Beatitudes

Epiphany 4A: Fools’ Treasure

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fools-goldOLD TESTAMENT:  Micah 6: 1-8

Read the passage from Micah

The writings known as Micah were probably written during the reigns of three kings of Judah: Jotham (742-735 BCE) was a time of growing fear and unrest, Ahaz (735-715 BCE) came when Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was experiencing internal rebellions and rapid turnover of kings, and Hezekiah (715-687 BCE) was the time when Sennacherib marched on and destroyed most of Judah and Jerusalem barely survived.  Micah is associated with Moresheth, a small town about 25 miles from Jerusalem and probably did most of his writing during the reign of Ahaz, when there was great oppression from the upper class.

His message is assurance that this time of oppression would end and a new ruler would come and usher in a time of salvation.  The prophet is claiming a coming new Davidic king, one that would rule relying on the strength of God.  Keep in mind that in this time of exile, it appeared that the Davidic line would be ending.  The prophecy was a reminder that God would keep the promises that God had made, offering new hope to the people in despair.

This passage that we read ends with one of the most familiar and most quoted lines in the Bible.  It sounds so simple—just do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.  What more do we need to hear?  But back up.  We are told that God has a problem with the people and is going to deal with them.  The people have actually failed in their covenant to God.  And they know it.  They have looked at their lives through God’s eyes and the scene is not a pretty one.  The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Those with power are taking and using the resources of the less powerful and leaving them out in the cold, so to speak.  Wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people while homelessness and poverty are growing at an escalating pace.  Clean water is in short supply.  There were those who do not have education or insurance.  (Oh, sorry, I accidentally jumped ahead about 2700 years!)  But the worshipping community just goes right on worshipping and living piously as though nothing was wrong, wondering when this whole Reign of God thing is going to come to fruition.

So, what, they ask, can they do to make it up to God, to make it up to the community and to God?  Nothing except what God has said—live justice, love kindness, walk humbly.  In other words, our faith is not to be measured in piety but in terms of justice and relationships with others and with God.  The object is to overcome separation from God and from each other.  Our religion should be a religion of mercy and justice.  That is the way that God is made flesh; that is the way that we experience the Reign of God.  The prophet Micah would say that right worship and right conduct are undividable; you cannot have one without the other.  Justice and piety are two sides of the same coin.

The truth is, we people of faith, according to Micah, are called to question those systemic injustices that continue in our world.  That’s hard.  After all, what can we really do about them?  Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.  And if you read Micah, you know that it’s not really just a suggestion.  It’s who we are and who we’re called to be.  It’s the Reign of God coming into our midst.

 

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What does it mean to do justice? To love kindness? To walk humbly with God?
  3. What evidence do you see of the Reign of God in our world?
  4. Why is it so difficult to embrace that vision?
  5. What happens when justice and piety become separated?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  1 Corinthians 1: 18-31

Read the passage from 1 Corinthians

Once again, Paul is dealing with the people of Corinth.  Earlier in this chapter, he has been bemoaning the divisions in the Corinthian church community.  He starts here not really taking sides, but addressing the issue of wisdom and pointing out that wisdom in Christ is not the same as the wisdom of the world.  He is not attacking being “wise”, but is calling them to a more profound wisdom.

Think about it.  The ugly sight of a mangled human body hanging on a cross confronts normal worldly values.  But these are not worldly values. And this first century church, no less than we, have tried to “clean up” this image and fit it into something that makes sense within the normalcy of the world.  Paul is warning against the structures and intentions of the world that crucified Jesus and that are now trying to make it “presentable”.  Paul is reminding us that for those wise in the ways of God, the cross is salvation.

What the world sees as failure, Paul sees as the beginning of wisdom—real wisdom.  (And keep in mind here that first century Corinth was entrenched in its love for wisdom just like all Greek states.  Paul was hitting them where they lived.)  The cross, the wisdom of God, is downright subversive.  It’s hard to swallow.  In fact, it’s just downright foolishness—the foolishness of a God who would expect those of us living in a world where it’s hard to make a living, hard sometimes to get by, hard sometimes to get what we’re due, to simply do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

One of the dangers of being in church as often as I am is that it all starts to make sense. I speak of the Christian faith so casually and effortlessly that I begin to think, “Fine thing, this Christianity. Makes good sense.” And then I find myself believing all sorts of things in church that I wouldn’t let anyone put over on me in the real world. That which people would choke on in everyday speech, they will swallow if it’s in a sermon. That’s a blessing for those of us who get paid to preach Christ crucified.

