Sermon for March 17, 2019 | Lent 2

The Beatitudes and the Politics of Grief

Throughout Lent, I’m reading the beatitudes and think about them politically. Today we deal specifically with the promise about loss: blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. On the surface, it sounds so awful to my ears. It reminds me of the things people say when they don’t know what to say. Like when people say, “Everything happens for a reason. Others have it worse than you. Are you over her yet? She’s been gone a long time. She wouldn’t want you to be so sad. God wanted her more than you. Heaven needed another angel. God will never give you more than you can handle.” When we make thoughtless comments in our own discomfort, we try to minimize and fix another’s grief, but only manage to make it worse. It’s a way for people to disconnect from the excruciating pain another feels when someone dies.

I think we need a different lens to understand the beatitudes. How can Jesus so boldly claim that those who mourn are actually blessed? It’s one of those surprise reversals Jesus is known for. Jesus redefines suffering. Those who suffer are the ones who flourish. You can only experience it once you realize the world's present regime is passing away. The violence. The hatred. The greed. The leaders who satisfy themselves at the expense of the poor. The politicians who pretend to care for the downtrodden while taking away their rights. The terrorist who go into houses of worship and murder people of faith. Jesus says a new world is growing. Wholeness, peace, and compassionate justice have been planted. In this new reality, the so-called losers are the ones who flourish. Flourishers have a hunger and thirst for God to set the world to right. For Jesus, all this hungering and thirsting for righteousness, all this poverty, grief, and persecution, sets hearts in line to help a God’s new aims for the world.

Blessed are those who mourn. They shall be comforted. We all bear the ravages of grief and the toll of sickness in our bodies and in our relationships. Most religions deal with the question of human finitude. For the Buddhist, pain is inevitable. Growing old. Illness. Dying. Even love is full of pain. If we are all going to die, then how do we keep on living? How can humans be saved from pain? The Buddha asked: What might happen if we stop struggling against the pain in our life? For Chinese Taoism, the sacred principle behind the universe is like a river. You can choose to swim against the current or you can choose to be saved by simply going with the flow. For Ancient Judaism, the answer was to turn to community and guarantee the survival of the tribe. Through keeping covenant, Jews are saved as a people for a prosperous and reproductive life here on earth. The basic problem with human nature, as Islam sees it, is injustice. The Prophet Mohammad’s world was torn apart by blood feuds between rival clans, threatening his people’s security and prosperity. Muhammad’s revelation demanded that every person submit to God alone, leaving behind vengeance killings and other injustices in favor of a single consistent sacred law, regardless of that person’s social station or tribal affiliation. For Islam, salvation is achieved when the just society is established.

Christians also deal with human finitude. Christianity taught that because of human sin, human life is hard and short. The fix is accepting the atoning work of Christ, enjoying abundant life here on earth and eternal life in the hereafter. Jesus will return, gather the faithful and bring them to Heaven. We hear it in our reading from 1 Thessalonians. Paul writes to a little church in modern-day Greece. The members of the church have been persecuted for their faith. Paul has reports that they are losing their way. So he writes a letter to encourage them. Towards the end of the letter he says:

And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope . . . We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died.  For the Lord will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

Christianity has spawned many movements of people who wait out the final return of the Lord. In America, some of them were Utopian communities. Others, like the Adventists, are still with us today. They all play on a theme that has been with us for a long time: Jesus will return and reward the virtuous for their courage. Jesus will also punish evil-doers, with a clear separation between saints and sinners. A future moment will come when all tears will be wiped away, sorrow forgotten, joy restored, and the faithful will live in the light of God forever. We hear it in Ozark Mountain hymns like “I’ll fly away,” written by a man who dreamed of soaring away from the cotton fields of Oklahoma.

But wait a minute. I’m not a persecuted Christian. In fact, I am blessed. By pure luck, I’m a straight, white, married man with access to the privileges of the dominant culture. I don’t know much about persecution and enslavement. Here’s what I do know. I know pain. I know loneliness and depression. I know grief. I’ve sat with and listened to a hundred people who grieve from the depths of their being. I’ve witnessed the sorrow of prejudice against my friends, and my children. I’ve grieved with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends who suffer the trauma of treatment as second-class citizens. And during it all, I am not going to wait to fly away from earth to my heavenly home for life to get better. I want to know salvation NOW. I want those who grieve to flourish, NOW. I want the world to experience healing NOW. I want tears to be wiped away NOW, sorrow comforted NOW, love’s joy restored NOW. I think this is what God wants, too. But I’m not just going to wait around for it. So, I guess you and I will just have to help make this blessed human flourishing happen … NOW.

