That All May Share of the Feast

We end our study of the Beatitudes on Transfiguration Sunday – the day commemorating that long-ago day when Jesus’ disciples saw Jesus, transfigured, changed.  The better word might be revealed – that is, the disciples saw Jesus not as somehow different than he was, but as he really was all along.

Why should Jesus’ transfiguration matter to our understanding of the beatitudes?  Perhaps in the glorious revealing of Jesus in his true fullness lies the key to all our mysteries – perhaps there, in Jesus’ own glorious light, lies the revealing of all he sought to tell us on that mountain day of sermons and blessings.

Perhaps there, in Jesus own light of revealing lies the truth of the beatitudes: the call to see not as the world sees, blinded by so much that gets in the way between us and God, but to see with all the nonsense stripped away, what Jesus has been showing us all along . . . our state of upside-down blessedness, as real as Jesus’ own shining forth.

Consider the last of the blessings, then, from the light of Jesus’ own revealing . . .

Matthew 5.10 (NRSV)  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Privileged the ones harassed because of their beliefs for the sake of justice:  because of them is the kingdom of heaven.

Blissful those hounded for the faith for the cause of justice: theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5.10-12 (NRSV):  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Some things to note:

1. Here does Jesus move from the 3rd to the 2nd person – from ‘they’ to ‘you’.  Now it gets personal.

2. Jesus does not bless all suffering.  All suffering is not ‘blessed’ and none of it is good, even the blessed kind.

3. There is a juxtaposition, a contrast here, that still ends in the place of blessedness: both those who suffer because they cling to justice and those who suffer at the hands of injustice itself are blessed. Within the whole of the beatitudes, we begin with the blessing of the poor in spirit and end with the persecuted.  If it be the beggars whom Jesus first blesses, a certain sense emerges in the progression of the beatitudes in linking them to the idea of God’s justice.  William Sloane Coffin once observed that the very need for charity is evidence of injustice.  That is, the fact that some need, prompting others to give, shows us that all is not well in God’s world, for if all were well, there would be no need for our charity.  Understood in this way, Jesus begins by blessing those who show the world what’s wrong with it simply by their lack and he ends by blessing those who work to change the world into a place where there is injustice no longer.

4. The promise here is present (rather than future) tense: the kingdom of heaven ‘is’ (as opposed to ‘will be’) theirs.

5. Righteousness itself, that is, the insistence on justice – in one’s dealings with others – is a form of prophecy, of truth-speaking the will of God to others.

***

That All May Share of the Feast

Looking, then, towards Jesus’ beatituding of some among us, through the transfigured, the revealed, Jesus, might we then see thusly . . .

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the beggars our kings? . . .  lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of plenty where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the heartbroken our prophets? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of soothing balm and curing kindness where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the broken in life our signposts? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world where all may safely dwell and do their appointed work, there, sharing of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the justice seekers our conscience? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of fears banished, hopes fulfilled where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the mercied mercying ones our priests? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of care and understanding where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the God-seers our children? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the world of imagination and possibilities where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the creation-restoring reconcilers our healers? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the realization of a shalom-wholeness of things where all may share of the feast?

In a world where there is so much injustice, so much lack, so much want, so much hurt, are not the hounded ones our witnesses? . . . lighting our path towards God’s vision . . . towards the day when foolish humans will require no more sacrifice and all will share of the feast?

Oh, happy, blessed, blissful, privileged transfigured, transfiguring ones . . . who knew that there, behind the clothing of your wretchedness lies your blessedness.

Amen.

God's Kids You Are -- Blessed the Peacemakers

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. – Matthew 5.9

Blissful the ones trying to make peace, for they are God’s own kids.

Privileged those who try to reconcile people having disagreements, because they do God’s work.

***

What does it mean to be called a child of God?  In the New Testament, generally it means you are claimed by God, part of God’s family; it’s  another name for a Christian.  In this understanding, Jesus’ saying might mean, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for I have claimed them and they are mine.”

Another sense of being called a child (or more literally, a son) of God is in the sense that one is doing a God-like thing or work.*

But what actually is peacemaking?  It’s an active thing, and it includes the presence of justice, for God’s peace, as biblically understood, is probably better understood as a model of health rather than a courtroom model, with justice understood as wellness, wholeness, completeness, in the way that God intends all creation to be well, whole, complete.

