Jesus Wept...So Should We

This week those of us who use the Revised Common Lectionary heard once the story of the raising of Lazarus, the action in the Gospel of John that led the religious authorities to have Jesus arrested. The passage was 45 verses long (!), so I'm not copying the whole thing here. If you'd like to read it in full, go to The Lectionary Page. 

Included in this story, of course, is the shortest sentence in the whole Bible, "Jesus wept" (John 11: 35).  Of course, the Episcopal Church reads the New Revised Standard Version, which translates it as "Jesus began to weep." The poetry of Scripture is often lost in the NRSV. I personally prefer  “Jesus wept.” 

Jesus Wept by Daniel Bonnell

This is on the short list of most important sentences in all of Holy Scripture. Because it invites us to consider: what does it mean to follow a Savior who weeps? In the Hebrew Bible God walks in the garden, God laughs, God rants and raves, God even changes God’s mind. But God never cries, not even after the Great Flood or when people are held in bondage. The very idea of a mighty, omnipotent, God crying was simply unthinkable. And while the Jesus presented in the Gospel of John is often presented as being totally in control, which is in-keeping with the Gospel’s overall theme that Jesus is not only the Messiah, but God, here in chapter 11, verse 35 we see the rawest, most human version of Jesus in all of the Fourth Gospel. Here at the grave of his friend, Jesus, the Christ, the living embodiment of God, cries.  And not just a single tear down the side of his cheek like a sentimental moment in a Hallmark movie, no, the Greek word embrimasthai literally translates to “he snorted like a donkey,” and already knowing that Jesus was distressed and upset we can confirm that, yes Jesus ugly cried. And if you know, you know. 

This short sentence, one single word in Greek, buried in the longest Gospel reading we do all year – outside of Holy Week – has some major ramifications for us, even now. Especially now. In a culture that tells us – tells men, in particular – that we have to be strong, that we have to keep it together, that we can’t show emotions, can’t show any weakness, can’t shed a tear, this moment of Jesus weeping – ugly crying - over the loss of Lazarus is so powerful. It flies in the face of every convention that we have been taught. Every ounce of pride that we have is made irrelevant in this moment. Jesus has undone what we thought to be true about grief, about death, about life, and about how it’s all connected.

Most of us, I suspect, are familiar with the so-called Five Stages of Grief – to be honest, there are plenty more, but these exist less as an absolute and more as a model, a guide: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness, and Acceptance. And all five are on display in this story:  Denial – Jesus himself says Lazarus sickness doesn’t lead to death; Anger – Jesus is greatly disturbed, and again, the Greek text suggests it’s full-on angry, maybe over Lazarus dying, or maybe the people’s unbelief; Bargaining – Mary and Martha both say that if Jesus had been there their brother wouldn’t have died; Sadness – obviously, Jesus began to weep; and Acceptance – Mary and Martha bear witness to their brother’s resurrection and are therefore able to recognize Jesus in his own resurrection when all hope seems lost. The Five Stages are not meant to be linear, mind you, they are often experienced in a not-so-organized fashion, but because we see them play out right here, because Jesus himself experiences them, we can lean into our own grief in the moments when it takes hold. We can, instead of fighting against it, burying it, or pretending it isn’t real, acknowledge our grief and remember this story, remember that God too has wept, has experienced heartbreaking grief, and in that lies the good news of God in the one called Emmanuel – that God is, in fact, with us, in all of our emotions, all of the actions that make us human. 

The text invites us to befriend our own grief – whatever it may be – but it also reminds us that grief is not all there is. Sometimes our pain can become so great, and all around us are trying to tell us to buck up and get over it and not be so sad, putting us on the defensive and leaning even more into our pain – often accompanied by cries of “You don’t understand what I’ve been through!” While may be true, and our pain deserves to be acknowledged - and no one has the right to tell us when we should “move on” or “be better" -  remaining in the stuckness of our denial, anger, bargaining, and sadness will keep us from getting to the place of acceptance and seeing that there’s life on the other side of the pain.

Fortunately, the good news of Jesus is that those stuck places are often exactly where he shows up. Wilda Gafney, writes in A Women’s Lectionary, that life in Jesus happens here, among the brokenness, failings, and limitations of the physical world. Plato had taught that the physical world was evil, a mere shadow of a greater, more ideal and eternal realm. Christianity picked up on the idea, first among the Gnostics and later among the Puritans, and we still see it today whenever churches preach that everything that is of the physical world is an enemy. Even death. And so we are taught to rage against the world, rage against the dying of the light – thank you, Dylan Thomas – rage against that which is broken, failed, or limited. What can fit that description better than death itself, right? 

Yet it is in this place, amongst the broken, failed, limited enemy of death that Jesus cries, “Come out!” Lazarus has been dead for four whole days, which is significant because it not only hammers home that this isn’t one of those stories, like Jairus’ daughter, where the person may or may not actually be dead, but if it is meant to invoke the old theory that the soul lingers around a body up to two days after physical death, then saying he’s been dead four days means he ain’t coming back. All hope is lost. For Mary, Martha, and the people standing there grieving. Maybe, even, on some level, Jesus feels that hopelessness, but through it he cries to his friend, “Come out!” Death itself hears the cry, and Lazarus returns.  Death is now the enemy that we can learn to love, thanks to Jesus.

