Holy Wisdom Monastery
The Beatitudes
February 2, 2020
Corinthians 1:18-31; Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12
Today’s Beatitudes, as recorded by Matthew, are probably the most famous verses of the Sermon on the Mount, and perhaps one of the most well known passages of the New Testament. For many believers as well as non-believers, they epitomize Christianity.
But as we know, being famous cuts both ways. Biblical scholar, John Meier, speaks directly to this: “ The most dangerous passages in the Bible are the familiar ones, because we do not really listen to them. … No periscope in the Gospels is more exposed to this familiarity that breeds contentment than the beatitudes in Matthew’s gospel. Nine beatitudes, nine spiritual bonbons. No sooner is, ’Blessed are the poor…’ intoned than eyes become glassy… and no one notices that Jesus the revolutionary is heaving a verbal grenade into our homiletic garden.”
Former Jesuit and peace activist, John Dear, wrote that he learned that some scholars were rethinking the original Greek translation of the Beatitudes. These scholars claimed that the passive, “blessed are …” was not accurate – and proposed the more active language, “Walk on! Walk forth!” I like it. It gives the Beatitudes a tone of urgency, of personal agency.
What follows blends the dynamism and resolve of Dear’s activist preface with what it might look like for each of us to embody the Beatitudes’ wisdom tradition[1] of connectedness and compassion. A tradition where Jesus’ words are held up as illustrations of the nearness of the reign. As a way of cultivating humility and love as a way of life. Where we are invited to open ourselves to be encountered and changed by Jesus in life circumstances that may seem beyond all human hope.
- We walk forth, poor in spirit, humble and powerless. Rather than being discouraged by our poverty, we acknowledge that our poverty opens our hands and our hearts for God to fill. Beginner’s mind. The Greek word Matthew uses for “poor” translates literally as, “the very empty ones, those who are crouching.” When we are not filled with our own self-complacency, when we embrace our radical vocation as humble servants – we have space to receive the gratuitous love of God that is the ground zero of the spiritual life. In the words with which Jesus may have called his disciples to leave their nets, with which Paul challenged the folks in Corinth, so, too, we are invited today: Consider your own call, sisters and brothers.
- We walk forth, we who mourn the victims of war and hunger. In stepping away from the values of the world, we actually plant our feet more firmly on the earth; in wisdom teacher Cynthia Bourgeault’s words, we “touch directly the substance of divine compassion.” We weep for all that breaks the heart – including our own apathy, lifestyles, and priorities. We open ourselves to sorrow as we encounter racism, injustice, and hatred. Our softened hearts help keep us from stoicism in the face of others’ pain and from cynicism in the midst of our own. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters.
- We walk forth, meek and gentle – as Bourgeault interprets it, “gentled.” The word translated as “meek” means becoming tamed, as a wild animal is tamed. What is our responsibility for the earth we have inherited and domesticated? We call on what Gandhi called “soul force” to disarm our hearts as we strive to remain undaunted by what feels like a pervasive sense of dread and impending doom. We pause, consider, and act with clarity and direction to help ensure that there is a more humane earth to inherit. Consider your own call, sisters and brothers.
· We walk forth, we who hunger and thirst for righteousness. John Dear writes, “Righteousness is not just the private practice of doing good; it sums up the global responsibility of the human community to make sure all human beings have what they need, that everyone pursues a fair sense of justice …and lives in right relationship with one another, creation, and God.” Dear reminds us that nonviolent love is a heart-connection; it is other-centered and public. And so are we are open – to use psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s popular term, to a kind of spiritual “flow,” to being absorbed and transformed by the non-violent love that
follows from being “anchored in God’s own aliveness (Bourgeault).” Consider your own call, brothers and sisters.
- We walk forth, giving and receiving mercy. To understand the implications of the non-violent cross, Richard Rohr invites us into a giving-is-receiving exchange through which we give and receive tenderness, paying attention to each other with the focus, openness and non-judgmental compassion that is who God is — and with which God is drawn to all of God’s creatures. We acknowledge that to speak about mercy with personal integrity, we have to have some presence next to the least of God’s children – and to ask what this reveals to us about ourselves and about our God. Consider your own call, sisters and brothers.
- We walk forth, pure in heart. In wisdom tradition, purity means singleness, living with an undivided, whole heart. Jesus modeled this path for us: love that is not saved up for the “worthy” but extravagantly poured out, given away for every creature, over and over again. We are, as Bonhoeffer describes the fellowship of the Beatitudes, one with the “fellowship of the Crucified. With him it has lost all, and with him it is all found.” Consider your own call, brothers and sisters.
- We walk forth, we who make peace. As people whose hearts are whole, who embrace the daily conversion of seeing the face of God in everyone, we can own the possibility of being peace. And grounded in this inner stability, our contemplative engagement with the world better allows us to pursue our single vocation: to keep the vision of God’s unconditional love for all alive in the marketplace of our splintered communities and nation. Consider your own call, sisters and brothers.
- We walk forth, persecuted for righteousness’ sake. We stand on the shoulders of Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., Anne Frank and Mahatma Gandhi – all the great cloud of witnesses. We take strength from them even as we may identify with the disciples – a little shabby spiritually, discouraged on occasion as we discover that Jesus’ path involves some pretty discomforting situations. The Gospel of Thomas reveals the essence of Jesus’ meaning here: “Blessed are you in the midst of persecution who, when they hate and pursue you even to the core of your being, cannot find ‘you’ anywhere.” Consider your own call, brothers and sisters.
So what is our call this morning? Our call is to embrace the revolutions in the homiletic garden: The revolutionary truth that Jesus, that Saboteur of foregone conclusions, inverted and redefined the Good Life and our role in it in nine sentences. The revolutionary truth that the Beatitudes don’t tell us what to do but show us who to be: Shopworn people of the reign who are different not because of what we achieve, but because of who Jesus is: The guy who has done all the achieving that is needed. People of the reign who align our lives with the prophet Micah’s operating instructions: do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
As a community, we consider our
call, sisters and brothers.
[1] Ref: Bourgeault, C. The wisdom Jesus. Boulder CO: Shambala Publications, 2008.