The Beatitudes

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

January 30, 2011; 4 Epiphany, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 5:1-12) B When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.  "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will 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 in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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Preacher’s Note:  This sermon is so thoroughly influenced by the teaching of Thomas Keating that I can’t claim its composition as my own.  I am particularly indebted to chapters 17 and 18 of his book “Invitation to Love” – chapters on the Beatitudes.  If I accurately acknowledged all of his phrases incorporated into this text, three-fourths of it would be in quotations.  Get the book and read it, and I will be absolved of plagiarism.

About thirty three years ago, I preached my first sermon as a seminarian on this gospel text.  I was very excited about a Christian Spirituality course I was taking at the time, so I tried to pack a whole class worth of material into one sermon.  I wanted the congregation to know about the three stages of the spiritual path – the Purgative Way, the Illumnitive Way, and the Unitive Way.  The pattern fit perfectly with the Beatitudes – three Beatitudes for each of the three Ways.  Some said the sermon lasted twenty-three minutes.  Others said it seemed longer.

Well, I’m going to try that same sermon today.  Not exactly the same sermon.  But the same idea:  The Beatitudes as a map of the spiritual journey.  It’ll be a teaching sermon.  That means it’s a bit more boring than some.  I don’t have some entertaining stories.  So gear up your concentration.  Oh.  I won’t be twenty-three minutes.

First, a note about translating.  The word “beatitude” can be translated “blessed” or “how blessed.”  It also can be translated “how fortunate” or “how happy.”  The Beatitudes are Jesus’ formula for true happiness and blessing.

Second, some landmarks along the spiritual landscape.  Many of you have heard us speak regularly of the three energy centers that create so much of the False Self – our exaggerated needs for security, for esteem and affection, for power and control.  The first three Beatitudes speak to the dismantling of these addictive, false programs of happiness.

“Blessed, how fortunate, how happy are the poor in spirit.”  Philip Vigil adopted me as his friend when we lived in Fort Smith.  Philip was chronically homeless.  Having a secure, permanent place of shelter wasn’t a need for him.  Nor was money.  He sometimes gave away everything he had if he saw another homeless family with children.  Philip knew he could go down the street and talk people into giving him twenty-dollars within the hour.  And that was enough. 

Those of you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs know that it starts with the fundamental need of security.  We need to feel secure.  The first freedom is the freedom that comes with trusting God for our security.  The first work of spiritual maturity is the dismantling of our exaggerated need for security and our attachment to the symbols of its possession.  “How happy are the poor in spirit.”  Those who can accept reality as it is, including afflictions, and trust that God will carry us through. 

The poor in spirit hold their possessions lightly enough to give away as the needs of others or the will of God may require.  They trust God rather than their possessions.  “Theirs is the kingdom of God.”  The poor in spirit have a special claim on the Kingdom of God because they do not have anything. 

The church invites us to disciplines of fasting and of simplifying our lifestyle, as well as bodily disciplines to reduce our overdependence on the prompt fulfillment of our instinctive and exaggerated need for security. 

The next two Beatitudes address the other two energy centers – first, our exaggerated needs for affection, esteem and pleasure.  “Blessed are those who mourn.”  And second – our exaggerated needs for power and control.  “Blessed are the meek.” 

When we let go and accept loss, we mourn.  When what we mourn is the loss of what we used to be dependent upon for creating our own happiness, we experience freedom, comfort.  How happier might we be if we didn’t have to control situations, other people, our own life.  What if we had the freedom to accept insults or unfairness without being blown away?  What if we could accept people as they are without trying to change them, and then meekly follow God’s lead to offer acts of mercy to help as we can help.

To give up our needs for attention, affection, esteem and the gratification of pleasures is the path of mourning that leads to deep comfort.  To give up our needs for power and control is the meekness that allows God to give us the earth.

Sometime between age four and eight, we inherit the identity and values of our family, peers and culture.  I was certain that Ford’s were better than Chevy’s because my dad drove a Ford.  My best friend Charles and I fought over that, because his dad had a Chevy.  Now it’s Hogs and Longhorns; Republicans and Democrats.  Overidentification with our social group and issues creates deadly divisions.  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” which is what righteousness is.  When we can be thankful for our family, school, nation and group affiliations, but commit ourselves to justice for all humanity, not just those like us. 

