Matthew 5:1-12
When I can, I attend the Thursday Bible Study
at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Marion Oaks. Currently, we are studying the
Gospel of Matthew. We just began a few weeks ago, so it happens that we looked
at the Beatitudes last Thursday.
We had some fun defining the Greek word makarios.
In English Bibles, it shows up as happy, blessed, fortunate. New Testament
professor David Lose suggests “favored by God.” I like blessed and favored by
God.
We agreed in class that some people understand
the meaning, while others clearly don’t. When I ask my son Dan how he is doing,
and he responds, “I’m blessed,” I know he knows God loves him. And when I ask
someone else, who also responds, “I’m blessed,” I know they are counting all
the dollars in their bank account.
We also talked about out the joking way the
word blessed is used. “Well, bless his pea-pickin’ heart.” And “Bless her
heart. She can’t help herself.” These both tend to be said with a southern
drawl, and intend to be criticism, not compliment.
… When we pay attention to them, the
Beatitudes seem to be full of contradictions. Jesus describes those in
unfortunate circumstances as favored by God, blessed. The opposite of what we
usually think.
So … People in Jesus’ time who were poor in
spirit, or grieving, or persecuted usually described themselves as anything but
blessed by God. They or their ancestors must have done something wrong,
something sinful, which made them poor, or crippled, or grieving a family
member. They were somehow deserving of their current condition.
They would have been puzzled by these words,
by Jesus telling them they were favored by God, blessed. “Say what?! How can we
be favored? All our lives we have known we were not favored. … And yet, what if
it were true? Could it be possible? Is it ok to have some hope that God cares
about us?”
The wealthy and powerful of Jesus’ day would
have been upset, angry at these words. They knew the social order and that
meant they were already blessed, favored by God. Just look around and see how
blessed they were! They wore fine clothes, lived in large houses, made large
offerings to the temple, and so forth.
The wealthy and powerful were sure that God
did not favor the poor, grieving, broken people. They were poor, broken,
grieving for a reason. Their ancestors were sinful, and the retribution for sin
is carried out on the children for many generations. “Jesus is a blasphemer,
and the leaders need to shut him up.”
… In one way, the meaning of the Beatitudes is
a puzzle for 2,000 years ago. That was then, this is now. It’s different today.
We know better! But is it really different today? Aren’t there always people
telling us we are worthy, or not worthy, of God’s blessing? And our response is
to either be puffed up by their comments and take them to heart, or to shrug
them off as not true for us. We don’t believe we are blessed, favored by God,
any more than the poor people of Jesus’ time did.
Even Lutherans, who tell ourselves we are both
saint and sinner, usually believe we are more sinner than saint. And if we are
sinners, we are not favored by God. At least, we are not favored very much. Especially
if we have Scandinavian ancestors!
So, what are we to do? How can we shake the
feeling that we are not really blessed, favored by God?
I suggest one way is to remember we are
baptized – which means we are filled with God’s Holy Spirit. How can we not
be favored by God if we are filled with God’s Spirit?
Another way is to remember we are forgiven,
not sinful. As a reminder that we are a forgiven people, we begin most worship
services with the Order of Confession and Forgiveness. We face the font, to
remind ourselves that our sins have been washed clean in our baptism. Many of
us even draw a cross on our bodies as a reminder that we are forgiven because
Jesus died on the cross for us.
Once we wrestle with believing we are blessed and
forgiven, we face a trickier challenge. We must remember that other people are
blessed, favored by God, too. Typically, it’s easy to see that those who are like
us are blessed, but it’s harder to see that those who look or act differently
from us are also favored by God.
… Diana Butler Bass is a church historian who
hosts monthly interviews with authors in a Zoom meeting. This month the guest
was Rev Dr Otis Moss, the lead pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in
Chicago. His latest book is a study of Black spirituality, Dancing in the
Darkness.
After some discussion of the book, Diana asked
him about the murder of Tyre Nichols by five Black police officers. The
officers were quickly fired and arrested and charged with murder. Moss
explained that even though these men were Black, they were trained by their
mostly White superiors that a Black man is dangerous and they responded
accordingly.
Our biases come out in this tragedy in several
ways. First, we readily agree that Tyre should not have died – and admit that
he is blessed, favored by God, simply because he should not have died. His
grieving family are also favored, blessed by God. But what about these five
officers?
It’s harder to see that they, too are blessed,
favored by God. At the same time, we wonder if the charges would have been made
so quickly if the five Black officers had been White. It’s even harder to
accept that the White DA who so readily charged the officers with murder is
also blessed, favored by God.
… In truth, we are more like the people of
Jesus’ time than we want to admit. We both accept and deny that we are blessed,
and we accept and deny that others are likewise favored by God.
This week, Let’s remember we are blessed, and
favored by God. And let’s be aware of how often we allow our biases to identify
others as favored by God, or not.
Amen
