How it is and how it will be. 6th Sunday in ordinary time.

The Kingdom of God was close at hand, brushing up against the world. What Jesus had been saying to the Twelve alone and what he had said in the synagogues to learned teachers was now being shared with the people. Jesus comes down from the mountain on which he had been praying.

He stands on level ground, in equality and solidarity with those who surround him. Those lost sheep who came to hear Jesus and to be healed by him. They all gathered around him; the curious, the desperate, the believer.

He begins to heal and the people are trying to touch him for God’s power was coming out of him! In the midst of all this, in a voice that somehow pierced the commotion, he preaches the Good News to them.

In Matthew’s version - the Sermon on the Mount the blessings are expanded to nine by adding mercy, meekness, cleanness of heart, and peacemaking to Luke’s shorter list. In Matthew’s list of blessings there is a sense that they mark an inner disposition towards God and the path towards self-transcendence. Theses blessing are an invitation to a new orientation and openness to what God desires and commands.

Luke’s account - the Sermon on the Plain is more spare and focused. These blessings seem to be a measure of life before God. How life is now vs how life will be. Theses blessing are a reversal of the status quo. They confront the way things are. They challenge long held values and exposes the illusions of power. These blessings question the world’s own ideas on what it means to be happy and successful. They promise that the deep seated Structures of Sin will be overturned by God.

The very fact that Jesus stood amongst them teaching and healing showed that God’s blessings were already at work within the world’s woes.  The world already has the seeds of the Kingdom hidden within.  It starts small and imperfect, for the Kingdom is like a mustard seed.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.”

Poverty is not a blessing. Poverty is a sinful diminishment of God’s goodness. We all must do what we can to fight it and alleviate it. But, those who suffer poverty those who lay outside the economic benefits of the powerful and the establishment are still human beings love by God. It is to them that Jesus preaches the Good News.

“Woe to you rich people, for you are already receiving your consolation.”

The disordered rich though they already have their fill of the good things, still hunger for more. They have their consolation in wealth and power, but it is never enough. Their wealth is their security, but they are terrified of losing it. The 1% are arrogant in their self-satisfaction and their self-fulfillment. But, they are slaves to the gold that traps them. They are enslaved by grasping, greed and avarice. And their time is short. There is death (even for the 1%) in the kingdoms of men.

But, the poor without material or social goods often find their only consolation and hope in the promise of God and the love of Jesus. We know that even in their poverty they are generous and often share what little they have. Theirs’s is the Kingdom of God.

Those that put profit before people so they will be first will surely be last.

“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”

Hunger is not a blessing. Food insecurity, persistent hunger and starvation are sinful conditions. They are a diminishment of God’s gifts to all people.

The power and wealth that comes with unjust accumulation and hoarding of food is always theft. Self-serving mismanagement of the earth’s resources is foolish, short sighted and always sinful. But, those who starve because the earth has been ravaged and ill-treated or starve because others control food distribution and the means of production will be nourished. Perhaps, by an earth restored, or a new heaven and earth or a change in human consciousness and will. The hungry will be filled with good things. For God‘s banquet table is beyond measure and it is for those who have had to do without.

Those that ravage the earth’s resources and steal from the months of the vulnerable to be first will surely be last.

“Blessed are you who are weeping now, for you will laugh.”

Despair is not blessing. To be sad, when sadness is appropriate is natural and so very human. Hearts can be broken, but hearts can mend. But, the darkness of despair brought about by abuse, oppression and injustice is a deep wound not so easily mended.

Many turn to pleasure seeking to escape the emptiness, the loneliness and the pain but it is never is enough. Its shallow meaningless relief never lasts long enough. It never cures anything.

We can and must face the causes of sorrow. Healing when we can. Sharing the pain of others when we cannot. We can reach out beyond ourselves to comfort one another or we can be humble enough to be comforted by another.

God will lift the burdens and the spirits of those who mourn. For despair is of the world. Hope is of God.

Those that hurt and cause grief to others simply so they can be first will surely be last.

 

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they set you aside and scorn you for the sake of the Son of Man.”

Hatred and persecution are not blessings. Many in the world are segregated and marginalized by race, gender, economics and social status. Many are scorned and belittled, imprisoned and killed because of THEIR love of God.

Persecution is born of fear. It broods in darkness. It hates the light. It hates the Truth.

But, it is only the Truth that will set us free. It is only by clinging to God that we can Hope when all seems hopeless and Love where there is no love. 

There will be a day, God promises, that there will be rejoicing in heaven for all who held fast. The Kingdom of God is freedom and joy and it is for all of God’s children who suffer hatred and persecution.

Those who persecute, hate and oppress so they can be first will surely be last.

God is the God of all creation and all those who dwell within and he declared it all good.

In gratitude and wonder we are to cherish, love and protect all of creation (the environment) for it is God’s not ours. Woe to those who do not.

God creates and loves all human beings. He desires only the good for each of us. In gratitude and wonder we are to cherish and love, care for and protect every human being.

Woe to those who do not.

Poverty, hunger, despair and hatred are not blessings. They are evil and go against God’s own desires for us. But, those who do sufferer those evils are blessed because even though the world does not love them - God does and his Kingdom is theirs.