Here it is – they double down on half pay. Here it is – they
double down on double cross. They lie and hold for commercial.
Another lie and pause for laughs. We understand but will not speak
the language of monsters and masters.
Words spoken over our heads, words aimed at our life, our liberty,
our peace. Threats and intimidation. Believe and submit. A chill in
the mind. Cold wind. Cruel words. A silence of voice. A bound mouth.
Submit and disperse. Unarmed agitators and sidewalk citizens will be
shot. You saw nothing. You believe what you’re told. Break down
your obedience.
Or face the hose. Or we let slip the imperial dogs. Flick the baton,
snap the whip. Burn the city down – we will rule the ash.
If
you see the oppression of the poor and record the denial of justice
in the province, in the state, in the city – do not be shocked at
the sight. One official watches over another. Checks and balances and
regulating authority. There are higher officials over them all –
and none of them care.
The words of the preacher are wrenched from the word. Wretched now.
Worthless vanity. Worthless and void. “Blessed are the Peacemakers”
becomes the recruitment campaign for the Department of War.
Propaganda is truth.
There are six
things the Lord hates. Make it seven detestables. Deplorables.
Haughty eyes.
You’ve heard it
yourself – the tone, the shrill, the shriek. You know the smug
dynamic tough guy vibes. You know him – the American Vulgarian
brandishing his piety like a goddamn hammer. The governing authority
without credibility. Zero.
A lying tongue.
Wicked. Perverse.
Depraved in front of the cameras of the White House press room
Hands that shed
innocent blood.
I’ve had enough
of staring down the line. Jumping impossible hurdles. I’ve had
enough of the barrel and the bullet. A funeral test. A failure trial.
These are debts that can never be repaid.
A heart that
devises wicked schemes.
Another Midwest
shooting. Another state sponsored murder. Another extrajudicial
execution on a Minnesota street. Antinomian disregard. No
jurisprudence. No moral law.
Feet quick to rush
into the evil of the American nightmare
Your absurdities
have become atrocities. Another every day. Without regret. Without
remorse. You delight in the cruelty. Pleasure in our pain.
A false witness
pouring out lies one after another as if we didn’t see the videos
ourselves.
Jesus said “blessed
are the peacemakers” – but this is not you. You are lawlessness
and chaos. You are death and destruction. Without a profession of
doubt you’ll never realize your mistake.
A person who stirs
up conflict in the community.
Don’t ask for
reverence. Give me no more confessions of faith. I no longer believe.
If this is to be a Christian nation – founded on Judeo-Christian
values – let this be the baseline standard: “There should be no
poor among you.” Deuteronomy 15:4 We can argue over words and names
and the interpretation of the law, all of our internal religious
disputes. But let this be the minimal standard: “There should be no
poor among you.”
But
there are billions in amusements and billions in military spending.
Always billions more uncounted. And those budget cuts are never an
option. There is always money for guns and butter. Let the poor
starve. The free-market has spoken.
“Do
you have any better ideas, whiz kid? Smart alec. Jackass.”
“Defund
the military. Demilitarize the police. Feed the poor.”
The
cold air operators and cold war operatives recoil in horror. Taped
phone conversations are tagged, flagged, and reviewed. Who is this
criminal? Who is this asshole?
“A
sociopath, obviously.” This is their detailed analysis. “A commie
libtard with a poor memory. We have all the evidence that we need:
the phone calls are real. The photos are authentic.”
“Blessed
are the poor and the hungry…”
“...the
poor in spirit! It says the poor in spirit, you illegal piece of
shit. You’re not entitled to a damned thing except hostility and
bodily harm.”
Blood
and hair. Bone and blood. Drag marks in the dirt. Hanging and beating
in the public park with all the other liberal scum. Strung up and
left bleeding. “This is the way. This is way things are. Who are
you to object? Who are you to complain? We stomp commies like you.”
How blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is hers.
She was one of those lovely things I’ll always remember - a beautiful girl with deep chocolate eyes. When she would laugh it was always too loud and she was always reluctant to speak. She left her apartment just after dusk and she never came back.
How blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Fast beat driving - heartbeat slow and irregular. Snatched from the street. Unmelodious chords in the parking lot. Friction sounds. Grinding telephones and no answer.
How blessed, the meek. They will inherit the land.
