The Grave
Blessed Are Those That Mourn??
Over the years, I have stood at countless gravesides, either as a pastor or as a celebrant, I have learned a profound truth. Every family handles grief differently. And you can see it in the way they stand and in the silence that sits over them like a pall.
And even though I have witnessed it many times, I am never ready for the parents. I have watched a mom and dad lower a casket so small it breaks something in the air around it. There are no words. No theology can make sense of it. The flowers on top of the casket seem almost cruel in their brightness. And the dirt - well, it is just dirt. Then there are the parents who stand on the edge of that hole, trying to make sense of the senseless.
When I watch the family and friends standing at the grave, I feel the full weight of what it means to be human, which is to say, the full weight of what it means to love something you cannot keep.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, in those moments, I hear a question I have never been able to answer, standing there in the grass:
What does God say to this?
Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them…Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
If you have ever stood at a grave and someone turned to you and said those words, I imagine you might have felt something catch in your throat. Please understand, not because the words are wrong. But because in that moment, with the dirt still fresh and the flowers still bright and the people you love still unable to make their feet move toward the car, comfort feels very far away.
And if someone had leaned over and whispered, "Happy are those who mourn,”
— you might have said a few words you would regret later, then walked away. And you would have had every right to.
But please know that is not what Jesus said. He said makarios. And makarios
doesn't mean happy. It never did. It means something closer to — God is with you. Right here at the grave. Right now, in the midst of the hurt and the questions. In the moment when no words can make any sense. Jesus says, Makarios…
He doesn’t say, "Let's wait till the grief gets easier.” He doesn’t say, “Time heals all wounds.”
And He doesn’t say, “You will get over this.”
He simply says, “Blessed are those that mourn…”
The theologian Frederick Dale Bruner said that when Jesus used the word makarios, which is translated to blessed, he was reminding the people that God is with them. It is as if God taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, “I am with you.”
And you know what I hold onto every funeral I stand with families? I hold on to the belief, in ways I can’t fully understand or explain, that those words are true. Okay, maybe God doesn’t just whisper them, He proclaims them in a big voice, bigger than the smallest casket even. He states them in such a way that they echo through every graveyard and every tomb. “Even in this moment, especially in this moment, I am with you. I am on your side!”
You see, I believe that because the God of Easter is not a God who watches grief from a distance and then sends an email. He is a God who came down, who stood at His own Son's grave. Who knows what those parents are feeling — not as theology, not as doctrine — but from the core of His being.
That is what Easter means even at the hardest grave. Not that death didn't happen. Not that the pain disappears with the sunrise. But that the God who walked out of the tomb on Sunday morning did it for exactly this moment. For the parents at the smallest grave. For the widow who can't make her feet move. For everyone standing in the grass, wondering what God could possibly say to this.
He says, "I am with you."
Even now. Maybe especially now.
And I'll tell you something I don't always say out loud. When I get in my Jeep after a graveside service and drive away, I sometimes wonder. And I hope. I hope that God does more than whisper.
But then I remember Easter.
It doesn't look like holy ground. It doesn't feel like it either. But it is.
But maybe that is exactly where the God of Easter shows up. Not after the grief passes. Not when the marker is finally in place, and the grass has grown back, and people have stopped bringing casseroles. But right there in the silence that sits over a family like a pall. In the moment when love has nowhere left to go.
The grave is an Unlikely Altar. But Easter was an unlikely morning.
On this Easter, may we know, may we remember, may we never forget — we have a God who doesn’t watch from a distance. Our God comes down and stands at the grave. And in a voice bigger than any casket, bigger than any grief, bigger than any question we have ever carried, He proclaims: I am with you. Even now. Maybe especially now.
He is risen. And that changes everything.
