Nothing Lost, Nothing Gained

Matthew 5:4

The second Beatitude might well be Charlie Brown’s life motto. In a series of strips, Charlie Brown’s hapless, hopeless baseball team is one run away from their first championship. Charlie Brown has made it to third, where, if he will just sit tight, Snoopy, their best hitter, can drive him home with a single. But as always happens with Charlie Brown, he wrestles suddenly with being the hero versus being the goat—the savior or the villain—so he wildly decides that he will steal home, and he’ll be the hero. Off he dashes, there is a slide, a cloud of dust, and, of course, this being Charlie Brown, the umpire cry, “YER OUT!!” When Charlie Brown asks if he wasn’t really safe, Linus tells him he didn’t even make it halfway home. What a blockhead! Charlie Brown then decides to simply lie there in the base path for eternity, hoping one day to be paved over as a speed bump in a parking lot. He cries out continually, “Why?!,” well into the ensuing night. Linus again appears, telling Charlie Brown that his cries of anguish are annoyingly keeping the neighbors up, so he reduces his sorrow to a hushed whisper, lest even his anguish offend.

“Blessed are you who mourn, for you shall be comforted,” answers Christ.

An immediate observation is that grief comes in many, many forms, covering many, many losses. It is not simply reserved for the cemetery. We grieve missed opportunities, broken relationships, former jobs, mistakes we can’t seem to escape, lost childhood, lost weekends, and so on through so many different corners of our lives. The further observation is that no one likes grief. It hurts. Regret can weigh on us like a thousand ton load. I am convinced there is a link between grief and back trouble—when you carry the weight of the world, it breaks us. 

I think it helps that Jesus finds blessing in grieving. That alone may be comfort enough. As he walked among the people of his day, he certainly encountered all forms of grief. A couple of examples will show us how this beatitude works.

As Jesus sat at table in a notable person’s home, woman came in from the street. Without a word to anyone, she fell at Jesus’ feet, weeping, using her hair as a towel, and washing Jesus’ toes, arches, soles, and ankles. The other dinner guests are horrified. She is lost. She is beneath contempt.

There are times when life spins out of control. It spins away from us so quickly, we are left blown to bits like a trailer park after a tornado. Like those poor folks, we never saw it coming until it was too late, and then it is ruins all around us. We cling to sticks to stay upright. In those moments, it is hard to be hopeful. It is hard to be sure of anything. It is hard to see anything but the wreckage. We even find the presence of God fleeting. So, we become desperate, willing to try most anything to find relief, even if someone else may find us ridiculous or humiliate us in our loss. 

Taking in that image, we move to the day a desperate father came to Jesus, seeking help for his dying child. He had nowhere else to turn. He runs to the wandering rabbi in the neighborhood, pleading for help. But it is too late, in the hubbub—Jesus even stops to heal a woman along the way—the child dies. The man’s friends are lost, so lost they just want to dismiss everybody, send everybody home, and stop troubling the rabbi with something beyond all hope. They want to be left alone in their grief.

A lot of us have been there, too. A crisis hits and time seems to warp into overdrive. Nothing happens as it should, no help rises, and then it is too late. There is no reason to keep trying. Why bother? It is like a friend of mine in college battling Organic Chemistry—the final exam was his utter downfall. The three hours raced by, and he had not even gotten to page 2. The proctor came in to collect the papers, but my friend frantically scribbled away. The proctor eventually came and stood over his desk, asking for his paper, but my friend still scribbled away. The proctor finally just took the paper by a corner, slid it out from under my friend’s hysterical hand, and ended the ordeal. He changed majors next semester, refusing to even go by the science building for shame. 

Now return to Christ in the midst of these scenes of grief. What does he do? He blesses the lost. He reclaims them from their grief. All is not lost; nothing can ever be lost in Christ’s presence. Nothing and no one is beyond hope. He blesses the woman—in fact, going so far as to name her a paragon of faithful praxis, assuring everyone that others will walk with God as she does “in memory of her.” At the house of the grieving father, Jesus waves off the gathered mourners, not in anger, but to work. He raises the child with the gentlest phrase in all of scripture, “Little one, get up.” Nothing and no one is beyond saving. 

Carry these images back into our life and world. 

For Charlie Brown, there will be other ballgames. Each spring, hope will rise. That is true for all of us. In the presence of Christ, there is always another day, another chance, and another opportunity. No loss is absolute. Even when we stand in the wreckage of any sort of human storm, know that Christ is present with his full blessing. Immediately, he gathers together the timbers of our lives and rebuilds. As Ezekiel saw in his most famous vision, as God’s breath flies over the valley, the dried bones rise and live. My friend’s failure in Organic Chem opened a brand new vista—he went on to become an art major, eventually finding a wonderful career as a museum curator. Grief turned to blessing; comfort was found.

With Christ, there is life, even life everlasting. 

That is the final point of the beatitude. Loss is inevitable. It is part of being created—of being a creature in the Kingdom of God. But with the presence of God, there is resurrection. No loss is final. There is comfort.

Hear and believe this good news.