Gratitude (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

February 19, 2014

Gratitude, a sense of thankfulness, is the emotion that can drive out all ill feeling, fear, doubt, and anger.  There seems to be something in our hard wiring that simply disallows feeling any of those other negative emotions at the same time we feel thanks.  Some of our “head-shop” Ashland friends would say that thankfulness is a positive energy, and it cannot be present without driving away “negative energies.”  Some Christian theologians would call it the queen of the theological virtues or graces. 

However we understand it, thanks is a key way of experiencing grace and connecting with God.  Let us remember to give thanks each day, both to God in our prayers, and to those about us. 

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+   

Priest's Blessings (Liturgical Aid)

Priest’s Blessings (FROM ALTAR)

 Assembled and edited by the Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.  

A Blessing adapted from Henri Frédéric Amiel

Life is short, and we have little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love, and make haste to be kind. And may the Divine Mystery who is beyond our ability to understand, but who ✚made us, and who ✚loves us, and who ✚travels with us, bless us and keep us in peace.  Amen.

Traditional Prayer Book Blessing

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, ✚the Father, ✚the Son, and ✚the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always.  Amen.

Common Worship Blessing from 1 Thessalonians 5:13-22

Go forth into the world in peace.  Be of good courage.  Render to no one evil for evil.  Strengthen the weak. Visit the sick.  Stand with the downtrodden.  Honor every person.  Love and serve God, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.  And the blessing of God Almighty…

The Priestly Blessing from Numbers 6:24-26

The Lord bless you and keep you.  The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you.  The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.  And the blessing of God Almighty ✚ …

A Celtic Blessing

May Christ and His saints stand between you and harm:
Mary and her Son, St. Patrick with his staff, Martin with his mantle, Bridget with her veil, Michael with his shield, and the High King of Heaven over all with His strong right hand.  And the blessing of God Almighty ✚ …

St. Clare’s Blessing

Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road.   Go forth without fear, for the one who created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother.   Go forth thanking God, for having created us. And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚ …

Rom 15: 13

✚May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing through the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of Jesus Christ.  Amen

2 Cor 13:14

✚May the grace of Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be among you and remain with you always.  Amen.

Eph 3:20

Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine:  Glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚…

1Thess 5:23

May the God of Peace make you holy, through and through. May your whole mind, soul, and body be kept blameless to greet our leader Jesus Christ at his coming.  The one who calls you is faithful and will surely do this.  And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚…

2 Thess 3:16

Now may the very God of Peace give you abundant life and joy at all times and in every way.   May Jesus Christ, our Model and Head, be at your side.   And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚ …

Heb 13:20-21

May the God of Peace, who brought back from the dead Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good to do accomplish his will and work in us what pleases him.  And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚  …  

Adapted from Psalm 90:17 and 20:3-5

The Lord prosper the works of your hands and defend you.  

May God bring forth much fruit in you, 

        and give you more and more. 

May God bring to pass your heart’s true desire,

and equip you with every good thing.

And the blessing of God Almighty  ✚ …

In all blessings, "God Almighty, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" may be substituted by "The Ever-Present, All-Holy, and Ever-Helping God: Parent, Child, and  Sacred Breath," "The Triune God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" or "The Triune God: Earth Maker, Pain Bearer, and Life Giver."  

Life or Death (Climate Change Preach-in; Epiphany 6A)

Life or Death

16 February 2014

International Climate-Change Preach-In and Teach-In

Sixth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

Homily preached at 8 a.m. Said, and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Sirach 15:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Psalm 119:1-8; Matthew 5:21-37

God, give us hearts to feel and love. Take away our hearts of stone,

and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

Several years ago, Elena and went on a multi-day hike in the Olympic National Park in Washington state.  We were walking in early June, just as the snow and the ice began to clear from the higher elevations of the trail.  It was beautiful, and the walking was hard—multiple highpoints in the trail followed by lowpoints.  We occasionally saw mountain goats impossibly pasted to opposite cliffs and hills.  Just shy of Bogachiel Peak, we came up over a rise in the trail.  Elena was a minute or so ahead of me, and stopped at the small trail summit.  I heard her gasp, and then start weeping.  I thought she had injured herself on the sharp rocks that protruded on the sides of the trail.  When I caught up, I came up over the rise and realized what had happened.   

