Sermon on the Mount: Mourning, Wisdom, and the Religion of Simon

 Solomon echoes the sentiment of Jesus in this second beatitude.  "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting" (Ecc. 7:2).  Why is mourning better?  Here are my thoughts.

1.  To mourn properly, the wise man must understand the ways of God.  What is God like?  What is the effect of His righteousness in the world?  How has God constructed His world in a moral sense?  Good Theology will help us here.  Bad Theology will leave us mourning in the wrong places and for the wrong reasons.

2.  To mourn properly, the wise man must understand the rebellion of man.  Every sin, however slight, is cosmic treason to a perfect, holy God.  Rebellion gathers sins as it rolls down the hill toward destruction.  The wise man learns to see the traps and pitfalls of temptation.  More than once has he heard the snap of a trap around neck of the unwary.  More than once has he shouted warnings to the fool, but to no avail.  In this, he mourns.

3.   To mourn properly, the wise man must empathize with the sinner because he himself has taken that path.  He watches helplessly, but for prayer, as the sinner or the sinning nation blindly enters into the consequences of sin and God's righteous judgment.

At the dinner in Simon's house, the tearful woman is condemned by Simon.  She might have been helped if he had truly known the character and ways of God.  If he had remembered his own rebellion and its sinful consequences, he might have been in a position to understand the plight of the woman and point her to God.  As it was, all of his religious training did her no good (him either).

The Rabbi at the meal, however, was wise.  He understood the character and ways of God because He was God.  He also knew the weakness of man, his temptations and the path of rebellion.  He was tempted in all ways, like as we are, yet without sin."  He was also loving, moved to forgive the woman who met Him with tears.  And just like the many surprising reversals in Jesus' teaching, the one we expect to be forgiven is condemned and the one condemned by the crowd, walks away clean.