Sermons from the Pulpit

Micah 6:1-8; I Corinthians 1:18-29; Matthew 5:1-12

Where is the debater of this age?
I Corinthians 1:20

The one who is wise, and the scribe, and the debater of this age are all in Washington, of course, in Congress and the White House, and in front of hundreds of TV cameras and microphones. As far as I'm concerned, this is living proof of Paul's argument that God has made foolish the wisdom of the world, only these folks have made fools of themselves on their own, they didn't need God to do it.

At this particular point in our history we don't need to be convinced that the wise ones and the scribes and the debaters are fools. We already knew that, and we are reminded of it every day.

I don't know. Maybe we should have joined in the debate from this pulpit, and talked about Presidential ethics and high crimes and misdemeanors and lies and sex, and found some way to pronounce judgment about it all, but we haven't done that. It has seemed important to offer ourselves and you some sanctuary from all that (not just a hiding place, but a place where it's still possible to wonder and worry about and wrestle with things that those other people seem to have forgotten about).

So if you'll pardon my irrelevance, I want to talk not about our national foolishness but about God's foolishness, and ask you to consider its wisdom. That wisdom is not self-evident. Even though we dearly love the words of the Beatitudes and the words of the first chapter of First Corinthians, nevertheless they do not seem to make much sense.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the mourners, and the meek, and the ones who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The scholars tell us maybe we should say "happy" instead of "blessed," but that makes it even stranger. How can a person in any of those predicaments be "happy"?

The Gospel seems to connect it with a future reward: the mourners will be comforted, the meek will inherit the earth, the hungry and thirsty will be filled, the merciful will receive mercy. So is that all it is: Pie in the sky bye and bye? Be good now, and God will be good to you later? Earn yourself a place in heaven?

No, that's not it at all. These Beatitudes are not moral teachings. Jesus isn't telling us what to do, he's telling us that there is a kind of happiness that these meek, mournful, weak, hungry, thirsty people do receive, a happiness as real as real can be, but the rest of the world has no idea of it, because the rest of the world is seeing with the wrong eyes, wearing glasses with the wrong prescription if you will. Jesus isn't advising us how to behave, he's inviting us to see ourselves and others with new eyes, with his eyes, and discover what we've been missing, discover what we have programmed ourselves not to see.

So I am not going to stand here and tell you to work hard so you can be pure in heart, or meek, or mournful, or a peacemaker. What good would it do? It probably wouldn't change any of us. But I am going to invite you, as these Scriptures invite us all, to see things differently. And who knows where that might lead?

To see, for example, the happiness of the person who mourns, who grieves, which is very mysterious. How can those two things, happiness and grief, even be fitted into the same sentence?

Well, what is grief? It's pain and sadness over something or someone lost, a loved one, a parent, a husband, a wife, a dog, a cat (but more than that: pain and sadness over a lost hope, a dream that died, a broken promise, a new leaf that never got turned over, an injustice that never got made right, a success that never happened, a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory). All our helpless frustration in the face of things that we know are not as they were meant to be.

You don't have to go to Washington to find this. You don't even have to leave the room. This room is full of grief. Some churches used to have what they called a "mourners' bench," but it wasn't the pew reserved for the family at the funeral. It was the part of the church set aside for those in the congregation who were in the process of waking up spiritually, as it were, and realizing, perhaps for the first time, how small and weak and fallible and stubborn and angry and frightened they were, how ungodlike, how mortal, how infinitely capable of wasting time and kidding themselves and others. Those who find themselves singing songs of lamentation. In other words, those who might be most open to a change of heart and a new direction in their lives. Those in most need of encouragement and support.

We don't have one here, do we, unless we consider the possibility that every pew in the place is a mourners' bench. And where is the happiness in this mourning? Well, I've already said it. We're talking about someone who is losing hold of the old certainties, beginning to question the truths that used to be self-evident. That is a situation full of possibility. If you begin to mourn, you become more likely to reach out instead of building walls around yourself, you become more receptive to seeing things with new eyes. This is a good thing. Not safe, but good.

Well, maybe. Or then again, maybe you just fold your arms across your chest and dig in. We are equally capable of either response. That's why it's important for someone to say to us, "Say, you look like you might be a mourner. We have a place for you. Come sit on this bench." And that's what Jesus is doing here. He's saying, if you go sit on that bench, if you allow that mourner within yourself to come to the surface, then you are whatever the right word is, happy, blessed, lucky, because now you are open to the possibility of receiving comfort. No comfort can penetrate the shells of those who will not admit to needing it.

The meek also are happy. Not because they are timid little mousies, that's not it. To be meek in the sense of this Beatitude is to be attentive, to open the ears and the heart at least as wide as the mouth. To be meek is to listen and to think before speaking and acting. We might prefer to say "humble" or "gentle" or "considerate," and it might even be a better translation of the Greek, but we are still confined to a surprising degree in the 17th-century straitjacket of the King James Version, such glorious language but not always on the mark. And to be humble is happiness because it is liberation from the awful burden of our pride. And if you don't think pride is a burden, then I have a whole 'nother sermon for you.

Likewise Paul writes his own sort of Beatitudes for the weak and for fools. To be weak, or more accurately to recognize one's own weakness, is to move through the world oblivious to the whole calculus of power, not seeking or needing to have control. That's hard for us to imagine, because we're such control freaks. We're convinced everything depends on us, it's all up to us. So we have to be in control. The alternative is unthinkable. Except for those Bible folks. But then, that's who we say we are, Bible folks.

And as for the happiness of fools, well, what is a fool? Same as a jerk? No, a jerk is a jerk, but a fool is a messenger from God. There was a time when the world carved out a place for fools or jesters, because it needed them: to thumb the nose at conventional wisdom and established order, to turn somersaults in the throne room, to tickle and tease the king, to ask the questions that are not supposed to be asked, to say the unspeakable. The fool cries when everyone else is laughing, not sham tears but the real weeping, and is struck dumb when everyone else is babbling. The fool appears to be missing something, but does so in such a way as to make us wonder if it's we who are missing something.