Sermon from Sunday, January 29, 2017

Reading:  Matthew 5:1-12 (The Beatitudes)
 
We can make too much of the Beatitudes.  It’s tempting to make them a kind of law for everyone to have to obey … a test to pass … a checklist to tick off … and be able to measure and decide who’s in and out … maybe even a kind of contract or guarantee of what we can count, in this life or the next, for what kind of behaviour or attitude we think we show.

We can also make too little of them – see them just as some kind of perfect ideal that Jesus is putting out there … a kind of heavenly, spiritual perfection that of course we are meant to be able to practice, or at least most of us aren’t expected to live up to, because that kind of life just isn’t practical, isn’t realistic.

But when Jesus says these things – pronounces these “beatitudes” – the word “beatitude” is simply the Latin word for “blessing” – so when Jesus pronounces these blessings he is surrounded by, looking at, and speaking directly to a big bunch of regular, ordinary, very practical people who have gathered as his disciples and followers in the very down-to-earth region of Galilee, and he is affirming and blessing them as being among the sanest and most helpfully down-to-earth people in the kingdom.

After his baptism in the Jordan, his purification in the wilderness, and the imprisonment of John the Baptist, Jesus has left the insanity developing in the southern kingdom – with fervent millennialism rising at the riverside and paranoid authority coming down from Jerusalem and Rome, and he’s come up north to the city of Capernaum and the surrounding region of Galilee to heal people’s bodies and spirits, to teach them the ways of God, and to tell them the kingdom of heaven is come.  And people have responded – in large numbers – “bigly,” as some might say today.  And now this morning we read the opening of his first major public address – his first press conference you may say – his first major outline of what his movement is about, what the kingdom of God is like.

He might have started, “My fellow Galileans” and made his movement all about the rise of Galilee – making Galilee great again.  He might have started, “Friends, Israelites, countrymen,” and made it all about a populist overthrow of the corrupt rulers in Jerusalem and Rome.

But what he does instead is look within himself – what he has learned to see and embrace, and look around at the crowd – at what really on the deepest level brings them together around him, and from all of that he pulls out the words and the characteristics and the behaviours and the longings that most deeply unite and identify them as friends of his, and together as friends of God on the face of the earth – as people who are among the sane ones on the planet, and who represent the people’s, the kingdom’s, and maybe even Earth’s best hope.

And what it is that he sees, names, blesses in them and blesses them for – when you read through the Beatitudes, is their emptiness – basically their emptiness, their knowledge of their own and others’ emptiness – and in that knowledge, because of that knowledge, and from that knowledge their freedom and their willingness to walk humbly and openly with one another, with Jesus, with all others, and with God towards the way the world is to be, and is to be good for all.

Emptiness – known and named, accepted and embraced, shared and blessed.

It makes me wonder why do I run so much, and in so many ways from my own emptiness?  Why do I work so hard to hide what I don’t know, what I don’t have, what I’m not able to do?  Why do I even try – as I have for most of my life, to mask my incompleteness?  Why am I so afraid of it?  Why do I blame others for it?  Why do I try to fill the void, the emptiness I feel sometimes – that’s really deep inside all of us – with busy-ness?  With toys and games and diversions and aggressive self-defences?  With obsessive or compulsive food and drink – especially if I’m up late at night?  With who know what habitual and even addictive behaviours and stuff when my emptiness makes itself known in the cracks and corners and centre of my life?

It makes me think that the way we handle our emptiness – what we try to fill it with – what we say to it, or let it say to us – whether we embrace and befriend it or not, whether we are able to see it on ourselves, recognize it in others, and work together from it … is one of the most fundamental questions of our life, that goes a long way towards shaping and determining the kind of life we have, the kind of people we are, the kind of species we become, and the kind of world we create.

About thirty years ago I was given a gift by a good friend at the time.  Father Jerry was a Carmelite brother at the Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre in Niagara Falls, and for a time he was my spiritual director.  For a few years I saw him sometimes monthly, sometimes every few months for direction in the journey and opening of my spirit.  The relationship ended when he left the Centre and before he left, he gifted me with these two framed sketches – one of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day (the founder of the Catholic Worker movement), and Mahatma Gandhi; the other of Maryknoll sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missioner Jean Donovan, who in the words of one website, in 1980 “joined the ranks of some 70,000 people in El Salvador killed by their own militia during that nation’s civil war when they were killed on a roadside and buried in a shallow grave, December 2, 1980.”

These people were – are, contemporary saints – people who in their own lives were shaped by, and came to embody the Beatitudes of Jesus.  Like those who followed Jesus in real and practical ways in Galilee in the first century, they lived the Jesus-life among us in North America in the twentieth.  These sketches of them hung for years on the wall of Father Jerry’s office because they reminded him of Jesus’ call to us all, and inspired him to live it out in whatever ways he could. 