Her mother told her, “Be careful out there,” and “come home safe.” Now she refuses to take solace. “Prayer never works.” She stands at the mirror in a curious combination: half in a trance, half aware. There are only doubts and goodbyes. Cold black holes that never go away.
How blessed are the ones who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for justice. They will be satisfied.
You can never forget the way blood glistens in moonlight. Do the dead stay dead? Is this the way the world ends? With unanswered questions?
How blessed are the ones who show mercy for they will have mercy themselves.
Something has changed. Power rising. Red roses, white, yellow, pink. Eyes full of light. But still the thorn, the prick, the blood. The investigation continues. We don’t know and what could we say?
How blessed are the pure in heart; they are the ones who will see God.
From November to January we wonder. Dreaming. Imagining. Hoping. Fearing. Freezing. It’s all too much and too hard to bear. I don’t want this, any of this. No relief in nightmare. No weal when I wake.
How blessed the peacemakers; they are the daughters of God.
She was weak and unsure. Too delicate for this world, more suited for the next. This was the flaw in her beauty: she was afraid of her voice. In a flash, open slightly. Two paramedics in a whistle. Alive, now dead against a background of twilight stars. Ethereally beautiful, eternally young.
How blessed are the tormented, the persecuted, the beaten and abducted. The kingdom of heaven is hers.
There is a story told of the Reformer, Martin Luther – that when
asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow, he responded
that he would plant a tree. The story is apocryphal, a liturgical legend – and doesn’t
go back any further than the middle of the 20th century. But still,
there is something interesting in that story. Faced with the prospect of
calamity and destruction, with ruin and despair, Martin Luther (or at least,
this pious story version of Martin Luther) chose to plant a tree. That is, he
took the long view, even when the future might seem bleak; he planned and
planted something enduring, something that would grow.
A few years ago a friend of mine living in Michigan called me one afternoon
with bad news. His life, his career, his hope, all of it was collapsing. His
wife was leaving him. He was soon to lose his job. And there was little that he
could do about it. And there was even less that I could do about it for him. I
had no influence over anything. I couldn’t fix the broken things. I couldn’t restore
the dying things. And he lived too far away for me to hop in the car and go
over for a visit – and even if I had made the drive across the country to see
him, the best that I could have done would have been to sit in stupid silence
with and for him.
My schedule for that dark day included helping another friend of mine, one who
lived here in town. He needed help transplanting a small magnolia tree. The
tree was going to be cut down by developers who were clearing a lot in order to
put up a new building, and my friend wanted to try to save the tree. I changed
out of my Salvation Army uniform, and drove over to his place to meet him.
Together we dug up the tree with its roots, loaded the tree, along with our shovels
and gallons and gallons of water into the back of the pickup truck, and moved
the tree to its new spot, right near his garden.
We dug a new hole for it, put it in place, poured water over
the roots, replaced the dirt, poured more water into the soil around the tree,
tamped down the dirt, and poured more water over it all. At the time we weren’t
sure if the tree would survive. Neither of us had any experience in digging up
and transplanting trees. But, we reasoned, if it didn’t survive, well at least
we tried. And if it did survive, then we’d have done something good. Faced with
destruction and ruination, despair and helplessness, I planted a tree.
That was a few years ago – and the magnolia tree has survived. I went to check
on it yesterday, and it has been growing; it’s taller now than it was. It
was in bloom yesterday, with purple, pink blossoms reaching up towards the
falling rain. And my friend from Michigan has survived too, though like the
tree, he has been transplanted to a new home; he now lives in another state and
has a new job. His marriage did fall apart, and his wife did leave taking their
children with her. My friend misses his boys tremendously, but he has survived,
and grown. Bloomed even.
Is he happy? Blessed, Fortunate? I don't know. These are difficult words to pin
down, especially when the world around us is cluttered with chaos, when our
lives are bombarded from without and inflamed from within by stress and anxiety
and agitation. How can we be (even if we don’t feel) blessed, fortunate, and happy?
So this week we turn to the Psalmist for a bit of an Old Testament Beatitude
for a little about what it might mean to be blessed, or fortunate, or lucky, or
even happy.
How Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in
the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers (Psalm 1:1 NIV)
How blessed – that is, fortunate, lucky, happy – How blessed, how happy is the
one who does not walk with the wicked, or stood in the assembly of sinners, or
sat down in the session of scoffers.
