Live for Now

The Seven Sins of Suburbia: Part 3

Matthew 5:4 NRSVue

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

In 1939, as Britain prepared for war, the government launched a campaign to calm the public in case of crisis.

Posters were printed with a simple message in bold white letters:

“Keep Calm and Carry On.”

It was meant to steady nerves.

To preserve order.

To make sure that even if the world was falling apart, the public wouldn’t.

But beneath its stoic surface, that phrase reveals something deeper about the culture it came from —

a culture that prides itself on emotional restraint.

On keeping things quiet.

On pushing through, rather than breaking down.

The campaign resurfaced decades later — especially in 2020 —

plastered on mugs, t-shirts, memes…

and used as a response to everything from pandemics to politics.

But by then, it had become more than just a slogan.

It was symbolic of something Western culture had absorbed:

A deceptively numbing way of thinking.

A way of coping that avoids grief by trivializing it.

A way of surviving that tells us: don’t feel too much… just carry on.

And it’s not just British.

It’s everywhere — especially in how we respond to pain, injustice, or discomfort.

So now I want to show you a commercial.

It aired in 2017.

It tried to say something about peace.

About unity.

About this very moment we’re living in.

But watch closely —

not just for what it shows…

but for what it avoids.

(Play the Pepsi “Live for Now” ad with Kendall Jenner)

What you’re seeing is a protest.

Or at least — the branding version of one.

Kendall Jenner — is in the middle of a fashion shoot.

She notices a march passing by…

The signs say things like “Love” and “Peace” —

vague, feel-good words, with no real context.

No real pain.

The music builds.

Beautiful people smile.

Drums and slogans — but no anger. No urgency. No tears.

It’s protest reimagined — as aesthetic.

As optimism. As marketing.

And then…

she joins in.

She pulls off the wig.

Smudges her lipstick.

And becomes the centre of the movement she wasn’t part of.

At the end — she walks up to a line of police.

Hands an officer a can of Pepsi.

He takes a sip.

The crowd erupts in applause.

And that’s it.

Problem solved.

Crisis over.

Just like that.

This aired globally in 2017.

And within 24 hours… it was pulled down

Not because of a technical glitch — but because of what it failed to feel.

What it tried to say… without ever stopping to mourn.

In a world that tells us to skip pain and sell peace,

Jesus says something very different.

Matthew 5:4 NRSVue

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

That aired for just one day.

It was pulled almost immediately.

Some of you remember the backlash.

Others may be seeing it for the first time.

It was marketed as bold. Hopeful. Uplifting.

But to many… it felt hollow.

Disconnected.

Sanitised.

And if it made you feel something —

maybe confusion, discomfort, even anger —

that’s good.

Because sometimes the loudest thing in the room

isn’t what’s said…

it’s what gets ignored.

🕊️ MOVEMENT 1: The Culture That Can’t Cry

We don’t mourn very well.

We’ve become fluent in distraction.

Experts in image management.

We’re far more comfortable looking okay than being honest.

In the world that created that ad — and in the world many of us live in:

Grief is inconvenient.

Sadness is embarrassing.

Lament is awkward.

So what do we do?

We skip it.

We scroll past it.

We hand it a can of soda and hope it goes away quietly.

That’s not just bad advertising.

That’s emotional apathy.

And Jesus is calling it out.

Because this Beatitude isn’t just about private grief —

it’s about a posture of honesty. A way of engaging the world that says:

“I will not ignore what’s broken.

I will not pretend everything’s fine.

I will not numb myself to the pain of others or the grief in my own chest.”

But let’s be clear — the sin isn’t just numbness.

It’s the refusal to mourn.

One of many reasons why we refuse to mourn as human beings is because we have been sold into a lie.

The Lie that that peace can be created without pain,

that healing can happen without truth,

that hope can be sold without suffering.

The title of that pepsi ad that lasted less than 24h was: Live for now.

“Live for Now” sounds empowering.

But it’s often just a slogan for emotional evasion.

It tells you to smile.

Post something hopeful.

Stay in your lane.

Keep it light.

