Blessed? (Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany)

Matthew 5:1-12

1 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

            Isn’t it strange the way we can remember conversations we had years ago, but we can forget where we sat our coffee cup this morning? Sometimes the conversations we can recall are little more than insignificant chats about things like the cost of a gallon of milk, a preferred color of vinyl siding, or college football. Other times we can recall conversations that seem to hold more weight to us now, conversations that, after having time to soak and stew a bit, come sneaking their way back into our consciousness, rattling our brains just enough to cause us to pause and think.

            This happened to me recently, twice in fact. I recalled a conversation I had several years ago that involved two people with whom I worked: one was the director of the facility where I was working, and the other was his assistant director. Both men were married, but one of them had two children (and I think a third on the way at the time), while the other had no children, despite both he and his wife wanting to have children. They were discussing something of a high and theological nature, when the one with children said to the other, “I suppose God has just blessed me with my children…” I distinctly remember, even then, those words sounding wrong to me, as if I was listening to someone learning to speak English, but they were getting the vocabulary and conjugation wrong. 

            I can also recall a similar conversation I had with a colleague not too many years ago. For whatever reason, we were talking about the subject of families, and he said to me, “Well, God blessed me with a good family, great parents, grandparents, and siblings.” Again, there was something about that that just didn’t sit right with me. It seemed to suggest to me that God didn’t bless other people—other children—with good parents, as if those children didn’t deserve good parents, but instead, they were cursed with absent, lazy, or abusive parents.

Now, to be fair, I know neither of these men meant to be mean spirited or provocative with their words, but for so long it frustrated me that their comments didn’t quite ring true. It bothered me that I was bothered by the notion of God blessing some people with children and God blessing some children with good parents. Then I realized what it was that was really at the heart of my frustration: that word blessing. Think about it for a minute, is there not another word in out baptized vocabulary that is as misused and over-used as the word bless or blessing? After all, what do you call that little, quick prayer that you say before eating a meal (or at least before you eat big family meals or meals when the preacher comes over)? The blessing. What do you say about someone who can sing with a lovely voice? “God has really blessed her with a beautiful talent.” Or what about this: what do folks in this part of the country say to someone when they put their foot in their mouth, when they do something that borders on ridiculous, or when it seems they’ve been dealt an unfair hand in the more provincial things in life? “Well, bless your heart!”

Of course, none of this even comes close to the gross misuse of the word and idea by those who proclaim the gospel of prosperity. These pushers of profit-driven propaganda throw around the word blessing in a way that is synonymous with excessive wealth and miraculous health to the point of being gaudy. Their mantra is “Name it. Claim it.” Their motto is “Make God your choice, and He’ll give you a Rolls Royce!” Their understanding of blessing is found in financial abundance, in the notion that, if God is going to bless you, it’s going to be in large amounts of plain, good, ol’ fashioned money! Of course, we shouldn’t be too hard on these prosperity preachers. After all, not all of us who want to distance ourselves from their beliefs and language are innocent of using their vernacular when it comes to speaking about God’s blessing (especially when pledge drives and building funds rise to the top of our “to-do” lists).

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll have to admit that this is how most of us understand blessings. We see them as material manifestations of God’s favor, and they’re the type of manifestations that make us happier, more comfortable. They’re the types of things that are given to us or happen to us in this plane of existence because we have somehow either merited God’s favor or God has predetermined to bless us. But when we hear these words from Jesus, these Beatitudes, they don’t really seem to support such an understanding of blessing, do they? Perhaps we’ve heard them too often, maybe even had to memorize them for Sunday school once or twice, and now the beatitudes sound almost too familiar to us, like an old song played so often we just sing along without ever really stopping to think about the words.

So I want us to stop and really listen to them again. Listen to Jesus as he defines for us what it means to be blessed and to whom such blessings belong.  "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 receive 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 for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Do these sound like the kind of people who we might call blessed?! The poor, the mourning, the meek, the righteousness-starved, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted: this reads more like a list of those who are either at the bottom of the ladder or living in some sort of self-deprived state of misplaced piety. There is certainly no way we’d ever dream of calling someone living on the streets “blessed.” There’s no way we’d say of those whose hearts break with the weight of death and the world’s injustices: “My, they are just so blessed!” Turn on the news, open a newspaper, those who shout out the cry for war and grand shows of power are the ones whose names grace the headlines, theirs are the names written on the million-dollar checks—not those seeking to make peace! As for those who show mercy, well we wouldn’t call them blessed. No, behind closed doors we’re more likely to call them gullible, bleeding heart, fools!

It’s been that way for centuries. People have measured blessings in power, money, and influence for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Yet, the first things Jesus teaches his disciples in this discourse we call the Sermon on the Mount, is that in the Kingdom of Heaven, blessings are measured out on our scales; no, they are measured out on scales of God’s righteousness. And those blessings aren’t simple, temporary, monetary manifestations of wealth, health, and prosperity—they are blessings of eternal weight and significance. After all, Jesus doesn’t say, “Blessed are these folks, for God’s going to rain down financial abundance upon them…Blessed are these other folks, because God’s got a check with their name on it and it’s in the mail…Blessed are these folks over here, for God is going to heal their bodies and restore their reputation among their peers.” Jesus doesn’t say anything like that; the kinds of things we may think of as blessings are absent from Jesus’ list. Instead, Jesus promises the Kingdom of Heaven, consolation, a global inheritance, fulfilment, mercy, the promise of seeing God, and being called children of God. These are the kinds of blessings that are without measure. These are the kinds of blessings that can only come from God!

These are the kinds of blessings we ought to be seeking in our lives. Too often, we can be overtaken by the desire for more wealth, more power, more influence, more recognition, more of what the world would have us to think are blessings. All the while, we miss out on what God has for us. So, while these beatitudes may be in the indicative (making statements about who is blessed and how), they are in another way imperative (calling us to be those kind of people who receive God’s blessings). This is part of the Good News Jesus came to proclaim to the world: those whom the world may have deemed cursed, God has blessed. This is also part of the call to follow Jesus: to be people who walk a mile in the shoes of the poor, who mourn with those whose hearts are broken by tragedy and the overall sadness of a world lost in selfishness, to be a meek people who hunger for justice in a world where people are still treated as less than human because of traits beyond their choosing, people who show mercy when the world cries for retribution and payback, to be the pure-hearted, selfless, people of God who seek to make peace in the world even in the face of violence and persecution.  As much as these beatitudes tell us of God’s blessings, they tell us of how we are called to live as God’s blessed people.

God is calling us to be God’s blessed people. God is calling you to be blessed. God is calling you, though, to a different kind of blessing than you may expect, for it is not the kind of blessing that pads your bank account. It’s not the kind of blessing that can be measured over against the so-called blessings of others. God is calling each and every one of us to live the kind of blessed life we see outlined in the words from Jesus in Matthew’s gospel this morning. May we each seek to be those people God calls blessed.

Let us pray…