There is a movie called Hashtag Blessed. It’s about a young woman who is miserable in her life for a variety of reasons, but one key cause is that she is trying to live her life through the lens of Instagram. And that is a lens that is almost guaranteed to make you feel like your life doesn’t measure up.
She scrolls through and sees a picture from a friend who just got a new car! #blessedlife! Other friends looking fine in their fancy clothes, hanging out in elegant places, surrounded by dazzling, glittery things – #blessedlife!
Real life just doesn’t measure up to that for most of us.
Sometimes we are a little confused about what it means when we talk about blessing, being blessed. In the popular vernacular, to be blessed is about the same as being lucky. Or maybe being good – good enough to have all the things you want to have. But if that is what we believe, then Jesus is throwing a king-size curveball into our belief system.
The story we hear today from chapter 5 really begins in verse 23 of chapter 4, when Jesus began traveling through Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and healing every sickness, every ailment among the people. The word spread, and soon they all began bringing the sick and the lame to him, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; great crowds began following him.
And when he saw the crowds – this is where we begin today – when he saw the crowds he began to teach these things. The blessings.
When he pronounces a blessing on the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the persecuted, among other things, we struggle to make any sense out of this. Because we know from experience that being poor in spirit, feeling meek or mournful, being persecuted – these things feel like the opposite of being blessed.
A blessing is a good thing, by definition. Being poor, hungry, meek, mournful, and persecuted – these are not good things. So how are we to understand the meaning of these words, the beatitudes?
Of course, Jesus came out of a rich tradition of blessing. In Jewish tradition, a blessing can be understood as increasing. When we bless someone we are asking God to increase good things in their lives. And in the scriptures, we can see that the good things being increased come in all forms: increased crops, increased land, increased offspring, increased happiness.
More is better, the Bible seems to say. More is good, we agree.
But be careful about how we handle this notion of increase. Because more, when it comes to us at someone else’s expense, this is not blessing.
Blessing, when rightly understood, always involves an acknowledgment that there is something greater than ourselves and our personal interests at work in every part of life. Jewish teaching says that a person is obligated to recite 100 blessings a day – every day. But it’s not hard, because there are many, many blessings.
There are of course blessings for the food we eat. A blessing for the grain that grows to make bread, the fruit of the vine that gives us wine, the trees that bear fruit in their season. Blessed are you, O Lord, who creates different kinds of sustenance.
And there is a blessing for the hunger in us that allows us to eat and enjoy the blessing of being fed. Blessed are you, Lord, who creates numerous souls and their deficiencies; for all that you have created with which to maintain the life of every being.
There is a blessing for seeing a lightning strike, for hearing the roll of thunder, for experiencing an earthquake. Blessed are you, Lord, king of the universe, whose strength and might fills the world.
There are blessings for experiencing the pleasures of the world: the smell of flowers, of herbs, of balsam oil. There are blessings for new experiences – from wearing a new outfit to eating the produce of your garden to starting school to gathering together for a holiday. Blessed are you, O Lord, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.
There are blessings for God’s law, the greatest gift of all.
There are blessings for seeing a very wise person, for seeing a king, for seeing a place where a miracle happened.
There is a blessing for going to the bathroom. Blessed are you, O Lord, who created us with many openings and many cavities… I will leave the rest to your imaginations, But I will say that I think we all know that it truly is a blessing when all the parts of your body seem to be working the way they are supposed to, is it not?
What we see if we participate in the ritual of blessing is that all kinds of experiences and circumstances in life, whether they seem good or bad to us, can be connected with a blessing. Because to attach a blessing to them is a way of acknowledging God’s hand in everything, God’s concern for everyone and everything. And that God’s hand runs over all the things of life, smoothing and leveling – filling up the low places, and bringing down the high places.
It is, in a way, about balance.
The phrase I have used as the title of this sermon comes from the Navajo tradition, in which blessing is an essential part of life, of their way. In reading about the Navajo Blessing Way I have come to better understand the way that blessing – in their tradition, in Jewish tradition, and in our own tradition – calls upon God to bring balance. Or, we might say, Shalom.
Something we need very much.
Because to bless is also to know that there is evil in our midst. To know that there is sadness, there is anger, there is greed, there is violence. There is pain and death. To know that we might at any time suffer – from our own sadness or sickness, or from someone else’s pain or anger. It is far too easy to get swallowed up in the harmful feelings and thoughts. To let them make us recoil from another one’s suffering, or set ourselves against another one’s anger. The act of blessing serves to bring much needed balance into our lives.
When we recognize that we are frail and broken beings, created by God, wholly in need of the gifts God provides, this is a way to bring balance. When we can look at the ones who are persecuted, the ones who are meek, the ones who are mourning. When we can look at the family of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and feel their pain is our pain; that the injustice they experience is an injustice that hurts us all. Then we are taking a step toward restoring balance in the world.
Then we too know ourselves as blessed, right along with them.
All this is to say that when Jesus offers his surprising blessings he is telling us something about balance. We can be blessed if we have some need that only God can fulfill.
And he is telling us something about the way God is present in all things: in the needs we have, in the needs of the people around us, in the troubles we might face in our lives. In making these surprising blessings, Jesus is speaking two co-existing truths: these present circumstances of life and the eternal truth of God’s kingdom, which we know is ours.
And when we know both these truths and can hold them both at the same time, then we know – we can see – God is always in our midst.
And when we can see ourselves in that great crowd of people before Jesus, standing in need of the things only God can give, then we can begin to be a part of the work of shalom, of bringing God’s healing to the world.
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Photo by Ksenia Chernaya: https://www.pexels.com
