An important part of Christian worship is a blessing that is embedded in our services each Sunday. In the celebration of the Eucharist we end the service with a blessing. A blessing is God's way of telling us that we are okay and are one of God's people.
In today's gospel, Jesus, God the Son, is telling us the attributes that a blessed person possesses. When examining the Beatitudes one must remember that Jesus was speaking to the core of those followers, the disciples, who believed he was the Son of God. Through the 2,000 years since Jesus life on earth this core has expanded to include all of us who profess Jesus as our Savior.
The Beatitudes are addressed to the entire faith community, rather than to the individual. Very few followers of Christ can claim to be meek, merciful, and pure in heart; however in every congregation there are persons of meekness, people who minister out of mercy for their fellow man, and workers for peace. These individuals’ presence and activity among us is a sign of God's blessing and a call to all of us to make our common life more consistent with the values of God’s kingdom.
We must remember that Christianity is not an activity to reduce stress, lose weight, nor can just being a Christian preserve us from illness. To help us make sense of the Beatitudes we will examine two of the attributes that Jesus tells us exists in a functional faith community.
One of the Beatitudes that most of us have heard over and over is, “blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Beatitude actually reads, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Most Christians have a way of not remembering the words “in spirit.” The insertion of these two simple words radically changes the meaning of this beatitude. The words poor in spirit, refer to a spiritual void in each of us; that can only be filled by God. The poor in spirit know that their lives are not in their own control, and that they are totally dependent on God.
Persons who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those who neither long to be personally pious nor are they dreamers or do-gooders. They are persons who long for the coming of God's kingdom and the victory over sin that comes with this yearning. Righteousness in the beatitudes is more akin to the hope we all have to attain eternal salvation. Our Christian faith is a way of living based on the firm and sure hope that meekness is the way of God, that righteousness and peace will finally prevail. We must live in the realization that the future will be a time of mercy rather than cruelty.
We must remember that trying to use the Beatitudes as a way of life will in the end be vindicated by God and we will be truly blessed.
The blessings that we receive on Sunday’s service and in the daily office are the outpouring of Gods love for us. These blessings serve to strengthen us so that we can live up to the standard set by Jesus in the Beatitudes.
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