Participating in God’s creation in a way designed to restore health, wellness and wholeness for all is to make, to create, peace.  To make peace is to fundamentally change the nature of creation and all within it.  Understood thus, how could restoring God’s creation not be blessed by God?

Yet for the peacemakers among us, life is a great challenge.  There is no comfort of being at one with the crowd.  They live on the outside of things – always.  They see the world through different eyes – the eyes of hope for the better it could be – always.  And they are hated for it – always.

So perhaps what this beatitude is saying goes something like this: oh, my blessed ones who try so hard to make my peace move from dream to reality – nobody will thank you for it, you know.  Oh, they’ll love you enough when you’re talking about the other guy.  But as soon as you turn your gaze toward them, the friendship will be over.  They’ll feel betrayed.  And they won’t understand.  At least not at first.  Maybe never.  Just don’t you forget – whether they claim you as one of their own or not, I always will – I will always claim you for you are mine.  Nobody takes that from you.  Nobody.  So when it gets lonely . . . when you’re sure the world is incurably violent and nothing you do will ever make a difference . . . when you just know that your life has been a waste and a failure, you remember this: 

You are mine and nothing about you or what you do is a waste. 

As for the rest of us, perhaps we would do well to be a little more thankful for the peacemakers among us . . . for the ones who point out what is not always obvious to us . . . the ones who ask the hard questions, like: why does it ‘have to be’ this way? . . . the ones who challenge us to be better than we are . . . the ones who refuse to settle for business as usual . . . the ones who will not let themselves . . . or us . . . off the hook – yeah, those folk.  Maybe we should thank them, work with them, listen to them, walk alongside them, because maybe, just maybe they’re right.  Maybe we can actually do better.  And maybe we should.

After all, it was Jesus himself who said, Oh, lucky, happy, blissful, privileged, blessed you – my peacemakers, my creation restorers: you are my children!


____________________
*a God-like thing or work – from William Barclay’s The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1, p. 109-110.

Those Who Hunger & Thirst

Those who hunger are the 

ones standing at the margins

those who thirst are lying under 

foot being trampled by passers by

as they cry out No!

Whether the hunger or 

the thirst is ours 

or not

we eat at table with 

the hungering and thirsting ones

or not

for sometimes we get 

very good at ignoring their cries

shutting our eyes tight against 

the things they scream in our ears

it’s just too much

and we are too few

and it’s not our problem

and what can one person, 

one family, one church, 

one village, do?

Perhaps we might begin

simply by beginning –

remembering that hunger

and thirst are not abstract –

not theoretical

for they are not

and the real need

sits at table with us

always

That, perhaps,

is their blessing

to we who do not

The God They Be Seeing

Matthew 5.8:  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

The God They Be Seeing

Literally: Privileged the clean ones to the heart because they the God shall be seeing.

Blissful the guiltless, because they will be seeing God.

Happy those free from sin that they shall be seeing the God.

This, more than any of the other beatitudes, I suspect, is for the ‘rest of us’ rather than for the ones about whom Jesus speaks.

To be ‘pure in heart’ as Jesus speaks it means to be free of mixed motives . . . to see the best rather than the worst because one has no eye for the worst . . . to have no care for anything save the things of God . . . it is to be sin free.*

Jesus is not posing a riddle or speaking of impossibilities.  He’s talking about someone.  But who?  And what does it mean that they shall see God?  Or perhaps more importantly, what does it mean to those that are not pure in heart to say that the pure ones will see God?  Does it mean that they, that we, will not?  And what does that mean?  Is this code language about how to get to heaven?

View the beatitudes not as a list of criteria to get to heaven, not a list of virtues.  View them as a list (and not necessarily the only one) of blessings to particular people, people who are not ordinarily thought of as lucky or blessed.

There may be a call to be more like them.  But the more important challenge to the rest of us is simple recognition: the recognition that God values the likes of these.

So who are the pure in heart?  Perhaps they’re the ones among us who don’t get the joke – you know, the joke . . . the joke that has a cruel or off-color punch line . . . they don’t get it because for them, it really isn’t funny when somebody falls down because they might be hurt . . . they don’t get sexual innuendo because it never occurs to them to demean God’s gift of our embodiment. . . they are not worldly and in a sense, they are already seeing God . . . all the time.