And so Kierkegaard could say, “Christianity has taken a giant stride into the absurd,” and again, “Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them.”

It’s when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry. “Blessed are the meek. . . .”  “Thou shalt not kill.” “Love your enemies.” “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor.” Be honest now. Blessed are the meek? Try being meek tomorrow at work and see how far you get. Meekness is fine for church, but in the real world the meek get to go home early with a pink slip and a pat on the back. Blessed are those who are peacemakers; they shall get done to them what they are loath to do to others. Blessed are the merciful; they shall get it done to them a second time. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; they shall be called fanatics.

As Paul says, when you hear the gospel not with Sunday-morning ears but with Monday-morning ears, it can sound foolish indeed — tragically foolish or comically foolish, depending upon one’s point of view.

Is the world more like Sunday morning or Monday morning? [Hmmm…is the church more like Sunday morning or Monday morning.  Now THAT’S a good question!]

A nation that spends billions on sophisticated military hardware and computerized weapons only to be rendered impotent by a mob of poor, screaming Islamic students ought to appreciate the irony of how powerless the powerful can be. Our scientists make medical progress and invent the X-ray, only to find it to be a major cause of cancer. Our advanced technology moves us to the brink of a new Dark Age. It is shocking. how unwise people of wisdom can be…

Along with the world, we expected to see a savior coming to take charge on our terms. Then the parade comes, and we find that we are standing in the wrong place to get a good view. Here comes the carpenter’s son, bouncing on the back of a donkey — not coming for breakfast with [the president and his wife], or dinner with Congress, or [a guest seat with the first lady at The State of the Union Address]. The smart ones, the ones who are well adjusted to the status quo, the ones in the know, neither see nor know — so the story goes. Here is a messiah who does not make sense.

Only the very young, the very old, the women and the simpletons see him. They are standing in the right place to get a proper view. Along with the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame, the prisoners and the poor old crazed men like Paul, these “fools” see things as they really are.

As for us smart ones, we know better. We know that if we work hard, achieve, get advanced degrees, adjust to the way things are, and act sensibly, we shall be in the know. It all depends on how you look at it.  (Excerpt from “Looking Like Fools”, by William Willimon, The Christian Century, March 10, 1982.)

What it boils down to is that this way of life to which we have become accustomed is possibly not the way of life to which we are called.  We need to look at our lives through the lens of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.  What exactly does that mean?  And what do we have to change to do that?

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What, here, is wisdom?
  3. Do you think we try to “clean up” Christianity or God so that it will fit into our society? In what ways?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 5: 1-12

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Matthew

Most scholars agree that the core of what is known as the Beatitudes goes back to Jesus.  It is essentially a reversal of the usual value system that was in place in the first century.  The Beatitude was present in the Jewish tradition as a form of proclamation found in wisdom and prophetic writings.  They declare an objective reality as the result of a divine act.  Here, the opposite of “blessed” is not unhappy but cursed.

One thing to note is that the form of these Beatitudes uses two verbs:  are and will.  Each beatitude begins in the present and moves to future tense.  They are, then expressions of what is already true in the Christian community not, necessarily, for individuals, but in community.  The move to the future tense indicates that the life of the kingdom must wait for ultimate validation until God finishes the new creation.  There is a resistance, then, against Christianity as a philosophy of life that would make one healthy, wealthy, and wise.  It is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose weight, advance one’s career, make one financially successful, or preserve one from illness.  It is, rather, a way of living based on the sure and firm hope that one walks in the way of God and that righteousness and peace will finally prevail.

