about immortality. What we are talking about is new life in the resurrection. But the trouble with a promise of new life is we don’t exactly know what it’s going to look like. Our only example is Jesus himself. What we do recognize is that the problem with resurrection is that first you have to die. And we fear the unknown.

One of the things we do well as a denomination in the Episcopal Church is our burial theology. We hold in tension the joy of the resurrection with the grief surrounding death. The last note at the very end of our burial liturgies reads, “while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.” What I love about that is the acknowledgement that as part of a Christian community, as part of living together as siblings in Christ, is that when one of us mourns we all mourn. Which can be a comfort in and of itself. 

Today we heard, as one of Jesus’ nine beatitudes, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” The word translated as “will be comforted” is “παρακληθήσονται”, which can be translated as “urge”, “exhort”, “comfort”, or “appeal”. The verb appears 109 times throughout the New Testament. Its range stretches from the desperate pleas of a synagogue leader for his dying daughter in the Gospel of Mark to the lofty pastoral summons of Paul in his letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice”. Whether voiced by Christ, His followers, or even demons begging to enter swine, the word consistently carries the idea of bringing one person alongside another for an earnest, purposeful exchange. It can carry a warm, consoling tone when offering comfort in affliction. Scripture also shows the fellowship of believers offering a solace that mirrors God’s own heart. The recurring pulse of this word across the New Testament testifies that God draws near, speaks into the human condition, and calls His people to do the same, as we see Jesus do at the death of Lazarus, when he joins his friend’s family in weeping at the grave.

And we have had plenty of opportunities to mourn the deaths of our siblings in Christ, with Kathy’s funeral yesterday and Dwain’s tomorrow. But in between we get a Sunday. A feast of Our Lord. Where we are reminded of the promise that death is not the end, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And we were reminded in this whole series of promises of who will be μακάριος, that is, “blessed”, “happy”, or “fortunate”. A blessedness not in the #blessed way, but a spiritual blessedness from being nearer to the presence of God. The prophet Isaiah saw one of the gifts of the spirit of the Lord coming upon him and anointing him is his mission, “to comfort all who mourn; to provide for those who mourn in Zion - to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.” (Isa. 61:2-3)

Jesus brings us into conversation with the prophet Isaiah when he offers the beatitude, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” But there is nothing specific about what it is we are to mourn to be comforted. Death is, of course, a very clear and straightforward example. But there are so many other things in our lives that we mourn. The ending of a friendship. Discovering that a relationship isn’t what you thought it was. Losing a job. There are bittersweet things which still have elements of mourning, like moving out of your first house. I mourned a little bit when my oldest stopped needing her clothes washed in baby detergent, because I knew she wasn’t going to have that sweet Dreft baby smell anymore.

Mourning my kids no longer being babies - today is my youngest’s third birthday, so she is officially a threenager and will tell me she isn’t a baby - is a different kind of mourning. You want your kids to grow up. I can guarantee you I won’t mourn at all when we get rid of the diaper pail. But it’s important to acknowledge the little things as well as the big. Our infinite God cares about both. An infinite God must be infinitely small as well as infinitely large.

I have a notes app on my phone where I sometimes jot down quotes I hear that really resonate with me. One that the beatitudes make me think of comes from Ashley Judd, who in reflecting on her life said, “It’s a very strange dynamic, to be this broken and this blessed.” But that is exactly what the beatitudes say. The counterintuitive paradoxes of the beatitudes alert us to the fact that Jesus’ new community is a contrasting society, out of sync with the “normal” order of the world. After all, what sense does it make to say, “blessed are those who mourn”? Such a judgment can only be made in view of the promise that accompanies it, “for they will be comforted.” The community of Jesus’ followers now lives, we live, in anticipation of ultimate restoration by God. To be trained for the kingdom is to be trained to see the world from the perspective of God’s future - and therefore askew from what the world counts as common sense. (Hays, 97) After all, as Paul writes, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Amen.