Thanks to the model Jesus gives us, of befriending our grief and even embracing the enemy of death, we can hear his voice when he calls to us to “Come out!” Just like Lazarus Jesus cries out to us to come out from the darkness, to come out from the shame, from the place of judgment, from the sin that holds us captive. Would, as Robb McCoy once wrote, the whole Church heed these words. Come out! Come out from our stuckness! Come out from our pain, from our desire to scapegoat and blame, come out from our need for approval, come out from our comfort zones and desperation to hang onto nostalgia, rooted in the fear that death will consume us if we dare change. Come out of the graves we have dug for ourselves and come into the light, the light of life, the light of hope, the light of love, the light of Christ. This is the very light we all received in the form of that candle lit from the Paschal flame when we were baptized. It is the light that is already in ourselves and each other, if we have eyes to see, if we have ears to hear – and listen to – the voice of Jesus. Then, even when all hope seems lost, we can recognize him.

Once and for all, the story of Lazarus helps us remember that Resurrection doesn’t just happen to Jesus, or on the “last day,” but it is a daily reality, one that lays claim on us right here, right now. Jesus wept. We weep. Jesus cries for us to come out. And our grief is redeemed. 

The Risky Business of God

'The LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.'

--Genesis 12: 1-4a

'There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

--John 3: 1-17

Is there a word you would used to describe what being in a relationship with God is like? My word would be  'risky'.  Maybe not what you were expecting, huh?  Perhaps that’s because we tend to think that being in relationship with God means that everything will be easy, that we won’t have problems anymore. But that’s not what we see play out in the stories of Scripture, is it?  Instead, we see stories of men and women who courageously—some might even say, foolishly—follow an unpredictable and at times reckless God into a relationship and on a journey that literally transforms their lives.  That sounds pretty risky to me, especially in the cases of two people we meet in our Scriptures this week—Abram and Nicodemus.

Let’s start with Abram.  This story in Genesis chapter 12 is the first time we meet Abram, whose name means ‘exalted ancestor.’  We find him living in a land called Ur, which is inhabited by the Chaldeans, with his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot.  Abram’s father Terrah has just died, and it’s at this point that God speaks to Abram and tells him to take his wife and nephew and set out for the land of Canaan, and from there, God promises, Abram’s name will be great, and from him all the peoples of earth will be blessed.  Without any mention of trepidation on his part, Abram goes, listens to God and sets out for this new home. Eventually God will give him a new name—Abraham—which means ‘ancestor of multitudes’—and he will, to this day, be regarded as the father of the world’s three great religions associated with his God:  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

An Eastern Orthodox icon of Abraham

Contrast the story of Abram, then, with that of Nicodemus in our reading from the Gospel of John.  Nicodemus – whose name means “ruler, or conqueror, of the people” - is a Pharisee, a teacher of the Law, and he has seen and heard of the signs that Jesus has performed—including turning water to wine, feeding thousands, and even his antics turning over tables in the Temple.  Nicodemus is intrigued by Jesus, and under the cover of darkness goes to meet him.  He is stunned by some of the things Jesus says—such as the ever-complicated line “You must be born from above.”  He wants to understand, but there is an apprehension there, something that holds him back.  His position as a Pharisee is a comfortable one, no risk involved at all.  But these things Jesus is talking about?  This oneness with God of which he speaks?  All of this talk about Spirit and inner transformation?  This is complex, scary stuff, and clearly more than a little risky, as Nicodemus will never again speak with Jesus after this nighttime encounter.  

In Nicodemus we see perhaps what Abram may have looked like prior to God calling him; that is, a person whose comprehension of God’s initiative in his life is rather simplistic, meaning he can’t see past his own experiences up to this moment to understand how God could do something new in him.  In the Genesis reading God invites Abram to embark on an adventure of trust, while Jesus invites Nicodemus to be open to the rush of God’s holy and life-giving Spirit in such a manner that his very being will be reborn.  Whereas Abram accepts the risk, Nicodemus does not.  It’s just too fearful.  

Nicodemus and Jesus by Alexander Andreyevich

During the early days of the Protestant Reformation there was a group in Germany called the Nicodemites, who were Christians that sympathized with the reformers, but who were unwilling to publicly identify with them for fear of the ramifications they faced from the Roman Catholic hierarchy.  Such a position of complacency, or clinging to the status quo, rarely leads to growth.  As Walter Brueggemann puts it in his commentary on Abram’s story in Genesis:  “to stay in safety is to remain barren, but to leave in risk is to have hope.”  The catalyst for leaving this state of complacency, for having hope despite the the risk, is faith.  

We’re not talking about mere amazement at miracles or rational conclusions drawn from irrefutable evidence.  There’s no risk involved in that.  No, the kind of faith that drove Abram to leave his home, and the kind of faith that Jesus invites Nicodemus to consider, is an openness to the uncontrollable wind of God, an embracing of the mysterious newness of God.  This does not come from an external force—the word Jesus uses is flesh, that is, the material world.  This is Spirit territory we’re in—or Holy Ghost territory.  We do not control it.  We do not initiate it.  God does.  Our journey of transformation begins with faith, a willingness to be transformed.  Our faith begins with God, who has already placed faith in each of us from the moment we were spoken into existence.  This was the promise made to our great ancestor, and to us, and brothers and sisters we need always to remember that the promise-maker is also the promise-keeper!  When we remember that, remember that God’s faith in us has never wavered and that God’s promise of loving us through our brokenness has always and will always be kept, then we can start moving.  Even a little.  We can start to be more than we ever thought we could.