There, laid out before us was our first full view of the entire Seven Lakes Basin, shocking and overwhelming in its exquisite beauty and suddenness.  I took my breath in sharply as well and smiled as I realized her sobs were those of joy.  The rocky terrain of the large bowl-like basin spread out below us but still above the tree line was covered with brilliantly shining fields and blocks of ice and snow.  The sky was a light blue at the horizon, reflecting the glowing snow, gradually washing into to a deep indigo, almost violet, directly over our heads.  All seven lakes were still frozen, a sharp unnatural and brilliant turquoise that neither of us had ever seen before or have seen since, a color that seemed to lie behind and beneath all the other colors in this glorious scene.  We both stood in silence, weeping for the stark beauty of this place, and of joy of being alive, part of this landscape. 

To this day, when I need to use a meditative technique to calm and center myself, I go in my mind to that place and time, my “safe place,” standing there with Elena, being caressed by the brisk breeze tinged with turquoise and ice, looking out over silence and beauty.    

Today is a National Interfaith Teach-in and Preach-in on the subject of climate change, organized in part by one of the deans of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco. Our 9:00 am forum gave an overview of the issue in its technical details.   

Some people question whether human activity has caused climate change and argue that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would cause a needless drag on the economy.  They want to protect certain businesses or activities that might be harmed by effective action against climate change, or read the Bible in such a way that they cannot accept that true planet-wide catastrophe might result from human activity.  They might see this preach-in as a partisan act that reduces the Church to a political action committee.

Not so! Almost all scientists in the field agree that climate change is real, that our energy use over the last 200 years have freed enough carbon into the atmosphere to substantially raise the overall temperature of the planet.  A melting of the polar ice caps, of large areas of permafrost, and glaciers worldwide has begun, accelerating the problem.  It is not just the problem that our local ski resort, Mount Ashland, has yet to open this year and will probably not open, perhaps ever.  It is not just the problem of the catastrophic drought in California and the harm this will wreak on agricultural production.   Human-induced climate change on a global scale appears to be here, and unless controlled and rolled back, threatens the planet with major extinctions and human society with overwhelming dislocations and disasters.  Given the stakes, erring on the side of protecting the planet trumps almost any other considerations. 

This is an issue where God calls us to account. Our role in God’s creation is a central theme of Holy Scripture.    Genesis says we have stewardship over the whole of creation (1:28).  St. Paul (Rom 1:19-20) says that the natural world, including us, reveals God, and visibly reflects his invisible power and divinity.  That is what I think Elena and I were feeling that day in the Olympics.   Paul also calls us “partners with God” (2 Cor 6:1) whose task it is, among others, to “repair” or “heal” creation (Rom 8:18-28).     

The biblical story of Noah gives us a mythical example where human activity causes the destruction of the natural creation with only a few surviving because of God’s love (Gen 6:5-8; 7:16).  Such destruction so troubles the storyteller that he ends with a somewhat fanciful explanation of where rainbows come from:  God promises that never again will all creatures be destroyed because of human activity (Gen 8:21-22).  Some take this as an ace in the hole—God promised with the rainbow that we won’t go extinct because of climate change or because of nuclear holocaust.  I wouldn’t be so sure.  I think it foolish to court catastrophe because we think we have some divine promise against harm, especially one given in an etiological myth.  There are too many cases right in the Bible of the supposedly “divinely protected” meeting their doom.

The story of the Tower of Babel gives us another mythical case where human activity distorting the world as God intended, leads to the complete overthrow of the most advanced world society (Gen 11).

At the far other end of the Bible, in the Revelation of John, there is another myth of destruction, this one set in the coming end time where God will set all things right in the world.  There, because of human wickedness, seven angels blow trumpets, and with each blast, a third of the earth is burnt up, a third of the sea is turned to blood and its living creatures killed, a third of all fresh waters become bitter and deadly, and so forth.  Again, here human activity upsets the order of nature as God created, and disaster on a global scale occurs. 