But Jesus says —

“Blessed are the ones who don’t keep it light.

Blessed are the ones who cry.

Who feel.

Who ache.

Who refuse to go numb in a numbing world.”

A few years before my time at Newbold College in England — where I studied — I was told a story.

A painful one.

A Korean student had come to study at Newbold… and during his time there, he unfortunately passed away.

His body was eventually sent back to South Korea.

But sometime after, his father got on a plane and flew all the way to England — all the way to Newbold College.

Now, if you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, you’ll know something about British culture — especially outside of London.

It’s quiet. Reserved.

In the countryside where Newbold is, you don’t hear shouting in the streets.

You walk through the village and all you hear is birdsong, maybe the hum of a passing car.

Stillness is the norm.

But when this South Korean father arrived, he came to do one thing.

He walked the entire campus…

and he wailed.

Not cried — wailed.

The sound of his grief carried through the college grounds and into the village.

People stopped. They listened.

And they knew exactly who he was — because the story of his son’s death had already spread.

No one needed to ask why he was here.

No one needed to ask if he was mourning.

His grief was undeniable.

This man didn’t know how to hold it in.

And so… he didn’t.

He mourned.

MOVEMENT 2: The Sound of Real Grief

You didn’t need to understand Korean to understand that father.

Grief is fluent in every language.

Pain doesn’t wait for translation.

And what struck me about that story —

is how uncomfortable it made people.

It wasn’t wrong.

It wasn’t inappropriate.

But it disrupted the norms of the environment.

British reserve. Cultural politeness. Quiet towns and well-trimmed hedges.

That man brought something into the open that most people are trained to keep hidden.

And that’s not just a British thing.

That’s not just a countryside thing.

That’s all of us — when we’ve been conditioned to believe that real mourning is too much.

Too messy.

Too emotional.

Too disruptive.

Too vulnerable.

We want polite sadness.

A few tears at the right time.

Then back to business as usual.

But Jesus doesn’t say:

Blessed are the composed.

He says:

“Blessed are those who mourn…”

(Matthew 5:4)

And the Greek word He uses for the word Mourn— πενθοῦντες (penthountes) — doesn’t mean a little emotional.

It doesn’t mean to “feel bad quietly.”

It means to grieve deeply.

To lament loudly.

To wail — like that father did.

To be so overcome by loss or injustice that the pain can’t stay inside your chest.

This is active mourning.

It’s the present tense — a continual posture.

A refusal to grow numb.

🧯 Here’s the problem:

We’ve created a Christianity that lets you bring your faith to church —

but not your grief.

We’ve been told to hold it together.

But Jesus says, let it fall apart.

Because mourning isn’t a problem.

It’s not a spiritual failure.

It’s not something to rush through.

Mourning is a mark of someone who’s paying attention —

to the world, to their own heart, to the ache of others.

That father’s grief made people uncomfortable.

But it also made something clear:

He had lost something…

and he refused to pretend otherwise.

That’s what Jesus blesses.

MOVEMENT 3: The Disruption That Heals

In her research on the neuroscience of grief, Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor (Neuroscientist) discovered something profound:

“Grieving is a form of learning. Our brain is trying to update its understanding of the world… and that takes time and experience.”

In other words, grief doesn’t just make us sad — it transforms us.

Why?

Because love — deep attachment — physically changes the wiring of our brain.

When we lose someone, or when our hearts break from the pain of the world, our brains have to literally rewire to make sense of a new, aching reality.

And the only way that transformation happens…

is by not avoiding the pain.

Not skipping over it.

Not numbing out.

Not buying into the distractions of a culture that tells you to “Live for Now.”

The String Illustration

Let me show you what I mean.

[Hold up a long piece of string. Two congregants stand with the string stretched between them. A metal ring is threaded through the string.]

This is how the brain works.

When you love someone — or when you get used to a certain rhythm of life —

your brain forms strong pathways.

It creates habits. Patterns. Expectations.

The way you start your day.

The people you expect to see.

The world you believe in.

[Push the ring from one end to the other.]

But then — something shifts.

