Matthew 5:1-11
It’s hard to listen to the news these days because it’s full of violence. My phone tells me there are wars, civil wars, drug wars and more in 33 countries. We try to pray for people in harm’s way, but frankly, I don’t even know where some of the countries listed fall on the globe. These 33 don’t count the countries dealing with fires, floods, and earthquakes which are destroying homes and communities and causing rising casualty counts.
For two weeks we’ve been watching Israel’s every move in response to a terrible terrorist attack, and while as I write this they are not yet at war, thousands of people are dying, many more are injured, and humanitarian aid is far from meeting the need in Gaza.
In the midst of all this anguish, I read a short piece written by a Jewish woman in our country. Her heart is broken by the attack on Jews in Israel. She felt powerless to stop the horror of terrorism or war in response. So she made her favorite supper dish and took it next door to her Arab neighbors. They had coffee and talked. They laughed and shed a tear. The next day her neighbors brought her dessert. They had coffee and talked. Neighbors from two religions, two ethnic backgrounds, two cultures – sharing what they loved best to eat and sharing their lives.
We’ve been reading about the first century for four months now. We’ve learned that the violence of those times even exceeded the violence in our own. People have been hurting each other for the sake of power and wealth forever. We also read that the folks who followed Jesus gathered together, shared food, and talked. They talked about how Jesus taught them to live with dignity and compassion in the midst of violence and danger. They laughed. They surely cried. The created a life within the life of their community that resisted violence and oppression. They found a better way.
I used to think that the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount were about how God was going to fix the world. “Blessings” seemed to me to be God’s business. Something God passed out as a reward for doing good. Like when my granddaughter Lily got a chocolate pumpkin candy at the end of her sewing lesson on Friday. Or when Weight Watchers gives you a charm for losing five pounds.
These blessings are pronounced not for doing something right, but for just living. In Jesus’ day almost everyone was poor or grieving, hungry and thirsty. Matthew cleaned up the list with some spiritual language, but the truth is everyone who came to see Jesus qualified for these blessings just by getting up in the morning and making it through the day.
As the list goes on it shifts a little. Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. What is their reward? Mercy, holiness, peace. Seems like doing good is its own reward. If you want the blessings of kindness, generosity, and peace of mind – be kind, generous and focused on what’s good.
Some amazing folks with decades of meditation experience meet every Monday in our fellowship hall as Lotus Meditation Center. Hanging out with them I’ve learned a few things about Buddhism – only a few. The purpose of Buddhism and its meditation practice is to help people deal with the suffering of the world. There’s plenty of suffering, but meditation teaches people how to set it aside and find peace. I suspect that being a part of a sangha (or meditation group) is something like being a follower of Jesus in the first century. You hang out together, you talk about things that help you in life, you practice living in a new way. From these folks I’ve learned that it’s not the ups and downs of life that get you, it’s how you think about the ups and downs of life. Too often we think life is supposed to be great for everyone and if it’s not, we haven’t received our due. Generations of history show us that life is often beautiful and sometimes hard and no one is handing out chocolates to us just for being alive. At the same time, we can learn to be calm in the midst of chaos, happy in the midst of hardship, at peace with what is, even if it’s not what we first hoped it would be.
Finding peace through meditation and finding peace through the community of Jesus folks are a lot the same. It starts with being honest about what is – good and bad. Life is good. Life is hard. Life is. Folks get sick and sometimes don’t get better or get better differently than they were before. Accidents happen. Companies downsize. Storms blow through.
We seldom have control over everything that happens to us. We can choose how we respond to everything that happens to us. We learn that in community with the support of people who care about us and have our backs. We learn that although God doesn’t send us only the experiences we want, whatever comes our way with face it witih God. Over the ages people have affirmed that when their own strength faltered, there is a stronger power at the center of life which keeps them going. We say, “God is with us.”
Although we have less say than we want in how life unfolds, we have more say than we know in how we live it. Remember the earliest Jesus followers resisted Empire by living in communities patterned on Jesus’ teachings. They fed each other, employed each other, protected each other. They had a good time together and called their efforts “new life.” Our time isn’t identical to the first century, but we have similar opportunities to create life in Jesus’ way. Today when I read the beatitudes, I hear Jesus telling us that if we want life to be full of blessing, we live as though those blessings were reality. We live them into being.
At the recent Conference annual meeting the leaders recommended a book by Margaret Wheatley: Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity. On the first page Wheatley quotes historian Howard Zinn:
We don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Jesus tells us that in the midst of everyday challenges, we can be blessed. “To live now as we think human beings should live” is to create blessing. Goodness in life isn’t something we wait for God to hand us, it’s something we birth from our hearts and the heart of our community. It’s taking the light of God within us and letting it shine as we live by the vision Jesus has given us.
Blessed are the merciful, the kind, those who share food and share vision, who make peace. Blessed are those who make food and take it next door to the neighbors, looking for hope. Blessed are those who shine the light of God into this present darkness and transform themselves and the world.