I am not saying that these passages predict or prophesy our current environmental problems.  All I am saying is that the Bible teaches us that conformity to the intention of God in creating us and the world about us is essential if we are to avoid disaster. 

Today’s scriptures are all about responsibility and moral agency:  Paul wants us to avoid faction and the conceit that our way to God is the only way. Matthew’s Jesus teaches that obedience to Law is only the first step in conforming to God’s intentions.  The reading from Sirach emphasizes moral agency and responsibility in stark terms: 

“[God] has placed before you fire and water;
stretch out your hand for whichever you choose.
Before each person are life and death,
and whichever one chooses will be given. (Sirach  15:16-17)

The Book of Deuteronomy puts it this way: 

“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity” (Deut 30:15). 

Respecting creation and protecting nature is not mere sentimentality or romanticism.   It cannot be reduced to a naïve fundamentalism that would argue “if God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings!” 

 

Rather, it is profound Christian doctrine, expressed well in the Middle Ages, when theologians like Thomas Aquinas and mystics like Meister Eckhart talked about a great chain of being. Contemporary Franciscan monk and contemplative Richard Rohr writes:

“The Great Chain of Being was the medieval metaphor for ecology before we spoke of ecosystems! This was [an] attempt to speak of the circle of life, the interconnectedness of all things on the level of pure “Being.” If God is Being Itself … then the “Great Chain” became a way of teaching and preserving the inherent dignity of all things that participate in that Divine Being in various ways. It was not intended to teach hierarchy, as much as inherent sacrality, continuity, and communality.  …

[A]ll things [held] together in an enchanted universe.

“To stop recognizing the [reflection of God] in any one link of the chain was to allow the entire coherence to fall apart! It would soon become a disenchanted universe. If we could not see the sacred in nature and creatures, we soon would not see it in ourselves, and finally we would not be able to see it at all.  …

“This is the way they saw it:

Link 1 – The firmament/Earth/minerals within the Earth

Link 2 – The waters upon the Earth (snow, ice, water, steam, mist)

Link 3 – The plants, trees, flowers, and foods that grow upon the Earth

Link 4 – The living animals on the Earth, in the skies, and in the waters

Link 5 – The human species, capable of reflecting on all the other links

Link 6 – The world of angels, and the perfect communion of those who have passed over

Link 7 – The Divine Mystery Itself.” 

I cannot tell you how we can fix human-induced climate change.  Others with much more knowledge than I are hard pressed to come up with solutions, and of those proposed, few appear wholly satisfactory.  Global ecology suffers from the tragedy of the commons, where what is everyone’s responsibility in principle ends up being no one’s business in practice.  The ethics are complicated: intergenerationally, where our abuse of nature to our benefit harms those who come after us, and internationally, where we want  other nations to eschew the abusive path of development we took, yet are not willing to give up even a little of the wealth and ease we gained thereby.  But the fact remains that if we have benefited from the industrial revolution and modern economy, which has released millions of tons of carbon into the air over the last centuries, we have some moral responsibility here.   

At the very least, we need to notify our elected leaders that we are deeply concerned about this and consider it a key matter needing immediate and effective attention.  We need to act corporately as well as individually.  Limiting our own individual carbon footprint might not seem to be much of a solution, but many small acts will make some dent in the problem:  giving up the second family car if possible, contributing the cost of an airfare we give up to carbon sequestration efforts.  This looks like a problem that can only be corrected by making many dents, some small, some large. 

Sisters and brothers, we are part of the Great Chain of Being.  God is reflected in the world about us, including us, and we have a responsibility for it all.  And it is a matter of fire or water, of life or death. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Common Life (Mid-week Message)

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Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Common Life

February 13, 2014

St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, said,

“I have a serious concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our Master. I’ll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other. You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common” (1 Cor 1:10, The Message)

The Corinthian Church he wrote to was divided by parties, cliques, and incipient sects.  Much of his letter seeks to address specific points of division or teach an overall way of getting along in the Church. 

