One of the things that makes scripture enduring even beyond people who identify as followers is the universal truths they contain. Our gospel today contains one of them: the golden rule. Which we heard right there at the end of the gospel: treat others as you want to be treated. It shows up in every religion on earth, from Hinduism to Buddhism to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. It’s so simple—and yet so important. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all really followed just that one little commandment?
Then a but later there was a new wave band called Mr. Mister that even had a hit based on a poppy, upbeat take-off of the Kyrie Eleison, or Gloria, that is right there in our prayerbooks on p. 361. Unbelievable, right?
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to reap;
a time to kill, and a time to heal,
a time to break down, and a time to build up…
and so on.
This was more old school—it had been turned into a folk song called “Turn! Turn! Turn!” in the 1950s by Pete Seeger, the coolest banjo-playing grandpa ever, and later covered by the Byrds in the 1960s. Years later, my own kids heard it in the soundtrack of the movie Forrest Gump.
This passage was comforting to me because it pointed out that there is balance in life: for every time to be born, there is a time to die, for every time to plant, there is a tie to harvest and then clear the fields for the next year, for every time of killing there is also a time of healing, and so on.
The gospel we hear today from Luke is one of those kinds of passages that can almost be that familiar. We just heard Luke’s version of “The Beatitudes.” The name comes from the first two words of each of these sayings in Latin, beati sunt, which means “Blessed are.” In the original language that Jesus spoke, however, they are in the same pattern as the very first verse of the Book of Psalms, which in some translations starts “Happy is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly.” The word for “blessed” and the word for “happy” is the same word.
So, if you had never actually read this passage, you might think that the Beatitudes are about happiness, right? About being blessed by God.
Not so fast.
While the specific things that are listed that makes one blessed are certainly counterintuitive. Note the conditions that Jesus says makes someone blessed: being poor, being hungry, weeping, being hated and treated hatefully on account of your faith, as we just heard.
Who here thinks any of those things, on the surface, sound like happiness?
Most of us would argue quite easily that being poor, or hungry, or sad, or the object of hate would be the exact opposite of being a condition of blessedness. Being in those categories sounds more to most of us like curses. No one want to be poor, or sad, or treated hatefully—not if they can help it, any way. And maybe you notice that, as in the passage I mentioned from Ecclesiastes, Luke provides us with some balance. Luke then follows the four blessings with four warnings for those who have the means to help others, yet turn away. To those who see the blessing of responsibility as a threat and a curse.
Jesus holds up those who are oppressed by poverty, sorrow, or oppression as having good things awaiting them, and he warns those who are in more favorable circumstances to use remember the mutuality and interconnection that binds the community together. The Beatitudes remind us that we have responsibilities to each other, and that those responsibilities are actually blessings.
November is Native American Heritage Month. Each day this month the diocese will be sharing daily posts celebrating and honoring Native culture, Native people, and Native history. The 505 will feature Native prayers and translations of scripture from across the Episcopal Church. While there is more than a little bit of irony that the month chosen to highlight Native American achievements would also be the month that contains Thanksgiving, there is also a certain harmony in that too, given the importance of gratitude and mutuality in Native ethics especially regarding the importance of community for the flourishing of life. Today is also the day we officially launch our annual giving campaign, which also focuses on the importance of gratitude for the gifts we have been given and strengthening our parish community for the flourishing of our shared life of faithfulness, fellowship, and service. And all these things are woven into our living out the Beatitudes in our lives, in striving to be saints of God.
In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, biologist, professor and member of the Citizen Pottawatomie Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer explains the connection between thankfulness and the strengthening of community:
Cultures of gratitude must also be cultures of reciprocity. Each person, human or no, is bound to every other in a reciprocal relationship. Just as all beings have a duty to me, I have a duty to them. If an animal gives its life to feed me, I am in turn bound to support its life. If I receive a stream’s gift of pure water, then I am responsible for returning a gift in kind. An integral part of a human’s education is to know those duties and how to perform them.... [D]uties and gifts are two sides of the same coin. Eagles were given the gift of far sight, so it is their duty to watch over us. Rain fulfills its duty as it falls, because it was given the gift of sustaining life. What is the duty of humans? If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking “What is our responsibility?” is the same as asking “What is our gift?” (Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 115)
How life -changing would it be to think of our responsibilities as gifts? I remember how proud I was when I was growing up when I became old enough to be trusted to operate a lawn mower, or to babysit. Can you remember when a newborn baby or puppy or kitten was first placed in your arms? You KNEW that responsibility was a gift—how we embraced it and knew it for the privilege that was! Native wisdom aligns with Jesus’s teaching on the Beatitudes to insist that our special gift from God as humans made in God’s image is to embrace responsibility, service, and empathy rather than avoid them. To see the web of generosity that supports us, and to joyfully embrace our place as part of that web.
That is also the heart of stewardship. Our budget is about balance, too. Balance between our obligations and paying them yes. Balance between our expenses and our income. Balance between when we get from this community and how we support it to help it grow and witness. This too is a sacred balance. It is a balance that gives life, rather than takes. This responsibility, too is a GIFT.
A commitment to live lives of outstanding gratitude and generosity is woven into scripture—and into the lives of the saints we also celebrate today. They lived lives of abundant faithfulness and generosity—and if we don’t mean to be one too, as the song goes, then what are we doing here?
Too often our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. But it is this simple: scarcity breeds fear, and fear strangles faith.
Let me say it again: Scarcity breeds fear, and fear strangles faith. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. Scarcity lures us to break the bonds of fellowship and deny the truth of our interdependence upon each other, upon this earth, upon God.
The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the Saints we celebrate today. As a matter of fact, the word for saint is right in there. “Beati”—is the beginning of the word “beatify” which means to recognize someone as a saint. And the entire point of this day is to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made.
Jesus isn’t trying to scare anyone into submission, ever. But Jesus does remind us to use the gifts we have been given for something greater than ourselves—for each other, and for the world. The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: no matter what we have or don’t have, whether wealthy or poor, whether sinner or saint, we cannot depend upon our own resources to be blessed. It doesn’t work that way. The key to being truly blessed is to truly be a blessing—to acknowledge our reliance upon God, no matter what our situation. Happiness begins with acknowledging that God’s grace and mercy are not only necessary, but also real and present in our lives.
As for us, sitting here, as we remember saints of God, we remember people who, in ways small and great, were willing to be cursed, to go against the logic and the dominant culture around them, in order to testify to the God Jesus came to bring to flesh and bone before our eyes: the God who always takes interest in those who are humble in spirit, and yet filled with awe and wonder at the wonder of this God-infused creation of which we are a part. And saints are those who see with the eyes of Jesus the belovedness of everyone, regardless of any other condition.
Jesus calls us to discover within ourselves the same greatness of faithfulness and abundance that reflect God’s imprint in each of us. May we find blessing in the balance between responsibility and gratitude, b between obligation and gift, for the flourishing of each other, and the wider world.
Preached at the 505 on November 5 and at the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on November 6, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Citations:
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013), p, 115.