Abram’s migration that begins in today’s Genesis reading is a model for the movement of any person from despair to hope, from oldness to newness, from death to life.  It’s a model for Lent. Abram’s journey leads to transformation—he literally gets a new name—and so does every other journey that begins in faith.  Even if Abraham doesn’t get to live in the land God promised to him. The same is true for Nicodemus.  No, he will never again speak with Jesus, but his journey leads him to defend Jesus to the other religious authorities in Chapter 7 and when all is said and done, he will be there at the foot of the cross.  The one who came to Jesus under the cover of darkness will be standing in the Palestinian sun on a Friday afternoon, when he will bear witness to Jesus being lifted up on the cross and then prepare his body for burial.  At long last he is able to take a risk for this faith of his.

So much about this season of Lent is risky.  On Ash Wednesday we were invited to recall our sins, our wretchedness, which always runs the risk of us sinking into pits of self-deprecation and despair.  Last week we reconsidered the story of the Fall, of that original sin of Adam and Eve, and how we ourselves have been caught in the same cycle of shame and judgment arising from our temptations for possessions, prestige, and power.  It’s risky to do the kind of hard self-examination that Lent expects of us, and truth be told, it would be easier to stay in the dark, to not budge from our places of comfort.  Do we really want to be exposed by the light, especially the Light of the world?  Surely, the condemnation will be too great.  But condemnation is not the judgment of God but the judgment we bring on ourselves when we forget our belovedness and hide our brokenness from God and one another, like Adam and Eve and their fig leaf clothes.  We remember John 3: 16 all the time, but let’s not forget John 3: 17:  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The journey beyond condemnation and toward true belief in the salvific power of God is the journey of Lent, a journey that begins with the faith God has already placed in us.  It’s a journey not unlike Abram or Nicodemus, yet it is one that is unique to each of us.  It’s not easy—I suspect Jesus uses the term “being born from above” to remind us that a lot of time and energy and pain and even risk go into a birth, so why should faith be any different?  This season let us take the time to ponder the choice that is before us, the same choice that Abram and Nicodemus faced:  do we remain comfortable or do we risk everything for the sake of following such a loving, liberating, and life-giving God?  

Temptation, Sin, and Judgment: An Endless Waltz

'The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’“ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.'

--Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7

'As sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned-- sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.'

--Romans 5: 12-19

'Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.'

--Matthew 4: 1-11

Let’s talk about sin.  It seems fitting now that we are in the season of Lent, doesn’t it? You’ve already heard me talk about sin – hamartia – as an archery term that means, “to miss the mark.” Chances are you’ve also heard in one way or another that sin is the result of an event recounted in today’s passage from Genesis, what we often call The Fall.  Well let’s unpack The Fall, shall we?

The Fall

When folks ask me if I believe that Adam and Eve and the Garden were a true story, I always tell them yes. It’s not factual, but something does not have to be factual to be truthful.  This is a story of theodicy, the exploration of why evil exists in a world that God repeatedly declares as good.  What is going on in this story, the point it’s making, is certainly true.  Let’s start with the serpent, a character who has long represented any entity that seeks to undermine God’s creation in some way—the Book of Revelation will go so far as to explicitly say the serpent in the Garden was the dragon John sees in his apocalypse, who is also called Satan and the devil in the Gospels of Jesus.  So we see that the serpent exists within this created order, not outside or against it.  When the woman—Eve—converses with the serpent it appears that God is not anywhere to be found.  But how can that be, since just a few lines earlier we heard about how God walked in the Garden with Eve and Adam?  Obviously, God is omnipresent, but clearly Eve at least perceives that God is absent, and so the serpent’s words are easier for her to hear.  We can relate to this, can’t we?  We all know that God is everywhere we go, yet we have all experienced what we might describe as an absence of God, which produces a very real lack of trust in God’s ultimate goodness, making it easier for us to hear the serpent’s whispering in our own ears.  

This moment of feeling absent from God is what leads to Eve acknowledging the serpent’s words about the fruit of the tree—the text never says it’s an apple, by the way, just fruit—and she gives in to that temptation.  And what is the temptation?  It’s not to disobey God; in fact, disobedience never enters into this story, according to the text itself.  The serpent never lies to Eve, he simply points out three things:  that the fruit is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise.  All three are truthful points God has already made. So in this perceived absence of God that Eve is experiencing, she struggles by herself with three most basic of human needs:  the need for sufficiency that leads to the desire for possessions—the fruit is good for food—the need for esteem that leads to the desire for prestige—the fruit is a delight to the eye—and the need for autonomy that leads to the desire for power—the fruit is desirable to make one wise.  These, brothers and sisters, are the three base temptations, out of which every single one of our sins arise.  They are the root cause of the Fall and everything that has occurred since.  

In the very next moment, Adam and Eve are Fallen, afraid and shameful because now they know right from wrong.  They sew fig leaves to hide what they have done from God out of fear of God’s judgment.  Before eating of the tree they didn’t know judgment, they had no need of it, but now they do, and because they know the concept of judgment they become like God—making the serpent something of a prophet—insomuch as they begin passing judgment themselves.  Adam blames Eve.  Eve blames the serpent.  Thus begins a vicious cycle of blame and judgment-passing that has had disastrous consequences for us as a species and for our planet as a whole.  This is sin, a constant effort on our part to scapegoat, pass judgment, find fault, and righteously play the part of God in punishing wrong, all stemming from our own fears of being judged, our own shame for the exposure of our frailty, our nakedness.  And in their Fall, they are expelled from the Garden. Every Feast of St. Francis I mention how our animal friends are very much still “in the garden” because they still live into that original relationship between the Creator and created, built on trust and intimacy with God.  That relationship is broken and devolves into distrust and estrangement in Adam and Eve’s case, which ultimately leads to the killing of their son Abel by his brother Cain, who does so out of a sense of feeling like God had treated him unjustly.  The blood of Abel still cries out from the ground every time we repeat this cycle of temptation, sin, and judgement, like some kind of endless waltz.