Perhaps the pure in heart are the child-like innocents among us, for whom life seems very simple, because it is.  They’re the ones the rest of us are always explaining things to, as they ask their ridiculous questions:  Why would people go to war: don’t they know people will be killed? they wonder.  Why would you make fun of her? don’t you know it hurts her feelings?  Why are you laughing when she’s crying? they ask mostly themselves.

We answer, but you don’t understand!, to which they sadly respond, you’re right: I don’t understand, leaving us wondering if perhaps we’re the ones who’ve missed the point.

They’re not self-righteous, these pure ones.

They’re simply confused and hurt by the ugliness of the world.  Of course they see God.

The great irony is that they most likely have no idea Jesus is actually talking about them.

Oh, blissed, blessed innocent pure ones . . . God is overjoyed to see you . . . and can’t wait for you to see him. . . you see, you already have.

_________________
*William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1.

Mercied the Merciful

SCRIPTURE:  Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  –Matthew 5.7

Mercied the Merciful

Happy they who are greatly concerned about those in need: they will receive great concern in their own need.

Blissful those who show compassion to others for they will receive compassion.

Privileged those whose hearts are filled with pity because they will receive pity.

My favorite:  Blessed the merciful for they shall be mercied.

***

Often biblically, mercy is an aspect of forgiveness, as with the mercy of God shown by God’s forgiveness.  But the two musn’t be confused: mercy is the quality; forgiveness is the thing done as the result of the quality of God’s mercy.  Another way to say it is that God’s mercy is God’s motive – the reason why God is moved to forgiveness.  But biblically, mercy is not forgiveness.  Mercy is compassion, pity, caring for and about the other.

Yet it is even more than caring.  Here, the Hebrew word would be chesed, a way of caring and being that originates in the cultivated ability to see and experience things from the other’s point of view.  It’s the original idea of sympathy, which from the Greek literally means to experience or to suffer together with.  Thus might we better understand this blessing to say: Blissful the ones who get right inside others until they see with the other’s eyes, think with their thoughts, feel with their feelings: they who do that will receive that same understanding and caring returned to them.*

Ultimately, mercy is the quality of surrender of self in order to better know, understand and serve another.  It’s an act of supreme and abundant generosity, this form of being, living and giving.

This abundant generosity that is mercy is costly to the giver: it is not easy to see things from the other’s eyes.  It requires effort.  It requires a giving self.  And it results in pain – the experience of the pain of the other as one’s own pain in a manner of speaking.

This is the only beatitude in which the blessing is to receive the thing expended.  Up to now, the blessed one is one who lacks and receives the opposite of what they experience: the mourners receive comfort . . . the meek the earth . . . the hungering and thirsting, filling . . . and the poor, the very kingdom itself . . . up to now, Jesus blesses those who lack with the promise of fulfillment . . .

Here, however, is emphasized that in the very quality lies the gift.

As William Shakespeare noted in The Merchant of Venice, from the mouth of Portia to Shylock, to whom she owed a debt she could not repay, her plea for his mercy: “the quality of mercy is not strained. . . It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven . . . Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. . . it is an attribute of God himself.”

Ah, blessed, blissful, privileged the compassionate caring ones among -us: rest well, for compassionate caring will be yours.


__________________
*William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1, p. 105.

The Privilege of the Gentle Ones Among Us

SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 5.5: Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The Privilege of the Gentle Ones Among Us

Today we consider Jesus’ blessing of those we call ‘the meek’, asking who are the meek and what is the nature of their blessing and if we’re not ourselves meek, why we should care.

A clarifying moment is called for to consider the differing approaches to the beatitudes themselves.  As I’ve alluded to before, the predominant view throughout history is to take the list as a list of virtues – character traits to strive for and improve within ourselves.  I find this view problematic:

1. Jesus is making a statement of fact rather than an exhortation. In grammar, we refer to this as a declarative statement.  A declarative statement functions in a number of ways.  One is command, as in thou shalt go to the store . . . now!  Declarative statements are also used to reflect reality: it is snowing.  It’s not a debate or an opinion: it either is or is not snowing.  This is the manner in which Jesus is speaking.  So a statement of fact says, It is . . . they are . . . An exhortation (a call to change or improve something) says You should . . . They must . . . exhortation speaks to what is not true but should be.  It’s all the difference in the world:  what is versus what should be.  Jesus is speaking to what is – some are poor . . . some are sad . . . some are meek . . . and so forth.  Grammatically, Jesus is not telling people what they should be; rather, he offering a word of promise and comfort to people who already are these things.

