“The Ethos of Blessedness”
Psalm 34:1-10, 22 and Matthew 5:1-12
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
6/16/24
1I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
2My soul makes its boast in the Lord;
let the humble hear and be glad.
3O magnify the Lord with me,
and let us exalt his name together.
4I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
5Look to him, and be radiant,
so your faces shall never be ashamed.
6This poor soul cried and was heard by the Lord
and was saved from every trouble.
7The angel of the Lord encamps
around those who fear him and delivers them.
8O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who take refuge in him.
9O fear the Lord, you his holy ones,
for those who fear him have no want.
10The young lions suffer want and hunger,
but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
22The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be
condemned. (NRSV)
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2And he began to speak and taught them, saying:
3“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5“Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7“Blessed are the merciful,
for they will receive mercy.
8“Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9“Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of
righteousness
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
12Rejoice and be glad,
for your reward is great in heaven,
for in the same way they persecuted
the prophets who were before you. (NRSV)
Since I’ve been in Jonesborough, one three-word phrase has become a common punch line: Bless your heart. Just a reminder: In the south, to bless someone’s heart is not always a compliment. It’s code for, Friend, you ain’t got the sense God gave a lug nut.
From members of this church, I have received two pillows and one paperweight with Bless Your Heart written or stitched on them. So, honestly, I’ve probably overdone it and created a monster that will never die.
“Blessing” has become a slippery concept. Whether in condescending idiom, a verbal pat on the head after a sneeze, or some winning team’s locker room where God’s name is taken in vain more dangerously and tediously than it ever has in genuine anger and pain, we have so trivialized and materialized the idea of blessedness that the Beatitudes may ring hollow in our over-blessed/under-blessed ears.
In Luke, Jesus offers his most famous sermon on a “level place,” where every valley is lifted up, every hill is made low, and everyone stands on equal footing.
In Matthew, Jesus goes up a mountain. Matthew wants us to imagine Jesus as the second Moses, high and lifted up, and giving a new Torah. But Jesus does not give commandments. He pronounces particular blessings on particular people who seem anything but blessed. In doing so, Jesus peels back the eschatological curtain and scandalizes human reason. He reveals that the realm of God does not arrive in glorious conquest but through “the least of these.”
Do you want to know true blessedness? says Jesus. Then look at “the poor in spirit…theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Look at] those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…the merciful…the peacemakers…” Look at them and see God!
True blessedness begins with what Frederick Buechner calls “The Magnificent Defeat”—God’s radical and painfully gracious overcoming of the soul-rust of pride, fear, selfishness, and anything else that blocks the doors of humility and gratitude.1 “The Magnificent Defeat” was a sermon Buechner preached on Jacob wrestling that mysterious stranger on the banks of the Jabbok, a struggle that Jacob finally concedes, with one condition: “I will not let you go,” he says, “unless you bless me.”
The liberty of blessedness begins in the sheer stillness of defeat, and the unwelcome awareness that we cannot create lasting freedom and wholeness by ourselves. The Beatitudes reveal the path of radical Christian spirituality, the path of subversive love, the path by which the human heart, mind, and spirit move from the immaturity of an ego-centric existence toward the freedom and wholeness of intimate reunion with God through the embodied prayer of relationship with neighbor and earth.
Brian McLaren, teacher, pastor, author, and now dean of the faculty at the Center for Action and Contemplation, views the Beatitudes as foundational for understanding our God-imaged selves and our mission as disciples of Jesus. To illustrate how revolutionary the Beatitudes are, McLaren has written his own version of the opposite of each beatitude. Listen to a few of his anti-beatitudes; and beware, while some are tongue-in-cheek, others have teeth:
Blessed are the rich and successful, for they shall consume more than their fair share.
Blessed are those who laugh, for they shall inherit amusement.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for status, for they will be full of themselves.
Blessed are those who launch preemptive attacks, because they will never be bored or caught off guard.
Blessed are those who persecute others for righteousness’ sake, for they have a great future in talk radio…
And blessed are you when people honor you and flatter you and give you all kinds of extraordinary compensation on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great right now in the religious-industrial complex, and in the same way, they celebrated the inquisitors before you.2
“What [we] consider blessed,” says McLaren, “will be the ethos [we] desire and imitate.”
By definition, ethos refers to a culture’s accepted ways of thinking, and being in relationship.
“[Our] ethos,” says McLaren, “will determine [our] ethics…[and] our ethics will create our future.”3
Any future that depends on an ethos of consumerism, militarism, authoritarianism, or winner-take-all triumphalism is a future that will not hold. For proof, look at the Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, European colonialism, German fascism. Just ask American slave owners and carpetbaggers alike.
Whenever human institutions equate blessedness with individual privilege and tribal supremacy over others, they will be consumed by consumption and humiliated by pride. And they’ll never hear Jesus’ call to poverty of spirit, to meekness and mercy. They’ll never follow him into the costly and rigorous work of helping to create more peaceable and just communities.
Friends, hear the Good News: The Beatitudes convey the very power of resurrection for humankind. They give us the means by which to die to self. Then they breathe new and lasting life back into us.
When working as an attorney in South Africa in the 1890’s, a young Hindu from India named Mohandas Gandhi recognized the blessedness of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. He decided that if Christians really followed that teaching, he wanted in. So, one Sunday, Gandhi wandered into a Christian church. And immediately, the dark-skinned immigrant was physically thrown out into the street. One can only imagine that afterward, the congregation inside that building proceeded to sing praises and offer prayers to the God of love. Who is being revealed in Jesus. Who preaches the Sermon on the Mount.
While Gandhi did not become Christian, one would be hard-pressed to find another human being in the last 140 years who more fully and more graciously embodied an enriching poverty of spirit; who mourned humanity’s brokenness with healing love; who felt an aching hunger and thirst for righteousness for all humankind; who possessed a world-transforming meekness and a luxuriant purity of heart; who displayed a fierce and often disruptive commitment to peace; and who endured persecution with such determined love for those who persecuted him.
It seems to me that Gandhi recognized Jesus’ point better than most people in the power-coddled, post-Constantinian Church ever did—that point being that God calls and empowers us to become an eschatological community of diverse individuals who come together, intentionally, to live into a healing and redeeming relationship with God and with all Creation.
Our purpose is to live the ethos of true Blessedness, the life of Resurrection—the life of humility, simplicity, and grateful service.
In living the ethos of true Blessedness, we become more fully human, and more fully the Body of Christ. And we discover that being that Body means inhabiting, through better and worse, and for the sake of others, the mystery of God’s eternal realm, which is our true home—our past, present, and future home.
1Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, Harper Collins, 1966, pp10-18.
2http://www.slideshare.net/brianmclaren/getting-blessed-new
3Ibid.
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