The urgency of our times means those who grieve are part of a political process. I’m not talking about joining a political party so you can get your individual preferences voted into power. Mourners take part in active civic engagement and collective deliberation about all matters affecting our community. And those who mourn … well, that’s everyone. There is no shortage of suffering. The blessing of grief has its greatest political impact every time suffering citizens gather in a public space to deliberate and decide about matters of collective concern. Power springs up whenever people get together and act together. Think on the opportunities we’ve had to watch this principle in action this week. We listened to those who mourn the deaths from gun violence and mass murder, and our young people who took to the streets demanding for sane gun laws this week. They build power and show us what it means to flourish when the odds are against them. Protesters gathered on the mall to grieve the killing of the Earth and demanded laws to combat climate change. They get together and act together. In their grief, they are blessed because they know what a new Earth really means for our survival and can show us the way there. We cry along with those who mourn the murder of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand by an ani-immigrant, anti-Muslim terrorist. Their vulnerable tears remind us that white supremacy is a sinful expression of power in the hands of haters. God’s new world invites those who mourn to help create powerful communities that flourish by going beyond our private self-interest. And that’s where we come in.

Faith disconnected from real life and real suffering is vanity. And vanity is a luxury that Christians can no longer afford in today’s world. That’s why I love this poem by the mystic Kabir. He lived around the year 1500 CE. Kabir was a Muslim who tried to reconcile Sufi Islam with Hinduism. He wanted people to leave aside the Qur'an and Vedas, and people’s entrenched assumptions, so they could follow the simple way of oneness with God. Here is one of his poems, translated by Robert Bly.

Friend, hope for the guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive.

What you call salvation belongs to the time before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you are alive,

Do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten—

That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

You will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now,

In the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is.

Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this:

When the Guest is being searched for,

It is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.

Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity

Did you hear what Kabir suggest? Jump into experience while you are still alive. If we don’t break our ropes NOW, how will it happen later? Don’t wait for some future healing of our mistakes and bad decisions. Don’t let pain paralyze us into inaction. What is found now is found later.

Without even being aware of it, we can easily slip into living life as if it were a rehearsal for the real thing. We only have this moment. You know where I get glimpses and little reminders of the reality of NOW? For me, it’s in the simplest treasures: A supporting hand upon my shoulder or a loving brush of my cheek; the softest whisper of truth spoken in adoration; the early morning orchestra of music from the birds outside my window; the refreshment of the breeze, the contagious laughter of those we love;  the pain of loss; the miracle of healing; the unstoppable toil for a better world; the constant reminders of how precious each moment truly is; the moments when I experience kindness and compassion.

Jump into experience while you are still alive.

Break the ropes

Plunge into truth

Fall into love.

Cry YES! To the immensity of life.

Say YES! To sharing the power of beauty.

Do this while mourning, and you are blessed.

As we become present to ourselves and God and others, we begin a journey without end. All we are asked to do is start down that road. NOW.

Sources:

http://progressivechristianity.org/resources/823/

http://uustoughtonma.org/Sermons/Archives/20020331-DancingWithEternity.htm

http://www.namethathymn.com/hymn-lyrics-detective-forum/index.php?a=vtopic&t=177

http://throughaglass.net/archives/2012/02/24/saving-my-life/

Roger Housden, Ten Poems to Change Your Life, pp. 53-62.

Ernest Best, The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, Blacks NT Commentary.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/

Sermon for March 10, 2019

The Beatitudes and the Politics of Poverty

Matthew 5:1-12; Matthew 25:40

“Then the King will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, anything you did for even the least of my people here, you also did for me.’”

So, here’s my problem with the beatitudes: for words that are supposed to be comforting, they don’t sound comforting at all. The voice in my head that says “I do not feel very blessed when I am poor, hungry, thirsty, or persecuted.” Going to a person struggling with poverty and telling them they are blessed with spiritual riches without doing anything to alleviate poverty is obnoxious. When Christians offer pity without addressing the systems and structures that allow 39.7 million people in our country to live in poverty, we deserve our reputation for being too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.

