Matthew 5:1-12
“Our Best Selves”
February 2, 2020
The phenomenon has been growing and growing over the past decade and there doesn’t seem to be agreement on what sparked it but it seems to have taken on a life of its own. It’s a practice that individually with one shot deals doesn’t seem to hurt anyone and must make the person who does it, somehow feel better. It definitely is one of the side effects of the growing use of social media to spread good news. It is the phenomenon of the “humble-brag” and it seems to be spreading like wild fire. There is a proliferation of folks out there on social media and talk shows and in the press who term something “blessed” as a way to boast about an accomplishment while claiming to be humble, or fishing for a compliment or owning a success while trying not to sound too conceited. If you have access to a computer, just type in #blessed and you will quickly be inundated by all matter of humble-brag under the guise of blessing. There are many postings about finding one’s dream home or the perfect car and especially in this season, college acceptances, often in some cases saying things like “Verbally committed to a college to play baseball” or “Our daughter was accepted at Brown University” followed by the hashtag #blessed. Blessed has been so overused that there are those who are known to go looking for it on-line attached to posts as a kind of game. One New York writer said that “There is literally no other word that can simultaneously inspire such animosity and rapture.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/fashion/blessed-becomes-popular-word-hashtag-social-media.html)
There are certainly countless wonderful events to give thanks for but to use the term “blessed” to describe the good fortune one finds one’s self in is, in some ways to say that accomplishment is something some of us get from God and others don’t. It is definitely a far stretch from the humility and turning on its head ways of Jesus.
Scripture is filled with statements of blessing, what we know as beatitudes. They are used to pass on a blessing to a person or group most frequently in the Old Testament. In the New Testament they are more often used to declare the reality of some trait or characteristic about a person or group of people. Beatitudes are not rules to be followed. They aren’t commandments and they are not ethics.
What they are here, as Jesus offers them, are statements of divine blessing, a jumping off point here in this mountaintop experience first with his disciple and then with all of those folks who are listening in, in an ever-widening and curious circle, to this man who is saying that the world’s ways are not God’s ways. This had to be surprising if not shocking for these people to hear, especially if they were expecting that this one they viewed as a prophet was going to tell them how to get and keep God’s blessing while all this time the blessing they sought was already within them. If they looked around themselves then and if we look around ourselves now, we would assume that the ones who are blessed are the popular, the strong and the rich. Instead what Jesus offers at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount is the Good News that the opposite is true. It’s the poor, the mourning, the gentle, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemaking, the persecuted and the reviled who are blessed.
These Beatitudes provide not a how-to lesson but a form of congratulations. To borrow from Oprah – you and you and you are blessed! What wonderful words to hear for the oppressed.
The best part about this blessing from God is that it has already been given and is all over the place but not in the expected locations. The response is intended to be gratitude and joy. The knowledge of blessing comes first here, right at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus, as we’ll hear in the coming weeks, will save the lesson part for later in this Sermon.
To be a blessing – what does that mean? Where do we go, how do we learn, who will teach us how to be a blessing? Jesus has an answer for us in these beautiful words uttered from a mountaintop. They are lovely but very confusing words for our times. John Pilch reminds us that during Jesus’ era honor was the highest value in this Mediterranean region and that honor is described as “a public claim to worth and a public acknowledgment by others of that claim.” (The Cultural World of Jesus: Sunday by Sunday, Cycle A, p. 28)
Jesus wasn’t the first one to make poetic statements that exposed and lifted up the stuff of life which is honorable – in fact there are nearly 100 Beatitudes found throughout the Bible. If we thought of it that way it would be more accurate to say instead of “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” we instead said “Truly honorable or highly esteemed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Takes on a whole different meaning doesn’t it? These are community wide standards, not simply accidents of birth. It is what we do with our faith that brings us closer to God’s kingdom here on earth.
If we take the Beatitudes truly to heart, we may have a path toward how we are to each be our best selves and truly value every other life. The Beatitudes are not meant to be written off as out of our grasp because we didn’t start out as a mourner or a peacemaker or persecuted. Instead the implication here is that we can strive to be our best selves, recognizing the value of the humble way that we each arrived on earth. Each of our lives, from those of simplest means to those of great wealth and power, are blessed by God and are all given the opportunity to be a blessing to God and other people – it’s not the college admission or the big house or new job that is the blessing. We already have within us God’s blessing. That is cause for celebration every day. This is where our power and strength can come from – the place of knowing that we belong to God and have deep within us “blessing” which in Greek is the same word used for joyful, saved, greatly honored and awesome. Such potential is where God has begun with us – where we go with it from there is our soul work. We have, each of us, been included in God’s love. These blessings speak of our potential to do our part in Kingdom building. To look at our fellow humans with such knowledge can alter our treatment of each other if we let it. Who do we know who is mourning? Run into anybody lately who is working at making peace? Is there somebody close to you who is willing to go to bat for the underdog? This is their Good News, too.
Hear then from the late Irish writer and mystic, John O’Donohue, these words of blessing:
May you listen to your longing to be free.
May the frames of your belonging be generous
enough for your dreams.
May you arise each day with a voice of blessing
whispering in your heart.
May you find a harmony between your soul and
your life.
May the sanctuary of your soul never become
haunted.
May you know the eternal longing that lives at the
heart of time.
May there be kindness in your gaze when you look
within.
May you never place walls between the light and
yourself.
May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world
to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in
belonging. Amen.
(To Bless the Space Between Us, 44)
May the recognition of the true meaning of blessing that Jesus shares as our birthright bring us to the table in a spirit of praise and thanksgiving.