I often hear from people that what brought them to Trinity was the good community life offered, the fact that people in the parish care for one another and truly seek to live the Gospel.  I see everyday evidence of this, and feel very blessed to be called to minister to such a community.  As Jesus said, “By your love for one another shall people know that you are my disciples.” 

I do on occasion, however, hear from people in the parish who have been deeply hurt by others.  I suspect this usually comes from thoughtlessness rather than deliberate, intentional nastiness.   The most common type of injury stems from a simple lack of courtesy, where one person seems to denigrate or at least devalue the gifts and tastes of another.  This might take the form of a general expression of dislike or contempt for certain kinds of art or music, or styles of worship.  It might be phrased prettily as a “helpful suggestion” for improvement. 

Such commentary comes with the turf, perhaps, in a theater town and a parish with a lot of musical talent.  We all love to be critics.  Often, I think, the person making the comment is unaware that the person to whom they are speaking deeply loves the music or art in question, maybe has spent years honing a skill in it, or is profoundly moved by the style of worship—simple or complex—thus belittled.  Sometimes the critic is aware of the other person’s attachment to the thing criticized, but feels a need to set the other person straight, or at least establish his or her own ‘expertise’ in the matter being judged.

But there is no love in judgment.   Such off hand remarks by those in community with us can deeply hurt, sometimes worse than intended insults by opponents.  The problem is that often the thing ‘corrected,’ belittled or criticized is something that truly matters to the other person, something where they find joy and feel God, or something to which God is calling them.   Disrespecting someone else’s calling from God is rightly understood by people as dishonoring them. 

So in the spirit of Paul, let me repeat a couple of basic rules for us to get along well in community and build our common life in Christ: 

1)   I must always try to be open to things that are not my “cup of tea.”  

2)   I should try to phrase my judgments on art, music, or worship style in terms of what I find attractive, not what I find unattractive.

3)   I should feel free to pursue my calling and my passion, and let my work and art speak for itself. 

4)   I should generally refrain from playing the teacher, opinion leader, or critic.  If asked or tasked to take on such a role, I should limit it to the specific demands of the request or tasking.  As a teacher, leader, or critic, I must always try to build up and not tear down, remembering that the best pedagogy is empowering someone to learn on their own and correct their own errors. 

5)   I should seek to honor Christ in every person, as I promised in the baptismal covenant, regardless of our differences in politics, taste, morals, or backgrounds. 

I have found in my own life that every time I have let myself learn a new form of expression, whether musical, artistic, or in worship, I have always been enriched.  When I was young, I found what I indiscriminately booked together as “classical” music too hard and inaccessible.  Fortunately, in college, I fell in love with a woman of impeccable taste and was motivated to learn the delicate and joyful art of appreciating fine music.   In fact, I became something of a snob.  I later developed a real prejudice against what I characterized at the time as “hands in the air, repetitive, happy-clappy” PRAISE music.  But I served in parishes with Evangelicals who loved this kind of music, and performed and led it.  I came to appreciate it, and today, two of the hymns I thus learned have become favorites, always deeply moving to me.

We are very blessed in Ashland and at Trinity to have such gifted people in our midst, and such diversity.  Let’s remember to treat ourselves and others gently, and always try to build each other up and respect the gifts and callings God gives each of us. 

 Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

God at Work Where We Least Expect (Gospel for Epiphany 4A preached 5A)

God at Work Where We Least Expect

9 February 2014

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

Homily preached at 8 a.m. Said, and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 58:1-9a; Psalm 112:1-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-12; Matthew 5:1-12*,13-20

(*These verses are from Epiphany IV’s lectionary, superseded last week by the Candlemas readings.)

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so people persecuted the prophets who were before you.” 

Matthew 5.3-12

God, give us hearts to feel and love. Take away our hearts of stone,

and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

What would the Beatitudes look like if they were written to reflect the values we see in the popular culture around us?

Blessed are the wealthy; whoever dies with the most toys wins. 

Blessed are the young; dying young beats rusting and growing old. 

Blessed are the fashionable, for they can look down on others. 