What then is the answer to this cycle of blame and scapegoating that stems from our own fear and shame.  What, then, is the answer when sin sounds like an inevitability? It’s Jesus, y’all, and we know this because Jesus himself faces these same three temptations:  the desire for possession—turn these stones to bread—the desire for prestige—throw yourself down if you are the Son of God so that the angels will catch you—and the desire for power—all the world can be yours.  Jesus confronts these temptations, like Eve, in a moment when it appears God is not present, out there in the desert.  Notice that, like the story from Genesis, God doesn’t intervene to offer any assuring words.  But like Paul points out in our reading from Romans, which is a kind of commentary on the Fall, Jesus succeeds where the first humans failed.  He overcomes what theologians have called the “original sin” by resisting that same voice and maintaining his intimacy with God.  In doing so he exposes the whole mechanism of scapegoating and judgment-passing as the fraud that it is, an illusion we buy into when we give in to our temptations toward possession, prestige, and power. This is why Jesus is the only one worthy of passing any judgment, because the judgment he will pass—which we affirm in our Nicene Creed—is one based not on blame and punishment but on the love of God that has always been there since the beginning of creation.  It is as if Jesus—mentally and emotionally speaking—has always been in the Garden, in a place where he knows the intimacy of his relationship with God, and he never truly lost it.  And in our own relationship with Jesus, while we may lose it, we can return to that intimacy again and again through confession, fasting, prayer, and worship.

An ancient mosaic of the Temptations of Christ.

It’s never mentioned in the story, but there is another tree in that Garden:  the tree of life.  We never hear of anyone eating from that tree, but the implication is that it was the tree from which all creation ate—including Adam and Eve.  In many Christian pieces of art Jesus is depicted as the tree of life, in part because, it could be said, he never ate of the tree from which Adam and Eve ate.  So we who are the children of Adam and Eve, and who are followers and lovers of Jesus, have a choice, every day:  eat of the tree of our first parents, the fruit of which leads us to wallow in shame, blame others, and pass what we believe to be righteous judgments, or eat of the tree of Jesus, the fruit of which is intimacy with God and all creation.  When we eat on him, as we do at this table, we abide in the one who never knew separation from God and who knew the truth that we so often forget, as Adam and Eve forgot:  that there is no such thing as being absent from God.  

Lent is the time when we intentionally remind ourselves of that fact, as we ponder our own temptations for possession, prestige, and power and remember that Jesus has already faced these same temptations, and it was his intimacy with God and creation that kept him from giving in.  The  event in Genesis has also been called the felix culpa, the Happy Fall, because it ultimately led to Jesus coming and showing us that it is, in fact, possible for humanity to fall and yet still be raised, a scene often depicted in art as the Harrowing of Hell, showing Jesus pulling Adam and Eve out of their graves. As we move toward Easter morning, let us take time this season to ponder our own cycles of temptation, sin, and judgement, and remember that Christ has already succeeded where all others—including ourselves—have failed, and in doing so he has given us power to be resurrected even from our own Falls.  

Jesus, the Tree of Life

Acknowledging Our Wretchedness, Reconsidering Our Fast

Many of you have heard me talk about my great-grandfather, Preston Epps, who was a Greek professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Granddaddy was also a gifted singer. He loved Amazing Grace and had it played at his funeral. But there was one difference. He changed the words from “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me” to “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound to a believer’s ear.” My dad asked why Granddaddy had insisted on that change to the hymn, to which my great-grandmother replied, “Well, he just didn’t really think of himself as a wretch.”

In the Collect that we pray for Ash Wednesday, we ask that, “lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, we may obtain of the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.” It does hit pretty hard, doesn’t it, the notion of our own wretchedness, that we are, in fact, wretches? 

In the spirit of my great-grandfather, no, I do not believe we are wretches, nor do I believe that it is the Church’s job to tell people that they are. But by the same token, it is disingenuous to think that we are not capable of wretchedness, that any of us, myself included, have not sinned, have not missed the mark, and offended against the God who loves and forgives and calls us to do the same. 

It seems at times that we Christians – especially in the mainline denominations– find ourselves caught between a binary: on the one hand you have churches that preach total depravity and the idea that we are all just miserable, horrible people who deserve nothing less than to spend eternity in the dungheap of Gehenna; and on the other hand you have folks who are slow to condemn any action at all for fear of offending someone or re-traumatizing them, preaching a Gospel that God only wishes for us to follow our bliss, regardless of the consequences. Binaries aren’t cool, and as usual, we humans forget that God doesn’t operate within them but instead is always calling us to find the Middle Way between such extremes. 

This is what Ash Wednesday and Lent call us to consider. No, we are not horrible, miserable people and we shouldn’t fast to the point that it makes us physically ill. And also, we are flawed, we are broken, we do hurt one another and ourselves and we do disappoint God and need to own up to that, with one way being to fast in some form or fashion. It is perhaps better to think of the season of Lent as a both/and, not an either/or.

The prophet Isaiah, speaking in chapter 58 for God, calls out people who fast only for the purpose of being noticed by God – something Jesus later condemns in his own day. They follow the letter of their Law, but their heart isn’t in the right place. The fast God wants, the prophet declares, is one from injustice and oppression. The rending God asks for is of your heart, not your clothing. Modern audiences, though, have often heard these words and interpreted them to mean that Isaiah – and by extension God – doesn’t think fasting and rending one’s garments are needed or necessary, so let’s just forget them entirely; after all, it’s a fast of the heart, of the spirit. You can draw a line from this kind of thinking to the end point of there being merely a spiritual resurrection, rather than a real, bodily one.