The Matthean beatitudes are spoken from a mountain, probably since, as one writing to the Jewish community, this would depict that it was something important.  (Reminiscent of Moses on Mt. Sinai.)  The version told by the writer of Luke is spoken from a “level place” (sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain.  Matthew’s beatitudes are spoken to a “crowd”.  When Jesus speaks in the Lucan version, he speaks specifically to his disciples.  Matthew version have no corresponding “woes”.  In Luke, there are four “woes” corresponding to four “blessings”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this:  Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways.  Jesus knows only one possibility:  simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it.  That is the only way to hear his word.  He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

The Beatitudes lay out a vision of a reversal of the world we know.  Jesus calls us to a radical kingdom that is totally different than the world in which we live.  Now don’t think that Jesus is merely laying out the conditions under which we would be blessed.  It is rather a promise of a radical reversal, an upside-down (or right-side-up) world.  It is a promise from a God that wants the best for us, a God that sees that we will indeed be blessed.  That is the promise—a blessed relationship with God.  So this is a picture of what that Kingdom looks like.  It is the way it should be and the way it will be.  The Beatitudes are meant to be descriptive rather than instructive.

Brendan Freeman, a Trappist monk, said that “the Beatitudes draw our hearts out of themselves into a new way of understanding our lives…they are deliberately incomplete.  They wait the inclusion of our lives.  Each person fills in the blank space with the details of his or her own life’s situation.” 

 

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What is the most difficult Beatitude for you to grasp?
  3. What difference does it mean to look at them as descriptive rather than instructive?
  4. In what ways might we interpret The Beatitudes incorrectly?

 

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

More than a few Christian might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus’ commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing)

Do Justice

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.  (William Penn)

Love Kindness

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.  (Thomas Merton)

 

Walk Humbly

 

Closing

Because we love the world, we pray now, O [God], for grace to quarrel with it, O Thou whose lover’s quarrel with the world is the history of the world . . . Lord, grant us grace to quarrel with the worship of success and power . . . to quarrel with all that profanes and trivializes [people] and separates them . . . number us, we beseech Thee, in the ranks of those who went forth from this place longing only for those things for which Thou dost make us long, [those] for whom the complexity of the issues only served to renew their zeal to deal with them, [those] who alleviated pain by sharing it; and [those] who were always willing to risk something big for something good . . . O God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire.  Amen.   (William Sloane Coffin, available at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3160, accessed 26 January, 2011)

 

 

 

All-Saints C: Blessedness Incarnate

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Rainbow_1574OLD TESTAMENT:  Daniel 7: 1-3, 15-18

Read the passage from the Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is believed by most scholars to be the most recently authored Old Testament book (probably 167-164 bce).  The dating is pretty reliable because it has so many references to specific historical events.  The time was one of intense suffering for the Jewish people under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who attempted to eradicate Judaism and replace it with purely Greek practices.  He eventually committed the “Abomination of Desolation” by sacrificing a pig on the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem.  He was eventually driven out of Judea by the Maccabees, a period that is celebrated by the festival of Hanukah.

The Book of Daniel is set during the time of Antiochus IV and the persecution of the Jewish people and the message essentially is one of hope and belief that this time of crisis will pass, the forces of evil will be overthrown, and God’s kingdom will be established once and for all.  When all this occurs, the righteous will triumph.

In Chapter 7, where our reading is, there is a shift from the King’s dream to Daniel’s dream and this is sometimes looked upon as the heart or center of the entire book.  It recounts a dream of deliverance, which are usually associated with situations of negative political rule, such as the rule of Belshazaar.  Dreams are images of what could be, an act of faith that looks past the world around us.  It is interesting to note here that apparently Daniel is not only capable of interpreting others’ dreams but also his own.

Some scholars suggest that this is the first event in the series that follows, implying that the four winds of heaven are actually the catalyst that brings forth the beasts from the deep and that God initiates that action.  There is no indication that the beasts rise at God’s request, but are simply part of the chaos that ensues.

The sea is a symbol of chaos and the four beasts represent the different world empires that have conquered the Jewish people and other nations.  (Perhaps, the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks.)  The ten horns on the fourth beast symbolize the rulers of the Greek empire or provinces and the “little horn” (verse 8) is probably Antiochus himself.

Verse 15-18 is actually a summary of the whole vision that is told in more detail throughout Chapter 7.  Daniel is, of course, confused by his own dream and seeks an interpreter, where he gets a summary of the whole vision:  The worldly powers will arise but God will conquer them all and God’s kingdom will be everlasting.  In essence, the “saints of the Most High”, as many translations read, will eventually emerge victorious and the evil forces threatening Israel will be destroyed.  The conflict and its results are certain.  This promise of the victory of the saints is probably the reason the passage was selected as the first reading for this All Saints Day.

