“Happy/Blessed”

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE GOSPEL Matthew 5:1-12 click here to watch the sermon “Happy/Blessed”

I saw this week that one politician of some reputation in their state said of another politician running for elective office that they were going to hell. I know this sort of language is just par for the course these days, but I guess I took it slightly personally because the politician in question, the one supposedly booked for an eternity of fiery torment, also happens to be a person of faith who attended the same seminary that I graduated from. But then I remembered that I don’t believe in hell. At least not in the way that it was being used in this context. Before you get too scandalized, remember that I am- if reluctantly so- a Calvinist, which is to say that I’m pretty sure that any hell that exists is the product of our own human constructions and failings and not the eternal will of God to punish certain people for all of eternity. The truth is that while Jesus spoke once or twice about hell as a place to be avoided, he spent far more time pointing us toward and inviting us to re-orient our lives and our hearts around something he called the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven. In contrast to the turn, or burn language of the condemning sort of Christian fundamentalism, Jesus’ words about repentance (literally a change of direction) had to do with the nearness of this Kingdom of Heaven and the good news that represented. The more time we spend with Jesus, with what he did and what he had to say, the more evident that faith and belief in this good news has far more to do with participating in the coming of that Kingdom on earth as is in heaven and very little to do with escaping this earthly life and an eternity of torment for some heavenly afterlife destination vacation. 

Now, the word Kingdom presents something of a challenge these days. A kingdom is quite literally the dominion of a King. Both those words can feel problematic in different ways. First, there has been a whole lot of noise lately about ‘No Kings.’ But it isn’t just lately. We’re coming up on the 250^th anniversary of the signing of our nation’s Declaration of Independence and the beginning of a revolutionary war against the British crown, stoked in no small part by Presbyterians whose rallying cry was, “No Bishop. No King!” We don’t do kings. We’re suspicious of their authoritarian impulses. Plus, there’s the whole patriarchal inference. Kings are male. Dominion isn’t a whole lot easier, given that it shares a word root with dominate. That sounds like the kind of power that is oppressive and limiting. Some folks have worked around these objections by talking about the Kin-dom of God. A realm having more to do with the bonding loyalties of family. But it still carries that dominion piece, and plenty of us have experiences of family that feel more like bondage than bonding. In a book we read last year, Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles articulates these objections to the phrase Kingdom of God and lands instead on Kinship of God. “It’s not a place but a stance,” he writes. “It’s not a position; it’s a disposition and a temperament.” All of that is well and good, and I think worth merit. 

But Jesus himself is speaking against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. More to the point he lives and moves and has his being in a land that while promised by God to God’s people, is occupied by the global superpower of its time. Rome was very much about dominion and domination, and that domination issued from its king, its emperor, its Caesar. So all of our objections not withstanding, when Jesus announces the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven, he is announcing an alternate source of power and allegiance to the one currently occupying the lives of the people he’s talking to, and healing, and feeding and cleansing. But what is that alternative? Just what is Jesus proposing when he invites us to change the direction of our lives by orienting them to this alternate reality. A way of being in the world that theologian Karl Barth referred to as the real reality. The gospels are very much an attempt to answer that question. And one of the best places to start in the gospels is what we’re going to investigate over the next nine Sundays of the summer, what is often referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a collection of Jesus’ teaching over three chapters in Matthew’s account of the good news. Crowds are coming out to see him. They’ve heard tell of his miraculous healing and want to see it for themselves. So, Jesus goes up the mountain where his disciples come to him and listen to what he has to say about this Kingdom of Heaven, this realm of God’s power that has come near to them in him. 