2. Jesus speaks in the present (rather than future) tense – blessed are . . . rather than blessed will be . . . yes, the promises have a future sense, but the state is a present one.  This is not so much a call to become meek as it is a promise that things are better for the meek than they or the world might think.

3. The list as a whole makes it clear this is not list of virtues: it is not a virtue to be persecuted.  The thing that prompted the persecution might be a virtue (or it might not), but the experience of persecution itself, which Jesus blesses, is not a virtue.  It is the experience of injustice.  Being poor is not a virtue.  It’s not a vice, but it’s not a virtue.  It simply is a state of economic being. Being sad isn’t a virtue.  It’s an emotional response.

4. The form of the sentences suggest these are not virtues but states of being that are often accompanied by both a state of felt helplessness within those experiencing them and a sense of judgment by the world.  Jesus seems to be more speaking into the helplessness and judgment than telling folks how they ought to behave.

5. For those in that particular state, it would be cruel to understand these statements as exhortations to more: already broken hearted?  Well, break your heart a little more, won’t you?  Come on, you can do better at getting beat up by the world, I know you can!  That hardly sounds like the Lord of Love we follow, does it?  We must consider to whom Jesus was speaking.  If Jesus were speaking to the wealthy, the comfortable, the fat cats, it might make sense to understand the beatitudes as a list of virtues, a sort of ‘get down off your high horse’ sermon.  But those weren’t the folks in Jesus’ audience.  The folks in Jesus’ audience were first the crowds – the Bible’s way of referring to the general population, the riff-raff, as it were.  Then he is speaking to his own disciples, his followers – remember them?  The not-very-special of their society – the reputed prostitutes, the unwashed and uneducated.  Jesus wasn’t in the business of putting them down by telling them how they had fallen short.  Rather, Jesus spent a lifetime lifting them up where everyone around them had put them down.

6. Finally, in this particular beatitude, Jesus is drawing from Psalm 37, where the psalmist sings words of comfort to those who are downtrodden, promising that things are not as they seem, proclaiming that the successes of the wicked will not last.  Who needs such words?  Obviously the ones who need to hear this are the ones being downtrodden already.

The point is simple: this is not a list of things we’re to do in order to receive the blessings.  This is a list of blessings for those who are these things which society condemns and scoffs at.  Why, then, would that matter to those of us who are not, for example, meek?  As with all the blessings, I am minded of Genesis 12 where God promises Abraham blessings in order that Abraham can be a blessing to the world.

If I am meek, this blessing is for me.  If I am not meek, that the meek are blessed works through them as a blessing for me as well.  My part, as one of the not-meek, is to understand how very cherished by God the meek are.

So what on earth does it mean to be meek?  The Greek word, praeis, from the noun praus, refers  to someone who is not overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance, someone who is gentle, humble, considerate.  As a verb, the word is used of horses and other domesticated animals, to refer to the process of taming or breaking them.

The word ‘meek’ in English comes from an Old Norse word, mjukr, meaning soft or gentle.  In Middle English, meoc, came to mean courteous or indulgent.  Thus in our time, ‘meek’ means  gentle, quiet, unaggressive; benevolent, kind; courteous, humble, unassuming, modest.

As used in the Hebrew Scriptures and Apocrypha, ‘meekness’ refers to persons who are downtrodden, in need of rescue or help from the Lord: Psalm 10.7: O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart . . . Psalm 37.11 (which Jesus is drawing from in the beatitudes) but the meek (in contrast with the wicked) will inherit the land . . . Isaiah 11.4 - but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek; Isaiah 29.19 - The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord, and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.

A word about Psalm 37.11: in English, the verse has been translated:  But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.  But more literally from the Hebrew, it reads:  But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.  The word translated ‘prosperity’ in English in the Hebrew is shalom, meaning peace, wholeness.  In Greek, the word is iranas which also means peace.

From this context, we can deduce that the meek ones are the ones being beaten up by the world, who have no say in what happens to them, who are in desperate need of rescue.

The usual translation of the beatitude into English reads: Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.  Literally from the Greek, Privileged the meek ones because they shall be tenanting the land.  Perhaps we might better understand it as:  Blissful the tamed ones broken by life: in God, they shall always have a place to work and dwell.  This completes the sense of land as a source of safety and providing and peace.

