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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Sunday, April 7, 2019

God bless us


The beatitudes do not tell us what to do. They tell us who we are, and more importantly, they tell us who Jesus is.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way, 55.)
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Jesus had a way of turning the world upside down

Nothing about him made sense
In term of standard ‘wisdom’

If he was who people say he is
If he truly was the incarnation of the Sacred
A “first born” who came to show us looks like when we allow the Sacred Presence
be fully expressed in human lives…

then he had a strange way of showing us

Born among the animals
Born into poverty
Born into obscurity

A common man
With common parents
Living in a rural city

A ministry on the backroads of Galilee

But as weird as all that!

His behavior
His words

He gathered around him people of no importance
He spent time with the lowest of the low
He broke a lot of rules
He comforted the afflicted (as they say)
And afflicted the comfortable

But it were his teachings that really turned things upside down
Love your enemies
Turn the other check
Go the second mile
Give more than you are asked for
Give up all that you have

Over and over Jesus said things that make us stop
(if we really listen) and gape.

But nothing is stranger than the beatitudes

Where Jesus truly turns everything upside down

What we normally think of as bad, is good
What we normally think of as good, is bad (Luke’s version)

What do we do with these stranger verses?

We cannot see them as commandments
They do not (BBT) tell us what to

Jesus does not say (at least in the Beatitudes) be poor
Or grieve
Or starve
Or become a person who is meek

He says when we find ourselves in these places
We are blessed

Which when you think about it is good news

Because almost all of us find ourselves in some of these places
Where we are struggling, or in grief, or pain
Where we have been humbled

And knowing God is with us in those moments
Is indeed a comfort

But perhaps not that comfortable
Because the implication is, that if we are following the way of Jesus

The way of radical giving
And love
And acceptance
And service
And humility

When we are people who expend themselves for others
Not thinking of ourselves first
But thinking of God
And thinking of others

We will find, in many cases, our world turned upside down

We like to think following God, and being blessed by God
means our lives will look like those of the mega pastors (perhaps)
That we will have great cars, and amazing clothes
and mansions to live in
and private jets to enjoy

That we will be rich, and powerful
Yahooo!

But perhaps, if we follow the way of Jesus
Really follow the way of Jesus
We will sometimes,
Maybe often

Grieve
It hurts to see others in pain
And to walk with them in that pain

It is painful to see injustice, and inequity
And to feel with those afflicted by that injustice and inequity

Perhaps the beatitudes do describe
the things that can come in to the life
of the one who walks the way of service and love

but still
we are told, there is blessing

The blessing of being close to God
The blessing of making a difference
The blessing of walking next to Jesus

Whose very life is described by the Beatitudes
The man of sorrows acquainted with grief
The one who picked up all the pain and fear, hate and greed of the world
And carried it with him to the cross

That it might die there

It is odd, perhaps,
To think of blessing this way

But seriously
How blessed are the pushy
The ultra wealthy
The powerful

If they felt blessed
Would they keep grasping for wealth and power?
Would they always be hungry for more
Would they need to abuse power to feel strong
Have to make others less so they can be more?

It is I know
A mixed up messy thing
Full of paradoxes and contradictions

It does not always make sense

It is rarely easy

But who Jesus was and is
The blessed one, is illustrated in these blessings

And who we are called to be
Is equally defined

And what this all tells us
In that upside down
Weird way of God

Is that when we are faithful
Even if being faithful puts us in a very difficult place

We are truly blessed

And if we are wrapped up in the wrong stuff
(think Luke’s woes)
Wealth, power and acclaim

We are,
Well,
Not

Even if the world says we are

So…
God bless us
everyone


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