November 6, 2011
(All Saints)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Blessed Are You
Today’s gospel reading forms a series of blessings that begin what we refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. I find it useful to think about this passage in terms both of what is being said by Jesus, and to whom it is being said. These blessings are too often read as instructions to be followed in order to achieve God’s blessing. But they are not directions for Christian ethics. Most biblical scholars would have us hear this passage through the lens of verses 10 and 11: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…” and, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you…” These were simply the realities of those to whom the gospel of Matthew was written. The characteristics of those that Jesus blesses, describe the experience of his followers. So, we don’t have to look far to wonder who it is that these verses point towards. It is, among others, us.
Knowing this, then, sort of changes what is actually said, doesn’t it? It isn’t meant to leave us looking around and guessing who is blessed. Likewise, it is not even exhorting us, at least at this point, to go out and do these things. This series of blessings precedes all instruction. As Fred Craddock has pointed out, they come “before there has been time for obedience or disobedience.”[1] “If the blessings were only for the deserving,” he writes, “very likely they would be stated at the end of the sermon…, prefaced with the clause, ‘If you have done these things.’ But appearing at the beginning, they say that God’s favor precedes all our endeavors.”[2]
We so often live much of our lives, doubting our ability to live our discipleship, such that we will achieve God’s blessing. And we should doubt this, because it can’t be done. But doubt is not the goal of this word. God has already blessed you. This word of blessing in today’s gospel not only describes those whom God blesses, but in speaking the word of blessing, Jesus actually confers that blessing, upon his followers. That blessing is renewed once again in our hearing of it today.
By reading these blessings as just that, rather than simply as more instruction, things are changed. Now we can say that “all our efforts at kingdom living, are in response to divine grace, motivated by ‘because of,’ not ‘in order to’”[3] Do we understand our own discipleship to be a long term effort to achieve God’s blessing at the end of our life? Or do our works simply flow out of God’s freely given blessing? We can certainly choose not to internalize God’s gift. But that’s altogether different, from thinking that it can be earned. It can’t be earned. It’s already given. That’s very freeing. That can dramatically change the way we see the world, the way we live. Our guilt at not being able to live up to the gospel is washed away. Repentance is our response to God’s blessing, not our punishment for having failed.
After reading the verses that we’ve heard today, Fred Craddock said this: “It is always more difficult to hear and receive a blessing than to attempt to achieve one.”[4] And since we can never achieve it, we always doubt our own place with God. We can now take that doubt out with the trash, and with it our fear that God has not blessed us.
I wonder if that’s how those people live whom God would think of as saints. We’ve all met those people. Their whole life proclaims freedom, freedom to hear again the blessings that God would have us all to hear; freedom to live that blessing in the boldest, and most powerful way. That freedom begins now, with our hearing once again God blessing real human living. “Blessed are you people… Rejoice and be glad …”
Amen.
[1] Craddock, Fred. “Hearing God’s
Blessing.” From The Christian Century, Jan 24, 1990, p. 74
[2] ibid Craddock
[3] ibid Craddock
[4] ibid Craddock