It begins with blessing, which seems important to point out. So many people who claim the faith want to tell others how bad they are, sinners in the hands of a God who is really mad at them for their sin. But that isn’t what Jesus does. In fact, he says that it’s the people who are poor in spirit who are blessed. What? Not those who identify as spiritual, but not religious, but the ones who are neither spiritual nor religious. The ones who may not give one thought to God, if they even believe in God to begin with. Or the ones who are so overwhelmed by their lives and the world that belief feels like a luxury they cannot afford. It’s to them that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs. That can’t be right, can it? But then the list goes on. Blessed are those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted. None of those sound like something you could post to Instagram with the hashtag: blessed. Where are the ones with a sweet new ride, or high achieving kids, or tropical vacations? Why don’t they make the list? 

Years ago I was on a retreat with my friends. We were staying at an Air BnB and the caretaker of the property found out we were pastors. “Ah yes,” he said, “I like the Bible. Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” I might have injured myself rolling my eyes. He meant well. But not everything- in fact, very little of what is in the bible is instruction, and it has nothing to do with leaving this planet that has been entrusted to our care. Back in the day Robert Schuler wrote a book about these blessings titled The Be Happy Attitudes. To be fair, the word we translate as ‘blessed’ can also be rendered as ‘happy’ or ‘fortunate’. That may make for a catchy book title, but I’m not sure I could bring myself to tell someone who is mourning that Jesus says they should be happy. And really, these Beatitudes are not prescriptive; the nine steps to a blessed life. They are descriptive. And if they sound less than appealing to us, I think Jesus may have achieved his purpose. We look at each of these, even the ones that sound admirable like purity of heart and peacemaking, and are likely to think, “no thanks.” “Not for me.” When we look at someone who is poor in spirit or even pure in heart we’re more prone to say, “better them than me. That isn’t my idea of my best life.” 

And that is where Jesus would have us know that when it comes the Kingdom of Heaven, when it comes to way in which God’s power and presence moves in this world all around us, all the time, there is no one and no circumstance that is beyond the blessing of God. Contrary to what you might find in the comments on the internet, there is no disqualifying condition for the favor and love that God would bestow upon us. Even, and especially in the places we would rather not talk about. We’ll pretend to believe even in our doubts, lest we be considered spiritually unfit. We’ll throw celebrations of life to avoid the painful reality of mourning what has been lost. We’ll bluster and pound our chests to mask our fear of being meek and powerlessness. Instead of hiding from what it is to be human, and all the difficulty that comes with believing and mourning, and having little to no say when it comes to the powers of this world. Instead of ignoring the wrongs that we’re sure will never be made right, or sliding into cynicism, or avoiding conflict so that we aren’t persecuted, Jesus reminds us that there is a blessing to be found in all that we would otherwise avoid, or flee from. 

This week I’ve been reminded of how much there is in the world that would throw me into despair. People who live on the margins, children put at risk, debilitating delusions brough on by mental illness, the person who called the church Friday morning seeking prayer and sobbing before they hung up. I am completely unequal to the task of taking any of it on spiritually, and that is just the tip of an enormous iceberg of pain that floats just beneath the surface all around us on a day-to-day basis. But Jesus says that’s okay, there’s a blessing to be found there, because we don’t have to face it alone, we never did. And so we mourn, not just our personal losses, but so much that is lost daily, so many who are wounded or in pain. There’s a blessing in that, in letting it affect us. It humbles us. We are made meek by it, recognizing our limits. We inherit all that God has made and we find ourselves hungering and thirsting for it to be made right. There’s blessing there too, because we aren’t satisfied with crumbs. We are purified in the fire of our longing for justice to see God in ways we never would otherwise, which is also a blessing. And we put ourselves in uncomfortable places of conflict because as children in the household of God we want everyone to be able to rest in the peace, the wholeness God offers. None of which is likely to make friends among those whose profit and power come from the injustices and the conflicts that are the source of so much of our mourning. They will come after us. They will come after you. They might even suggest that you’re going to hell for it, for trusting in the blessing that Jesus describes. All the more reason to rejoice in the counter-intuitive blessings of this Kingdom that has come near to us. The kinship of the household of God that is for everyone and that has been with us all along.