I can’t believe that when Jesus offered these words, they were meant to be carefree clichés, or condescending confirmations of human misery. Naming those who are poor, or those who are weak, or people who mourn as “blessed” was deliberately shocking. Jesus held a firm belief that the fulness of God’s new Reign was really on its way. Jesus believed he lived in the time of fulfillment. His words were urgent: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land—soon! Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy—soon!” We miss that urgency. Over the next few weeks, I want us to consider the beatitudes as political statements, not just spiritualized platitudes. I want to restore a sense of urgency to words that are so familiar to many of us, we don’t stop to think what they can mean today. We begin with the very first line, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Prepare our hearts, O God, to accept a Word. Silence in us any voices but your own, so that we may experience your Word and also do it; through the power of your Divine Spirit. Amen.

The American middle class is in trouble. Our incomes stagnate while the costs of life’s necessities continue to rise. Even for those with jobs, the promise of economic growth has failed to deliver. Income for the typical middle-class household has actually fallen over the past 10 years. For the past decade, Gallup has asked Americans about their biggest financial concern. Those in the middle class consistently say they are most worried about the high cost of living, lacking money to pay for medical care in the case of a serious illness or accident, and running out of money in retirement. Sadly, Americans have also been telling pollsters, even before the start of the 2018 Recession, that they think their children will be worse off than they are.

If the middle class is at risk, that means the American Economy has a growing population of at-risk families. Tens of millions of people live in poverty, although many refuse to think of themselves as “poor.” Some make daily choices as to which necessities they will have to live without. Many work part- or full-time, but on that basis, are still unable to lift their families out of poverty. Some lack the family, educational, and community support important for upward mobility. Although those living in poverty are particularly visible in cities, we know hidden poverty in suburban, small town, and rural areas can be just as painful. The poor are disproportionately women with their children. Systemic racism and sexism continue to influence the rate of poverty. There is nothing generous about our national definition of poverty. In 2019, the official poverty line for a family of four is $25,750, or about $125 per person per week. That’s the ceiling, not the average.  About 40% of poor U.S. families have incomes of less than half the poverty line. 33% of African-American children live in poverty. 33% of American Indian children live in poverty. A quarter of Hispanic or Latino children live in poverty.

Here is one of the problems: Instead of addressing the needs of the American poor and the shrinking middle class, American economics has taken the lion’s share of our impressive gross domestic product and invested in a far-reaching mission of income redistribution to the rich. The share of domestic income going to the middle class has been shrinking for decades. The poorest fifth of American households have seen their after-tax income increase by 18%. The richest fifth, have seen real income increases of 65%. For the top 1%, real income went up more than 2.5 times. America is now a land of economic insecurity for most, and a playground of unprecedented wealth for a small minority. We live in an unequal society where those on top can enforce their will against people who have less. Those on the bottom have little reason to believe they will get a fair shake. No wonder we sense that our politics are permeated by distrust.

If the economic arena becomes a reigning power for us, the question arises: in what or whom shall we place our trust and hope? We can’t place our hope in the GDP. We can’t place our hope in unlimited economic growth. Neither Wall Street, K Street, nor Madison Avenue have your family’s best interests on their agenda. And even though we’ve heard it before, it bears repeating: Money does not buy happiness. You may have heard the joke, “Those who say money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop!” The data indicate money really can’t buy happiness among the more affluent. Study after study indicate income is a weak measure of happiness. Do you know what produces happiness? The answer is complicated, but one answer is: “Other people.” We flourish in settings with warm, nurturing, and rewarding interpersonal relationships. We are at our best when we are giving, not getting.

In 1968, Robert Kennedy spoke about this. “Our Gross National Product . . . counts air pollution and cigarette advertising . . . it counts special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts . . . nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riot in our cities . . . and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet, the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our [relationships], the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom or our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything . . . except that which makes life worthwhile.”

