Micah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12
Ordinary 4A
Blessed are …
So begins this famous sermon of Jesus. Blessed are … for they … . We can hear the refrain of this proclamation as Jesus teaches on the mountain. God, it would seem, sees those often overlooked and devalued among us. God notices and attends to the poor in spirit, the meek and the mourners. God recognizes the work of and aligns forces with those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The peacemakers, those who look fool hearty or naïve in this all too violent world, get particular attention from none other than the Almighty. The downtrodden, the courageous, those who believe in what they have not yet seen and are holding out hope for reconciliation and justice, they too are held in the hands of the Most High God despite all evidence to the contrary. God, after all, chooses the foolish to shame the wise, the weak to topple the strong, and the cross, that most shameful instrument of state terror, to defeat the very evil and death and sin it perpetrated.
What do we make of this strange coupling of the vulnerable with the unsurpassable strength of the holy? How do we stand with and for those Jesus says are blessed even though to most they appear accursed? If the destitute and the bereft, the meek and the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers garner God’s favor and praise, how do we demonstrate our allegiance with God and with them?
Perhaps we could start by heeding the familiar words of the minor prophet Micah: Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God. To do so will inevitably cause us to join with those starving for righteousness and putting their lives on the line for the sake of the meek yearning right now for a tangible earthly inheritance. Seeking to fulfill the requirements of our God undoubtably blesses us as we participate in God’s will and find ourselves face to face with our Lord who tells us later in Matthew’s Gospel that we will meet him in the least of these.
What, though, does this look like? Saying, and even meaning, that we want to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God does not easily translate into our daily living — not without discernment, intention and accountability. We need real-world examples and both divine and earthly assistance if we are to be the fools for Christ we are called to be.
Where do we look to imagine how to go about doing justice, loving kindness, humbly following God and aligning ourselves with the divinely blessed but earthly vulnerable?
I find myself thinking of biblical examples of those blessed to be a blessing, people who took God’s requirements seriously and at great personal risk. This week I find myself thinking especially about those Hebrew midwives of Exodus 1: Shiphrah and Puah. They are not noble or powerful. They are enslaved women, tasked with delivering the babies of their fellow enslaved women. They could never foresee the bravery they would be called to enact, the justice, kindness and faithfulness to God and God’s will that came to them in the midst of their daily lives. And yet, when the time came to exercise their power, limited though it was, they did so repeatedly, defiantly, emphatically and in the presence of the greatest, most threatening ruler in the land. In so doing they were blessed and they became a blessing. In doing what God required, and not what Pharaoh demanded, these meek women helped their sisters, their people, inherit the earth. Their hunger and thirst for righteousness, no matter the potential cost to them personally, helped fulfill God’s promises. They were blessed and were a blessing because they refused to capitulate to a lesser law than God’s.
What might that look like in our lives? When the time comes for us to give our testimony in God’s court, will we be able to swear that we sought to do what God required of us or will we plead guilty to having squandered our blessing?
We all will be called upon to choose between doing what God requires – looking perhaps utterly foolish in the eyes of this world – or pledging our loyalty to lesser tempting and threatening powers.
Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, recently shared in an interview on Fresh Air that we must risk telling the truth for the sake of reconciliation. He told a powerful story of one woman’s courage at the site of a lynching. Stevenson founded the National Memorial for Peace and Justice that memorializes the victims of lynching. At the memorial there are jars of dirt dug from the sites where these murders occurred. Stevenson shared the story of an African American woman who participated in this project. She was on her hands and knees digging dirt and placing it in a jar at one of these sites when a white man in a truck slowed down and looked at her. He drove past, turned around and stopped. He asked her what she was doing. She said she felt compelled to tell him the truth, despite her fear. He got out of the truck and asked if he could help her. She offered him the trowel. He declined and dug with his hands. Together they put the dirt in the jar. She noticed tears streaming down his face and she asked if he was OK. He said he feared his ancestors may have participated in the very lynching she was memorializing. She cried with him. They took pictures of each other, holding the jar, memorializing a moment of unexpected understanding, hope and reconciliation. A moment of blessed mourning, mercy, hunger and thirst for righteousness that came as a result of two people, each in their own way and time, in their ordinary lives, haltingly trying to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with their God.
We never know when we will be called upon to truly be fools for Christ, to align ourselves fully and at great risk with the blessed of this world and thus be both blessed and become a blessing. I would argue that in every moment of every day we are called to do what God requires with all we have and all we are, choosing minute by minute to do justice, love kindness and humbly walk with God. What does that look like? Well, it most certainly makes the meek and the mourners, the poor and the merciful, the pure in heart, those starving and parched for righteousness absolutely, unquestionably blessed… to be a blessing.
This week:
- How have you witnessed God use the foolish of this world to shame the wise? The weak to upend the powerful?
- What does it mean to you to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God?
- What influence do you have in your life to advocate for the blessed vulnerable? How are you exercising this influence?
- When have you felt blessed by God? Why? What did that look and feel like?
- When have you felt like you had to choose between doing what God required and the expectations or pressure of others?
- Can you think of examples of people (biblical, historical or contemporary) who have followed God’s will at great personal risk?
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