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Matthew 5: 1–12
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
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A couple of weeks ago I got a call from someone at The Cathedral
Bookstore asking if I would take part in a series of video conversations
the Bookstore was sponsoring called Conversations with our Priests. All
I had to do, my caller promised, was to choose a topic I’d be
willing to discuss with another priest in the Diocese for thirty to
forty minutes and then talk with that priest on a Zoom call that could
be shared around the Diocese.
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To make it easy on myself I chose the topic of Incarnation, and agreed
to do the talk sometime during Advent. After all, I thought, what could
be simpler than Incarnation – God appearing in the
flesh — close to Christmastime? What I was picturing, of
course, was some Christmas card version of the manger scene – maybe
my favorite painting by Rembrandt, where the presence of the divine is
represented by light in the dark stable, illuminating every holy face.
But after some time trying to work on that talk, I’ve begun to
realize that this won’t be quite as easy as I’d
hoped – because incarnation is not reserved for Christmas time
alone – and Jesus is seldom where we think he will be.
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Take, for example, the Beatitudes in our Gospel reading from Matthew
this morning. Jesus is incarnate all over this passage, but it takes
some careful thought . . . and more than
a few second glances to see it. For what Jesus describes here is not at
all what we expect.
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Jesus has just begun his ministry, and in this, his inaugural
teaching — which we’ve come to call the Sermon on the
Mount – he is describing the qualifications for membership in
the Kingdom of God. You will know the saints of the Kingdom, he says,
the ones who belong, by the blessings that accompany them, blessings
that God has pronounced on them. Only, as I said earlier, these
qualifications don’t look like blessings at first.
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Blessed, Jesus says, are those who need God in the worst possible
way; the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
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Blessed are the sad, he says, the ones who can’t stop crying over
all the hurt they see in this world, for they shall be consoled.
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Blessed are the timid, the ones who won’t push to the head of the
line, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Blessed are those who have worked up a good appetite for God and his
ways; the best meal they have ever eaten is on its way.
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Blessed are you who care – passionately — for others; you
will be cared for by God.
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Blessed are you when you teach people to cooperate instead of competing
or fighting; you shall be called the children of God.
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Blessed are you when you are persecuted for doing things God’s
way; that’s the ‘good trouble’ God’s prophets
and witnesses always get into. And up in heaven we’re cheering
you on.
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Now, that’s not exactly how our New Revised Standard Version put
it this morning, but you get the idea. The people Jesus calls
‘blessed’ aren’t at all the ones we have imagined,
especially if we were looking for sleek well–fed faces, serene
faces illuminated by halos. On the contrary, the faces of the people
Jesus calls blessed are lined with
tears . . . or they look
careworn . . . or they are gaunt with
poverty. Just like Jesus, these people are
vulnerable . . . they appear
weak . . . they are hardly upstanding
citizens respected by the best people in town.
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But they’re hardly to be pitied, for Jesus says some of them
have actually chosen that place at the end of the line, realizing that
somebody back there needed their help. When someone crosses them they
are the ones who choose to extend mercy rather than exact revenge. And
when they find themselves in trouble you will see them striving for
peace, turning the other cheek, rather than exerting their will through
violence.
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That all sounds good until I realize that that’s not the way most
of us have been taught to behave. On the contrary, our whole lives
long we’ve been encouraged to speak up and assert ourselves, beat
out the competition, think positive thoughts rather than sad ones, and
not get involved in other people’s problems. We’ve been taught to
value “success” – defined in terms of material
wellbeing. And if we notice someone who doesn’t have those
material goods — Well, as someone recently said, what can you
do? You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to succeed.
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You see, there’s a whole worldly mindset superimposed over these
beatitudes – at least in our own minds. We want the second half
each one of them offers. We want the intimacy with God, the consolation
only God can give. We want mercy to be shown to us even when we fall
short – and heaven thrown in as well. But we’re not so
enthusiastic about the first half of these beatitudes — the mercy
we’re to extend towards others, no matter what they’ve done,
or an unwillingness to fight, even when we think we’re right. We
haven’t yet seen that someone’s
sadness . . . or
meekness . . . or thirst for God might
be an indication of God already working in them. In other words, we
haven’t quite seen the face of Jesus in the people of this world
that the world calls “losers.” And we certainly hadn’t
planned to join them.
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But maybe that’s what we need to see – that Jesus Christ is
incarnate in people this world tends to disparage – the people who
help the helpless . . . the people who
care when caring seems to be a fool’s
errand . . . the people who simply weep
for all the trouble in this
world . . . This is the secret of
Incarnation. It’s a whole new way of seeing heaven on earth.
And maybe that’s what All Saints Day is all about.
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You see, on all Saints Day – which is today – we don’t
just celebrate the saints everyone knows were saintly – the
Mother Teresas of this world, Pope John XXIII, or Saint Francis. We
celebrate Auntie Mead and Cousin Lucie and that fifth grade teacher who
was uncommonly kind to us, no matter how we behaved. We remember the
people who cared for us when no one else noticed our need. And when we
remember their kindness to us, when we begin to see that Jesus was in
them, working his love into us when no one else did we begin to realize
that we too – in little ways, small ways – can begin to
extend the love of Jesus to others. And see heaven on earth in a way we
haven’t seen before: Jesus Christ, operating through each one
of us.
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Amen
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