Matthew
5:1-12
I missed you all last Sunday. I missed
you because last weekend I, along with Father David and the lay leaders of the
church, were in Richmond at our Vestry Retreat. That time away was especially
sweet because, due to Covid, we haven’t been able to gather like that since
January of 2020. As you may know, the Vestry Retreat Weekend is a mix of work
and play. There’s time for prayer and spiritual reflection along with visioning
for the church in the next year. And then there’s the fun with icebreakers,
free time, and a type of charades game. It was definitely a laugh to see Fr.
David impersonate Marilyn Monroe! But on the first night, though, one of the
things we did was talk about how our faith was ultimately about good news. Each
one of us reflected upon what that good news was to us and how we experienced
it at Church of Our Saviour. It was quite a moving experience as one by one we
shared what our faith meant to us on a personal level. Obviously, there was no
right or wrong answer. Every reflection was beautiful. One person talked about
the good news was simply that God exists and that that God is good. Another
shared how he had grown up in a faith community where God was all about
judgment but now, as an adult, he heard a different message. The message of a loving
and accepting God. And not only that but also how he really felt that love and
acceptance at COOS - that no one was there to judge. Then one woman talked
about how, when she first came to our church, it wasn’t God that she was
looking for but a wholesome community for her family. At first, she didn’t
particularly believe in Christ but over the years of hearing the good news and
experiencing it she came to believe. And that has made all the difference.
At its heart Christianity is all about
hearing, knowing, experiencing, and sharing good news. In fact the word
“gospel” itself, if you trace it back to the original Greek, literally means
“good news.” Yet our gospel reading - the good news according to Matthew - may
sound, at best, more like mixed news. Jesus does say blessed are the merciful,
the pure in heart, and the peacemakers. That’s all well and good. And likely we
can get on board with that. But blessed are the poor in spirit? Blessed are
those who mourn? Blessed are the persecuted? Really? That's quite a stretch.
Especially because we often think of
blessings as gifts or even prizes that God doles out to us. A loving family,
close friends, good health, a satisfying job, a luxurious vacation, a roof over
our heads - we call these blessings, and they are. But if blessings are only
things in our lives that address our needs or make us happy then what is Jesus
talking about? Being poor in spirit or grieving over a lost loved one or
experiencing ridicule, harassment, and maybe even violence doesn't sound like
such a good thing. Let alone a blessing.
So maybe it would do us well to expand
our notion of what being blessed really means. When we look at the word for
“blessed” in our reading from the gospel of Matthew we see that it comes from
the Greek word, “makarios,” which is commonly translated as blessed and
sometimes even happy. But there’s also another way to understand this word and
that is with our English word “flourishing.”[1]
Flourishing, as in, marked by vigorous and healthy growth. So if blessing is
more than just good gifts from God that we can point to and name, if blessing
also includes deep, rich growth in our lives then maybe Jesus is onto
something. Because like it or not, when you reflect on the times when you grew
the most, was it really when you were sitting on a beach soaking in the sun? Or
has deep wisdom and healthy growth been more hard earned through some degree of
toil and struggle? Probably so. Which is why Jesus calls us here to the
lifelong task of attuning ourselves to what blessing truly is and how often it
is found in the last place we’d willingly look for it. Flourishing, he says,
are the poor in spirit. Flourishing are those who mourn. Flourishing are the
persecuted - along with the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.
The blessings of which Jesus speaks here are not prizes that God gives out to
certain people in certain situations. Rather they are invitations into a way of
being in the world that results in true and full flourishing.
Yet, I don’t know about you, but when I
experience hard times in my life, times where I feel empty, vulnerable or
exposed my first impulse is to retreat, to pull in, and put up all of my
defenses. But there is another way - a better way. Jesus invites us to resist
that impulse during such times of trial. Instead of pulling in, to trust God in
all of our vulnerabilities, in all of the unknowns and allow God to open us up
in new ways - ways that give us new wisdom about what really matters in this
world, ways that increase our compassion for others, ways that deepen our
connection to the God of love. Ways that bless and help us to flourish.
Although our reading ends on that note,
that we are to rejoice and be glad in this good news, that’s not where Jesus
ends. He goes on, “You are the salt of the earth” and, “You are the light of
the world.” The flourishing that God desires in our lives is not to be ours
alone. As salt and light we are to spread this flourishing out into the world
through witness, deed, and invitation to the same. Our reading from the prophet
Micah puts it this way, that when all is said and done this is what God wants
from us, that we do justice, and we love kindness, and we walk humbly with our
God. For when we do, all of us will flourish.
That is the good news which we reflected
upon last weekend at the Vestry Retreat. Each of us used different words,
nonetheless, we were all touching upon, in one way or another, the same thing.
That life is richer, more meaningful, and true when we know God’s love and
presence in our lives. It is my hope - really, it is my prayer that each one of
you knows that good news deep within your souls. Because when we do then, no
matter what life holds, whether we are meek or mourning, pure of heart or
persecuted, we will be blessed and flourish.
[1] Jonathan Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human
Flourishing: A Theological Commentary
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