The Galilee
of Jesus’ day was a muddle of power struggles; rich elites were getting richer
and richer by burdening the poor with endless tolls and ever-higher taxes. And
religious leaders kept piling on rules and regulations that assured the poor of
their exclusion. Jesus arrives and announces a higher grace.* He brings good news to the poor, sets
free those oppressed and heavily burdened, and he is teaching the people how to
hope again. Jesus is this great surge of God’s compassion rushing in with a
relentless, astoundingly gentle but ferocious urgency and energy. And he is enacting
a great reversal. He eats with sinners, casts out demons, cures people no
matter which day of the week it is. He touches lepers and so has become
unclean. He even dares to forgive sins. Who does he think he is?
Jesus sees things
differently, he grants access to the kingdom directly to outcasts and the downtrodden,
offering not pity but blessing. He speaks to them this morning on a “stretch of
level ground” – their level. The standards of the world are toppled. Jesus is
with them, he has become poor for their sake, he is a wandering preacher, who
has nowhere to rest his head. Jesus is the love and beauty of God, this breakthrough
of God’s compassion in the midst of all the muck, violence, and pettiness. And
as he mingles openly with his often underfed and unemployed followers, Jesus
assures them: “You are seen by God. You may be poor and hungry, weeping and
hated, but you are blessed, never ever forgotten.” In and through Jesus, they
have been found by God’s compassion. We can well imagine their surprise as they
hear his message this morning. More than one looking over their shoulder to see
who he’s talking to. “Oh, I think he means us.” Jesus is not joking around nor offering
false hope but assuring them of the fullness and joy that God wants for them. Jesus
topples the values of the world and invites us to see the world in terms of
God’s values. He names the poor makarios, truly blessed and fortunate;
they can rejoice in the midst of their suffering for in God’s eyes they are favored.
Now, it’s embarrassing
to admit, but most of the time I come to the Gospel Beatitudes, wondering how
I’m doing. You know like: how m’I doin? Would Jesus number me among his blessed
ones? Did I make the cut? After all, I’ve had some tough breaks. Right? But am
I poor enough, have I suffered enough? Fool that I am. At this point I sense
the Lord giving me the time-out sign. Time out, this isn’t try-outs for the
kingdom. The invitation is simply to listen, just listen to Jesus, stay with
him, abide with him and notice those whom he names blessed. Notice who it is
that is getting his attention and allow my priorities to be shifted.
Any of us
who have had the privilege of working with the truly poor have experienced
this. I remember working in Belize many years ago. I would often go to the very
simple home of one family; it was a little wooden house on stilts. I loved
being there with these friends. They didn’t have much. One evening they
announced, “We have something special for you.” What could it be? Jello. (I
hate jello.) But that night jello became sacred. Holy Communion. I savored every
bit of my lime jello like never before.
The
Beatitudes are not a checklist for the spiritually ambitious, but an invitation
to see as God sees. An invitation to notice who Jesus is speaking to and
quietly, gratefully, graciously, humbly find our place with him among those who
are disadvantaged and oppressed and learn to live by a new set of standards. Abiding
with the poor, staying with the poor Christ, we learn what is truly important. It’s
about welcoming vulnerability and being unattached to anything less than God. It’s
not about doing anything but about responding to the hope and higher
grace that Jesus is relentlessly offering. He is our true Beatitude, though he was
rich, yet for our sake he became poor, abandoned even unto death on a cross.
But woe to
us, woe to us if, stranded in our selfishness, we are forgetful of our constant
dependance on God’s mercy and compassion. Woe to us if we forget that our
blessedness demands that we learn to see as God sees, to love as God loves. Woe
to us if we ignore the poor. Beatitude is about stepping into the blessedness
of those who know their desperate need for God, those who have no other treasure
but him.
I am reminded of an afternoon some years ago, as I was trudging down Broadway in Manhattan feeling terribly despondent as I made my way to class. I was stopped in my tracks, as I noticed, written in large letters with colored chalk on the sidewalk, these words: “I am well-pleased.” It was as if the sidewalk itself was crying out – “You are seen, you are noticed, even blest, you have been found by God’s compassion.” Maybe we could write that all over the cloister floors, on all the hallway floors: “I am well pleased.” Might be helpful.
Who is Jesus noticing? Who am I noticing? Whom have you seen? Who do you see each day around here? A brother with Lou Gehrig’s disease literally dragging himself into this church to pray Vigils. A young monk in a rush, interrupted and now leaning down to an elder who wants him to read the latest notes on the bulletin board to him. The one I judge, the one I take for granted, the one I’ve made invisible. How will I notice the poor one I am liable to miss, the ignored or forgotten one - in my world, in my heart, in my mirror?
In the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus this morning, a revolution is happening, with vulnerability at the center. Inadequacy, vulnerability are the key to beatitude, the source of all that can give us life and joy, love, belonging and connectedness. For when I am vulnerable, I realize that I desperately need God; I realize that I desperately need others. I come to understand that I am perfectly incomplete, perfectly inadequate and on the way, certainly not poor like the truly economically disadvantaged whom Jesus addresses this morning, but somehow, connected by the grace of self-knowledge.* Then real prayer becomes possible. And Eucharist becomes real. How blessed are they who trust in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. How truly blessed are those who know their desperate need for God.
* See address given by David Brooks at The National Cathedral, Washington July 5, 2020. * See Jamie Arpin-Ricci on Brené Brown in Huffington Post blog for April 8, 2015. Reflection by one of our monks.
