Thriving: Lives of Blessing

Do you ever pause to really think about how you want to be remembered? Each year on All Saints’ Sunday we remember and give thanks for the people who have mentored and guided us who have now died and joined the great cloud of witnesses. We come to Communion and remember that we are all gathered, from all times and places, at the Table. Each year around All Saints’, I think back over the people whose lives influenced and guided my faith. And some of my earliest memories are of two – very different – saints of the church I grew up in. My parents were always in the choir, so I sat with one or the other of these two saints of the congregation when I was in elementary school. One wore her mink coat and was prim and proper –Ms. Lashlee . The other wore overalls and had white hair with a white beard, Pa Earhardt. They could not have been more different on the surface, or more the same in their hearts. They were people who lived their faith. Ms. Lashlee had never married; she had no children, but she welcomed me beside her. She would put her arm around me when I got restless. She taught me to fill in the circles in letters and turn t’s in the bulletin into diamonds. Pa had a whole farm of children and grandchildren, but he made sure at the end of every service that my brother or I was ready to acolyte; and he invited us to “help” him on his farm. He kept mucking boots our sizes and taught us how to go round up the cows for milking in the evening and how to give a calf a bottle. More than what they taught me, though, I remember their patience. Looking back, I realize that they made a choice to pay attention to me when I was in first grade and moved to their town and into their church community. They didn’t do it because everything had always been easy for them, in fact, even though I never noticed it at the time, I can imagine a lot of things I know about their lives must have been hard. They didn’t care for my brother and me because they felt obligated by a volunteer commitment or for recognition. They did it because that was who they were. Their lives were blessed and were a blessing.

Jesus, here at the beginning of his ministry, climbs up on a hillside on the northwest bank of the Sea of Galilee, sits down and teaches 8 conditions of a life of blessing: being poor in spirit, mourning, being meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, being merciful, being pure in heart, being a peacemaker, and being persecuted for the sake of being righteous.  It sounded as upside-down to the crowds that day as it does to us today. When he comes to this hillside to teach the crowds are beginning to grow large. Jesus has been traveling throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and curing diseases and healing sickness. Word had spread like wild-fire and people were bringing their loved ones with all kinds of suffering to him to be made well. They were coming to be blessed, in the way the world labels blessing – relieved of suffering. And Jesus teaches that true blessing is deeper. It’s not that Jesus says that suffering is good – Jesus over and over again has compassion and heals the sick and the suffering even when he is exhausted and needs to get away, to rest and pray. It’s that there is a deeper blessing than a life without suffering – that deeper life of blessing is living in right relationship with God – and the way to that deeper life of blessing is through these 8 conditions.

How do we embrace this life of blessing? Because it seems like foolishness. It is counter everything that the world teaches about thriving and power and success. It contradicts our instinct to exercise our freewill and be independent. How can we thrive when we are weak? How is there blessing in vulnerability?

On the surface when I hear blessed are the poor in spirit, I think about how many conversations I have had with parents about protecting and even building up a child’s self-esteem. When I hear blessed are those who mourn, I think about how it hit me this summer during the memorial service at General Assembly as Rev. Margaret Burnett and Rev. Mitzi Lesher-Thomas’s names were remembered, two colleagues my age, with children my children’s ages, with husbands and church families, friends of mine who died to cancer this year. I think about all the pain and sadness in this world…and I know Jesus’s compassion…and I know that an interpretation of the Beatitudes that says that something painful is actually a blessing is wrong.

Here’s where we miss what Jesus is teaching us. We tend to do what I call “silver lining” the hurts and hard circumstances of life.  “Yes, that is bad, but look for the silver lining. What good can come from it?” So we might be tempted to use the Beatitudes to create silver lining platitudes. But Jesus is not trying to help us find a silver lining. Jesus is teaching us a whole new way to live. So, we need to hear what he is saying in a new way.

One of the best ways that I have found to go deeper and hear what a familiar passage of Scripture is really saying is to rewrite it with its opposite. So I invite you to hear the Beatitudes from the perspective of each of the Beatitudes’ opposite. What is Jesus revealing to us about how to live a life of blessing?

Blessed are the poor in spirit becomes blessed are those who are not filled with pride, for God’s will is their way. We are blessed when we let go of thinking we are independent and have it all together and realize that we need God.

Blessed are those who mourn becomes blessed are those who are not indifferent to the ways this world is not the way God intended it to be, to the pain of brokenness and death, for they recognize the need for God’s comfort. We are blessed when we realize that the world is not the way it is supposed to be and cry out to God, “How long, O Lord!”

Blessed are the meek becomes blessed are those who are not controlling and do not insist on their own way, for they seek God’s way. The word for “meeked” is related to the taming of horses, we are blessed when we come under the control of God’s way like a championship show horse.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness becomes blessed are those who have not compromised their integrity and become corrupt, for God’s presence can fill them. We are blessed when “who we are on the outside”, the things we say and do, matches “who we are on the inside”.

Blessed are the merciful becomes blessed are those who do not hold grudges, for God won’t hold a grudge against them. Over and over again Jesus teaches that God follows our example when it comes to forgiving us. How we forgive is how God forgives us.

Blessed are the pure in spirit becomes blessed are those who have not compromised their morals, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers becomes blessed are those who do not maintain division and condone violence, for they will be claimed as children of God. Peacemaking is not passive – it is actively working toward reconciliation, for community and goodwill.

And Jesus concludes by admitting that God’s ways are counter to the world’s ways. The final Beatitude, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, when we rewrite as with the opposite becomes blessed are those who are not powerful or popular because they refused to be immoral, for God’s will is their way.”

When we shift our perspective to what does NOT lead to a life of thriving and blessing, it is easier for me to understand what we have to let go of to gain what God is offering. Blessed are those who let go of pride, indifference, control, corruption, grudges, immorality, division and violence, and caring more about getting to the top than doing what is right. Because when we let go, we are blessed. We become saints of God. Amen.