Matthew 5:1-12
“Blessed”
January 29, 2023
I appreciate now more than ever what I took for granted during the last 7 months before he died which were my first 7 months here at the Federated Church.
Every conversation or visit was sure to end with him offering the words that we hear most often when someone sneezes, “God bless you.”
Cliff Pierce never missed an opportunity to say the words “God Bless You” and coming from his lips, even when he knew his earthly days were passing quickly somehow never seemed canned to me.
He truly believed in the power of blessing, in the knowledge and awareness of it.
Last week, we heard Jesus laying the groundwork for his public ministry, prepping folks on what God is up to with the idea of the kingdom of heaven, sharing the promise of the joining of the here and now with what lies ahead.
This week Jesus is filling in the details of what that looks like but he’s not painting some lofty gilded edged sophisticated depiction with the spiritual all-stars looking their best, with all of their superhuman traits on display to project in an aspirational way that they should all be striving to be like.
No, Jesus does not lead with “Blessed shall be.”
The very first words he shares with the crowd?
“Blessed are”
He is starting with blessing.
He’s not keeping score.
Jesus is describing what these followers already are.
They have been created blessed by God.
They may add on to that but that is the core of every one of us.
We are the blessed children of God.
That blessing is given without strings attached.
And we are then free to bless others.
We don’t have to do justice or love mercy or walk humbly with God so that we will earn God’s blessing.
We do all of that because we have been blessed.
How do you feel about blessing other people?
I know it comes with my position as a minister to offer blessings.
I’ve blessed dogs.
I’ve blessed dolls.
I’ve blessed homes.
I’ve blessed buildings.
It’s happened in the places you would expect like hospital rooms and funeral homes.
And the less obvious places – in a car, in a supermarket, on a beach but maybe what Jesus is saying here is teaching by example and stating the obvious is that blessings are not just for special times and places because blessing is not just a noun.
It is a verb and when offering a blessing what each of us does is uncover and bring out into the open the status of blessedness that is already ours.
What Jesus offers here is a glimpse of blessedness that doesn’t look like it at first glance.
We love hearing the second part of each of these Beatitudes or statements of blessing.
Who doesn’t want to be assured of heaven and comfort, being full and rich with inheritance?
We all yearn for mercy and a glimpse of God as well as dwell in the knowledge that we are God’s children.
What we have trouble with is the first part and that’s because for most of history those first parts have been depicted as either weaknesses or failures or unattainable or downright frightening.
The hard part is recognizing that in the midst of our darkest hours – those when our faith feels weakest or we are grieving with no end in sight or we’re being shamed or persecuted or even hated – that we are still blessed.
That does not mean the pain will not be there.
What Jesus’ blessing means is that we are not defined by the pain.
Regardless of what we’ve done or haven’t done, we are still a beloved child of God.
The blessing doesn’t go away.
Imagine the woman in that crowd who heard Jesus’ blessing when she had just buried her husband.
Picture the man who couldn’t bear to go home empty handed, with nothing to feed his children.
Jesus was not saying you will not suffer.
Jesus was saying all that all the garbage that life will throw at you does not diminish you in the eyes of God.
Jesus is making the point that he’s not impressed by and thus closer to the outwardly shiny and perfect.
He wants them to know that God is standing by and holding close the messed up, confused, lost, and hurting ones.
God’s presence in our darkest moments is assured.
We will not be abandoned.
It can be easy enough to coast through the smooth parts of life with not much thought of God.
When I live a predictably comfortable and relatively struggle free and privileged existence, it can be easy for me to forget God at the center of it all.
Here Jesus is teaching us that we need to flip what we culturally call blessings – material comforts, workplace success – and recognize that these are not what God prioritizes.
Maybe our everyday lives need breaking into with the knowledge of our status of blessing in the eyes of God, not because of what we do or don’t do but just because we are.
Yesterday, after she had finished ringing up and bagging my slivered almonds and maple syrup, the cheerful woman at the Market Wagon counter handed me my receipt and with a smile said to me the same words I heard her say to the woman ahead of me, “Have a blessed day.”
I responded with “You, too.”
I needed that reminder on an average, nothing out of the ordinary Saturday.
Hear then these words from writer and podcaster Kate Bowler who ends every weekly podcast with a blessing.
This one’s called: “A blessing for if you happen
to be having an ordinary day:”
Lord, here I am.
How strange it is, that some days feel like hurricanes
and others like glassy seas
and others like nothing much at all.
Today is a cosmic shrug.
My day planner says,
rather conveniently,
that I will not need you,
cry for you, reach for you.
Ordinarily, I might not think of you at all.
Except, if you don’t mind,
let me notice you.
Show up in the small necessities and everyday graces.
God, be bread.
Be water.
Be laundry.
Be the coffee cup in my hands
and the reason to calm down in traffic.
Be the gentler tone in my insistence today
that people pick up after themselves for once.
Be the reason I feel loved
when I catch my own reflection
or feel my own self-loathing
fluttering in my stomach.
Calm my mind,
lift my spirit,
make this dumb, ordinary day
my prayer of thanks.
“Earth is so thick with divine possibility
that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere
without cracking our shins on altars.”
—Barbara Brown Taylor
Amen.