There is a movie called Hashtag Blessed. It’s about a young
woman who is miserable in her life for a variety of reasons, but one key cause
is that she is trying to live her life through the lens of Instagram. And that
is a lens that is almost guaranteed to make you feel like your life doesn’t measure
up.
She scrolls through and sees a picture
from a friend who just got a new car! #blessedlife! Other friends looking fine
in their fancy clothes, hanging out in elegant places, surrounded by dazzling,
glittery things - #blessedlife!
Real life just doesn’t measure up to
that for most of us.
Sometimes we are a little confused
about what it means when we talk about blessing, being blessed. In the popular
vernacular, to be blessed is about the same as being lucky. Or maybe being good
– good enough to have all the things you want to have. But if that is what we
believe, then Jesus is throwing a king-size curveball into our belief system.
The story we hear today from chapter 5
really begins in verse 23 of chapter 4, when Jesus began traveling through Galilee,
teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and healing every
sickness, every ailment among the people. The word spread, and soon they all
began bringing the sick and the lame to him, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics;
great crowds began following him.
And when he saw the crowds – this is
where we begin today – when he saw the crowds he began to teach these things.
The blessings.
When he pronounces a blessing on the
poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the
persecuted, among other things, we struggle to make any sense out of this. Because
we know from experience that being poor in spirit, feeling meek or mournful,
being persecuted – these things feel like the opposite of being blessed.
A blessing is a good thing, by
definition. Being poor, hungry, meek, mournful, and persecuted – these are not
good things. So how are we to understand the meaning of these words, the
beatitudes?
Of course, Jesus came out of a rich
tradition of blessing. In Jewish tradition, a blessing can be understood as
increasing. When we bless someone we are asking God to increase good things in
their lives. And in the scriptures, we can see that the good things being
increased come in all forms: increased crops, increased land, increased
offspring, increased happiness.
More is better, the Bible seems to
say. More is good, we agree.
But be careful about how we handle
this notion of increase. Because more, when it comes to us at someone else’s
expense, this is not blessing.
Blessing, when rightly understood,
always involves an acknowledgment that there is something greater than
ourselves and our personal interests at work in every part of life. Jewish
teaching says that a person is obligated to recite 100 blessings a day – every
day. But it’s not hard, because there are many, many blessings.
There are of course blessings for the
food we eat. A blessing for the grain that grows to make bread, the fruit of
the vine that gives us wine, the trees that bear fruit in their season. Blessed are you, O Lord, who creates
different kinds of sustenance.
And there is a blessing for the hunger
in us that allows us to eat and enjoy the blessing of being fed. Blessed are you, Lord, who creates
numerous souls and their deficiencies; for all that you have created with which
to maintain the life of every being.
There is a blessing for seeing a
lightning strike, for hearing the roll of thunder, for experiencing an
earthquake. Blessed are you, Lord, king
of the universe, whose strength and might fills the world.
There are blessings for experiencing
the pleasures of the world: the smell of flowers, of herbs, of balsam oil.
There are blessings for new experiences – from wearing a new outfit to eating
the produce of your garden to starting school to gathering together for a
holiday. Blessed are you, O Lord, who has
granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.
There are blessings for God’s law, the
greatest gift of all.
There are blessings for seeing a very
wise person, for seeing a king, for seeing a place where a miracle happened.
There is a blessing for going to the
bathroom. Blessed are you, O Lord, who
created us with many openings and many cavities… I will leave the rest to
your imaginations, But I will say that I think we all know that it truly is a
blessing when all the parts of your body seem to be working the way they are
supposed to, is it not?
What we see if we participate in the
ritual of blessing is that all kinds of experiences and circumstances in life,
whether they seem good or bad to us, can be connected with a blessing. Because
to attach a blessing to them is a way of acknowledging God’s hand in everything,
God’s concern for everyone and everything. And that God’s hand runs over all
the things of life, smoothing and leveling – filling up the low places, and
bringing down the high places.
It is, in a way, about balance.
The phrase I have used as the title of
this sermon comes from the Navajo tradition, in which blessing is an essential
part of life, of their way. In reading about the Navajo Blessing Way I have
come to better understand the way that blessing – in their tradition, in Jewish
tradition, and in our own tradition – calls upon God to bring balance. Or, we
might say, Shalom.
Something we need very much.
Because to bless is also to know that
there is evil in our midst. To know that there is sadness, there is anger, there
is greed, there is violence. There is pain and death. To know that we might at
any time suffer – from our own sadness or sickness, or from someone else’s pain
or anger. It is far too easy to get swallowed up in the harmful feelings and
thoughts. To let them make us recoil from another one’s suffering, or set
ourselves against another one’s anger. The act of blessing serves to bring much
needed balance into our lives.
When we recognize that we are frail
and broken beings, created by God, wholly in need of the gifts God provides,
this is a way to bring balance. When we can look at the ones who are
persecuted, the ones who are meek, the ones who are mourning. When we can look
at the family of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and feel their pain is our pain; that
the injustice they experience is an injustice that hurts us all. Then we are
taking a step toward restoring balance in the world.
Then we too know ourselves as blessed,
right along with them.
All this is to say that when Jesus
offers his surprising blessings he is telling us something about balance. We
can be blessed if we have some need that only God can fulfill.
And he is telling us something about
the way God is present in all things: in the needs we have, in the needs of the
people around us, in the troubles we might face in our lives. In making these
surprising blessings, Jesus is speaking two co-existing truths: these present
circumstances of life and the eternal truth of God’s kingdom, which we know is
ours.
And when we know both these truths and
can hold them both at the same time, then we know – we can see – God is always
in our midst.
And when we can see ourselves in that
great crowd of people before Jesus, standing in need of the things only God can
give, then we can begin to be a part of the work of shalom, of bringing God’s
healing to the world.
Photo by Ksenia Chernaya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/boy-lighting-menorah-3730941/
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