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PERICOPE STUDY
CENTER FOR THEOLOGY, LRC
The
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 30, 2005
1.
Probably the best thing than one can do
with the Beatitudes to preach them is simply to read them. Maybe just to read one and let there be silence to reflect.
Read another and more silence. … and so on through what the Lord deems
blessed. Each child is precious in the Lord’s sight; there is not a sparrow
that falls what the Lord does not mark it.
Even the hairs of our head are numbered.
But some things are overtly blessed.
2.
Some of the beatitudes are like truths
identified by Jefferson—self-evident. What
more needs saying that that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (for
justice!) shall be filled? Whether
in this world or the next. “The
next” is the province of God. As
to this world, many are the things that are unjust.
We are called (see above, Micah 6:8) to do justice … for others,
yes, and for ourselves.
Who can
challenge the assertion that the merciful will obtain mercy?
Perhaps, again, not in this vale of tears.
But, speaking eschatologically, the mercy of God knows few boundaries,
short of the blatantly unrepentant blasphemers of the Holy Spirit.
One needs no
augmentation to peacemakers being called children of God.
In a century in which genuine peace has been rather in the short supply,
those who are genuine peacemakers (and not those who merely placate or appease)
are the more to be honored. Whether
by the Nobel laureate, as some have achieved, or by the judgment of history, or
by common assent to local men and women whose passion for peace resides first in
the heart and then in deeds of love and mercy.
3.
As to a couple of the others, though,
perhaps some commentary is useful, even necessary.
First, as to the blessedness of the “poor in spirit”:
surely this does not mean the intrinsic blessedness of those who are
spiritually impoverished, spiritually stunted, either by depleted natural
endowment or by deliberate truncation. It
does not, I think, mean “the dispirited,” the “discouraged.”
Those whose poverty is of the spirit, by deliberate introversion (in
curvatus in se) or by willful neglect.
4.
To be blessed as poor in spirit does
not mean some form of “poor-mouthing,” citing one’s disadvantages as to
economics or opportunity. Nor does
it mean allowing economic poverty to quench one’s spirit of effort or
faithfulness. It means, I thin,
those who do not allow wealth or lack of wealth to take the place of God. Whatever their economic circumstance, they give thanks to God
because He is the author of all blessing. Their
gratitude ascends over any attitude of self-sufficiency.
The “poor in spirit” know that all gifts come from God, that
everything is held in trust, and that those who are short-changed in the economy
of the world have a claim upon those in like manner favored.
The poor in spirit who are the blessed do not let wealth or goods less
modest come between them and the Savior who meets them in the face of the poor,
the hungry, the homeless. The
“kingdom of heaven” is, by one definition (this one, too, from the Lord,
also in Matthew) where folk recognize Him in the ones starving, deprived,
imprisoned. To be “poor in
spirit” means that one can see in those folk not simply “ourselves,” but,
more importantly, the Lord. To such
is the kingdom of heaven.
5.
Last—time is running out
again—those blessed who are persecuted are those whose persecution is that
revilers utter all kinds of evil against (you) falsely on my account. …
What is lifted up here is not the disciple as victim, per se, but the
disciple as victim on account of being a disciple of the Lord.
Too often the status of “victim” is invoked for any and all reasons
other than being a follower of Christ. Such
victimization may or may not have status in (positive) law.
But it is not what Christ is talking about.
6.
The beatitudes are entirely compatible
with Micah 6:8. With little
commentary, they stand unadorned save for the Lord’s poetry and Matthew’s
rendering. Praise the Lord.
JLY
–1.24.05 … revised from 01.26.99
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