Someone is gone.

Or the world breaks.

Death. Injustice. Betrayal. Displacement.

The old system collapses.

[Cut the string with scissors — the ring falls.]

The pathway breaks.

And everything collapses with it.

That’s what grief feels like.

It’s not just sadness.

It’s disorientation. It’s confusion. It’s panic.

Your brain and heart can’t find the way forward — because what once made sense… no longer does.

[Introduce a third person standing in a new direction. Begin tying a new piece of string from the original first person to the new third person.]

But here’s the good news:

When we choose to mourn —

When we don’t numb out, or scroll past, or ignore it…

When we stay present to the ache in our own hearts and in the world —

Something holy begins.

We form new pathways.

New compassion.

New awareness.

New solidarity.

[Push the ring along the new string.]

And here’s the beauty of it:

This new pathway doesn’t cancel the old one.

It honors what was lost.

It remembers the break.

But now — because of Jesus — the grief doesn’t end in collapse.

It leads to comfort.

To healing.

To a new way of navigating life, with divine presence beside you.

And it’s not just transformative for you.

It’s transformative for everyone watching you walk through the pain.

Because Kingdom mourning is not weakness — it’s witness.

When the world sees someone refuse to go numb…

When they see someone feel, and weep, and keep going —

held by the Comforter Himself —

They don’t just see your pain.

They see your faith.

And they glimpse what it looks like to be truly human.

He’s blessing the ones who feel.

Who choose empathy over apathy.

Who weep — because to weep is to be human.

And more than that — it’s to be like Jesus.

There’s a word used in the Gospels — when Jesus is overwhelmed by a man’s suffering.

It says Jesus had compassion on him.

But in the Greek, the word is splagchnizomai —

It means to be moved from the guts. The womb. The place of birth.

Jesus didn’t just notice pain.

He was moved by it.

He entered it.

That’s what mourning does.

It undoes the numbness.

It breaks the apathy.

It transforms the heart.

So here’s the truth:

To not mourn — is to resist the work of the Spirit.

To not mourn — is to reject the way of Jesus.

To not mourn — is to stay safe, when God is calling you to be soft.

Mourning is not a side note to faith.

It is central to discipleship.

Because it’s only when we mourn…

that we’re open enough to be comforted.

Come Feel Again

This is Ieshia Evans.

In 2016, just days after the police killing of Alton Sterling, she stood — calm, still, unarmed — before a line of riot police in Baton Rouge.

No shouting. No signs.

Just her body, her silence, and her refusal to look away.

She stood in protest — but also in grief.

Not just for one man, but for a world cracking under the weight of injustice.

And somehow, in that moment… the world felt it.

This is why, when Pepsi aired its ad in 2017, something felt eerily wrong.

It wasn’t just the tone — it was the emptiness.

The ad bypassed the ache.

It skipped over the mourning and tried to sell us unity without ever naming the grief.

But that ad wasn’t just Pepsi’s fault.

It was a mirror.

A symbol of how Western culture has normalized avoidance…

and numbed us to the holy discomfort of mourning.

Jesus invites us to something deeper.

He doesn’t say, “Smile and move on.”

He says, “Mourn… and be comforted.”

Because mourning isn’t weakness — it’s witness.

It’s how the Spirit softens hearts and rewires our souls.

And maybe that’s what He’s asking of you today.

Not to fix everything.

Not to carry it all.

But to feel again.

To lean in — when the world tells you to check out.

To let your heart break — when it’s easier to scroll past.

To weep for Sudan.

To mourn with Palestine.

To ask, “What if it were me?”

Because the Kingdom of God isn’t built by the unbothered.

It’s built by the brokenhearted — who refuse to go numb.

And when you mourn…

You make room for the Comforter.

You become the evidence of hope in a hurting world.

So if you’re tired of pretending —

If you’re done performing —

If you’re ready to stop numbing and start noticing —

Then this Beatitude is for you.

Pepsi tried to show us how to live for now…

Ironically, Jesus already told us how to Live for now.

Matthew 5:4 NRSVue

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.