Beatitudes are not laws – that is, rules to be followed.  Rather, they are pronouncements – statements about the nature of reality.  The point is not to try to be meek.  The point is, if you already are meek, the lessons of the world – that you are trash – are nonsense, for the true reality is that if you are meek, in God’s view of things, the world was made for such as you.  The world is yours.

In God’s view of things, the poor man on the side of the road is a boon companion rather than a burden . . . the sad ones are doing work for all of us in mourning the state of things . . . the meek peasant of any society is the one we should be asking from, as in ‘won’t you share with me?’  For theirs truly is the world.  Theirs to own.  Theirs to share.  What we have, we take on sufferance from the meek and we take it on loan.  We, the not-meek are the true tenant farmers among us.

MLK & Happy Mourning

Considering Matthew 5.4:  Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

We might translate this passage in various ways:

Blessed the mourning ones among us, for they shall  receive comfort and their mourning shall not have been in vain – consolation, the full realization that what they mourned has passed away, shall be their knowledge, their joy.

Privileged are the broken hearted among us:  they shall know the consolation of change.

Blissful mourners:  in your mourning lie the seeds of change, which will be your consolation.

O the blessedness of the mourning ones!  Consolation is yours!

Comfort, consolation, here has the sense of God as companion, for the Greek word means coming alongside.  So we might say:

Privileged mourning ones!  God walking beside you – comfort!

***

In the hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness, the chorus’ 2nd line: morning by morning, new mercies I see, came to me today not in terms of the morning dawn of each new day but as the sorrowful, grieving mourning, “mourning by mourning, new mercies I see” – as one sorrow takes us to the next and the next and the next . . .

Tomorrow is MLK day, when we remember the work and sacrifice of Dr. King.  He began working for his own people: the people of color in Montgomery, Alabama . . . but he was moved from there to a movement that embraced the entirety of the South and then into the north . . . and from there to the vagaries and violence of the war in Viet Nam and from there to the conditions of poverty throughout our land . . . from there to standing alongside the sanitation workers on strike in Memphis, where he would be killed so we cannot know where he would have gone from there . . .

But virtually his entire ministry was encompassed by a movement from mourning to mourning, from cause for sorrow to cause for sorrow, yet moving in the sure and certain and true conviction that consolation was always present . . . not fully realized, but always present.  

This consolation is easy to understand (when you’ve experienced it) but right difficult to explain:  it’s the knowledge of the grieving mother that she will see her son again in the sweet by and by . . . of the soldier standing on the field of battle surrounded by the fallen dead at the moment when the victory is won . . . of the moment when a lawyer pleads with an opponent to understand that this is wrong and sees a glimmer of understanding in their eyes . . . change hasn’t yet happened, but it is coming and mourning and promise stand together, hand in hand.

The mourners among us are the ones who see things as they are and know they do not have to be thus . . . sorrow is their response.

Blessed are they, for they do not mourn in vain.

This is not merely the sorrow of inevitable loss, such as death.

This is the soul-invading Spirit sorrow at a world gone awry.

This the praying, beseeching, pleading sorrow of a saint on his knees before his God. . . the sorrow for the hunger of children she’ll never meet . . . the broken tears shed for a world that cannot, that will not, imagine another, better way.

Put another way, Jesus might have said . . . consider yourselves lucky for the pain-in-the-neck cry babies among you . . . the ones always reminding you about Somalia and Syria and Israel-Palestine and Congo and Iran and Iraq . . . the ones whose tears never end and who insist that things not only should, but can, change . . . lucky you to have such people living among you – for they will make you better and in the making, God will comfort them.

On the night before he died, Dr. King spoke of hypothetically being given the chance by God to choose in which time he would live and in his choosing, said this, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy." Now that's . . . strange . . . the world is all messed up . . . Trouble is in the land. . . . But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a away that men, in some strange way, are responding — something is happening in our world. . .

Using the parable of the Good Samaritan, Dr. King made the point that the question is not: if I help this man, what will happen to me?  Rather, the question is always, if I do not help this man, what will happen to him?  

Dr. King concluded the last speech he would ever give famously and prophetically saying, Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  

The mourning ones among us, like the rest of us, live as long as they live.  They eat and drink, they laugh and make jokes.  They watch tv and read the papers and go to church . . . or not.  They raise their families.  And they watch and see and read the signs of the times.