But our God is one who uses real matter, real stuff like water, wine, wheat, and ash to get the point across because our God took on real human matter to show us how to be fully and authentically human ourselves. This is why some safe form of physical fasting is needed, because God did it in the form of Jesus. Actually speaking aloud to another physical human being – in a safe space in the presence of God, of course – is important to our spiritual health and to our relationship with God and one another. These actions – yes, physical actions, not just spiritual or mental exercises – redirect our motivations, help reconcile us to our neighbors, and most importantly, remind us that our total dependence is on God alone and that, oh yeah, God is God and we are not. They put us in our place, and honestly, that’s not really a bad thing. 

A friend of mine is a Russian Orthodox priest in Kentucky, and his congregation developed a really good self-reflection to help them prepare for the period of confession that begins what they call Great Lent. This document asks the confessee: how have I turned away from God and my neighbor. What are the ways I have been self-centered, the addictions I’ve fallen to, the scapegoating and blaming I’ve participated in, the resentment and rage I’ve felt toward others, the lies I’ve told, the ugly truths I’ve hid from everyone, including God, the facades I’ve hid behind, the ways I’ve tried numbing my emotional and spiritual pain, the blame I’ve placed on others for my own actions, and the ways I’ve beaten myself up and participated in self-hatred. Such a practice is not about self-pity or loathing but conversion. This is the Christian journey; not so much getting into heaven later, but being converted day after day so that heaven can be a present reality. As the medieval Coptic Saint Isaias of Scetis put it, “The voice of God calls to us until the day we die, saying be converted today!” Not to a specific religion or denomination, but to a right relationship with God and our neighbor. That’s a voice that is a sweet sound to a believer’s ear, right there.

The ashes we take up remind us that we will die, every single one of us. And too often humanity tries desperately to ward off that inevitability. In death we are all reconciled to God – that is what Jesus did in his own death and resurrection – but by taking up the ashes and remembering our own deaths, we remember St Isias’ words and the call from God to be converted every day until all that is left of this mortal existence is the dust. 

How will you spend this season acknowledging the ways you’ve missed the mark – dare I say, wretchedness – and your utter dependence upon God? One of the best manners of doing this that I know is the Jesus Prayer, a practice that can be traced back to the desert fathers and mothers of the 5th century. It’s simple but powerful: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I’ve used it often and intend to incorporate it into my daily Lenten prayers and invite you to do the same. You may find, as I have, that when you admit acknowledge your own sinfulness, the burden of  having it all figured out is lifted, and you are able more and more to let God be God, so that you can do what God put you here to do: to love God and love your neighbor. And that, in the end, is what Lent is all about.

For Absalom

On Sunday, February 12, Episcopal Churches across the country commemorated the Feast of Absalom Jones, the first person of African descent ordained a priest in the United States. 

Absalom Jones from a portrait by Raphaelle Peale.

In 2021, the Episcopal Church, under the leadership of our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, in an effort to live into its call of racial reconciliation, established the Absalom Jones Fund to provide scholarships to the only two Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the country founded by the Episcopal Church: St Augustine’s University in Raleigh, and Voorhees University in Denmark, SC. These institutions, as Bishop Curry pointed out in his pastoral letter that went out last month, are training Black leaders of the future, who will go forth and build a more just and equitable society for all of God’s children in the spirit of Absalom Jones, who understood that education was the key to empowerment.

But who was Absalom Jones? When I asked that question of my parishioners on Sunday - a church filled with white faces - I could count on one hand the number of folks who had even heard his name before. I’ll admit that I wasn’t familiar with his story until I was a seminarian, but it’s a story that highlights both the wonderful and the heartbreaking aspects of the Episcopal Church and its heritage. In observance of his feast day, my parish honored Absalom Jones by designating our offering on Sunday to go to the Absalom Jones Fund, and the Church as a whole share his story this week, let us pray that we be bold in our mission to live into those baptismal promises to seek and serve Christ in ALL persons and to proclaim by both our words and our examples the Good News of God in Christ, because Blessed Absalom did just that.

His story began in Sussex County, Delaware when he was born into slavery on November 7, 1746. It could’ve ended there, as it did for so many others who have gone nameless, but God had other plans. 

He was named Absalom after King David’s most favored son from the Second Book of Samuel in the Hebrew Bible. But where the biblical Absalom’s story ended in tragedy, this Absalom persevered. He managed to learn how to read with the New Testament as his main resource. At 16 he and his mother, sister, and five brothers were sold to a farmer, who turned around and sold Absalom’s mother and siblings and promptly moved, with Absalom, to Philadelphia. Like so many other families ripped apart by American slavery, they were never reunited. 

Absalom was permitted to attend a Free School; that is, a nighttime school run by Quakers, which is where he learned more fully to read and write. Once the door had been opened, Absalom proceeded to kick it down. He continued to read and to educate himself as much as possible, even when he was sold once again to a man named Wynkop – who was listed as a member of the Vestry of Christ Church, Philadelphia. Around the same time he was sold again, Absalom married a slave girl by the name of Mary King – who was owned by a neighbor of Mr. Wynkop - on January 4, 1770. 

Adelphi Free School in what is now the Chinatown district of Philadelphia.

