Sermon for January 29, 2022 – The 4th Sunday after Epiphany

Whenever I hear the Beatitudes, I am struck with their poetic beauty and, at the same time, I can feel overwhelmed by their perceived impracticality for the world in which we live. I admire the instruction, the guideposts along the pathway of discipleship if you will, but I also fear the implications of putting the words into actual practice. Am I really ready to potentially sacrifice all that I have to walk this path of discipleship? Or, do I hold on all the more tightly to what is mine?

We live in a time when the blessings given are to those who succeed, often at the expense of others. To be poor in spirit, peaceful, merciful, and meek will get you nowhere in a culture grounded in competition and fear. Perhaps this is why most references to the Beatitudes imply that in giving these instructions, Jesus was literally turning the values of the world upside down. Honestly, who can survive in attempting to live into the spirit of the Beatitudes?

Well, the answer resides not in their impracticality but in their practicality. We often approach them as an impossible challenge for ordinary living. Only the greatest of saints are up to the task. Therefore, we wait for the occasional figures like Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu to show us the way. In the meantime, the world does not get any better, and we remain unfulfilled in our pale expectations of Christian discipleship. The truth is that Jesus meant the Beatitudes to be for everyone. How can such a task be accomplished in our own time?

Living daily into the spirit of the Beatitudes involves looking at them as a collection of the whole, rather than looking at each one individually. Each is related to the others, and they build upon one another. Those who are meek, meaning humble, are more likely to hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, because they remain open to continued knowledge of God and of growing closer to God. If we approach the Beatitudes this way, we see they invite us into a way of being in the world that leads to particular practices. There are three principles for living into the spirit of the Beatitudes: simplicity, hopefulness, and compassion. These three principles allow us to be in the world, while not being totally shaped by it. We offer an alternative to what the world seems to be pursuing.

In responding to Jesus’ instruction, simplicity has little to do with lack of sophistication. It has to do with hearing the words of Jesus for what they are, not what we would prefer them to be. We might say that we are open to hearing this teaching for what it simply is, rather than layering it with our own prejudices and subjectivity. That would include our prejudice of already deciding that the task at hand is impossible. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard made reference to the importance of hearing the Gospel in a “primitive way,” stripped of all refinements that we so often bring to any difficult text, in order to avoid its meaning. To approach the Beatitudes simply is to hear the words clearly, without prejudice, and to know that the words are spoken directly to us. We do receive more courage than fear when we hear Jesus saying directly to us, “You are blessed in this life whenever you demonstrate humility, bring a peaceful presence, open your heart to others, and show mercy on those who cry for it.” Hearing Jesus’ words, simply spoken, is the first principle for living into the spirit of the Beatitudes.

Now, there is little disagreement on the lack of hopefulness in our world. The distinguished theologian Juergen Moltmann stated that the death knell of the church is when the overall attitude moves from anger to cynicism. Cynicism differs from anger. Cynicism has decided to accept whatever is, regardless of the consequences. Cynicism offers little hope that things will get better. The mantra is, “Do not worry about it. That is just the way things are. You will get used to it.” How many times have these words passed through the lips of those living under some form of oppression; the poor, the marginalized, those living under occupation? Cynicism leads to apathy, and apathy never leads to change, but rather to a reluctant acceptance that we are completely powerless to change our circumstances and make our lives better. This cynicism, mixed with apathy, poisons the heart and the mind and stops us right in our tracks.

The Beatitudes invite us to the opposite point of view, which is hopefulness. We place our hope in Christ, who offered hope to the hopeless. Thus we are able to approach the world with a spirit of hope, even when the outward signs indicate otherwise. When we are hopeful, we stand in the world sure of the possibility that the day will come when mercy, humility, peace, and love are the descriptions of what it means to live.

The thirds principle of Beatitude living is compassion. Compassion is not associated with either pity or sympathy. It goes deeper. To have pity on another person means you feel sorry for them. Sympathy means that you understand what another person is experiencing, and so you offer some advice. The late Henri Nouwen offers an insightful description:

compassion “grows with the inner recognition that your neighbor shares your humanity with you. This partnership cuts through all the walls which might have kept you separate. Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, destined for the same end.”

Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands (New York: Ballantine, 1972), 86

We are distinct, but more importantly, we share the gift of being created in God’s image; thus we belong to one another as family. Compassion requires not taking the same path alongside a companion, but taking a moment to walk in their shoes.

So it is then, that when we consider the Beatitudes, which illustrate the upside down nature of the Kingdom of God, we must seek out ways to make these a reality in our own neighborhood. We must seek out ways through study, prayer, and mutual service that we might grow as the blessed community we are meant to be, so that we transform our neighborhood into the Kingdom of God. As the prophet Micah reminds us, “…what does God require of us but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Living into the spirit of the Beatitudes with a commitment to simplicity, hopefulness, and compassion is something that we can all do. In big and small ways, each and every day. And in the process, we discover this is not irrational at all, as others would have us think. Quite the opposite…it is the only truly rational approach to living. Amen.