There is a particular view from the dugout bench that only the not-so-good know well. It's the view from the end of the bench. The splinters you've memorized. The dirt at your feet you've studied longer than the game itself. You can see everything from there — the field, the action, the players who belong — but you are not in it. You are watching. Waiting. Wondering if your name will ever be called. I spent a lot of time on that bench. Last one picked. Wrong end of the dugout. The kid coaches sighed about and teammates learned not to throw to. You don't forget that feeling. The quiet ache of not measuring up. The sense that some people just get it — and you don't. You don't have to play baseball to know that bench. Most of us have sat on some version of it. That's exactly where the people on that hillside were. Not metaphorically but literally. The religious system of the first century had a very clear pecking order — and most of the people who followed Jesus to that hillside weren't anywhere near the top of it. They were fishermen, farmers, and tax collectors. They were the people who'd been told, quietly and not so quietly, that God had higher standards than they were meeting. Then Jesus sat down. And He looked at that crowd — that tired, hoping, half-believing crowd — and said: Blessed . Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the ones who've been pushed around for trying to do right. The Greek word is makarios . And no matter what you have heard, the word does not mean happy. These people weren't happy. They were worn down and wondering if God had forgotten them. Theologian Frederick Dale Bruner called the word, Blessed, as if God is whispering: I'm with you . And that is what Jesus was doing on that hillside. He wasn’t handing out merit badges. He was declaring something that the whole religious system around him refused to say: You are already loved. God is already on your side. Please understand that, in saying that, Jesus was making an extremely radical claim. It was an expensive thing to say. That's the part we can easily miss when we read the Beatitudes, especially when we read them in any other season but Lent and Good Friday. We hear blessed, which makes us feel warm. And maybe we should. But Good Friday asks a question the Beatitudes don't answer on their own: What did it cost Jesus to make that claim? Because grace isn't cheap . It never was, and it never will be. When Jesus said, " Blessed are the poor in spirit " — He knew what was coming. When He looked at that crowd of people the world had written off and said you belong to the kingdom of heaven — He knew the price of that declaration. He knew that He was the One who was going to pay it. Every person He called blessed — every fisherman, every grieving mother, every doubter sitting in the back of that hillside crowd — the grace extended to them had a cost. And Jesus carried it; He carried it alone. To a hill less pastoral than the one where He preached. Then to a cross and eventually to three hours of darkness and a cry that still echoes: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Love isn't cheap. It's the most expensive thing there is. And on Good Friday, we don't look away from that cost; we have to sit with it. We let it be as heavy as it actually was. The cross isn't a footnote to the Sermon on the Mount. It's the answer to it. Jesus could say blessed to the last-picked, the overlooked, the not-good-enough — because He was willing to pay what it cost to make that true. You know, if I am honest, there are still more days than I would like to admit when I feel like I've been sent back to the bench. The world says that I am too old; it loves to remind me of every mistake, every error, I have ever made. Or maybe it's not the world, maybe it’s me telling myself that I am not good enough anymore; that I am damaged goods. Maybe there are days when you feel the same way. The Unlikely Altar just might be the thing I disliked the most — t he bench . Splinters and dirt. The wrong end of the dugout. But maybe that's exactly where we meet the God of Good Friday. Not in the robes and the formality. Not in the times we had it all together. But in the waiting. The wondering. The hurt. The loneliness. The not-quite-good-enough. Shhh…do you hear it? That voice is calling you and me — not because we are good enough, but because Someone chose to pay the price and declare to the world: you matter. I matter. We matter. And can you imagine what would happen if you actually believed that? On this Good Friday, may we know, may we remember, may we never forget that there is nothing you can do — nothing — to ever make God love you less. Because when God sees you, He doesn't see the mistakes you have made. He simply says you are nothing but the best of the best of the best.
Every year, the week of Opening Day , I watch the movie, Field of Dreams . It's a ritual and it is pretty non-negotiable. And because I am going to cry, I watch it alone. When I say cry, I am not talking about some polite tear or two. I am talking about the kind of crying that sneaks up on you even though you know exactly what's coming — because you've seen it more times than you can count and it wrecks you every single time. You probably know the ending. Ray Kinsella, standing in a cornfield in Iowa, realizes the young ballplayer who has walked out of the corn is his father — his father as a young man, before life got complicated, before things went wrong. And after everything — after all the wondering and the waiting and the not knowing — Ray looks at him and says, voice barely holding together: "Hey Dad... wanna have a catch?" I lose it every time -- I mean every single time. Because I know that question. I have carried it my whole life. I just never had anywhere to put it. My father's name was Larry. He left when I was very young — so young that I have no memory of him. I don’t remember his voice or his face or the smell of him or his laugh. I mean he was there (I guess), and then he wasn't, like a foul ball that disappears into the stands and doesn't come back. You can't grieve what you don't understand. And for a long time I didn't understand what was missing. I just knew something was. Baseball found me somewhere in that emptiness. I can't explain it exactly — the game just had a steadiness to it that nothing else did. Maybe it was the long season; the fact there was always another game the next day. Or maybe it is the way failure is built right into the game's DNA, and you're considered great if you succeed three times out of ten. There was grace in that. There was room in that for a kid who was still figuring out what he was made of without a father around to tell him. You know, I never had a catch with Larry. Not once. He was gone before that could happen, and there was no cornfield waiting for us, no magic that could bring him back across the years to stand in my backyard on a summer evening and throw me the ball. For a long time I thought that was simply the wound I would carry. The unanswered