The crucial thing to remember when reading apocalyptic literature is that it is not a prediction about the future but an interpretation of present events written in coded language, which, obviously, would have made more sense in the context in which it was written.  You have to remember that studies of eschatology, or “last things”, for Judaism referred to the coming of the Messiah.  Christianity, on the other hand, sees it as something that has begun but has not yet come to completion.

In an essay entitled “Waltzing with the God of Chaos”, Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

 

Where is God in this picture?  God is all over the place.  God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out.  God is the web, the energy, the space, the light—not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them—but revealed in that singular and vast net of relationship that animates everything that is.  God is the web, the connection, the glue, the air between the molecules…

            As for God’s plan?  You know, whether God has a file I can break into and find out what I should be doing ten years from now?  The more I learn about chaos theory, the more I favor the concept of life with God as a dance instead of a blueprint.  God makes a move, humankind makes a move, then humankind makes a move based on God’s move…

            In a lot of ways, to read science is to be tempted to become a deist—to believe in a clock-maker God who sets things in motion and wishes the creatures luck.  But I’m a Christian, which means I’m schooled in paradox.  I’m schooled in the opposite of any truth being another great truth.  And so I live in the paradox of this God who seems to have set things in motion and yet is still involved.  There’s some evidence that things are random to a point, and yet, I have experience of some spirit that seems to direct my feet at times.  So I’m stuck with both of these, and I’ve somehow got to live into the paradox of that.  They may not fit together, but I’m stuck with the two. (From “Waltzing With the God of Chaos”, by Barbara Brown Taylor, in The Life of Meaning:  Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, p. 47-50.)

 

  1. So what, then, does this have to do with us?
  2. What does this speak to you about God’s actions?
  3. What image of God does this reading leave for you?

 

           

NEW TESTAMENT:  Ephesians 1: 11-23

Read the passage from Ephesians

Most scholars agree that Ephesians is considered what you could call a “Deutero-Pauline” work, implying that it is “second” or “secondary”.  (This would also refer to 2 Thessalonians and Colossians).  These letters were probably written in the 70’s or 80’s.  Paul more than likely died around 60, sometime around Nero’s reign.  So, rather than being written by Paul himself, Ephesians was more than likely written by a follower of Paul, using the format and even the style that Paul employed in his letters.  This is not plagiarism.  In that society, placing someone else’s name on a work was considered the highest form of compliment.

The main purpose of Ephesians, probably written to a Gentile audience, seems to be to remind the believers of their communal identity in their new status in Christ and to urge them to walk in ways that demonstrate this communal identity and unity.  (When you think of it, this idea of “community” would probably have been more difficult for Gentiles to grasp than for the Jews of that time, who had a sense of community embedded in their very being.)  The church here is understood as a Body of Christ that is exalted, which resonates with our understanding of the community of saints here and forever.

It is important to remember that in the New Testament, “saints” refers to all the people of God, rather than the later understanding of it as specific individuals of invincible faith and heroic nature.  Saints are all believers who have been called and have been sanctified, or made holy, in their new relationship with God.  In verse 11, the term “obtain an inheritance” echoes Israel’s destiny to be God’s “lot” or heritage.  Ephesians makes the risen Christ their basis for obtaining this inheritance.  In verse 18, “the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints” refers to that inheritance that is extended through Christ who God raised from the dead, caused to sit in “heavenly places”, and gave authority over all things.  The reading closes with a reference to the church as the Body of Christ that is triumphant in all things, the point of eschatological fulfillment.  In other words, the Body of Christ is us.

 

  1. What message does this reading hold for you?
  2. What sense of connection to those that have gone before does this give you?
  3. What does it mean for you to have this “inheritance”?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 6: 20-31

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Luke

Traditionally, the All Saints gospel has been the Beatitudes found in Matthew.  But since we are in Year C of the Lectionary, the Lucan version is the gospel of choice for the year.  There are several differences in the two versions:  In Matthew (the more familiar one), there are nine beatitudes; in Luke, there are four. The Matthean beatitudes are spoken from a mountain, probably since, as one writing to the Jewish community, this would depict that it was something important.  (Reminiscent of Moses on Mt. Sinai.)  The version told by the writer of Luke is spoken from a “level place” (sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain).  For Luke, this seems to identify Jesus with the people.  In essence, it gives the impression and sense of Jesus no longer elevated above us but standing here with us.  Matthew’s beatitudes are spoken to a “crowd”.  When Jesus speaks in the Lucan version, he speaks specifically to his disciples, to those who are professing to follow him.  What follows is the standard for which every disciple should strive.  (“You”)