There is an interesting bit of entropy in
this verse, a steady decline in power and vigor. The psalmist's negative example
decelerates from walking to standing and then from standing to sitting. Little
by little he loses energy and vitality, he loses his strength. She associates
with those who bring her down.
But blessed is the one who keeps moving. Blessed is the one who keeps on
keeping on. Blessed is he or she who makes some progress every day, even just a
little. Even just one step. Blessed, Fortunate, Happy is the one who never lets
the counsel of the wicked slow them down. If we allow the world to encourage us
to be angry, to hate our enemies, to turn our passion into resentment, to turn
our fear into loathing, our energies will be sapped. We will lose our power,
our motion. We will get bogged down by the ensnaring concerns, drained by fear
and anger and we will give up. We will sit down with the scoffers, slowly dying.
But blessed, fortunate, happy is the one who keeps moving. Blessed is the one
who is not paralyzed by fear and doubt, or immobilized by resentment. Instead,
the law of the LORD is
her delight. The teaching and instruction of the LORD is his delight. And they meditate on it day and
night. They recite it. They ponder it.
Now we should note that the Hebrew word translated “law” here is the word torah which is something more than a
legal list of rules and obligations. The psalmist’s beatitude is not saying
that happiness can be reduced to a mechanical process of following a set of
rules and regulations. Instead it is a dynamic process that requires a constant
meditation on the instruction of God in order to determine the will of God in
every situation. (McCann) It is the
continual transformation and renewal of our minds so that we can discern what
is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect (Romans 12:2
NRSV).
Such a one is like a tree planted near streams;
it bears fruit in season
and its leaves never wither,
and every project succeeds. (Psalm 1:2 – New Jerusalem Bible)
Actually the verb here is more than “planted.” More accurately it would be “transplanted”
(Dahood, 3). They have been dug up from the soil, pulled up from the roots and
moved to a new location, put into new soil, near streams of water where they
can grow anew – like my friend’s magnolia tree transplanted, but still blooming,
and like my friend whose world came to an end but he kept on going. They bear
fruit in season. Maybe not right away. Maybe not a lot at first. But they bear
fruit. How blessed, how fortunate, how happy.
There’s also an interesting temporal dimension to these verses that’s not always
picked up by the various translations of the bible. In Mitchel Dahood’s
translation we read:
How blest is the man who has not entered the council of the wicked
nor in the assembly of sinners stood, nor in the session of
scoffers sat.
But from the Law of Yahweh is his delight, and from his law he
recites day and night.
So shall he be like a tree transplanted near streams
of water;
which yields its fruit in its season, and whose leaves never
wither.
Whatever it produces is good.
We in these verses we have the past (blessed is the one who has not entered,
stood, sat…), we have the present (the law of the LORD is his delight, he recites day and night), and we
have the future (so shall he be like a tree).(Dahood, 3)
Yes, the past may have been difficult; we may have found ourselves surrounded
by hostile forces, lured by temptations, excited by passions. We may have been
tempted to give in, and give up. But we keep the law of the Lord in our minds,
and on our tongues, reciting it day and night, constantly refreshing ourselves
with it and renewing our minds by it, and we will be like a blossoming tree,
bearing the fruit of success. How blessed, how fortunate, how happy.
And now our psalmist changes tack: Not so, he says, the wicked. How different
are the wicked, how very different. They are like chaff blown around by the
wind” (Psalm 1: 4 New Jerusalem Bible). They are impermanent, ephemeral,
without roots, useless, drifting, always changing their story, telling new
lies. They are blown by the inconstant winds here and there, never amounting to
anything. They are all desperation and no dreams. All vanity and vainglory. All
dust in the wind.
The path of the wicked is doomed; it is a dead end. It is death and nothing
more. The wicked are dust and detritus caught in a current of wind. They cannot
stand in the face of judgment. They have no root, no depth. They will not
endure. They will not prevail.
But the blessed one, the fortunate and happy one, is intimately known by God,
is looked over and protected by God. The assembly of the just is kept safe by
the LORD. Our lives,
cluttered as they are with chaos, bombarded from without and inflamed within by
anxiety and fear are known by God, and are protected. We are fortunate, and
blessed, even happy. Thanks be to God.
Dahood, Mitchell, Psalms 1 – 50: Introduction, Translation,
and Notes. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1966. Text.
