Sunday Musings at the Cottage

Blessed

This Sunday’s lectionary reading is from the Beatitudes found in the Gospel of Luke. These few verses are Jesus’ central teaching, a vision of a peaceable and just world. Below is a visual meditation of the blessings followed by some paragraphs adapted from my book Grateful. I went back and re-read what I wrote and once again felt the beauty and the soul-disturbing challenge Jesus left us in these blessings.

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

Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.

Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

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What are blessings? The English noun “blessing” means “gift from God” and is derived from the verb “to bless,” “to hallow, or to make holy.” Eventually, “bless” became associated with “bliss,” meaning merriment, happiness, and favor. Thus, “blessing” came to be used in two senses—as both a sacred gift and something that makes one happy. Gifts and gratitude are always of a piece. Blessings and thanks go together.

The Beatitudes, however, can be challenging. Few give thanks for poverty, hunger, or grief as Jesus did in his sermon. Most contemporary people have a very different idea of what makes a blessed life. Money, beauty, power, achievement, and fame—we hold these things in esteem. If only we had them, or just one of them, we would be blessed. We identify “blessings” as material things and consumer goods.

The Greek word for “blessing” ascribed to Jesus in the Beatitudes is makarios, meaning both “happiness” and “favor.” A few Bible translations actually replace “blessed” with “happy,” reading “Happy are the poor” and “Happy are the hungry.” To understand blessings as mere happiness, however, often results in a strange view of blessings: it seems to say poverty or starvation is a gift, and we should be happy to have it.

The alternate sense, however, opens a new understanding of the relationship between blessing and gratitude. Blessing is not just happiness, but favor. In the Christian scriptures, the word specifically means God’s favor, often called “grace” or “abundance.” “Favored are the poor” or “Gifted are the poor” would be equally valid ways of making sense of makarios.

The sense of the Beatitudes is not “If you are poor, God will bless you” or “If you do nice things for the poor, God will bless you.” Nor is it “Be happy for poverty.” Instead, “Blessed are the poor” could be read, “God privileges the poor.” If you are poor, you are favored by God. God’s gifts are with you.

This would have shocked Jesus’s hearers on that day long ago. Blessing was beyond the reach of everyday people. “The blessed” in Greek actually became interchangeable with “the gods” and “the elite” and meant something like “those worthy of honor.” Thus, the “the blessed” were the big shots of the ancient world, the upper crust, those who lived above all the worries of normal existence. The poor, “the losers,” had to live with shame.  Even back then, the blessed were the rich, not the poor.

In the Roman Empire, the world in which the Beatitudes were first preached, the richer and more powerful you were, the more valor and virtue you possessed, the closer you were to the emperor at the top of the social hierarchy, the more blessed you were, and the more blessings you could (if you chose to) bestow on those beneath you.

When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” he overturned the hierarchical structure of blessing. The Beatitudes move blessing from a feeling — happiness — to a social ethic of radical equality. God gives gifts to everyone, but most especially to the vulnerable and those at the bottom of society. The rich, the sated, the mirthful, the proud have a very hard time understanding this. Gifts are not only for the few, but wildly distributed for all.

And the people at the bottom? History’s losers? God’s favor resides with them. God has uniquely blessed them. What is the proper response to this? Gratitude. Blessing is an invitation to give thanks — and a vision of a very different sort of world.

(This selection is adapted from Grateful, pp. 140-142)

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INSPIRATION

We bless you, who have spelt your blessings out,
And set this lovely lantern on a hill
Lightening darkness and dispelling doubt
By lifting for a little while the veil.
For longing is the veil of satisfaction
And grief the veil of future happiness
We glimpse beneath the veil of persecution
The coming kingdom’s overflowing bliss
— Malcolm Guite


Vulnerable God,
you challenge the powers that rule this world
through the needy, the compassionate,
and those who are filled with longing.
Make us hunger and thirst to see right prevail,
and single-minded in seeking peace;
that we may see your face
and be satisfied in you.
— Janet Morley

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