As Christians, we need to think strongly about what Jesus said about God’s economics. That which we keep to ourselves, that which we hoard, that which we take at the expense of other’s survival, we keep from God. And what we give to the least of those among us, we give to God. Our faith provides a vantage point for critiquing any system of this world which falls short of what God intends: Human impoverishment, excessive accumulation and consumerism driven by greed, gross economic exploitation.  God stands in judgment of those in authority who thrive at the expense of others. God moves with compassion to deliver the impoverished from all that oppresses them.

From the vantage point of faith, here is one vision for a New American Economy: sufficient, sustainable livelihood for all! The language comes from a study put out in 1999 by the ELCA. The study reminds us how we depend on God and are interdependent with one another. The new American Economy thrives when we nurture one another, sustain each other, and hold each other accountable. The statement proclaims:

• As people of faith, we realize that what human beings want is not necessarily what they need for the sake of life.
•  As people of faith, we acknowledge that what is in our interest must be placed in the context of what is good for the neighbor.
•  As people of faith, we recognize that intense competitiveness can destroy relationships and work against the reconciliation and cooperation God desires among people.
•  As people of faith, we affirm that God promises a world where there is enough for everyone, if only we would learn how to use and share what God has given for the sake of all.
•  As people of faith, we insist that economic growth must be evaluated by its short-term, and long-term effects on the well-being of all creation and people, especially those who are poor.

If we want those who live in poverty to experience the fullness of the Reign of God, then we commit ourselves to serve Christ by serving the least. We provide counsel, food, clothing, shelter, and money for people in need in ways that respect human dignity. We develop mutual, face-to-face, empowering relationships between people who have enough and people living in poverty. We advocate for public and private policies that effectively address the causes of poverty. We support organizations and community-based efforts that enable low-income people to obtain sufficient, sustainable livelihoods. And we continue working to eradicate racism and sexism that. Most of all, we become aware of how the Divine Spirit wants to expand our vision and transform our priorities.

I get restless when I see us offer less than what God intends for the world. When I think about these issues, I return to a poem by Drew Dellinger, called “hieroglyphic staircase.”

it's 3:23 in the morning

and I'm awake

because my great great grandchildren

won't let me sleep

my great great grandchildren

ask me in dreams

what did you do while the planet was plundered?

what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something

when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest

when democracy was stolen?

what did you do

once

you

knew?

What if God is asking those questions of us?

What did we do when our economic household was being plundered?

What did we do when our democracy unraveled?

Did we fill the streets when equality was stolen?

What will we tell our great, great grandchildren?

What did we do once we knew?

Imagine an America where the pursuit of happiness is not about getting and spending, but in the growth of human solidarity, real democracy, and devotion to the public good. Imagine an America where the benefits of economic activity are widely and equitably shared. Imagine an America where the environment is sustained for current and future generations. Imagine an America and where the virtues of simple living, community self-reliance, good fellowship, and respect for nature prevail.

If we really want those who struggle with poverty to be blessed, if we really want the poor to experience the full Reign of God, then we continue to establish a Jesus economy where no citizens or immigrants are left to fend for themselves alone and afraid. In this new way of life together we don’t keep holding on to what we already have while grabbing even more as if our life depends on it. We don’t have to gather and hoard.  We can stop build ever-bigger garages or renting ever-larger storage units to house our stuff. Welcome to the new story, the new day, the new economy, a new life together in which we hold only to give, and we gather only to share.

Sources:

“Making Our Middle Class Stronger: 35 Policies to Revitalize America’s Middle Class,” http://www.americanprogress. org/issues/economy/report/2012/08/01/12034/making-our-middle-class-stronger/

“A Social Statement on Sufficient, Sustainable Livelihood for All by the ELCA” (1999).  http://www.elca. org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/Social-Statements/Economic-Life.aspx

America the Possible by Gustave Speth (NetGalley Edition: 2012)

Drew Dellinger, “Hieroglyphic Staircase”

http://people.tribe. net/cefe44e3-67d7-4375-99eb-46638d882eb6/blog/df552535-4ec8-47d6-a01a-a097667683b7

http://sermons.spiritofpeaceucc. com/2012/07/abundance-of-broken-pieces.html

https://news.gallup. com/poll/233642/paying-medical-crises-retirement-lead-financial-fears.aspx

https://www.brookings. edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/06/05/seven-reasons-to-worry-about-the-american-middle-class/

https://aspe.hhs. gov/poverty-guidelines