One of my now deceased homily mentors, the Capuchin Alexis Luzi once wrote:
There are three ways with which to proceed with Matthew’s eight Beatitudes. Some preachers choose to give time and attention to each Beatitude in one and the same homily. Jamming all eight into one homily makes for a very lengthy homily. What’s more, it violates a golden rule of homiletics: “One idea — one sermon! Two ideas — two sermons!” Some choose to give the Beatitudes separate treatment by means of eight separate homilies. That’s a good way to proceed. Or the preacher can search for the one golden thread that pervades all eight Beatitudes, and focus on it. That would require only one sermon. That too would be good way to proceed. And it would honor another golden rule of homiletics: ”One good idea makes for one good sermon!”
So, I have spent much of my thinking time in the last week or two trying to identify that one golden thread. And, there it was staring at me in the words of Paul to the Corinthians:
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world…
I mean seriously, when was the last time you heard about someone trying to pass a law that would post the Beatitudes in every classroom.
Blessed are the poor Blessed are the humble
Blessed are peacemakers and justice-seekers Blessed are the kind
How could you ever build the bombastic, self-absorbed and self-absolving worldview that every good nationalist movement requires on that nonsense?
Throughout the Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus and the disciples we are reminded time and again that God’s reign is not the way of empires. It does not depend on the domination of one person over another. It does not demand the maximum exploitation of our natural resources or the jealous acquisition of wealth. It demands, in fact, the opposite-respect for all of creation and dignity of each person, a willingness to share, empathy and compassion.
Radically countercultural, the Beatitudes-and the whole stream of spiritual teaching that they embody-are not the stuff of which empires can be built nor, it would seem, churches.
About eight and a quarter centuries ago a young man stood before a crucifix in the ruin of a small wayside chapel in Italy and opened the scriptures to the very text which is our gospel reading this morning. He was so taken by the first of the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor that he made it the foundation of his way of life.
Twenty-one years later as he approached death in a small hut by a river he was still so moved by that first experience that he asked that his body be laid naked upon the dirt floor so that he might die possessing nothing.
Less than 4 years later his body was moved to a magnificent basilica.
Less than a century later four Franciscans were burned at the stake in Marseilles for preaching blessed are the poor as a model for the church.
In commenting on this horrific act, the Austrian theologian, Adolf Holl states
Today we know that the two basic principles that still determine the way we act were just then emerging. They were:
Religion is a private matter The books have to balance.
The Beatitudes are antithetical to the construction of empires. And, at least until we add a “blessed are the book balancers” equally unfit for building a church
I’m afraid there is only one thing we can make of these radical teachings with which Jesus begins his proclamation of the Good News
The reign of God.
It challenges every earthly authority and forever calls us as individuals, churches and societies to greater sharing, deeper compassion and a stronger commitment to seek justice. Not out of despair for our world but out of a confident hope. Eight times we are called blessed. In our suffering and in our response to suffering we are blessed and consoled In our hunger and thirst we are blessed and satisfied. The radical counterculture expressed in the beatitudes is rooted most deeply in the stubborn, unshakable conviction that in this world-exactly as we find it-God’s reign is being realized.
In these eight blessings, we are invited to be part of it.
In light of the horrific events happening in Minneapolis and in so much of the world, I was very much moved this past week by Jan Richardson’s poetic reflection on today’s gospel:
Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable, who bear witness
to its persistence when everything seems n shadow
and grief.
Blessed are you
n whom
the light lives, n whom
the brightness blazes— your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night can be seen
the fire that shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope,
n love that illumines every broken thing t finds.
© Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons