The Blessing as Indictment

Today is an invitation to take a long hard look at ourselves. Before we protest, before we answer a question we have not yet heard, it is time to listen to Jesus’ words and let them sink in. Before our lists of boasts and things we have done well, let’s take a moment and take a long, hard, look at where we—where the church—is today. When our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren read of this week in their history books, and ask us, “What did you do?” What will we say?

We are a church of a poor spirit. We are poor in spirit not because we are humble. We are poor in spirit because the proclamation of Christ crucified has been traded for a gospel of glory. We are attracted to being right, to winning, and as we stand in messes of our own making, we try to play it both ways, aligning ourselves with the poor of spirit when our riches have cost us all that we hold dear.

We are a church that mourns. We mourn because we have tried to outrun the message of scripture, the message that calls us to care for the orphan, the widow, the alien among us, and turned them all away because we do not recognize Christ coming to us in the hungry, so we did not feed them. We do not recognize Christ in the thirsty, so we do not give them water. We do not recognize Christ in the foreigner, so we refuse to let them reside among us. We do not recognize Christ in the one who is naked, so we refuse to clothe them. We do not recognize Christ in the sick or imprisoned, so we do not visit them. We mourn because the Gospel seems so far from our reality because we have tried to make its message something easy, something that enables our apathy.

We are a church that is hungry and thirsty for righteousness. We are hungry and thirsty because we have bought the lie that our hunger and thirst is supposed to be for our righteousness, rather than for Christ’s righteousness. We are hungry because we want a Bread of Life that will not inconvenience us. We are thirsty because we want the Fruit of Salvation that requires nothing of us. We want to be judged worthy without having answered the call.

We are a church who craves mercy. At the same time, our mercy extends to those who look like us, who believe like us, who think like us. Mercy does not extend to families fleeing war zones, to their children who have seen atrocities we cannot imagine, to those who have nothing but a shelled out building to call home.

We are a church who has cried “Peace, peace,” when no peace is to be found for far too long. We want to be protected. We want to be safe. But we do not want peace, not really. Instead, we nurture old hurts, we hold grudges, we refuse conversation with those who might disagree with us. These are not the things that make for peace. Fear of conflict and peace are not the same. Fear of being unsafe does not make us unsafe.

We are a church who wants to claim that we are persecuted, standing in line with the prophets before us, but we proclaim a message of quietude, like the false prophets of Israel. We claim the parts of the Bible that we find comforting or convenient; we claim the cross so long as it saves us, but we try to shimmy out of the claim the cross makes on us, trying to take off our baptismal robes as soon as we realize that it unites us with Christ’s life and his mission, calling us to act as he would act, to love whom he would love, to stand up for those he would stand up for, and we are called to follow him all the way—even unto death.

The Beatitudes are not simply blessing for those who are poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted: the Beatitudes are an indictment of all that stands in the way of their blessing. Jesus’ words weren’t about some eschatological future; they were present-tense, they were for today. Jesus gives no caveat about the blessings: he does not tell people they need to become Jewish or even believe in him before he blesses them, lives with them, eats with them, or heals them. Jesus doesn’t ask if the people he saves will benefit him, he doesn’t ask what’s in it for him; he just feeds the hungry, heals the sick, sets the captive free, and dies at the hands of the tyrannical schemes of humanity to keep God out of our lives.

Jesus saves us even though we don’t deserve it. This is the foolishness of the cross: that Christ would save us who prefer our complacence over discipleship. This is the foolishness of the cross: that it keeps hoping in us to live faithfully in accordance with the Son of God who didn’t claim status or power or authority, but rather, came as a servant among us.

The Beatitudes are an invitation, not to justify our behavior, not to point to ways in which we are already poor in spirit or meek or hungry for righteousness or any of that. The Beatitudes are an invitation to stop and be quiet. The Beatitudes are an invitation to look around us and around our world, to recognize the poor in spirit even though they may not believe the same as we do, to take the hands of the meek to comfort them, to encourage those whose hunger and thirst for righteousness refuses to let them be comfortable in an unrighteous world, to watch with the pure in heart to see God, to join with the peacemakers because we are children of God, to recognize that we have the opportunity to bless the persecuted.

This message is foolishness to our world, where fear and doubt run amok, because this message demands courage, faith, and belief in something greater than the power of humanity: this message demands belief in the one true God, who blesses those who hope for no blessing, giving them the kingdom of heaven and the earth as their inheritance, who comforts and fills those whose endless grief and hunger seem to have no end, who promises to walk with us through persecution and unto death and, on the other side of that death, promises us a life we could have never imagined. So, when our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren read of this week in their history books, and ask us, “What did you do?” Let us live in such a way that we can answer, “We followed Jesus.”