Waiting for Godot
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Matthew 5:4 NASB
Mourn – Samuel Beckett’s play raises a critical question for humanity. It does so with a kind of dramatic insanity. “Vivian Mercier described Waiting for Godot as a play which ‘has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.’”[1] Interpretations of Beckett’s masterpiece are quite varied, but one thing is sure. Godot never arrives. In fact, one wonders if the point of the play isn’t the empty promise of arrival. As Mercier points out, nothing happens despite all the rhetoric, desire, justification and intention. Are these two men waiting for God to show up? That’s one view. In that case, God is the One Who never arrives. Life is a meaningless pause, an expectant fiction. Godot (God) never planned to arrive. Beckett’s play was considered the most important dramatic work of the century. Is that because it so succinctly captured the absurdity of human hope in a world without God? One wonders.
Juxtapose Beckett’s emptiness with Yeshua’s enigmatic statement of hope. When Yeshua pronounces that those who mourn will be comforted, is he just adding a line to Beckett’s play? It certainly seems as if we wait for comfort in a world where comfort never arrives. We dream of the days when sorrow will end—but it doesn’t. Tomorrow’s troubles come just as routinely as today’s. Pain is the ubiquitous human experience. Is that all there is to this journey—waiting while nothing happens? I don’t think so. I think that Yeshua’s announcement is not just “pie-in-the-sky-bye-and-bye.” But many theologians seem to think it’s only an eschatological expression.
Notice Bultmann’s comment about the Greek word in this verse, penthoúntes:
- Greek Usage. penthéō means “to mourn,” “to grieve,” and pénthos means “grief” or “sorrow,” as well as “painful event or fact”; it is commonly used for mourning for the dead. The Stoics regard pénthos as a páthē that is to be avoided. Its pointlessness is a common theme in popular philosophy.
- The LXX and Judaism. The LXX commonly uses penthéō and pénthos for derivatives of the stem ʾbl. What is denoted is sorrow or lamentation, and especially mourning for the dead, which includes individual sorrow but is also conventional. pénthos plays a special role a. in prophecies of disaster (Am. 5:16; Is. 3:26, etc.), b. in descriptions of judgment (Joel 1:9–10; Jer. 14:2; Lam. 2:8), and c. in prophecies of salvation when mourning will end (Is. 61:3; 66:10). Apocalyptic describes the lamentation of Zion and its transformation into joy (4 Esdr. 9:38–10:50).
- Primitive Christianity. In the NT, too, the words signify sorrow expressed in lamentation, especially mourning for the dead (Mt. 9:15; Rev. 18:7–8). In 1 Cor. 5:2 pénthos is passionate grief that leads to action. Only two usages are theologically significant.
- In Rev. 18 lamentation is part of the divine judgment on Babylon. In Jms. 4:9, too, pénthos is God’s judgment. The author is weaving a traditional threat into the context of admonition. In 1 Cor. 5:2 pentheín expresses grief at the shame brought on the church by the case of incest. Grief at sins for which there has been no repentance is also the point in 2 Cor. 12:21 (cf. 1 Clem. 2.6).
- The blessing of the penthoúntes in Mt. 5:4 is to be taken eschatologically. Those who suffer in the present aeon will find comfort in the next. The mourning here is not just sorrow at sin; it is the mourning of those who see this aeon as it is and are not seduced by its charms. Their pentheín marks them off from the aeon and can hardly fail to include an element of penitent sorrow for sin.[2]
Did you perk up when Bultmann wrote, “Those who suffer in the present aeon will find comfort in the next”? Is that true? Is Yeshua’s remark only about some future hope? Is there nothing in this present experience but mourning?