We are sometimes told that God
has blessed the United States of America – and even more – that God has
“blessed this nation more than any other on earth” (Graham “Facebook” ).
American wealth and power are cited as evidence of God’s favor on America. Franklin
Graham has said, “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of
Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we
have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown”
(Graham “Defining Moment”). So it must be obvious that God loves us best and has
blessed us the most. Right? Right?
But this is rubbish. This is not the gospel or, at least, it is not the gospel
that Jesus proclaimed. Wealth and power are not values of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Egypt was rich and powerful once. Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Persia,
Rome – they were rich and powerful as well; they each ruled the world for a
time. But time passed and where are they now? These were not the nations that
God blessed, that God chose as his own. No. Wealth and might are not signs of God’s
favor and blessing on a nation. America should never be confused with the
Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven places value not in wealth and power, but in poverty and
weakness. And this sounds foolish to most of the world. It always has. The
message of the Kingdom, the gospel of Christ is in the cross, and this is
foolishness to the world. (1 Corinthians 1: 18 – 31) We proclaim a Christ
crucified. We proclaim a Kingdom that values the poor, the mourning, the meek,
and the merciful. This is not an empire built on coffers of gold and backed
with bullets and bombs. This is something altogether different.
Jesus saw the crowds that were beginning
to follow him and he left them to go up the mountain. There, away from the
crowds, he sat down and began to instruct his chosen disciples. The crowds were
not ready for this. Maybe we aren’t either.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate (Albright 45) are the humble and poor in spirit for
theirs is the kingdom of God. The difference between Matthew’s “Blessed are the
poor in spirit” and Luke’s “Blessed
are the poor” is very often noted, as it should be. But this difference does
not get us off the hook. In America most of us are not poor. Not really. We may
not be rolling in money. We may not be part of the 1%, but neither are we “poor,”
not in the sense of the word that Luke uses.
We are comfortable, and so we cling to Matthew’s “poor in spirit” as a way to
justify ourselves, and to include ourselves in this blessed category. “Luke’s
blunt talk about the ‘poor,’ we are instructed, must be interpreted in light of
Matthew’s fuller ‘poor in spirit,’ a classification to which we can all aspire
since it has none of the rude realities of ‘material poverty’ (lack of food,
clothing, shelter, employment) attached to it. ‘Spiritual poverty’ in fact becomes a Christian virtue, and we are
encouraged to affirm a life-style that puts no premium on goods and possessions
but equally does not suggest that we need to get rid of them (Brown, 89).”
Reading the beatitudes only from the gospel according to Matthew is a way of
letting ourselves off the hook without requiring any sort of compromise to our
materialistic lifestyle.
But we must be careful not to
“minimize Jesus’ gospel of liberation for the poor by interpreting poverty as a
spiritual condition unrelated to social and political phenomena … a careful
reading of the New Testament shows that the poor of whom Jesus spoke were not
primarily (if at all) those who were spiritually poor as suggested in Matthew
5: 3” (Cone 79). The poor in spirit are the dispirited, the broken, the “losers”
of this world. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the poor and
humble in spirit, for theirs is the enduring Kingdom of God.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are those who mourn for they shall be
comforted. There’s a chorus that I
remember singing in Sunday School as a child. I remember that it made me cringe
then, and it still does, even more today:
I’m H-A-P-P-Y; I feel like I could fly.
I’m going to heaven; I’ll get there by and by.
My name is in the book; you’ll find it if you look.
I’m going to heaven by and by. (Unknown)
I hate that song, but I do not want to discredit the idea that there is joy in
the Christian faith. Neither am I suggesting that a state of mourning is
blessed in and of itself. Depression is not divine and no grief is good. But
those who grieve and those who mourn are blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven. “The
world says, ‘Enjoy!” Christ says “Grieve!’” (Buttrick 281). The world is a
sharp and dangerous place. It wounds us. It cuts us to the quick. And we mourn.
We grieve. Let no one tell you to “forget about it.” Ignore anyone who tells
you to “just get over it.” Blessed are those who mourn, those who feel the
wounding of the world for they will be comforted by God.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are the meek, for they will inherit the earth –
though, with the way things are, it often feels like maybe the meek will
inherit what’s left of the earth after the rich and powerful have sucked away
its resources and nuked the ashes. But blessed are the meek. The world derides
the meek as pussies, as pansies. ‘Step up and be a man! Be forceful and strong!
