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Beloved of God, grace to you and peace. . . The other day I was searching through one of our closets to find Valentine’s decorations and I came across this little red heart. It is inscribed with the word “Blessed”. I remember picking this out at a shop several years ago and I’m still a little surprised that I bought it. Truth be told, I have a love/hate relationship with the word “Blessed”. This may be a risky confession for a pastor to make. But I hear this word used a LOT, and used in ways that are puzzling to me. I am a football fan (another slightly embarrassing confession) and almost every Sunday I hear NFL players report how blessed they are to have scored a touchdown, how blessed to have won the game, how blessed they have been with freakishly good athletic skills (okay, I made that one up). I often hear the word “blessed” to describe material prosperity. I am blessed to have this beautiful house, blessed to be able to take fancy trips, blessed to have a hot tub and a luxury car. I remember years past when I had younger children how challenging it was to try to balance my call to be a pastor with my call to be a mother. I can’t tell you how many women told me that they were blessed to be able to stay home with their children and not work. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. . . that I wasn’t blessed because I had two vocations? I want to LOVE the word “blessed”. But not when it’s used as a synonym for “winner”, or for “lucky” or for “privileged”. It feels like the word has been hijacked by our current cultural values.
So I am thankful today to be able to sit at the feet of Jesus in our gospel text as he gives us insight into what it means to be truly blessed. Today we begin reading a section of Matthew’s gospel called “The Sermon on the Mount”. In these chapters we hear Jesus teaching his disciples and those closest to him, what it looks like to live in alignment with God’s values. Jesus’ tender words remind us that God sees and honors the poor in spirit, those who grieve. . . the meek. . .the merciful. . those who long for and actively seek righteousness. . . the pure in heart. . . the peacemakers. God sees and honors all these ones who are easily ignored or looked down upon. This list is so familiar to us, we even have a name for it: “The Beatitudes”. It is so familiar that we may forget how truly radical these words were, given the time and place in which Jesus lived, the backdrop of the Roman Empire. The dominant values of the Roman Empire were not meekness and peacemaking. Rather, the Romans valued Wealth, Glory, Winning, Conquering, Dominating. The Roman military liked to keep their power front and center so no one would forget who was in charge. This is why they crucified people along the public road, for all to see the shameful consequences of challenging them. Roman gladiators packed stadiums, fighting animals and criminals with their swords, all in the name of entertainment. If they were successful, they were awarded honor and fame, which could elevate their social status and lifestyle. IF they won. It was a different story if they lost. The values of Victory, Power and Wealth were the currency of Roman society. It was very clear who were the winners and who were the losers. . . who were blessed and who were not. As Jews, Jesus and his ancestors found themselves on the wrong side of this equation many times. Israel’s might rarely matched that of their neighbors. Then again, Israel’s core values were quite different than those of their neighbors. Their life together was not to be a reflection of the culture’s values, but of God’s core values: Not Honor and Power, but Blessing and Promise. It was the blessing of God’s steadfast love that called Israel into being. It was God’s promise of faithfulness, generation after generation, that created a future for them. With these values at their center, they were a counter-cultural people. They lived differently. They acted differently. This doesn’t mean that they did not struggle with being overtaken by dominant culture. Read the prophets. Of course they did. But their relationship with God, and God’s faithfulness to them was the bedrock of their life together. They were blessed in order to share this blessing with others. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus lifted up, what it meant to be a counter-cultural people, a people sent into the world to carry God’s blessing and promise. It wasn’t NEW information to them, but it was essential to their understanding of their identity and their mission. they were not to be a people defined by winning and losing, They were not slaves to honor and shame. As followers of Jesus, you and I need this same reminder. We see the world through different lenses. . .counter-cultural lenses. . . cross-shaped lenses. St Paul articulates this so beautifully in the opening paragraph of his letter to the Corinthians. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, be we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews AND Greeks. . . Christ, the power of God and wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” We may not be perceived as the strongest or the wisest or the wealthiest, but we are blessed because of God’s steadfast love and salvation. We are blessed because of who God is for us in Jesus Christ. I don’t know how you hear this, but it sounds like really good news to me. My status as a “blessed” person does not depend on my prosperity or my privilege, my accomplishments or my trophies. Your status as a congregation blessed by God does not depend on how many people you have in worship, how big your budget, or how impressive your programs. You are blessed by God simply because God loves you and has called you to be agentsof divine love in the world. . . ambassadors of the reign of God. So the question today isn’t “are we blessed?” or “how do we get more blessing?”. The question is, how is God calling you to live these countercultural values in THIS place at THIS time? Jesus had a remarkable ability to see and honor those whom society pushes to the margins. Who are these people in our society? (i.e. immigrants, mentally ill, disabled or neurodivergent people, LGBTQ people, even elderly people). Do they KNOW that Jesus sees them and blesses them? Jesus taught his disciples to pay close attention to who is being shamed by the culture. . . who is being treated as if they are outside the realm of God’s concern. Is this not our calling as Church? To see and to honor people the way God does . . to share God’s love, most especially with those who have been harmed by the dominant values of our culture. Is it not our calling to keep looking to the margins, to take down barriers that keep people from experiencing God’s wide open embrace? This is how I understand my call as a Christian. It is exciting, purposeful work, even when we are not exactly sure the best way to go about it. I am so thankful that I do not do this work alone, but that I have companions like you. As we sit at the feet of Jesus these weeks, listening to the wisdom he shares in the Sermon on the Mount, we will feel his hands on us, like a potter’s hands on clay. . . forming us. . . shaping us into the people he would have us be. . . people with a powerful sense of identity, rooted and grounded in the love of God. . . people with a clear intention: to bear God’s blessing and promise to all the world. . . to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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