For instance, health: think about it. For the last three years, we have watched what the infection and hospitalization rates were from COVID, the flu, and RSV, and proceeded accordingly.
But then there’s the more prosaic numbers. How old are you? How much do you weigh? What’s your resting heart rate? What’s your cholesterol count? What’s your A1C? What’s your BMI? And the dreaded, soul-crushing, fun-sucker of all questions: how many calories are in that?
Then there’s status: How many degrees do you have? How much money do you make? How much in your 401K or Roth? How many bedrooms—or more importantly, bathrooms-- in your house or apartment? How many cars do you have, if any? How many shares of stock do you have? What iPhone model do you have? What’s your zip code? And if you think that one doesn’t matter, let me try an experiment. What numbers come after this? Beverly Hills… (90210).
And what’s worse, all the numbers in that second set can have an impact on those numbers in the first set. In fact, here in the US, depending on what zip code you are born and then live in, your life expectancy can differ from those in other neighborhoods by as much as 22 years in St. Louis County alone.
You will forgive me if numbers have been on my mind a lot lately, and on the minds of a lot of us here at St. Martin’s whether you’re a staff member or lay leader or member. It’s annual meeting time, after all, and then comes parochial report to the diocese and the Episcopal Church time, and once again that seems to be all numbers, numbers, numbers.
But I am snapped out of this obsession by our gospel today. Today, Jesus gives us nine statements of blessing—and hopefully that’s the last number I use for a while as we ponder this pivotal and yet in some ways puzzling teaching. Because for Jesus, numbers have nothing to do with belovedness or with ranking.
Instead, Jesus lists categories of people whom he names as being blessed, right now. And what’s intriguing is that the categories Jesus names are NOT categories many of us would normally associate with being in a state of favor or blessing. Especially the first four. In the first four, he singles these out: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Likewise, we hear “meekness” in our macho-obsessed culture as “powerlessness” or “wimpiness” even though that was not the case in Jesus’s day—in fact, it was one of the adjectives used to describe both Jesus and Mary his mother, and neither one of them were in any way weak. Instead, their meekness was their willingness to yield to God’s will, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer every time we pray for God’s kingdom to come.
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice are those who see the brokenness in our world and cry out for resolution and correction. They are those who allow themselves to see and name the sorrows and injustices that surround us, and call on us to stand against the forces of hatred, division, and inhumanity. And as we have seen especially in the last few weeks with the death of Tyre Nichols and the release of the video evidence of his brutal murder at the hands of those who dehumanized him even though sworn to serve and protect, we also know that these categories can overlap. Those who thirst for justice are also those who mourn, and those who are at the end of their rope.
Jesus calls us to recognize ourselves within these four categories. We need to be honest and think of those times we have been in one or more of those categories, either through our own circumstances or by empathy for the circumstances of those around us. Jesus reminds us that those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who protest against oppression should be as dear to us as ourselves, that we are all bound together in mutuality and love. What one suffers, we all suffer. We see that in the next three categories Jesus names as blessed: the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.
The merciful receive mercy and it grows and grows until the violence and exploitation our society is absolutely drenched in is cut off at its knees, because the merciful will never support the merciless, no matter how much it may profit them in the short-term. The pure in heart will see God, because they will see the image of God everywhere, as they view creation with wonder and each person in it as being in the image of God Godself, as precious to us as our own breath.
Jesus finishes up by acknowledging the cost of living in this state of blessedness. Those last two statements of blessing may be the most paradoxical of them all. And Jesus is blunt. First, he makes a general statement: blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of working for Jesus’s gospel. Because it is certain that the forces of this world will fight tooth and nail against being overturned. But then, Jesus turns and looks at each of us and makes it clear: he means you and me. Blessed are YOU, he says. The first time he uses that word in his sermon. Blessed are YOU when you are mocked and resisted as you work to help bring my kingdom into being. He is looking right at what we now call the Church, here. We are called to stand at the nexus of each other and God and, with our fallible yet faithfully striving hands and hearts, and promote blessing instead of curses, healing instead of injury, engagement instead of apathy, care instead of disdain.
And there our gospel portion ends. If that was all we got, surely we would be left at best scratching our heads, or at worst, scoffing and declaring this precious message, this encapsulation of all of Jesus’s teaching, to be impossible and simply walk away. But we are blessed for another reason: we know the entire story of Jesus’s saving life and example among us. And when we gather in worship, we do so not for what it gives us, but for how it empowers us to give to the world.
There is a story from Hasidic Judaism. A teacher and his students in schul were studying the story in Deuteronomy when Moses gives the Ten Commandments to the people, and God commands them to place the words on their hearts. One of the disciples asks the rebbe, or teacher, “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon our hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place them in our hearts?” The rebbe answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”(1)
Come, Lord Jesus. Come to us who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who seek your will, who cry out for justice and righteousness. Come to us as we embody your call to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to hammer our swords into plowshares and our hearts into worthy vessels for your love in the name of peace. Come, break us open that your Word may find a home within our hearts, and make us a blessing for the world in truth and love.
Amen.
Preached at the 9 am single service and annual meeting at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on January 29, 2023.
Readings:
Citations:
1) Christopher K. Germer, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, pp. 142-143; cited in J. Marshall Jenkins, Blessed at the Broken Places: Reclaiming Faith and Purpose with the Beatitudes, loc. 756/3579, kindle edition.