Take what is yours!’ they say. But in the Kingdom of God, the meek inherit what
they would never seize by force (Buttrick 281).
The meek are not arrogant and
forceful, they do not bully or belittle. They do not seek to destroy or defeat their
enemies. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth as a gift from
God.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
This statement, like Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” has been used to justify those like ourselves despite
our lack of actual hunger and thirst. But this is no easy escape, no cheap
grace. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is to hunger and thirst for something
more than personal moral rectitude; it is a desperate hunger for justice and an
unquenchable thirst for “equity and humanity” (Buttrick 283). Those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness will never “get used to” those who would use their
political power to abuse and mistreat the poor immigrant, and to close the
doors on the refugee fleeing from war and destruction. Those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness will not accept a status quo that leaves people
starving for food and clean water while the wealthy and powerful minority live
in profligate excess. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness
for they will have it.
Get used to it. @POTUS is a man of action and impact.
Promises made, promises kept.
Shock to the system.
And he's just getting started https://t.co/AoUsZWClXt
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are
the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Oh mercy! But this is hard. “We do
not train to be merciful here,” the world says. “Mercy is for the weak. Here,
in the streets, in competition. A man confronts you, he is the enemy. An enemy
deserves no mercy.” We are taught by this world to “Strike first! Strike hard! No
Mercy, sir!” (Karate Kid) Mercy is
foolish. Mercy says, “Father, forgive them,” even as they are killing us. But mercy
is not pity. It is not a feeling. It is not a saccharine, sentimental sop. It
is the recognition that all of us, at times, are cruel and selfish, proud and
hateful and that God has loved us even still. Oh mercy! But mercy is hard.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall be given mercy.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are
the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are those who seek truth, who honor
and esteem truth as a treasure. Who can abide in the tent of God; who can
ascend his holy hill? None but the pure in heart, only those who speak truth
and will not slander. (Psalm 15) Blessed are those who value truth and not “alternative
facts.” Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see the face of God.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate are the peacemakers for they will be called
children of God. Peacemaking is a “preventative task” (Buttrick 287) a preemptive
task. Oh, we know all about preemptive invasions, do it to them before they
have a chance to do it to us. But we know very little about preemptive
peacemaking. We are reactive, responding to the outbreaks of violence with more
violence, and still hoping to somehow make peace, instead of identifying those
sources of unrest and injustice that lead to violence and correcting them
before war breaks out. Instead of feeding the hungry and defending the
oppressed, we allow them to suffer until they feel that violence is the only
option. We know something about
peacekeeping, sorta’ but it’s a “peace through superior firepower” and that
kind of peace does not last. We need to be peacemakers – building peace from
the ground up. Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children, the
favored sons and beloved daughters of God.
I
know that this sounds foolish, like a surefire way to end up broke down and beaten
up. It is the foolishness and weakness of God chosen to shame the strong and
wise of the world. If it were just the hippy-dippy, can’t we all just get along, “cloud of liberal optimism,” this would not be “good news.” It would be “a
mockery of the present misery of the suffering” (Moltmann 59). This is something
more than just the feel good musings of a bleeding heart liberal; this is the
gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel has teeth. It bites.
I begin to understand why Jesus left the crowds and went up the mountain to
speak these things to his disciples. The crowds were not ready for them. I’m
not sure the disciples were either, and I’m not sure that we are, even today. I
know my faults and failures. I know how far from these I am. They are hard.
They bite. They challenge. They provoke.“To hear Jesus’ words of liberation
requires a radical decision … a decision that defines theology as a weapon in
the struggle of the little ones for liberation” (Cone 52). To hear these Beatitudes
is to redefine our world and our place in this world. It is to reject the idea
that wealth, and power, and privilege are our rightful blessings from God, and
to accept the foolishness of the gospel of the Cross, and a kingdom that values
the poor, the mourning, the meek, the merciful, the peacemaker.
Blessed – Happy – Fortunate, but we may not be ready to hear this.
From Indianapolis to Perth
the meek aren’t given what they are worth,
but we’ve gone ‘round the bend
and soon our wars will end -
thenthey’ll inher’t what’s left of
the earth.
Blessed are you who are poor and meek;
blessed are you when they call you weak
but woe upon the rich
living without an itch-
you laugh now, but your future is bleak.
