The Blessed

The Gospel this week is familiar, Matthew 5.1-12, also know as the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes. Jesus saw the crowds of people coming to him. He called to them and they came to him and he taught them. It might be worth noting that he sat down to teach them. This was a defining moment for Jesus and those who followed him. This was to be core teaching and Jesus took a position that told the people around him that they need to get this down. Plus, he ascended the mountain – as Moses did to meet with God. Everyone understood that this was going to be a meeting with the holy because of where Jesus went and how he was teaching them.

Jesus calls them the makairos, the blessed; the fortunate ones. Being blessed by God is not dependant on how we feel or think – it is what God does for us, regardless of how we feel and what we think. It is not even dependant upon our circumstances. God knows and understands our lives and the circumstances in which we find ourselves and we are blessed by him right where we are. It is amazing that we are blessed often before we know why or what for.

And it is important to recognized that we are blessed for the precise reason that we are headed to the future. A future with God and others who have followed Christ where there will be no more weeping and tears. There will be no more death, only life. We are being fed, led and enabled to work to get to the kingdom of heaven. After all, where else can you go and get yourself a meal that is going to last you an entire week? Being blessed is more than getting what you hoped for – there is an action dimension. We are blessed for a purpose – to be a blessing to others that they might turn and walk into the kingdom. When we are blessed, we seek God. We follow his Word, we seek after righteousness and choose to be made holy.

This does not mean that the Christian life, is easy. It is not. It is the cruciform life. We are called to come to Christ, deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow him. We are called to live out Christ’s death and resurrection on a regular and sometimes daily basis. We need to recognize that we are called to help make the old new, new again. We are asked to participate in raising up the fallen and await that moment when all things will be brought to perfection in Jesus on the last Day.  Being a blessed people comes at a cost because we see and know what the world around us is like. We know all to well the brokenness and sin, the pain and death in this life. We are meant to be the peacemakers, the meek and those who are righteous that others can see a new way and a new life. Blessing necessitates action for the sake of others. Otherwise we are at risk of being complicit in how the world continues.

As a brother priest once pointed out to me, some of our blessings have the strangest names: cancer, meningitis, loneliness, conflict, separation. You could add to that list easily. The Good News is that God is at work in this world at this moment, to bring in his kingdom. He is at work in our lives and through our circumstances to bring about his will and his kingdom.  He is not dependant on your circumstances but rather can use them to draw others to you and to himself. The kingdom is alive in our midst and we are God’s demonstration model for the rest of the world as to how we live this life and into eternity. We are the living conduit through which God blesses.

This means that we are fortunate. We are blessed, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

Maybe I can sum up this way. I recently spent some time with Bishop Wilson Kamani of the Diocese of Ibba. He need to fix his watch because it has come apart in the wrist band. So my wife and I took him to Wal-Mart to see if we could find what was needed. In looking for the parts, two important things happened: (1) we discovered that we could fix the watch and (2) Bishop opened my eyes to see things as he did. He had never seen a store like things and he was constantly lifting up his hands and giving thanks to God for this marvelous store where you could find some many things under one roof. “You are so blessed!” he kept telling me. I had to reconsider my attitude towards the circumstances in which I was living and look at it from a fresh perspective. It requires a change in attitude- to start thinking and living with an attitude of altitude – to see things as Jesus does and to know that we are blessed, even when we don’t feel or think that we are.

As St. Paul points out to the Corinthian Church: To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours… (1 Corinthians 1.2 ESV)

Jason+