For me, this is very powerful because he’s showing us exactly what to do.  It leaves us no room to morally judge others.  He really wants us to listen to him.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this:  Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways.  Jesus knows only one possibility:  simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it.  That is the only way to hear his word.  He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

Matthew’s beatitudes have no corresponding “woes”.  But in Luke, there are four “woes” that correspond to four “blessings”.  The main focus of both versions is not the individual petitions but, rather, a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God should be like.  Essentially, the Kingdom of God will bring about a reversal of fortunes.

In first century society, poverty was not just a plight, but a social shame.  These people were believed to have done something wrong in the eyes of God and were shunned and depicted as “dirty” and “unacceptable”.  Jesus reverses that social order.  The first beatitude describes a way of life, and we, who are not poor—not really—often run to Matthew for relief.  Because we are not poor, this beatitude either mystifies us or leaves us feeling guilty rather than joy.  I’m not sure that we should get so wrapped up in the specific language.  For me, it’s a matter of humility, of emptying our lives and opening them to God’s vision of what the world should be.

Once again, it’s about paradox.  We read it and we think we have it figured out.  In this world, “blessed” often means having wealth, or security, or ease of life.  It often means that things are going well.  But “blessedness” for Christ has nothing to do with the quality of this life at all.  It is about being one with God and one with others.  Perhaps being Christian, itself, is about being paradox, about looking at the world in a different way and being open to seeing things one has never seen before.

Does it make more sense like this?:

 

“Blessed are the poor for they already know that God is all they need and are open to receive what God offers; blessed are the hungry for they know where to look for sustenance and they are thankful for small but glorious abundance; blessed are those who weep for they know where to look for comfort and they know how to comfort others; and blessed are those who are hated or excluded or shunned for they truly know what it means to be Christian and to reach out in love.”

 

I’m sure you remember all of the accounts and the press coverage of the 2006 shooting in the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.  After the community lost five young girls and had five more that were seriously wounded at the hand of a shooter, the world expected the usual—grief, anger, vengeance, and, most of all, justice.  And while the rest of the country, prompted by the press, responded with shock and anger, the Amish community responded with graciousness, patience, and love.  Instead of being consumed with revenge, this community lavished forgiveness on the killer’s widow, her parents, and the killer’s parents.  In subsequent interviews, the Amish community made it clear that it was not a mandate from their church; it was an expression of their faith.  In their understanding, they could only receive what they could give, for that was the only way that they could grasp what they had been given.  In her column in the “National Catholic Reporter”, Sister Joan Chittister suggested that “it was the Christianity we all profess but which the Amish practiced that left us all stunned.”  She concluded that the Nickel Mines Amish surprised our world the same way the earliest Christians astounded the Roman world:  “simply by being Christian”.

“Being Christian”—perhaps that in and of itself is a paradox.  Perhaps rather than being good, we’re meant to be faithful; rather than being godly, we’re meant to show people who God is; and rather than making sure that the world is filled with justice, perhaps we’re meant to fill it with love, and grace, and hope, and forgiveness, and a vision of something that it’s never seen before.

 

  1. What message does this reading hold for you?
  2. Why is this a difficult passage for us?
  3. In these terms, what does it mean to be “Christian”?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

 

The saints are those who, in some partial way, embody—literally incarnate—the challenge of faith in their time and place.  In doing so, they open a path that others might follow.  (Robert Ellsberg)

 

The past takes us forward.  (Diana Butler Bass) 

 

 

Closing

Think about those who we have lost this year and who we would like to remember.  Think about those with whom you journey.  Think about your own journey.

 

For those who walked with us, this is a prayer.

For those who have gone ahead, this is a blessing.

For those who touched and tended us, who lingered with us while they lived, this is a thanksgiving.

For those who journey still with us in the shadows of awareness, in the crevices of memory, in the landscape of our dreams, this is a benediction. (“Feast of All Saints Prayer” from In Wisdom’s Path, by Jan L. Richardson, p. 124)