When I was little, I used to spend a month or so every other summer in Alabama as a so-called vacation – it was only when I became an adult that I realized the real vacation was for my parents. The Sunday ritual included church, of course, but the best part of Sunday was Sunday dinner with my Great Aunt Laura and her husband Uncle Toliver. Aunt Laura was a member of the generation of my mother's mother; she was like the grandmother I never knew since my mother's parents had died years before I was born. The Sunday dinner ritual always included Uncle Toliver's blessing on the food.
Now, as everyone used to say, Uncle Toliver knew how to pray a blessing. After returning from church, Aunt Laura would oversee the cooking in the kitchen, done by “the help,” an army of black women dressed in white, who busily scurried about getting the meal ready for delivery to the large round table that sat at least a dozen people. We would all sit patiently while Uncle Toliver said the blessing, which on a good Sunday would last only about fifteen or twenty minutes, and during which time Aunt Laura would hold up her hand toward the kitchen while the help would keep the food hot until he began to wind down and then dinner would suddenly appear within seconds of the “Amen.” I know because although I was supposed to keep my head bowed and my eyes closed, I peeked.
Sharing and blessing food is the most universal cultural experience. Just about every culture has had some form of giving food to the gods they worshiped as a principle of acknowledgment of the power of the holy and the divine in our lives. From ancient Egyptian wall paintings to gifts of food at a Hindu temple in Bali, food is offered as a gift and for a blessing.
An ancient Hebrew blessing repeated today is “Blessed be you, O God, who brings forth bread from the ground and who creates the fruit of the vine.” Blessing food and blessing the Giver of food have always been connected. We may call the blessing by a different name, such as grace, but the point is always the same: We acknowledge that God is the giver of life, the giver of food for our bodies as well as our souls.
There are many kinds of blessings, of course, including the ones we heard read from Matthew's Gospel, commonly called the Beatitudes. We are so familiar with them that the words almost roll off our lips, but to his hearers, these words constituted a new kind of blessing. What's most notable about these blessings is that they are about human relationships in light of the reign of God, a commonwealth that embraces all humanity.
There are two versions of what we call the Beatitudes, the more familiar and poetic one we read from Matthew this morning and a shorter, more challenging one in Luke. They differ in several significant ways. First, Matthew's Gospel softens the language, such as from only “the poor” in Luke to “the poor in spirit.” In using the word “mourn” instead of the Lukan word “weep,” Matthew's version broadens the dimension beyond grief per se. Matthew also softens the revolutionary promise to the hungry by adding the words “and thirst after righteousness.” More significantly, Matthew's Gospel eliminates the “woes” in Luke's version, making the Beatitudes more of a formula for a life fully lived. The inclusion of the sacred adjective “blessed” and the balance of language make the Beatitudes in Matthew sound far more poetic than the statements in Luke.
We should not, however, simply think of the Beatitudes as nothing or than a sweet promise of life in the by-and-by. When Jesus used the term “the kingdom of heaven,” he was not referring to a place beyond our earthly lives, but to society under the Reign of God. The first set of Beatitudes refers to people who presently suffer humiliations, who mourn, and who are patient. The second set affirms the attitudes of compassion, purity of heart, and peacemaking in these same people.
And then Jesus says directly, so that those who hear him do not think he is talking about someone else, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you on my account, for in the same they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Although the text this morning inserts the word “falsely,” not all ancient texts contain that word, making it clear that the “you” persecuted on Jesus' account includes the times that you speak the truth. Jesus and his early followers were hauled up before authorities for doing precisely that – speaking the truth.
The poetry of the Beatitudes obscures their revolutionary character. Jesus' words in Matthew intimately link the experience of poverty with persecution (for justice's sake). They also imply that there is a link between wealth and oppression although not quite as strongly as does Luke's version. Oppression takes many forms. It is more than Hebrew slaves building pyramids or Romans crucifying those they saw as threats to their power. Look at how money throws its power around today.
The Beatitudes set the framework of how we are to behave with each other; we are enjoined to live in love and reconciliation with others. That does not mean that we simply lay down and accept the evil that is done without response; we are to return evil with good. This is essential to Jesus' vision of the Reign of God, the commonwealth of heaven that will exist when we make the necessary changes. Those changes include practical ones as well as changes of heart because a change of heart will lead to practical results.
Returning good for evil results in change, real change. The merciful, those who act out their mercy, do obtain mercy. The peacemakers, those who search for and find alternatives to the violence of our world, will see God. Those who mourn because of senseless violence and corporate greed, will be comforted because those who struggle for righteousness, for justice, will obtain it.
As members of the community established by Jesus, we are called to bring his vision to fruition. It is a vision of God's reign here and now. It is a vision of a world where children do not die from lack of medicine, where families do not starve because global corporations underpay them or destroy their natural habitat in order to grow cheap crops for wealthy markets, and where all human beings are treated with justice and dignity no matter their origin.
The Beatitudes present us with the beginning of a new society, a new relationship between human beings individually and corporately. In less than a month we will come into Lent, when Jesus' vision of this new society set him squarely against the authorities of his day. Jesus wasn't crucified because he spouted pretty words. He was crucified because he preached the reign of God and spoke to the reality of the world in which he lived.
At table fellowship, Jesus blessed food and shared it with people the religious authorities of his day considered the “wrong kind” of people. Jesus in these twelve verses continued the legacy of the prophet Micah who declared that the Lord did not want outward offerings of what we would call possessions, but a new inward spirit reflecting the essence of how we are to live: doing justice, loving kindness and mercy, and walking humbly with God.
Jesus not only preached but lived what he preached. As a community, we are called to do the same: not just speak words but to live a life modeled on Jesus. This is not easy, to say the least, but so necessary. Even when confronted by the forces of evil, he still spoke of a new world, one of justice, righteousness, mercy, and love. Let us live that world in our lives.
Let us pray: God of justice and mercy, help us to live the new life given us by Jesus of Nazareth and to share our new life in community with all our brothers and sisters. Amen.