Blessing and Vulnerability: 4th Sunday After Epiphany

If you didn’t already know, we have lot of Epiphany left. Ash Wednesday isn’t until the ninth of March this year. And Easter Sunday falls this year on April 24th. Easter can’t fall any later than the 25th of April. So this is about as late as Easter can come. That is a blessing for us this year. Easter will fall on the one-year anniversary of the tornado. And Bishop Kee Sloan will be with us that Sunday. By then, our new sanctuary will be under construction, so we will see the new Christ Church being raised from the old.

In the meantime, we have this long season after the Feast of the Epiphany, which might also be called the Teaching season, or the Discipleship season. On the Feast of the Epiphany, the Christ Child was revealed to the Three Wise Men, and by extension, to all the nations of the world beyond the people of Israel. In this long season after Epiphany, this revelation continues as the child becomes a man, and begins his teaching ministry. And as Jesus begins his teaching ministry, so we are called to begin a season of discipleship. The word disciple means “student.” And so we all are, students walking with Jesus, hearing his words, and puzzling together over their meaning.

Today we begin that teaching with what is called The Sermon on the Mount. I warn you that our Teacher will indeed puzzle us. And probably no part of this Sermon on the Mount is more puzzling than the beginning that we hear today, the Beatitudes or Blessings.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who know their need of God. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek and humble. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice. Blessed are the merciful, who don’t do it to others before others do it to them. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who are persecuted and killed for the sake of righteousness and justice. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on His account. What sense does any of this make? What can we possibly learn that’s going to do any of us any good in the real world. What sort of self-help is this?

In this brief time left, let me offer two thoughts which I can only pray will make the Beatitudes more than an unobtainable ideal in your eyes. First; Jesus demands nothing of you in these Beatitudes. Never does he say that if you do this, then you will be blessed. Time and time again, He says that you are blessed, right here, right now. And second, those blessings are as close to you as the brother or sister on your right and your left.

Jesus says that you are already blessed, simply because you are poor in spirit. Well who among us has never come to the end of our rope and known that all we could do is throw ourselves at God’s feet? We are blessed because God picks us up. Who among us has never mourned? We all mourn with each other, and in our shared grief we are blessed. Who among us does not ache at the injustice of the world? Working together against that injustice, we are blessed. Who among us has not felt the fear of standing alone as the target of someone else’s wrath? God himself felt that wrath, and together with Him we are blessed.

So we are all blessed in the midst of our pain. Yet there is a risk in the blessing. For those blessings are found in the people through whom God comforts us, gives us mercy, and stands with us in our trials. And we only receive those blessings when we let those people see our poverty of spirit, our grief, our anger and our fear. These blessings are ours when we are vulnerable, to God, and to each other. It is in the vulnerability that we find the blessing.

It’s only when I take the risk of reaching out, when I make a connection to another human person that I realize how blessed I have been, from the Florida of my childhood, to the Carolina of my college years, to the Virginia of my early adulthood, and now to my newest brothers and sisters in Alabama. Through my joys and my losses, through those I have loved and lost, I have been blessed. I sensed all that yesterday looking out over the lake in Guntersville on a beautiful day that reminded me of the John Denver song, in which God sings to all of us:

Welcome to my morning. Welcome to my day. I’m the one responsible. I made it just this way…Welcome to my happiness. I know it makes me smile. And it pleases me to have you here for just a little while, while we open up some spaces and try to break some chains.

What a beautiful day it was! And what a beautiful day everyday is when the people of God try to break the chains of fear and shame and anger that keep us isolated from each other. Blessed are you when you at the end of your rope. Blessed are you who mourn. Blessed are you who are afraid. Blessed are you who are angry. For that blessing is just an outreached hand away.