These first four Beatitudes invite us to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Surrendering our exaggerated needs for security, esteem and power in order to trust God and to share God’s intention for security, love, and justice for all people. 

The last four Beatitudes raise the bar.  They follow the more demanding commandment from Jesus that we “love one another as I have loved you.”  Jesus loved from the cross.  Continuing to show us love even in our worse human brokenness. 

“Happy are the merciful” invites us to expand our love into the whole human family – past present and yet to come.  To join Jesus’ work of healing and reconciling the world.  To love others in their individuality, opinionatedness, in personality conflicts and unbearable situations.  To offer mercy, compassion. 

And such mercy extends also toward ourselves.  When we internalize an idealized image of ourselves, it is our pride, not God, that says “you’re not good; you don’t measure up.”  God loves and values us infinitely.  God is merciful.  We are invited to be merciful/compassionate like God, toward others; toward ourselves.

If we grow through these first five Beatitudes, there is a shift that happens in the spiritual journey.  We shift from going to God through reason and through our particular acts of devotion or good deeds, to going to God more directly, through the intuitive faculties.  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  When the eyes of the spirit are purified by deep trust, then everything begins to speak to us of God.  We sense God’s closeness; we sense our belonging to the universe. 

At some point, our longing for union with God can become so acute that we can integrate our emotional and rational lives into our intuitive faculties and surrender that unified nature to God in love.  “Blessed are the peacemakers.”  Augustine said that peace is the tranquility of order.  Deep peace comes when we know our house is built on rock, in union with God.  Not a sentimental peace, but peace that is deep, below emotions, transcending joy and sorrow, hope and despair.  The peace of living in total dependence upon God, when we experience the loss of self as a fixed point of reference.  This is rare life.

Even rarer, is the final beatitude of perfect wisdom.  Wisdom that finds joy in persecution.  The saints tell us that to endure persecution for God is the peak of happiness.  People like this no longer have a possessive attitude toward themselves.  Their identity is rooted in Christ and whatever identity Christ wants for them, including carrying their cross like Christ, to pour divine light, life, and love into the human family.

Okay.  My twenty-three minutes are up.  Maybe it felt longer.  I know there is too much packed into a sermon like this.  But think if there was a moment when you were awake.  Was there something that caught your attention or imagination?  Which beatitude was that?  Maybe that is what God is speaking to you today.  Walk with it.  Chew on it.  Which of these beatitudes speaks to you?  Blessed are you who are awake, even at the end of the sermon.

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Windows of God's Light

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

January 9, 2011; 1 Epiphany, The Feast of the Baptism, Year A

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 3:13-17) B Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."
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We are just a couple of weeks past the darkest day of the year.  Each day the sun rises a little earlier and sets a moment later.  We feel the stirrings of light and warmth and light.  Oh, there is plenty of winter left.  So often, Old Man Winter saves his fiercest blasts for us as his reign is coming to and end. 

Yet something has turned; it will not be stayed.  Under the cold earth the bulbs are awakening.  The day will have its way.  It will grow.  Our earth will become green again.  Flowers and fruits and harvests will happen.  Light will come.  Life will flourish. 

Outside it is cold right now.  Thank you for braving its intimidation, and coming in here, coming inside into the cozy embrace of this community.  Inside, it warm. 

I know that some of you mark the progression of the seasons by the light of the east window behind the altar.  A few weeks from now, later on in the spring, the sun will shine directly through the bright yellows of that window straight into the faces of a certain portion of our 7:30 congregation.  Some of our regulars at that service, who wish to continue to sit in their customary pews, will wear sunglasses in church during those particular weeks.  The light can be blindingly bright.