By 1778 Absalom managed to purchase his wife’s freedom during the height of the American Revolution. The law stated that children took on the status of their mother, so if a woman was enslaved, so was the child. So for the sake of his future children, Absalom made sure his wife would be free, even while he continued to be enslaved. Six years later, after Absalom wrote to him and perhaps inspired by some of the radical ideals of this new United States of America, Mr. Wynkop manumitted Absalom- which is the process of freeing enslaved people by their enslavers. Absalom then took the surname ‘Jones,’ which, according to one story from a PBS report in 2009, was as an indication of his fully American identity.

As was often the case, the Church served as the source for hope and the promise of freedom for so many enslaved peoples. Absalom had been involved in the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was founded in 1784 as a new denomination by Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. He served as a lay minister at St. George’s in Philadelphia with his friend Richard Allen, and together they established the Free African Society to aid in the emancipation of slaves and provide education, food, and other resources for newly freed Black folks. As a result, the Black membership of St. George’s exploded.

Richard Allen, friend and colleague of Absalom Jones, who would go on to found the AME Church.

You can probably guess what happened next. The white parishioners were uncomfortable that all these new folks would upset their establishment, and so the Vestry voted in 1792 to force Black worshippers to the balcony without any prior notice; and when Absalom, Richard, and others came to worship and sat in their regular pews, they were tapped on the shoulder by the ushers and told they had to go upstairs to worship. They all promptly walked and never came back. 

You might wish this was a kind of one-off situation, especially since it was a northern church, but the truth is that tensions were high around that time after the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1789, where Methodists and Black Episcopalians were each hoping to have seat, voice, and vote at the Church’s governing body, but both were turned away. The result was that the Methodist Church became its own full-fledged denomination – and the largest in the country – and many Black folks decided the Episcopal Church was not for them.

Absalom and Richard wanted to found a church for Black folks where they wouldn’t have to acquiesce to racist conditions. The result was First African Church in Philly, which they founded in 1792, the same year they walked out of St. George’s. While Richard wanted it to be a Methodist congregation, Absalom sought approval from William White, the Bishop of Pennsylvania and first Presiding Bishop, to admit them into the Episcopal Church. It was and became known as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, with Absalom serving as lay leader while he studied for ordination to become the church’s rector. Richard Allen, meanwhile, founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church that same year and became its first bishop in 1816. The two of them remained lifelong friends and collaborators.

The current version of the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in Philadelphia.

In 1802 Absalom became the first African American to be ordained a priest in the United States. As rector of St. Thomas he was known as a great preacher, and some white folks even said he had hypnotic powers over his congregation. He started a tradition of preaching an anti-slavery sermon on New Year’s Day, and when the Constitutionally-mandated end of the African slave trade occurred on New Year’s Day, 1808, he preached what he called a ‘Thanksgiving Sermon,’ which was published and brought him renown throughout the country. He took part in petitioning Congress on multiple occasions to end the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which not only forced runaway slaves back into bondage but often resulted in free men and women being kidnapped and sold into bondage in slave states – think of the film 12 Years a Slave. He decried the legislation and called for “some remedy for an evil of such magnitude.” Despite his pleas on the moral and ethical ground that God abhorred such an institution, each of his petitions failed. 

Absalom continued to be an outspoken advocate for the abolition of slavery as a whole for the remainder of his life and a fixture in Philadelphia, helping to found day schools for Black children because they weren’t permitted to go to public school with white kids. He never stopped dreaming, praying, and working for the Beloved Community that he heard Jesus call people to build, all the way to his death on February 13, 1818. He is interned at the current edition of St. Thomas Church.

In the section of the Sermon on the Mount that we heard in church on Sunday, Jesus reminds the people that it is not enough to simply follow the letter of the Law, especially if the spirit of the Law is neglected. White folks in Absalom Jones’ time followed the letter of their own Law, both when they enslaved his family and when they forced him and others to worship in their church balconies. It is not enough for us to simply look at the way things are and say, “Well, that’s just the way it is and nothing can be done.” Absalom Jones didn’t do that. He may not have lived to see the full abolition of his people, but he never stopped working toward that goal. He didn’t look at the way things were and said it was fine, instead he looked at it all through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus, which called him then, calls us now, called those folks on the mount who listened to Jesus, to dream of something different, to lives of transformation and reconciliation. To do that means to tread through troublesome waters, to tell hard truths, to be hurt by folks you thought cared. It is no easy task, which is why nearly everyone eventually abandoned Jesus. But blessedly, Jesus never abandons us. He never abandoned Absalom Jones, or Richard Allen, or Martin Luther King, or anyone else who has stood up for full rights and privileges and freedoms of all God’s children.

I may look out in my own congregation and see a church full of white folks, but that doesn’t mean this feast day shouldn't matter; in fact, I’d say we white folks desperately need to take part in it. We need to hear Absalom’s story and those of all of our Black siblings who have been wounded by the Church but whose love for Jesus has endured. We need to admit our own blindspots, especially in times when we’ve just been following the rules instead of embracing one another. We need to hope and work for a time when Sunday mornings are not the most segregated hour in America. This day is for all of us, in the sure and certain hope that the dream of Jesus, the dream of shalom for all God’s people, can and will be achieved. We will do it, with God’s help. Blessed Absalom Jones, pray for us. 

Preserve & Illuminate

'Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”'

--Matthew 5: 13-20

When I was growing up, my mother would sing to me and my dog as we nodded off to sleep. She kept this practice going until I was roughly 10 years old. One of the songs she would sing most often, sitting in the little rocking chair that now sits in our home, was This Little Light of Mine. I can still hear her particular cadence and the way she sang it, and to this day it feels like everyone else is singing it wrong if they don’t hit the notes and pitch that she did! It’s a sweet little song that has stuck with me, and I loved that we’re sang it as our closing hymn this past Sunday

This Little Light of Mine is a song whose words are lifted straight from our Gospel text this week, this section of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus admonishes the people listening to him to be “salt of the earth and the light of the world.” It’s such a well-known piece of the Gospel that the line “let your light shine before others” is imprinted on the back of our parish's t-shirts, and I’ve very often used it at the bidding of the offertory in our worship services. There are, though, a couple of things that Jesus says regarding salt and light that don’t really make sense, but by digging into them we get a clearer understanding of Jesus’ message to that crowd on that mount, and to all of us now.

