"Blessed are you" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday February 2, 2020

Scripture:  Matthew 5:1-12

Who is the most successful person in the world?

I asked that question to Google this week:  “Hey Google!  Who’s the most successful person in the world?”  Any guesses about what answer Google gave me?  (pause)

The first person that Google came up with was Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft.  He was the richest man in the world between 1995 and 2007 (but has currently dropped to the #2 position), and he is currently worth 96.5 Billion dollars.

The current richest person in the world is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, so maybe he might be in the running for the most successful person in the world.  He is currently worth 131 Billion dollars.

Other names that Google suggested for the most successful person in the world included Madonna (singer), Oprah (media personality), Kylie Jenner (the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at age 22), Mark Zuckerberg (the person behind Facebook), Tom Brady (American football player), former US President Barak Obama (most Twitter followers), and Taylor Swift (musician, and most influential person on Twitter).

It’s interesting to think about what defines success.  In the eyes of Google it seems to be related to wealth and the ability to influence others.

But then we turn to the words of Jesus that we heard this morning, and he doesn’t seem to be holding up the wealthy or the privileged or the influential people in his world.  Instead Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”  I doubt if any of these people that Jesus names would make it on to Google’s list of the most successful people in the world.

And yet if you look at the way that the world so often uses the word “blessed” it does mean successful or privileged or lucky.  I might say that I was blessed to be born into the family that I was born into, but what I really mean here is that I was lucky.  It was a simple accident of birth – I won the birth lottery – that I was born into a stable middle-class family with loving parents who valued education.  If you were to search #blessed on Instagram, you would come up with other examples of good luck or privilege – wedding pictures and baby pictures and vacations and fancy homes.  But this doesn’t seem to fit with what Jesus was referring to when he called the poor in spirit and the meek and those who mourn “blessed.”

So if “blessed” doesn’t mean successful, and if “blessed” doesn’t mean “lucky” or “privileged,” what does it mean?

Maybe we can get a hint if we look at how we use the word bless or blessing in the church.  At the end of each worship service, we offer a benediction, which is just a fancy way of saying “blessing” in Latin.  We end each service by saying, “God bless you.”  Sometimes our blessing is more general:  “May the blessing of God, Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit, be among us and remain with us always.”  Sometimes our blessing is more specific:  “May the love of God embrace you; may the peace of Christ sustain you; and may the breath of the Holy Spirit inspire you, today and always.”  But no matter what words we say, the intent of the blessing is the same – when we leave worship, we are asking for God to go with each one of us.

Also in worship, sometimes we bless things.  Since I have been here at Two Rivers Pastoral Charge, we have blessed choir chairs, pets, prayer shawls, and the former Saint John Presbytery stole; and soon we will be blessing the Westfield United Church kitchen.  Other churches have also offered house blessings, backpack and briefcase blessings, bicycle and motorcycle blessings – anything that could be blessed probably has been blessed at some time somewhere.

And when we bless these things, we are usually asking for God to work through them.  We are asking that their use might be dedicated to God.  We are asking that God’s love might be made known through them.  And so we bless them.

We also bless individual people – I’m thinking here especially of people at their baptism when we lay hand on them and say, “May the Holy Spirit, God’s power of love, guide you, inspire you, and work within you all the days of your life”; or at a wedding when the couple and their marriage is blessed.  Sometimes too, when I or others are visiting people in hospital or at their home, we might simply say to them, “God bless you.”  And this blessing of individual people has the same purpose as the general blessing at the end of our worship – we are asking for God to be with them.

But here’s the catch.  Any words that we say, or any actions that we do, they can’t make God be present in a place or a person.  Because God is already there.  When we bless a person or a place or a thing, we are naming the presence of God that is already present.  We are affirming the sacredness that is already there.

Getting back to those blessings that Jesus offered in Matthew’s gospel, when he was sitting there on the mountain teaching, he wasn’t teaching the successful or powerful or privileged people of his time and place.  In a world that was ruled by the Emperor in Rome and by the Roman army; in a hierarchical society where all of the land was owned by a wealthy few while the majority of the people lived in abject poverty, Jesus wasn’t speaking to the governors or the landowners here.  Jesus was speaking to people who lived with uncertainty, who lived with hunger, who lived in a world where no matter how hard they worked, they may or may not be able to feed their family.

And Jesus tells them that they are blessed.  Not the sports stars.  Not the wealthy.  Not the influencers.  They already seem to know that they are blessed.  But Jesus reminds the rest of the world that we are blessed too.

Blessed are the poor in spirit;

            you who question your faith,

            you who carry doubts,

            you who struggle to pray –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are those who mourn;

            you who are grieving the loss of a loved one,

            you who grieve the injustices in society,

            you who struggle to find hope –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the meek;

            you who have been pushed down,

            you who have been disempowered,

            you who have lost your self-esteem –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness;

            you who are literally hungry and thirsty,

            you who long for everyone to be well fed –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the merciful;

            you who turn the other cheek,

            you who extend a helping hand,

            you who feed the hungry –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the pure in heart;

            you who believe the best about others,

            you who love wholeheartedly –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

Blessed are the peacemakers;

            you who extend forgiveness,

            you who ask for forgiveness,

            you who long for reconciliation –

                        you are blessed.

                        God is with you.

I want to end with a story from author Diana Butler Bass.  Four years ago, she started writing a book about gratitude.  And then in November 2016 the US election happened and she fell into a deep depression and her writing ground to a halt.  Some of you may remember that in January 2017, the day after the inauguration, there was a worldwide Women’s March, and so she took the train from northern Virginia to Washington DC to march with a group of clergywomen.  When she got there, she found that they were carrying signs proclaiming the Beatitudes:  Blessed are the poor.  Blessed are the peacemakers.  Blessed are those who mourn.  Blessed are the merciful.

And to the beatitudes that Jesus teaches us, they had added their own.  Blessed are the women.  Blessed are the uninsured.  Blessed are the immigrants.  Blessed are the LGBTQ+.

As they spoke with other women attending the rally, she realized that all of the beatitudes could be summed up in one phrase:  “Blessed are all of you who are disregarded by the powerful, for you are God’s beloved community.”[1]

God blesses all people.  God is with all people.  God is with all of us.  Everyone is blessed, but just as Jesus did, sometimes we need to pay extra attention to blessing those whom society doesn’t see as blessed.

May God bless you today and always.  Amen.

"Dorothy Day with Homeless Christ" by Kelly Latimore

Used with permission.

 

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[1] Diana Butler Bass, Gratitude: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks (New York: HarperOne, 2018), 135-139.