I heard later from other brothers at the Centre that Father Jerry left Mount Carmel to go to Chicago, in part to face some of his own recovery issues, and also to work in an HIV-AIDS hospice that the Order had established there, to serve as priest and chaplain to those who were suffering and dying from the disease.

Blessed are …   Blessed are you … and blessed are they … friends of Jesus and of God, all of them, because of the way they handle their own and others’ emptiness.

Sometimes the friends of Jesus are big – big names, big personalities, big stories.  And it’s good that some are, because the world is also so full of big people with big egos, needs and power to lead us in all the wrong directions and reinforce us in all the wrong, all the evil ideas of how we and the world should be.  The world needs people who can also bear big witness to another way.

But we all are not big, and don’t need to be. 

Nor do we have to go far, to live as a friend of Jesus and friend of God, and make a Jesus kind of difference in the way the world works.  Some are called to leave where they are and go to places like El Salvador, Chicago, Haiti, the Dominican, the Galapagos and Bolivia. 

But for most, the place to be a friend of Jesus is right where we are – just as far away as our daily routine, the person next door or even next to us, the next person we meet, the next step we take.

The poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who suffer in any way for doing or saying what is right … these are not exotic, unrealistic, overly idealistic kinds of people.  They are people like us, who learn to handle their own emptiness well, befriend it and share, and let it guide them into the ways of the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Thom Shumann is a minister whose words we often use to guide us in worship here – in calls to worship and responsive prayers.  This week he took a little stab at translating the Beatitudes into contemporary and ordinary images, and came up with this:

·         blessed are the dog-walkers, for they will discover the streets of the kingdom:

·         blessed are those who welcome refugees, for they will embraced with unimaginable love; 

·         blessed are those who read to children, for they will plant seeds that bear fruit; 

·         blessed are those who shelter the homeless, for they will be shawled in God's grace;

·         blessed are those who stock food pantries, for they will taste God's hope;

·         blessed are those who reach out to the outsiders, for they shall be called bridge-builders; 

·         blessed are the faith-full foolish, for they shall be called the clowns of God.

And that’s just a start, isn’t it?  Just scratching the surface.  There are at least as many things to add to that list as there are people here in this sanctuary, as there are relationships and encounters in our lives, as there are days and nights to our living.

And to think it all starts by letting Jesus bring our emptiness out into the open, and build holy community with others around it.

Towards Sunday, January 29, 2017

Reading:  Matthew 5:1-12

Thought One:

The reading, commonly known as The Beatitudes, is the opening salvo in Jesus’ "first big speech" -- his first major press conference, if you will.

The kingdom of God movement has begun, people are beginning to get excited about God’s messiah appearing in their time, and they are ready for the way the world works, to be changed.  With John the Baptist, the movement's first leader now in prison and soon to be executed by the king, Jesus himself has begun teaching, healing and gathering disciples in Capernaum and throughout Galilee.  Now, seeing the crowds, he goes up on a mountainside to speak to them.   

So what does he say?  What kind of tone does he set?

And, if I were given a soapbox and a chance to be heard, what would I say to the world right now?  (Or, maybe closer to the bone, what is it that I post or re-post these days about the world on Facebook or Twitter?)

Thought Two:

A number of years ago Fr. Jerry Williams, a Carmelite spiritual director, gifted me before his departure with three pencil sketches that had hung on his office wall for years.  The sketches were of Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- three contemporary saints who in many ways were shaped by, and embodied the Beatitudes in their lives and their work.

When I read the Beatitudes, whose face or life comes to mind for me?  Who do I know -- and look up to -- who has been shaped by, and who embodies this Jesus-way of living?

Sermon from Sunday, January 22, 2016

Reading:  Matthew 4:12-23

(Jesus has left his somewhat obscure life in Nazareth to be baptized by John the Baptizer into the kingdom of God that John is preaching, and which is capturing the hearts of many.  From there Jesus is led by God into a time of wilderness testing.  While there he hears that the king has arrested John and put him in prison, where soon he will be executed.  What does Jesus do, when the power of the day so boldly seeks to silence the preachers and the promise of God’s kingdom coming to be on Earth?)

Why Capernaum?

When the king arrests John the Baptist and puts him in prison – soon to be executed, it’s an attempt to put an end to the way John has stirred up the people to expect God’s messiah to appear and to change the way things are in the world.  For many, the flexing of the king’s power triggers fear, anger, disillusionment and a sense of defeat.

What Jesus gets out of it, though, is that it’s time to act – time to come back from the wilderness where he was led after his baptism, to come out of the obscurity in which he has lived for thirty years, to come to the people with the message that the kingdom of God – the kingdom of heaven on earth, is near.

Because what do you do when the darkness falls and grows deeper, but light a candle?  And when you believe in God and the promise of the kingdom of God, you are not dissuaded by dark, fear-driven tyrants.  You are not surprised by the power of evil and of fear in the affairs of the world, but neither are you cowed by it.