Jesus first wonders what would happen if salt lost its taste. Well, that’s a good question, Jesus, because it’s not scientifically possible. Salt cannot lose its taste; it cannot lose its saltiness. He then points out that no one allows a light to lose its shine by putting it under a bushel basket – and there’s that adorable moment in This Little Light of Mine when we go “Hide it under a bushel? NO!! I’m gonna let it shine!” It’s an usual image because nobody would even think of putting a candle or oil lamp under a bushel basket because it would just set the bushel on fire! Maybe some folks in the crowd were left scratching their heads at these two somewhat ridiculous illustrations, but this is Jesus at his best, using hyperbole and absurd examples to get his point across. 

And that point is this: that salt and light cannot lose their properties, they cannot not be what God made them to be and do what God made them to do without devolving into something else. If salt lost its taste, it’s not salt anymore. If a light were snuffed out, it’s not light anymore. And YOU, Jesus says to the crowd, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. You folks that I’ve just told are blessed of God – you hungry, meek, merciful, reviled peacemakers – you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and like salt and light, you cannot not be what God made you to be or do what God made you to do. 

What God made them to be – and made us to be – is disciples of Jesus. What God made them to do – ad made us to do – are the actions of Jesus. And so, like that crowd that so eagerly listened to Jesus, if we are to be his disciples, then we must, like Jesus himself, season the world with love – like salt – and illuminate the world with grace – like light. When we cease to do these things, we cease to be disciples of Jesus. Like salt that has lost its saltiness or light that has lost its shine, we would devolve into something else. Call it what you want, but you can’t call it Christian. This is the lesson of the salt and the light. 

There is one significant element of being salt and light, of being disciples of Jesus, and that is being in right relationship with God and with one another. This is the reason Jesus follows up the metaphor of salt and light with a quick lesson on the Law. Many have looked at Jesus and seen a person – seen a rabbi, an authority figure – who disobeys the Law. He doesn’t follow kosher, doesn’t wash his hands, doesn’t obey the Sabbath, interacts with women, heals foreigners, and he’ll eventually be publicly executed, which, according to the Law, accounts him as accursed. But Jesus makes clear that he has not come to abolish or trample on the Law at all, but instead he has come to fulfill it. How? By his very person, his very presence, his very example of how to live in right relationship with God and others. This is again where salt and light work as a teaching tool for Jesus because salt is a preservative, and those who were so zealous for preserving the Law had forgotten how to be in relationship with others, they had put the Law above people and forgotten the important lesson that the Law was made for people, not the other way around, and while they wanted to preserve the Law’s letter, Jesus was more interested in preserving its spirit. For Jesus is the very light of the world that had come to illuminate the Law, and he calls them – and us – to remember that when life becomes more about obeying the rules than it does about people and their sorts and conditions, then we have sinned – that is, we have missed the mark, the literal meaning of the Greek word amartia, which is the archery term that our Scriptures translate as sin. 

How we live in relationship with God is reflected in how we live in relationship with others. How we love others is reflected in how we love God. This is what being salt and light – both preserving and illuminating – are all about, and Jesus will circle back to this point near the end of the Sermon on the Mount when he reminds them in Matthew 7, verse 12 that the whole Law is summarized in the commandments to love God and love neighbor – what we call the Golden Rule. If it sounds like a big responsibility, well, it kinda is. How do we keep up being salt and light and loving others and God all the time, when we ourselves get tossed and turned by the raging storms of life?

Fortunately, we can remember that it really isn’t up to us, so long as we can let go and let Jesus do his thing. That's what grace is all about, after all. Jesus tells us to let our light shine, but have you noticed that there is only one person in the Gospel who ever literally shines? That’s Jesus when he’s up on Mount Tabor and is visited by Moses and Elijah and the voice of God says, “This is my Son, listen to him!” That moment is the Transfiguration, and we’ll hear about it once again on the Sunday before Lent begins. Jesus is the only one who has ever truly shone with the divine light, so it’s not up to us to be “on” all the time or try our damndest to be the best possible Jesus follower there ever was, to be the tastiest salt and brightest light, we just let him do the work through us. Our light can only shine in the context of Jesus, when we allow him to shine through us, when we let go of our own egos and our own need for control and let Jesus take over. It’s kenosis, the Greek word Paul uses for emptying oneself, or what my spiritual director calls “spiritual surrender,” and it is the key to fully integrating our lives into that of Jesus.

We can preserve the gifts of the past while illuminating a new way forward, and we can be in right relationship with God and each other, and we can do all these things because it's Jesus who is doing it all in us and through us. Honestly, we cannot help but be both a preservative and a beacon for the future because, like Jesus points out, salt can’t lose its taste and light can’t lose its shine without no longer being salt or light. We Christians can’t stop loving God and others, we can’t stop doing the work of Jesus to create Beloved Community that looks more and more like the Kingdom of God, and we can’t stop putting people above institutions and powers and principalities without no longer being Christians ourselves. So be the salt and season this world with love. And let your light, the Christ light that is in you, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. 

Divine Blessedness

'When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."'

