Sunday Sermon - 1/29/17 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Blessed are the wise, for they shall not be fooled.  Blessed are the strong, for their enemies will fear them.  Blessed are the rich because, well, they’re rich!  That makes sense to us doesn’t it?  And that’s what made sense for the people back in Jesus’ day, too.  They were used to hearing about blessings and the “Blessed are” formula – that  was nothing new.  These blessings would list virtues or conditions that anyone would like to have.  What made Jesus’ words so radical, so shocking was not the formula of “Blessed are”, but the content.  Blessed are...the poor in spirit?  Blessed are...those who mourn?  Blessed are...the meek?  And all the rest of those people who are vulnerable, weak, or afflicted?  Surely Jesus was kidding, right?

Because that’s just not the way the world works says human wisdom, as we heard from our 1 Corinthians reading.  But it goes on.  God’s foolishness is wiser than any human wisdom.  What Jesus is doing with his Beatitudes is flipping things on their head.  Calling out human wisdom as false – proclaiming that what you may think is up is actually down and what you think is down is really up. 

Spatial disorientation - it happens when you literally aren’t sure just which way is up.  See, the way our bodies know where we are in space or which way is up is by using three senses.  The first and most obvious sense is our vision.  Our eyes are telling us right now that the ceiling is up there, the floor is down there and we are here in this church.  The second way our body tells us which way is up is by sensing gravity's gentle pressure on our muscles and joints.  It pushes us down so we know which way is up.  Finally, our ears get into the act with semi-circular canals that, to the best of my understanding, is lined with tiny hairs and also filled with liquid.  When we move the fluid bends the hairs which signals our brains where we are in space – whether we are upright, or if we’re young, upside down, or if we’re older, sideways taking a nap.

However, there are times when our senses can fool us and be absolutely wrong.  I’m sure we’ve all heard about airplane pilots who have gotten into trouble when they can’t see anything in front of them.  When a pilot flies into dense fog he or she loses her visual cues of where she is in space.  If the pilot goes into a turn her inner ear will tell her that she’s turning.  But as soon as the fluid settles down and the hairs stop moving the pilot can still be in the turn, but her ears tell her that she is level.  And because there are no visual cues to tell the pilot otherwise the pressure of the turn on the body can be interpreted as the way you’d feel if the plane was climbing.  The pilot’s senses can be giving her wrong information.  What is she to do?  Look at the instruments!  All those gages right in front of her that will tell her no matter what she feels or thinks which way is truly up.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted.  Our human wisdom and our senses tell us, No!  Don’t they? That there is nothing blessed about most, if not all of those conditions.  But what if we are suffering from a type of spiritual spacial disorientation and Jesus’ Beatitudes is our instrument trying to tell us which way is really up?

Maybe our resistance to the beatitudes is due to some confusion over what a blessing or being blessed is.  We throw around the word blessing quite a bit.  We count our blessings.  We talk about our blessings.  And when we do we often list things like health, family, friends, maybe a getaway vacation, a roof over our heads, food on the table.  This way of thinking leads one to believe that blessings are basically things that make us happy, give us pleasure, or at the very least make life a little bit easier. 

Jesus’ beatitudes challenge this way of thinking.  Blessed are the poor in spirit, the mournful, the persecuted, to name a few.  These are clearly not good things.  They don’t produce pleasure or happiness.  But what if being blessed is more than good things or happy feelings?  What if being blessed by God is instead a state of being where one experiences a deep connection with God?  Encounters a presence of something that holds in the storm? An inner knowing of care, grace, love no matter what’s going on on the outside?

If so, and I believe that Jesus’ life and words say it is so, then one is truly blessed in such times of struggle or weakness or incompleteness not because these conditions are in any way fun or pleasurable, but because when a person is that tender, that vulnerable they are more open and exposed to the fullness of God’s being and the truth that there is no circumstance, no situation, no relationship in life which God cannot redeem.

                                        

Jesus’ Beatitudes is God’s foolishness on display.  When human wisdom and even our own senses want to tell us that we are lost or alone or that there is no hope, as foolish and as difficult as it may be just like pilots we are to look at our instruments and trust. As followers of Christ, listen, listen to Jesus’ words – God’s foolishness that is wiser than any human wisdom – and trust that we can always count on God to show us which way is truly up.