In my book about the Beatitudes, I argued that we need to pay attention to two important things from Yeshua’s odd claim that those mourning are lucky. First, he does not address “those who mourn.” He addresses “those mourning.” The verb is in the present, active sense. They are right now, at this moment, in the midst of the grief. It is not past or future to them. It is the weight on the heart, the piercing blow, the gasp of breath just as the awful news hits, just as the calamity is revealed. “Listen,” says Yeshua, “in the center of your anguish is a promise—the promise that you are the lucky one, for something amazing is happening. You will be comforted.”
Yes, that’s true, we might say. Some day God will make it all right again. I will see my spouse, my child, my mother or father again—in heaven. Yes, some day. But that doesn’t help much right now. Right now the pain is so deep that I can hardly breathe. Right now I am suffocating in sorrow. Where is God right now?
Most of the time we operate on the mistaken belief that life revolves around us. Most of the time we think that tomorrow will be the same as today. Only when death jolts us do we see the real picture of our existence, that we depend on God’s graciousness for every breath. Mourning brings about the acute awareness of powerlessness—an essential ingredient for spiritual growth. Yeshua knew that those who were mourning were ready to receive God’s gracious favor. In fact, he knew that the rest of us, the ones who still think that life is supposed to be the way that we want it to be, are far from the trauma needed to find God. Those who are mourning open God’s heart. He feels their anguish too. The Great Hunter-Lover reaches to us. Unless we have reached the end of ourselves, unless we are broken, like the one who is mourning, we will not notice that God is here. We will miss the great announcement: God is here right now!
Many theologians see Matthew 5:4 as a statement about the next world. They read this Beatitude as though it is offering hope after death, that God will comfort us in heaven. But I don’t believe Yeshua is only telling us to hold on. We need to look harder at the backwards thinking he wants us to notice. He looked out on the brokenhearted in the crowd and he saw that some were ready, poised to accept the incredible announcement. They were ready because they were no longer able to cope by themselves. They were indeed the lucky ones. God could reach them, now, in the moment of their trauma.
The rest of us were too preoccupied with our own agendas to know that God had drawn near.
“They will be comforted,” promises much more than relief when we enter heaven’s gate. It is relief now, in this very moment. The Beatitude has a double temporal application. It says that the day will come when all the tears will be wiped away, when sorrow will cease, when heartache ends forever. God will see to it. And it says that God is seeing to it right now. God is present to me in the very center of my mourning because God has overcome death.
In this Beatitude, Yeshua announces the most startling fact that any living person could ever hear – death is not the end. Death has been overcome. Could anything be more comforting? When I face the complete helplessness of my humanity, when I look into the face of death and see that everything looks like it has been lost, Yeshua tells me that death doesn’t end the race.
We all try desperately to avoid exactly the condition necessary to experience this happiness. We all are Greeks, trying to avoid the grief of loss, trying to escape the clutches of death. But until we see that this world is truly broken, that death is here and we are not in control, we will not be ready to be comforted by God. So, grief comes upon us, not as a judgment or a punishment but as the single most clarifying moment of life—the moment when I see that my life is not my own, that it is not mine to keep. At that moment, when I know limited existence most intimately, I am ready to hear God’s message—comfort is upon me.
But the promise is even deeper than this. From the day we are born, we begin to die. Life spirals toward death. All that we have, all that we are, all that we accomplish will be undone at the grave. Life teaches us that in the end, everything will be lost.
Yeshua stands up and says, “NO!” What you thought about death is wrong. Those of you who are experiencing the terror of loss are open to God’s greatest comfort. Death has been destroyed. It is not the end. Everything has not been lost. God has changed all the rules.
Unexpectedly, the grief and loss of death hold a promise. It is a promise that only those who know their true condition can hear. It is the promise that God is still in control. It is the promise that God is able. It is the promise that God Himself will wipe away the tears. It is the promise that the jagged edge of human life does not end at the grave.
Oh, so lucky are those who at this moment are broken over life’s finality because the day is upon them when God’s gracious love is at hand and they have the promise that death is defeated.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Topical Index: penthoúntes, mourning, death, promise, Matthew 5:4
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot
[2] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (pp. 825–826). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
