January 29, 2023

Epiphany 4,

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Micah 6:1-8; I Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

I get stuck in my head sometimes and I just get bogged down. I read something confusing, like what we heard Paul talk about in First Corinthians a few minutes ago, and just when I think I’ve got the smart idea to tell everyone about that might just make people go “Huh?” someone else says something helpful. So I tried to explain these readings to someone the other day and then they said, “Look at that: Paul says “Not many of you were wise by human standards or powerful or of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish or weak to shame the wise and the strong.” He’s talking about normal people, and saying that maybe we should just be going to normal people or even just being normal people.” I learned again that all these things we hear from the Bible, they’re not always mysteries to unlock or secret codes to figure out. They’re just about real people with real lives.

So there’s this story that we just heard from Matthew. We sometimes call it the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has hiked up a mountain to get a break from all the crowds, and his disciples - his apprentices, trying to learn the trade - they come up to see Jesus there. He talks to them about all those “blesseds” and his words gather up a whole mishmash of people: “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, and the meek; blessed are the ones who mourn, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice; blessed are the merciful and pure in heart ; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are those who are persecuted” When I hear all that I get sdtuck, and maybe you do to, trying to figure out exactly what Jesus might mean by “meek” or “poor in Spirit” or “the kingdom of heaven” or “inherit the earth”, as though Jesus is just giving an assignment and I’ll need to write an essay.

But Jesus is talking to real people with real lives. Right there. Some of them might just feel like they are poor in spirit and their spirits are broken and they can barely make sense of what faith might be or what God or anything means. Some of them are probably grieving because someone they love died, and while there is nothing blessed about grieving they do hear something about comfort. Some of them thirst and hunger for righteousness or justice because life under the Roman Empire was not righteous or just or blessed.

Jesus says all this for real people with real lives, and so it’s so much more than a sermon back then and over there. We hear Jesus speak today and it’s the sermon on the right here and now.

So the first time I really heard it this week it wasn’t the Sermon on the Mount. It was the Sermon on My Laptop. Or it was the sermon on the Zoom, Monday night Bible Study, and Bernie and Cathy and Shirley and Annemarie and Joan and I met online and spoke this sermon to each other as we read it out loud. And then someone said that there’s something in this little talk of Jesus that’s going to resonate with everyone somehow. Because everyone has a poor or broken spirit sometimes, or anyone could be grieving and if we haven’t yet we all will, because someone they love died or their job died or their way of life died when COVID settled in. Or someone somewhere is persecuted, and someone longs for and struggles for and fights for justice or tries to make peace. These things Jesus talks about are things that actual, real, people who are listening are living through some way.

And as I listened to a few of us talking about it all I realized that each one of us hearing that sermon on a Zoom call could identify with something Jesus said – we could find ourselves in one of those “Blesseds” somewhere. Even though we didn’t talk about all our personal details we all knew that under the surface of that face on the screen something about this word of Jesus rang true, or maybe we didn’t agree, or maybe it was too close to home. And the sermon on the Zoom spoke to six people right there, and Jesus said, “You’re blessed.”

The next time I heard this sermon it was the Sermon at The Forks. I was upstairs at the Market working on my laptop trying to sort out some of these thoughts I’m having now. I was just down and around the corner, tucked way back behind McNally Robinson and that fancy cookie shop. There were a couple of young people – like actually young, like twenty or so – sitting a few steps away on a couch. They looked like most of here don’t - one had piercings all over the place and the other had tattoos all over as far as I could see, and when they talked they often used the best words that I’m really good at when I’m trying to do something impossible like taping drywall. I wasn’t eavesdropping but they were loud so I couldn’t help but hear a thing or two. There little bits about how they both love skateboarding, and about how he’s always thought he’s more girly than guyish but still a guy, and neither of them liked that other guy who did that thing the other day, and then their friend Sam came and said hi and then said bye because he had to go have a couple of beers. I knew nothing about these two. I’m guessing they were kind of money poor but I have no idea whether they were poor in Spirit, whatever that might mean, or whether they were stronger in Spirit, way stronger than I might have felt that day. Maybe they’re meek, or maybe they’re not at all meek. Maybe they long for justice, and they ache for a better world and they spend tons of energy trying to make peace. They seemed content and happy enough, they enjoyed each other’s company. They might think of themselves as broken or they might think of themselves as really together. Who knows?

And in this sermon at the Forks Jesus said, “Those people are blessed.”

The next time it was the Sermon in Memphis, and it was spoken while people grieved and were angry and were totally baffled and horrified and confused by the murder of Tyre Nichols, a young black man beaten by five black police officers. It’s awful in every way, it just makes no sense, it doesn’t fit the story that we’re used to hearing, when it should be white police officers. All that anger and violence…there’s no way to make it fit. Tyre’s family grieves – blessed are they? - and they’re angry and it’s like that with his friends to, and people gather to protest – mostly peacefully, blessed are they - or speak out or something because they hunger and thirst for justice - and everyone is baffled by it all? There is nothing blessed about what happened there. There are no silver linings or snappy lessons or good things about it. I don’t think that Jesus stood by and said things at a distance about it all; if anything we might talk about Jesus being right there, in a young man being beaten, in the broken hearts or the strong angry troubled spirits of the people who speak out now. Jesus doesn’t stand by and say to that crowd “Blessed are you” as thought it will make everything OK. But somehow, as those events were remembered and as we learned more about it all this week there’s this word of Jesus floating around saying, “Blessed are those who…” And it doesn’t really fit, but it’s out there. It’s the Sermon on a Memphis street.

I think there’s something more about what Jesus says on a mountain, on a laptop, at the Forks and on a Memphis street. It’s not that we have to make sense of all the blessed and get all the pieces to fit together; it’s just that Jesus speaks all of this to real people, with real lives, and he speaks it to all the people together. Together, see? Jesus doesn’t leave us or anyone on our own to fend for ourselves. Jesus comes to call together a community of people – call it the disciples, call it the church or the Body of Christ, call it the Saints, call it the neighbours on the block. Jesus comes and lives among us to make a community where the poor in Spirit belong and the meek are not left to disappear but are heard. Jesus calls together a community where those who grieve are not left to find their own comfort for themselves but instead are cared for and supported by their neighours. Jesus calls a community together where those who are persecuted and those who long for righteousness and justice and those who make peace can be together and be strong together or weak together and find life and hope and joy and some kind of community together. Jesus just calls normal people – Like Paul says, they don’t have to be strong or wise or noble in the eyes of the world – just one or another kind of blessed. Jesus calls people together and makes a community. And blessed are They. You. We. So today it’s not the Sermon on the Mount, it’s the Sermon on Dalhousie – and I don’t mean this sermon I’m preaching right now; I mean the sermon Jesus preaches, where he says all that about who is blessed and it’s surprising and unexpected and rich. And where are you in this gathering of the Blesseds? Is your Spirit poor, do you mourn, are you meek or afraid? Is your spirit strong and full and you’re filled with joy, and that’s blessed too? Are you left out at school or work or church, or are you troubled by the things you believe or given grief for believing them? Are you hungry, just plain hungry, or just regular empty-pockets poor? Or do you have more than enough and more? Do you long for justice, or is your deepest desire for peace? Jesus has called you here; we belong – together - with the one who by the foolishness of the cross brings all the blessed world together. Blessed are they. Blessed are you.

AMEN.