From the sermon:
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. 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...