question. The catch that never happened. And maybe it is. Some absences don't fill — they just become something you learn to live alongside, like a room in your house you don't go into very often but never quite forget is there. I've written about THE glove before — Larry’s glove . ( Some of you know this story. ) But Opening Day has me reaching for it again, the way you reach for certain things when the season turns. It’s a worn left-handed glove that I found years ago in a box among papers and old certificates — the only thing he left behind besides the questions. It sits in my office now. I see it every single day. It never fit right. It never could — he was a southpaw and I never knew that about him until I slipped my hand inside and felt the wrongness of it. A left-handed glove for a right-handed boy whose father never stayed long enough to find out which hand he threw with. That glove is my Unlikely Altar . The one I didn't choose and can't seem to put away. The one that sits there quietly every morning when I come in to write, or get on the phones, holding all the questions I never got to ask, reminding me of the catch that never happened. But then one afternoon, not so long ago, something happened. I was in the backyard with one of my adult sons. We grabbed gloves and I tossed him a ball. He threw it back. And just like that, without any ceremony or swelling music or ghosts emerging from the corn, we were having a catch. No soundtrack. No magic. Just a dad and his kid, the ball moving back and forth between them in the late afternoon light. That backyard didn't give me my dad. It didn't fix the absence or answer the question I've been carrying since before I knew I was carrying it. But it did something else. It rewrote the ending. It said the story that started with a father who left doesn't have to end there. That I get to choose something different. The catch I never had with Larry became the catch I get to have with my boys. And somewhere in that exchange — the ball leaving my hand, crossing the space between us, landing safe in his glove — I felt something I can only call grace. Grace found in reconciliation. Not with the man I never knew, but with the story itself. With the fact that it didn't break me. With the fact that I'm here, throwing the ball, showing up. Maybe that is why I love Opening Day so much. It is like the Resurrection itself. It gives us the chance to rewrite our story . You see, on Opening Day every single team is in first place. There are no losers yet and no broken hearts. No October collapses to recover from. Just thirty ball clubs and thirty sets of fans walking back in through the gates believing — fully, without reservation — that this is the year. The slate is wiped clean, the thing you were sure was finished turning out to not be finished at all. Hope springs eternal, they say — and they've been saying it for years because it keeps being true. Every Opening Day, the whole beautiful impossible season begins again. It is all about grace and second chances. But more than that, it is like a right-handed boy who spent a lifetime reaching for a catch he thought he'd never have — and then one ordinary afternoon, in a backyard with his son, discovered he already had everything he'd been looking for. Happy Opening Day. Go find someone to have a catch with. I have a feeling somebody out there needs it as much as you do.
I wasn't expecting it, but then again the best moments rarely announce themselves. I posted something on Facebook and, Atticus, one of my favorite young people from my years doing youth ministry in College Station left a comment that made me think. He called his generation the Sandwich Generation — squeezed from both ends, caring for aging parents while still raising their own families — and something that stayed with me long after I put my phone down. I've known this kid since he was a teenager, back in those College Station days when youth ministry meant late nights, bad pizza, and conversations that somehow managed to be both ridiculous and surprisingly deep all at the same time. He was one of those guys you just knew was going to turn out well. And now here he is, grown, living in the middle of exactly the kind of season that doesn't show up on anyone's life plan. Caring for parents who need more than they used to. Raising his own family while trying to hold both ends of the rope without letting either one slip. I looked at his comment for a long time. Not because it surprised me that life had brought him here, but because it reminded me that the hard seasons find everyone eventually. The S andwich Generation doesn't get talked about enough, and when it does it usually gets reduced to logistics. The doctor's appointments and the school pickups. The phone calls from a parent that come at inconvenient times and the homework that still needs checking after a long day. The calendar that never quite has enough room for everything that needs to fit inside it. But the logistics are actually the easier part. So what is the hard part? It's the emotional weight of standing in the middle of two kinds of love at the same time. The love that looks backward toward the people who raised you, watching them need you in ways that feel unfamiliar and perhaps a bit frightening. And the love that looks forward toward the people you are raising, trying to give them enough of you when you are not always sure how much you have left. Both of those loves are real and they are both sometimes demanding. Most days you are doing your best to honor both of them without dropping either one, which is its own kind of exhausting that is very hard to explain to someone who has never stood exactly where you are standing. And here is what I have learned from watching people carry this particular weight. The squeezing feeling — that sense of being needed from both directions at once — is not a sign that something has gone wrong in your life. It is actually a sign of something that has gone very right. You are exhausted because you love people who are worth being exhausted for. The parent who needs more of you than they used to is the same person who showed up for you before you knew enough to be grateful for it. The kids who need more of you than you sometimes feel like you have are the same people who will one day carry your story forward into a world you will never see. The sandwich is not a burden that landed on you by accident. It is the shape that love takes in the middle of a life well lived. And maybe that is the Unlikely Altar hiding in plain sight. Not in a sanctuary or a quiet moment of prayer, though those matter too. But right there in the middle of the calendar that has too much in it. Right there in the phone call from your parent that came at an inconvenient time. Right there in the homework that still needs checking at the end of a long day. Grace has a way of showing up exactly where love is working hardest . And you, standing in the middle of all of it, are standing on holy ground whether it feels that way or not.