Blessed are celebrities; they are the beautiful people.

Blessed are the hip; they can be ironic without the unhip getting the joke.

Blessed are the thin; they are never the butt of fat jokes,

Blessed are the powerful, for they can have their own their way.  

Blessed are the well armed, for they can stand their ground.

Blessed are the violent, because no one messes with them.  

Jesus’ beatitudes suffer from our familiarity with them.  We hear their first words and quickly lapse into a warm feeling of devotion and stop listening.   Like the people at the back of the crowd in the Monty Python film, we hear only bits and pieces, and at the end smile and say, “oh, that’s nice … blessed are the cheesemakers. Good chaps, they.”

We think the beatitudes are moral targets, the way Jesus wants us to be: be-attitudes.  Not so!  Beatus in Latin means “blessed.”  A beatitude is just a phrase that starts with the word “blessed.”  Another word is macarism, because in Greek they begin with the word makarios, happy. 

Jesus’ society, like ours, praised certain things, and called certain people happy or blessed.  But Jesus turns these on their head.  “It’s a good thing to be hungry, it’s a good thing to be poor, it’s a good thing to mourn, to be excluded.”  Really?

The Gospel of Luke gives its own beatitudes, less familiar. As a result, they jump out more clearly: 

"Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you,

 … because that’s how they treated the prophets…   

But woe to you rich, for you have already received your consolation.

Woe to you that are full now, for you shall go hungry.

Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”

Luke 6:20-26

Obviously, whatever it was that the historical Jesus said, it troubled his followers.  Both Matthew and Luke interpret these sayings in very different ways.

Matthew “spiritualizes” them, turning “hungry” into “hungry for righteousness,” and “poor” to “poor in spirit.”  Jesus just can’t be talking about the literally poor or hungry can he?  The sayings become a series of moral prescriptions, part of a New Law announced by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount:  a New Moses coming down from Sinai.

In contrast, Luke adds a “now” to each misfortune marked as “blessed,” and adds a “then” phrase of how God will turn it around in the future.  These are not moral nostrums, but affirmations of how God will straighten things out.  Luke also adds woes to counterbalance the macarisms.  He puts all in the second person, “blessed are (or woe to) you,” aiming them at us, part of Luke’s story of faith and grace in everyday life.  Appropriately, they are not part of a Sermon on the Mount (of God), but of a Sermon on the Plain (of ordinary life). 

This is more than a simple “Happy are they who,” or “How blessed are they who…”   The idea is more like  “How favored by God (or honored) are the ones who.”  “Woe to those who” is more like “Shame on those who,” or “How outside God’s grace are those who…” 

Jesus turns conventional views on their head.  Some things, let’s admit it, are just bad:  starvation, hardship, sorrow at a loved one’s death, social exclusion.   Some things are just good: having enough food and money to provide for yourself and family, being well.  But Jesus is not so sure. 

It’s easy to think that God blesses good people with good things and punishes bad people with bad things.  But Jesus knows that bad things can happen to the good and that the evil can prosper.  He says, “You misunderstand what a blessing or a curse is. Things are not as they appear.” 

Announcing the coming of God’s reign, Jesus sees God at work exactly where we expect not to find him: hunger, yearning, dependence, and vulnerability are all signs of God’s active presence and saving work, not marks of God’s curse or punishment.

It is important, profound theology.  He is not making light of suffering, or saying, “it’s not all that bad.”   He knows that hunger, grinding poverty, misery, deprivation, grief, and deadly exclusion inflicted on marginalized people are all truly intolerable and not what God wants.   He is not trivializing suffering, but magnifying grace.   God is the answer to, not the source, of horror.

Isaiah 45:15 says “Truly you are a God who hides himself, the God and Savior of Israel.”  St. Thomas Aquinas draws from this to develop his doctrine of Deus Absconditus, the Hidden God.   God by definition is hidden, but if you have faith in God, it is God whom you must wholly trust. Martin Luther later places this in the context of a larger doctrine of Grace.  The basic idea is “God’s nature is to be at loving work where we least expect.”