--Matthew 5: 1-12 (The Beatitudes)

Another pop quiz: What is the longest teaching of Jesus in any of the Gospels? It’s the Sermon on the Mount, and it spans three full chapters in the Gospel of Matthew, from the start of chapter 5 to the end of chapter 7. That’s a pretty long sermon, I gotta say. Folks in my parish get restless if I start to hit the 15 minute mark; I can’t imagine what it was like for Jesus’ audience!  

Icon of The Sermon on the Mount.

Here's the the scene: Jesus has gone atop a hill – or a mount – near the sea of Galilee. It didn’t even have a name at the time, and if you go there today it’s simply called the Mount of the Beatitudes. This huge crowd gathers around to hear him speak, and he takes his position – not standing on a rock or in a makeshift pulpit. Instead, he sits down because that’s what teachers and philosophers in the ancient world would do when they wanted to make a point that everyone should listen to. And this whole scene is intentional, with Jesus going atop this rather simple hill and offering a teaching that directly mirrors Moses going atop the mighty Mount Sinai and giving the Law to the newly freed people of Israel. More than a few times in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus will emulate Moses, the Law-Giver, and teach his people just as Moses did, which might be why Matthew is often called the “teaching Gospel.”

Jesus begins his sermon, not with commands, but with declarations of Divine Blessedness – this is where the Latin term ‘Beatitude’ comes from, it literally means Divine Blessedness. In the crowd are probably a few wealthy folks, maybe even some Roman soldiers or temple officials, but for the most part the crowd consists of poor folks who are desperate to hear some good news. And this is what they got:

Blessed are the poor in spirit.  That is, those who find their identity in true relationship with God, not in material possession or self-aggrandizing. Yours is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, those who know what it is like to lose, who understand the extraordinary teacher that is suffering.  You will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek.  This is straight out of Psalm 37, verses 9 and 11 In our lexicon meekness is associated with gentleness or passivity, but that’s not what is meant here.  Rather, Jesus is saying blessed are those who have a sense of humility, those who do not give in to the “futility of unyielding anger” as Preston Epps put it, even in the face of overwhelming power like Rome. You will inherit the earth with your meekness, which is a means of non-violent resistance against the very powers and principalities who use their military might and political prestige to gain even more power.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; that is, actively doing the will of God. This isn’t a foolish hope, but a deep desire to see the Kingdom of God come on earth as it is in heaven. Blessed, then, are those who strive for righteousness, justice, and equality—not just for themselves but for others—and do so with the same passion as one who feels the pains of hunger and thirst.  Those folks who desire and work for God’s righteousness with that kind of abandon will have their hunger filled.

Blessed are the merciful.  If you want to get mercy, you have to show it.  If you want to be forgiven, you have to forgive.  The measure given will be the measure gotten back. Such as these will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart; that is, those whose motivations are unmixed, clear, and undivided by agenda. Blessed, Jesus says, are those of you who speak up for others or do some kind of good, not because you’re gonna get something in return, but because it’s simply the right thing to do.  God, after all, sees not our outward actions but the motivations of our heart – remember the story of when David was chosen as King. Those with pure intensions will see God, Jesus says.

Blessed are the peacemakers.  Did you know that the Roman Emperor wasn’t just called Son of God, but also Peacemaker? Ironic, given that such peace – the Pax Romana – was achieved through brute force and domination. Jesus is a new kind of peacemaker and Son of God, who works through acts of mercy in anticipation of God’s own actions of mercy when the Kingdom comes in its fulfillment. It’s not passive – Jesus himself turns over the tables when necessary – but it is direct, and is about facing, naming, and confronting the evils of the world. In our own day we need to be reminded of that.  Making peace is not about accepting things because we are afraid of the trouble of doing something, but making peace is about actively facing things, even when the way to peace is through struggle.  These are the ones who will be called Children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted, who have understood that the path to peace often results in struggle.  Theirs will be the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Blessed are any of you, he tells the crowd, when people revile you, those of you who have lost family, friends, or jobs because you dared to seek God’s righteousness and be a peacemaker. Blessed are the members of the Church (with a capital C) who know such persecutions.  Those persecutions are inevitable because the Church, when it really is the Church, is bound to be the conscience of a society.  

And there you have the Beatitudes. Did you notice the verbs Jesus used? No shoulds or shouldn’ts – or thou shalts and thou shalt nots. The verbs are conjugations of “to be” – “Blessed are you..” and “You will…” So many of us get caught in the web of should that we get stuck and miss the bigger message. The Beatitudes are not commands to be followed but declarations to be responded to. Who among you needs to know that you are blessed, especially when everyone else seems to declare you cursed? Who are the poor in spirit, the meek, the mourners, the ones who long for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, and the reviled reading this message right now? Hear Jesus call you what you are: blessed! 

Loads of psychological studies have shown that children need to hear 10 affirmations for every negative comment. Maybe that’s why Jesus gives 10 pronouncements of Divine Blessedness in this sermon. We become what we are named, whether children or adults. Call someone bad long enough and they’ll believe it to their core; same goes for if you call them blessed. These are pronouncements not just for the crowd who heard them – and those who hear them still – but a reminder for the hearers to be doers and to pay these pronouncements of Divine Blessedness forward.

Much has been made of the debate around the Ten Commandments being posted in public places. But what if we publicly displayed Jesus’ version, these declarations of the blessedness of God upon the very ones to whom the world does anything but bless? If we are to heed the words spoken by the prophet Micah – to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God – then doing so looks like living into the Beatitudes ourselves, both as those who need such blessings and as those from whom such blessings can come.