It’s a funny thing to sit and write these words on a Monday knowing they won’t be read until the subsequent Wednesday or Thursday and realizing full well that on the intervening Tuesday is nothing short of the U.S. presidential election. What can be said today that will be of any use to you during these very fluid 48 to 72 hours and beyond? What words have any lasting power in this transitory moment?
As I reflected upon this question, I found that the Beatitudes kept bubbling up in prayer.
Blessed are the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, those who have been insulted and persecuted. Blessed are the poor and the hungry and the weeping and the excluded.
I wonder if — in reviewing these past many months — we can glimpse ourselves, our own actions and desires and shortcomings, in Jesus’ blessing. I wonder if we can see the efforts and actions and hopes and failures of others. Certainly, we have witnessed no shortage of insults, no lack of weeping; we encounter the hungry and the poor; we pray to be peacemakers; we desire a clean heart.
Jesus calls us blessed and then challenges us to be a blessing to others, to share God’s blessing with the world. Our pastor at my parish this very weekend reminded us that ours is a God of abundance, a God of delight, and that God desires to collaborate with us in the work of sharing that abundance.
God’s abundance is not something to be hoarded or held up as a prize. Rather, God gives freely so that we — made in God’s own image and likeness — freely give. The graces we receive are not points on a scoreboard, dictating winners and losers. No, the graces we receive are to be shared, given with the same gregarious generosity with which they were first given.
We turn to God in gratitude for all God gives, trusting that God continues to work in and through us. And then, knowing that we are indeed blessed by God, we turn and bless others.
The Beatitudes don’t represent a static social order. If God has blessed us as peacemakers — and consequently called us God’s own children — then we need to go to others in peace and invite them to join us, to assume the moniker of peacemaker themselves. God’s family only grows! The same holds for the merciful and the clean of heart; God never tires of showing mercy, of revealing God’s very self.
On and on it goes. The Beatitudes are a challenge and an invitation to go out into the world, to our families and friends, to strangers and rivals, to all people and to remind the world that God desires to rain down blessings upon us all.
This work demands each of us do our part. It does not come to pass if we hoard our blessings and turn to others in judgement, distrust and contempt. The reign of God is a vision we either continually — day by day, hour by hour — realize in our world, or one we ignore and let whither.
This vision, this invitation, this God who desires to bless us again and again and again, will be no less true today, tomorrow, next week or next year. And so, no matter the course of events this week or next, let us recommit ourselves to receive God’s many blessings in trust and gratitude.
And then, full of God’s grace, let us invite others to receive those same blessings and thus build up the reign of God, to be peacemakers and to consequently remember our common identity as God’s own children.
Get “Now Discern This” in your inbox every Wednesday. Sign up here.