Horror, Evil, in the world is not evidence that God does not exist.  Rather, the fact that we revolt against it and find it intolerable is one of the strongest evidences of God.  Our idea of justice and right cannot grow merely from this messed up world we live in.  Rather, it comes from God himself, imprinted in the creation of God bearing God’s image, written in our hearts.  Immanuel Kant expresses this when he says that he finds evidence for God not just in how the stars are moved above, but also in how our hearts and minds are moved.  

Buddhism teaches that all suffering comes from attachment; getting rid of all desire will end suffering.   Christianity teaches that while we must learn acceptance and patience, it is all right to feel the discomfort and pain caused by need and dissatisfaction with wrong.  In fact, it is essential because God is at work in such need and discomfort.  

Each of the macarisms includes dissatisfaction: hunger, grief, need.  Mourning is unhappiness at the loss of a loved one, not a state of acceptance.  Neediness and hunger do not describe satisfaction, but desire for something different that what we now have. 

Reinhold Niebuhr's great "Serenity Prayer" is misnamed.  It is not a prayer only for serenity to accept the things we cannot change.  It also prays for courage to change the things we can.  It also asks for wisdom to know to distinguish between the two.  

God at work in the day-to-day things of life, even its horrors, is a key idea in Jesus’ preaching, his announcement that “God’s Reign is in your midst”. 

If we put the idea into modern words and references, we see the point.  It should shock us into recognition of God at work in all sorts of situations where we normally only see horror: 

God favors those with AIDS; he is at their bedside and in their prayers.   

God favors outcasts, because he at least includes them.    

God favors the abused, because he himself was abused.

God favors the powerless, because he empowers them. 

God favors the homeless, because he gives them shelter. 

God favors “losers” because he turns tables on everyone.

God favors the addicted, because he relieves them of cravings and obsessions.

God favors the solitary, because he brings them into community and family. 

God favors “nobodies,” because he knows them each by name. 

God favors women, because she knows what they go through. 

Shame on you who have big houses, because you mistake them for your true home. 

Shame on you celebrities, because you are already being forgotten.

Shame on you powerful, because you must struggle to maintain power, and your fall will be great. 

Shame on you Empires, because you are going bankrupt fighting your wars.

Shame on you righteous, because everyone know your secret sins. 

Shame on you fashion plates, because you will have to go naked.

Shame on you brilliant minds, because senility awaits us all. 

Shame on you beautiful people, because you will grow ugly and die like everyone else.

Chaplain Mike Spencer before his death from cancer in 2010, wrote in his popular blog Internet Monk his version of what the beatitudes as proclamation mean:

“Even if you are spiritually bankrupt (poor in spirit),

Even if you are overwhelmed by the sadness of life in this world (those who mourn),

Even if you are the kind of person who doesn’t stand up for yourself or assert your rights (meek),

Even if you are fed up with and broken by injustice (those who hunger and thirst for righteousness),

Even if your heart is soft, you are always giving to others, and easily taken advantage of by needy people (merciful),

Even if you are so concerned with having a clear conscience that others think you a prude (pure in heart),

Even if you are always trying to pacify others and care more about diffusing conflict than any other objective (peacemakers),

Even if your convictions and actions get you in constant trouble with those who set the rules (persecuted),

God’s blessings [are yours! …] No human condition, no matter how hopeless …, no matter how despised …, [or] ‘unsuccessful’ or insignificant others may deem it, disqualifies [you] from God’s grace … The last shall be first.”

So what applies here to us?  First, God expects us to be dissatisfied with things that are just plain wrong.  We should be part of the social and moral conscience of our peer group, our colleagues, and our age.  Next, God expects us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.  God’s grace must work through us.  Third, in our prayer life and meditation, we must more fully empathize with those suffering, and redouble our efforts at the corporeal acts of mercy and organizing for social justice to alleviate hunger, poverty, persecution, and disease. 

“You think I’ve gotten things upside down?” Jesus says.  “Look around you and tell me who is getting things backward.”  If we love God and trust God, we too must actively engage with evil, in order that grace more fully abound. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.