All are needed for the blessing
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
Jan 29, 2023—Epiphany 4A
Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
As I think about the annual meeting, who we are and where we’re going, I’m grateful for 1 Corinthians and its words about ways in which we need each other. Last week, we heard about all the different kinds of gifts that each of us has to offer for the life of the community and the work of the kingdom. This week, perhaps after having contemplated our own gifts all week, we are assured: Yes, you are an integral part of the kingdom, even if you do doubt your own worth or ability.
The beloved community needs you too. Because the coming about of the kingdom of God will require every single one of us, and all that we might bring to it.
We will need it all. Even you. Even if you think you aren’t worth much according to the world’s standards. Even if you feel foolish. Even if you don’t have power or wealth or fame. Even if you aren’t the best educated, or the most fortunate, or the biggest personality in the room.
Over and over in the readings today, we are reminded that those standards are not God’s standards for worth. They are the world’s standards. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those who are educated, those who are wise, those who are wealthy or powerful or charismatic. But none of those things makes them more worthy in God’s eyes. None of that makes them more blessed or more of a blessing to the world.
It’s not that the class presidents and prom queens have no place in the kingdom. It’s more that the status the world affords them can actually obscure our vision of the kingdom of God.
Because people like that tend to rise to the top. They come to the foreground. And because they are so bright and so shiny, they tempt us to keep believing that bright and shiny is the goal … and also, they make it harder to see everyone else. And that makes it very hard indeed to see the full and beautiful picture of the kingdom … in which the lion lies down with the lamb, and rich and poor eat together, and there is no longer clean and unclean, inside and outside, special and ordinary. That vision of radical reconciliation, that appreciation of the infinite ways in which our ways of being and doing in the world can all come together to make a whole, THAT is the miraculous, astonishingly beautiful restoration of creation promised by the Kingdom of God!
I think about what I learned from my own little Brady Bunch, the family that Brian and I created together when we got married. Not that the kids were so very different in many ways, but socially they brought some varied gifts. Brian’s kids, for the most part, have an easy, outgoing gregariousness: always involved in activities and sports, talkative and extroverted in lots of ways. Which made my kids a bit of a puzzle to my beloved late husband. They are at least as academically gifted as their step-sibs, but also way more nerdy and introverted and awkward. Toss in some ADHD and a bit of painful social anxiety, and the world is just a bit more difficult for them to navigate.
It would be easier for them if that were not so, and sometimes it would be easier for those around them. It’s much more comfortable, in some ways, for those of us who are tidy around the edges (by which I mean, those who can more easily FAKE being tidy around the edges) to surround ourselves with others who can fake the same thing. But then … we’re in danger of never seeing the real insides of anyone … or anyone seeing our real insides either. And we never get to see the beauty and the complexity that’s found in the less typical places. And we very definitely won’t see the Kingdom of God as it starts to break through into this world.
Because the Kingdom of God, I believe, makes space for everyone to be whatever God dreams them to be. And it never forces anyone to become something else, in order to be what the world insists they should be.
Instead, Jesus pushes back against all of those images of what the world insists is valuable and desirable (#blessed), inviting us to expand our vision, to begin to understand that the point of blessing is not to receive all kinds of nice things from God. It is, rather, to draw us closer to God, so that we might be a blessing to the world.
Let’s look at those beatitudes. Preacher Nancy Asbury suggests that the conditions found there can best be understood as indicators. They are behaviors that show we are willing to engage in the kind of life that offers blessings, the kind of life that draws us closer to God. Those who mourn feel that pain because they have lived in relationship, open to its generosity, love, and growth: blessed. The merciful offer mercy because they live their life with an engaged heart, aware of their own need for forgiveness and mercy: blessed. The peacemakers are willing to get to know the enemy and see life from their perspective, no longer hostage to fear and the seduction of violence: blessed. The poor in spirit only get there by being willing to set aside ego and praise and achievement, and acknowledge their strength lies only in God: blessed.
It is a way of living, Kingdom living, and the blessing of it is not doled out as payment for right behavior. In fact, we might want to break the association between blessing and prosperity, although counting your blessings is a lovely practice. Still, as it’s described here, blessing is more like a kind of spiritual health and well-being, that comes as we engage God and the world in a new way (Preaching the RCL Listserv, posted 1/27/05).
May all of us be richly blessed in the coming year, by which I mean, may we draw ever closer to God. May we seek that blessing most particularly in the wisdom of Paul from today: so that, within ourselves, and within this community, we might shelter and welcome that which the world considers small and foolish and even despised, trusting that this is the very thing that will lead us into the heart of God’s wisdom and power. This is the thing that will give us a vision of the blessed kingdom of God. May it be so, Amen.