When I was a child, we once had a daytime eclipse of the sun.  It was a big deal at Oxford Elementary School.  We prepared ahead of time.  We were sternly warned.  You can’t look directly at the sun.  It can damage your eyes.  You don’t want to go blind, do you?  So we made eclipse viewers out of shoeboxes – with a pinhole opening at one end and a white index card at the other end.  On the day of the eclipse, we went out onto the playground, we aimed our shoeboxes at the sun safely behind us, we caught the sun’s rays through the pinholes, and it reflected the shadow of the heavenly eclipse on the white index card.  Every child that day saw the reflection of the eclipse of the sun.

Christian Mystic Evelyn Underhill speaks of God as “the absolute Light” which “only dazzles us; in its wholeness it is more than we can bear.  It needs breaking-up before our small hearts can deal with it.” [1]  She speaks of the incarnation of Jesus as God’s light which is broken up and brought to us so humbly in human form that we can touch and taste, see and hear the infinite mystery translated into our substance. 

She offers as a metaphor:  stained glass windows.  The shapes and colors of stained glass catch the dazzling, blinding absolute light of the sun; the light refracts and breaks into smaller bits so that we can bear it, so that we can see it in our windows, so often represented through images of Christ and various symbols of devotion. 

Each week we come into this holy place, surrounded by the suffuse light and colors of these windows, inviting us into the air and atmosphere of the mysterious divine presence. 

From the outside of the building, the windows appear mottled, dull, even grubby.  You have to come inside to truly see and appreciate them.  You have to come out of the cold, into the warmth of the glowing intimacy of this intimate place of welcome, this Temple of God.

Today, we welcome into this intimacy, our new family members, invited inside through the sacrament of baptism.  We invite them into the mystery of the divine light.  We will baptize them in the name of the Holy Trinity.  They will be filled with light and life – “the universal light of the Father, the interior radiance of the Holy Spirit, linked together in this vision of the Son, so far above us and yet so divinely near.” [2]

Today in these who are baptized God is creating new windows of divine light.  Just as the sun shines through each of these windows creating beautiful works of art that inform and inspire us, so each of us, a child of God, adopted as God’s own through baptism, becomes a window of God’s revealing light.  Each baptized person catches and reflects the light of God in the particular way each person manifests God’s life within their own personality and gifts. 

When you were baptized, the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended upon you to dwell within you forever.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  You were filled with the Holy Spirit.  You became one with Christ.  You became a light for the world, “enkindled, made radiant by the One Light of the World.”[3] 

If we could but see with the eyes of the Spirit, we could look out among this congregation and see the inner radiance of God’s light shining through every person here like light through stained glass.  Every act of kindness or gentleness, every smile of relationship, every sadness and suffering endured is a refraction of the light of Christ reflected in our lives and being. 

If we could but see with the eyes of the Spirit, we could look into the mirror and see the inner radiance of God’s light energized at our baptism now radiating through every molecule of our being, radiating us with beauty and intention and hope.

The fundamental truth of the spiritual life is the divine presence in creation and the divine indwelling within us all.  We don’t have to do anything or go anywhere to realize that presence.  We just have to open our eyes and take off our blinders.

Your essential identity is this:  You are the child of God.  You are God’s beloved.  You belong to Christ, the Light of the World, and Christ’s light shines in you; Christ’s light shines through you.  You don’t have to do anything about that except to accept it. 

It doesn’t matter what has already happened.  It doesn’t matter that you may have defaced that image or done things that are damaging or inconsistent with your true self.  We all do.  Simply return to the waters of new birth, be washed and cleansed again like a newborn child, breathe the breath of the Holy Spirit, lift up your heart, be fed by the bread of life and the cup of salvation, and be whole and light again.  Be who you are. 

In your baptism, something turned and it will have its way.  Spirit breathed within you.  You became the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  Go inside, into the warmth and intimacy of God’s indwelling.  Let the light of God shine radiantly through the window that is your particular personality and life.  Be what you are – the light of the world, “enkindled, made radiant by the One Light of the World.”  That is your inheritance.  That is your birthright.  That is your identity.  You are God’s child, the beloved, whom God loves with an infinite, unqualified love, whom God enlightens with eternal light.

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[1] Evelyn Underhill, The Light of Christ, Morehouse-Barlow, 1982, p. 10

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid, p. 21