Matthew 5:1-12
So, I'm pretty tired of the Beatitudes. Blessed are the blah blah blah, or, that's what they sound like to me. I feel like I've heard thousands of sermons on these things, and I've given a few a myself. They don't feel impenetrable--they feel old hat.I suppose I could take the angle that this is my fault, or society's fault, or sin's fault. Somehow, the exciting nature of gospel-life has been sucked away by these things. The Beatitudes seem boring because I haven't done enough work, or haven't let enough grace into my heart, or some such. And maybe that's true.
But maybe what's more true is that the vision these things offer is a long way off. One of my all time favorite lines from a movie is from Monty Python's Life of Brian. When the people hear Jesus say 'Blessed are the meek, they will inherit the earth,' one character says: oh isn't that nice, the meek finally get something. The point of the joke is that being meek will get us exactly nowhere in this world. In fact, being meek is not at all the example Jesus gives us. Jesus is more lion than sheep, more firebrand than guru.
Maybe that's why other gospel stories ring truer. When Jesus talks about having come to bring a sword to divide us, that just feels more true to our experience--not this silly blessed are the peacemaker stuff, something Jesus didn't seem to follow himself. The painful story of Lazarus' death, and Jesus' subsequent weeping, just seems more relevant than this broad and blase comment about blessed are those who mourn. Jesus' parable about the Samaritan seems far more poignant than some empty statement about 'blessed are the merciful.' And exactly how merciful is Jesus to that fig tree he blights?
I think these things are what make the Beatitudes so boring: other parts of the Bible just seem so much more relevant, so cutting edge. The Beatitudes read like bad Cliff's Notes, getting some details wrong in making a broad generalization that we can memorize quickly. Even Luke's version of the Beatitudes seems more cutting edge: forget the poor in spirit, blessed are the poor! Now that's something more of us can relate to in a world of economic disaster.
So, I'm tired of the Beatitudes. I'd love them not to show up on a Sunday again for a long, long time.
And yet, I sure do hope they're true. Really, really true. I sure do hope the workers for righteousness are blessed, although it damn sure doesn't seem that way. I really hope the meek get something--not the seemingly meek, the pretend humble, but the actual poor bastards who always put their foot in their mouth, who can't catch a break, and whom no one invites over for dinner. I hope that peacemakers are not frustrated forever. I really hope that mourners will be comforted, and that pain isn't forever. I hope for all these and more--they just seem so far from the world we live in.
So perhaps that is the Beatitudes at their best--irrelevant, placid, dull, and hopefully true. Hopefully, they're true in deeper ways than any of us can see.
I'm also mindful that as I'm writing this, election day will pop up again before the next Sunday. If the Beatitudes are to be our guide in the election, I would have to say that they should call us to a politics of hope. I know that has a certain resonance with a certain candidate, and that doesn't hurt my feelings. But setting the slogan aside, no matter who we vote for, the Beatitudes are calling us to vote for a vision of hope, regardless of what political party most holds that hope for us. We are called to vote for hope, and not for fear. If we fear our candidates, if we fear what they bring, we vote in fear, and nowhere in the Beatitudes does it promise that things will turn out well if we act in fear.
But those boring old Beatitudes do suggest that hope will not ultimately be frustrated. Boring, regular old hope will be triumphant, says Jesus in the Beatitudes. Seemingly impossible, dumb old hope will win. Let's hope so--wherever the economy goes, whoever wins the election, no matter the wars we're fighting, let's hope to God for hope.