As Bruce Cockburn wrote 26 years ago:

          When you’ve got a dream like mine

          Nobody can take you down

          When you’ve got a dream like mine

          Nobody can push you around

          When you know even for a moment

          That it’s your time

          Then you can walk with the power

          Of a thousand generations

Or as Kayla McClung has written this week in a meditation on today’s Gospel and on this weeks’ news:

I hear some gospel preachers these days say we are now experiencing a dawning of hope as the new administration takes office, while others say this political change represents the most perilous time in our history.  Is one completely right and the other completely wrong?  Does any man or woman have the capacity to alter the nature of our world so completely, and change who we are?  Rather than blaming or crediting another for a world we see as either wonderful or perilous, perhaps we need to accept responsibility for a world that is both wonderful and worrisome, both perilous and full of divine possibility all at the same time.

No matter what dire situations you see as monopolizing the world, the greater truth is that a light has already dawned in the regions of death.   Announce it.  Invite others to live in it with you.  All is not lost.  

And isn’t that what we see Jesus doing?  Isn’t that what we, as his followers, feel called to do as well?

I have a question, though – and it may seem piddly or a bit odd, but I think it reminds us of just how the messiah comes and how the kingdom of God appears and takes shape in the world.  The question is, why Capernaum?

When Jesus – as Kayla McClung puts it, “keeps moving forward, step by step, practicing his calling, going where he is sent, doing what he is given to do, honing in on his central purpose which is determined by a force larger than the current conditions,” why does he go to Capernaum to do it?

Not to say Capernaum is a bad place.  As a town it was maybe two hundred years old.  On major trade routes between the Mediterranean and the Eastern areas, there was a good level of commerce.  On the shore of the Sea of Galilee there was access to the south, and a pretty good fishery.  As a town it had a lot going for it.

But up until now it’s not been part of the story at all.  And if what you want to do is to announce and usher in the kingdom of God, why not go to Jerusalem – the seat of power in the kingdom?  Like the hundreds of thousands of protesters who filled Washington D.C. to overflowing the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated to the presidential office, like the Idle No More movement that marched to Ottawa, like the Occupy movement that tried to shut down Wall Street, why not go directly to the heart of darkness and confront it head-on – challenge its assumed supremacy face-to-face?

Or, if it isn’t time yet for Jesus to die (which is what happens when he does that), and his greater purpose is actually to live and show us the way to live, why not Bethlehem then – just a few miles from Jerusalem, the place of his birth, the place where thirty years earlier King Herod tried to have him killed?  It’s the ancient city of David, so what better place to begin calling together a parallel, alternative kingdom to the one seated in Jerusalem?

Or, if that’s too close to Jerusalem and maybe for the people still holds too many bad memories of what an alternate king in your midst can mean for you, why not the Jordan River and the Jordan Valley on the other side of Jerusalem, where John was doing his baptizing and people were starting to identify with the call to change the way world is?

Or, if Jesus needs to distance himself a bit from John and some of the ways John is understood by the crowds, why not Nazareth where he grew up and people know him?  Unless, as we see in one of the Gospel stories, it’s precisely that kind of familiarity that breeds contempt, and will make it hard to preach to them and do any wonders among them?

But why Capernaum?  Why does Jesus choose there?

Because it’s so far from Jerusalem – about as far as you can get and still be in Israel?  Was it, as some scholars suggest, ready for revolution because of centralization and virtual enslavement in the fishing industry and among the peasant class?  Was there a lot of exchange between Nazareth and Capernaum?  Did Jesus have family or friends there?

We don’t know.  And maybe in this not-knowing, we see the point that God comes into the world wherever God wants to – that any place in the world, even the places we’re not used to focusing on, are just as likely as any – maybe even more likely, to be an entry-point for God and for the kingdom of God on Earth as long as there at least some people willing to be open to the kind of change wants to make in their lives.

When Jesus goes to Capernaum he begins preaching God’s way for the world – a way of healing and love, of forgiveness and radical community, and not only preaches, but practices it as well – releasing people from evil spirits, healing them of physical and spiritual diseases, restoring hope and life to people who are as good as dead, gathering and calling all kinds of people together into redemptive community with one another and with God – and all of it in the ordinary, day-to-day places of life – wherever people work and pray, eat and raise families, meet neighbours, encounter strangers, come up against enemies and people different than themselves.

He doesn’t come preaching power and an earthly kingdom.  He comes preaching and practicing a way of life and a way of compassionate love that promises to change the world from the bottom up, from the inside out, from Capernaum – wherever that is, to the ends of the Earth.

And that’s worth thinking about – that the geography of the kingdom of God is not always what the media and our culture saturate us with. 

We do need to speak to what fills the news and fills the hearts of many with either fear or euphoria. 

But maybe what people are most hungry to hear, and what makes the most difference, is the way of love – the way of God’s kingdom alive in our own hearts, that we speak to them day by day, step by step, moment by moment in Capernaum – wherever Capernaum is for each one of us.