And in their reading live their tears, which God has blessed for the benefit of us all.

For them, there is special blessing – the blessing of knowing the right question to ask (what will happen to them?) . . . the blessing of a heart able to break over the things that should break a heart . . . the blessing of seeing the land of promise and like Moses and Dr. King and so many others, that is enough and more than enough.

God walks alongside the mourning ones among us, whispering the comfort that will be theirs: O blessed are they!

Sermon Cliff Note: Blissful Are the Poor

The Literal Sentence (from Matthew 5.3)

Privileged the beggars the spirit, because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Some alternatives:

Beggars make happy the spirit, for because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Beggars be happy in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

Beggars are blessed by the spirit . . .

Happy beggars to the spirit, because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

Because of them is the kingdom of the heavens, [so] blessed [are] the beggars [for/by/with] the spirit.

My two suggestions:

(1) The beggars [among us] are blessed by the spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

–or–

(2) Blessed, privileged the spirit of the poor ones, the beggars among us: because of them is the kingdom of the heavens.

It requires a bit of linguistic twisting, but the second one is where I land – I remain unconvinced that ‘poor in spirit’ is correct, thinking that the poor and the spirit are two separate things given the grammar, but I bow to the vast weight of scholarly consensus to adopt the idea that the spirit here is the spirit of the poor, but decline to agree that it’s ‘poor in spirit’ as opposed to the spirit of the poor.  There are problems both ways, but no one really has any idea what ‘poor in spirit’ means, so it makes sense to me to adopt the obvious solution: the blessing is for the poor, but it is a spiritual (rather than material) blessing of which Jesus speaks.

Either way, however, the question that begs to be asked by the clear language of the last part of the sentence is this: what if it’s that the kingdom of heaven has its existence among us precisely because of the poor?  What if the kingdom is the gift of the poor to all of humanity?  What if it’s not the poor in spirit who are blessed, but simply the poor and that what they receive is the spiritual blessing of knowing that because of them, the kingdom of heaven is at hand?

So imagine yourself driving to Staunton and coming to a stop at which stands a man with a sign begging for money.  You are Jesus sitting in the car, so instead of just sitting there and pretending not to see him or slipping him, somewhat guiltily, a little bit of cash, or even getting out and taking him with you for a meal or to find a job, you jump out of the car, unmindful of the blocked traffic, hug him, and declare what a great day this is that the two of you have met up, telling him as you hold him in your grasp, I am so glad I got to see you today!  You are such a blessing!  Thank you!  Thank you for bringing the kingdom of heaven with you!  Thank you for being here!  I’m headed into town – you want to come with me?  I want all my friends to meet you!  You have helped me so much today – you don’t even know.  Is there anything I can do for you?  What a lucky day that we met!  I can’t believe my good fortune!

So what if this is what God is actually thinking:

Oh how lucky you are, oh, the bliss God has in you and has in mind for you . . . you who are poor, who lack, who must beg for what you need . . . without you, there is no kingdom . . . you in all your need, make it possible . . . and your God is grateful for you . . .

You, who don’t know where you next meal might come from . . .

You, who have to beg the kids to call or visit . . .

You, whose family is ashamed to even admit they know you . . .

You, who don’t know what to do without the one you always counted on to be there . . .

You, exhausted by the demands of surviving . . .

You, who crack the door open for others to help and God to enter just by being here  . . .

You, who challenge the rest to change the world simply by your very existence . . .

You are the kingdom bringers, the God bearers, the very image of God in our midst . . .

And you are blessed. . . not your state . . . not your misery . . . not your poverty . . . but you.

The poor have much to teach.  And friends, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot to learn.

Amen.

Praying on the Impoverishment of My Generosity

Rereading me some liberation theology – condemned, as always, but this time, struggling not to be bogged down in guilt (that I am not poor, but wealthy, very wealthy, by the standards of the world) – I stand indicted by some of the first words of the original Introduction to Gustavo Gutierrez’s A Theology of Liberation: “My purpose is . . . to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord . . .”

Sigh.

And yet I recall to memory that to stand in judgment before my Lord is not to be bent down as a broken and caught-out criminal, but rather to stand in glory side-by-side with all, claimed, loved, redeemed, set and sent for purpose, fulfilled and unfulfilled, and that judgment this side of heaven is not my rod so much as my guide.

