Good morning! We made it through another snowy week. Many of our parishioners are now on Winter Break. We pray for the safety of those traveling this week. I will be one of them. Next weekend we’re heading out to Michigan (of all places this time of year!) to see some friends, but I’ll be with you again the weekend after that--for the jazz mass, in fact, on March 2!
Our reading today is one of the most famous in all the Gospels, perhaps one of the few passages people still know, even in an increasingly unchurched culture. “Blessed are the …”
[OK without looking down how many of those can you fill in? Poor, peacemakers, the meek...
Matthew’s Gospel contains more beatitudes, or blessings, than we read today in Luke’s account--eight, to Luke’s four. When we think of the beatitudes, it’s really Matthew’s that come to mind:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are the persecuted and reviled.
The Beatitudes have been referred to as the New Testament’s “10 Commandments,” or sometimes, “Jesus’ autobiography.”
In Matthew, they’re part of the larger Sermon on the Mount, which also contains a lot of familiar teachings even to those outside the Christian faith: do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. You are the light of the world, you are the salt of the earth. And, the Lord’s Prayer. Gandhi called the Sermon on the Mount, and the Beatitudes, the “greatest thing ever written,” and he wasn’t even of the Christian faith. Kurt Vonnegut, an avowed atheist, said “If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.”
On years when Lent begins early--and this year it’s late, starting March 5--we miss the Beatitudes. They come to us in the latter part of the season of Epiphany. So depending on how long Epiphany extends, we either read them or we don’t. There’s been complaining in the church over this; how can you skip the Beatitudes? Some Orthodox Christians say them every Sunday at the beginning of the mass; their children know them as well as they know the Lord’s Prayer.
On the one hand, every Christian should know these. On the other, to have them be too familiar is to miss the shock of them. I confess I always hear these and think, how lovely, and rarely stop to take in just how provocative they are. Every bit of us resists what they claim: that to be blessed, or (as some translations put it, happy), is to be weak, impoverished, in mourning, hungry, and thirsty. These are states we associate with being cursed, not blessed. Sad, not happy. Abandoned by God, certainly not drawn in closer.
Here in this country we’re especially prone to think that blessing and happiness look a certain way. On the more extreme end, it’s to be wealthy, wealthier than anyone needs to be. Beautiful. Young. Powerful. Perhaps famous. Those are messages that are fed to us a thousand different ways, everywhere we look.
Most of us aren’t that caught up in fame or extreme wealth, but we’re on that spectrum. Blessing is to be materially comfortable. In good health. Attractive, well dressed. An untarnished reputation, a life free of public gaffes or humiliation, happily married, employed and professionally successful.
I used to follow a podcast called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, who knows exactly the longings of women-of-a-certain age: an organized and structured life, where “there’s a place for everything, everything in its place.” You always make time for walks and self-care. Friendships are routinely maintained. Clutter is purged in a timely way. You never say Yes to something you don’t want to go to. She provides all sorts of strategies to make you think you can achieve the blessing of an ordered life.
That stuff is in the air we breathe. It’s no wonder we come into church, listen (every couple years--sometimes also at funerals or weddings) to the Beatitudes read aloud, and hear them as pretty sayings. We just can’t grasp how subversive, even outrageous, they are.
Everything we put in the blessings category, Jesus calls a “Woe,” “woe to you who are rich now…”. And everything we count as an affliction, a “woe,” he calls a blessing.
One of my favorite approaches to the Beatitudes comes out of the Early Church. Again, not the version we just read in Luke, but Matthew’s Gospel contains eight beatitudes, and together they provide a spiritual practice. Starting from the first, each beatitude is a rung on a ladder, and you take them one by one, working on each. They’re not pretty sayings to be admired; they’re a guide for life. And to practice them is challenging.
You begin with the first: Blessed are the poor in spirit.
If you’re too comfortable or content, maybe there’s something you’re not letting in. Contentedness is not a mark of Christian achievement; poverty of spirit, its opposite, is.
Next rung on the ladder of spiritual practice: Blessed are those who mourn.
Our culture does everything it can to contain and put limits on grief, and sadness. If you do it too long, you’ll know it. Someone will make you feel selfish, or unbalanced. But if the depth of our grief matches the depth of our love for the person or thing lost, then grief shouldn’t be shunned, but respected, and given all the time it needs.
Next rung on the ladder: Blessed are the meek.
Here’s one that couldn’t be more at odds with our culture. A glance at the news is all it takes to see how much we revere bravado, fighting words, being on top. If anything we persecute the meek, not bless and honor them. Next time someone tries to get ahead of you in some way, step aside. Let them. That’s what they need, not you. Or try not to let it be what you need.
Next: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Hunger--and I’ve never experienced it really--hurts. We’re called to want righteousness and justice as desperately we want food to eat and water to drink. Without people in this world who hunger after righteousness, we wouldn’t have food programs for the hungry, medical care for the world’s poor, societies that protect our most vulnerable. All these things are driven by those who feel viscerally that they must help.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are the persecuted and reviled.
You can go through each of these yourself and expand them. Each could take a lifetime to master. To start, spend a week on each, 8 weeks. That’ll take you right to Easter. Then turn around and do it again. And again. I often talk about the Baptismal Covenant from the Book of Common Prayer being the guide for the Christian life, but these I’d put well before that. Everything that’s in that covenant, is here.
Each of us is part of this little world, St. James, so if we all practiced the beatitudes, think how much more our church could be. But each of us is also part of other, different worlds beyond these walls, and if we all took these practices with us out there, too, imagine the reach just this small place could have.
And if we take blessed to mean (and many do) simply “happy,” imagine our happiness, too. Not the world’s happiness, but the true happiness and satisfaction that comes of living a life of humble service to God, and to the world.