Yesterday we marked the anniversary of the declaration of war on poverty.  It sounds a bit ridiculous, all this war-declaring we seem to like to do.  But the impulse (I leave to others far brighter than I to judge sincerity of intentions at the time) to eradicate (at least some of) the problems associated with poverty – economic, educational, and health care lack – is a good one.

That the conditions of poverty are (often if not always) institutionally created, it also seems good to me that we endeavor to address them in institutional ways, ever mindful of my far more progressive friends’ mistrust of all things institutional.

But if dismantling is not to our liking, maybe what we need is more mantling – more cloaking, but with what?  Perhaps with righteousness – an unpopular word in my time and place.  But even more, perhaps, with love – the act of actual care, of walking alongside, of doing better at doing better.

This, then, in observing yet another anniversary of human (claimed) desire to eradicate the misery of poverty, oppression, injustice, is my prayer . . .

Lord, I hear You telling me that sitting at table together, being the guest rather than always the host, matters.  For the gifts I have received from those with so much less in a material way than I, I give you thanks.  For the lessons in humility, I give you thanks.  For Your ways not being our ways, my way, I give You thanks.  For Your not-always obvious or even apparent ways of blessing the poor, I give you thanks.  When I have trivialized Your beatitude bestowing upon them by trying to make it about something other than genuine material lack, I regret.  When I am impatient because the solutions are hard and often not obvious, I regret.  When I am tempted to judge the worthiness of another before I bestow Your graces shared with me upon them, I regret.  Help me to do better at doing better.  Amen.

Blessed Are . . .

Blessed are those who sing our blessings
          that we might know something of Divine’s joy

Blessed are those who midwife their own birth
          that they might know the power of existence

Blessed are those who survive
          receiving not virtue but strength

Blessed are those who write the stories
          that we might know who we are

Blessed are the angry
          for they shall keep us honest

Blessed are the kind
          for we in much need of kindness

Blessed is the laughter
          for the laughter will see us through much

Blessed are those who stand at the margins
          slapping the torpor out of the rest – how I hate to own it – of us

Blessed are those who dance
          oh, so, so blessed are those who dance

The Eighth Day of Christmas: Blessed Are. . .

From A Catholic Notebook blog

From the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, today, the first day of 2012, is the 8th day of Christmas, represented by eight maids a milking.

Although it is discounted by much modern scholarship, there has been a suggestion that each ‘day’ of the song represents a teaching from the Bible, particularly for Catholics during the time of their persecution in England.  Wikipedia: The Twelve Days of Christmas

In that understanding, putting aside for the moment the historicity of the claim and the distaste at remembering persecution, today would be the day to recall the Beatitudes found in Matthew 5.3-10 (NIV)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, 

   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn, 

   for they will be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek, 

   for they will inherit the earth. 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

   for they will be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful, 

   for they will be shown mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, 

   for they will see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, 

   for they will be called children of God. 

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, 

   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The practice of blessing is one we might do well to adopt in this year of 2012 mythology of cataclismic endings, Mayan predictions of the end of time and Christian crazies continuing to presume to tell all the date and time of our collective end.

For the practice of blessing is one that reminds us that in our creaturliness, we inhabit the here and the now and while Jesus’ beatitudes may be promising future reward, they speak most eloquently, I think, not to reward in a distant horizon we can barely imagine, but rather to our present circumstance, telling us that no matter how challenging, no matter how bleak, our poverty, our sorrow, our humility, our hunger, our mercy, our focused hearts, our passion towards peace, even our suffering for the cause of justice in the here and the now have meaning . . . cosmic meaning.

Blessings are not blow-out-the-candle birthday wishes . . . rather, blessings speak something into reality.  Blessing are an act of creation.  And as such, blessings are incredibly brave and faith-filled things to offer . . . the creation of comfort where there seems to be none to be had . . . the creation of hope where things seem hopeless . . . the creation of rest right smack-dab in the middle of unrest . . . the creation of peace in the midst of violence . . .

My blessing offered for us all this year some of us name 2012 . . .

Blessed is the human as it struggles and writhes in its own birth, life and dying pangs, for it will find creativity . . . and solace . . . meaning and purpose . . . life and all its attendant joys . . .

May it be so, O Lord, may it be so.