Jan. 29, 2017, Beatitudes (full size gallery)
The pictures explore light and darkness this week and on Sunday. Episcopal priest and author, Brown Brown Taylor has written about darkness. “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”… "Here is the testimony of faith: darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day."
Both darkness and light are needed to bring out the character of objects. We talk about seeing things in a different light. New life starts in a dark womb. The Gospel reading on the Beatitudes certainly show life in a different light. Turning those who would be turned away based on their conditions into "blessings."
We had plenty of light at St. Peter’s. 33 people with the children acolyting, taking up the collection and keeping up with the service.
Susan Tilt just back from Annual Convention in Reston provided her reflections. You can read them here. We have heard several summaries of Convention over the years; unfortunately most of them come off like your report to Ms. Smith’s Biology Class. Susan was a true reflection, selecting events and moments meaningful to her. She connected with the congeregation during her talk. "This was an exciting, energizing, uplifting, inspirational and Spirit filled three days! I loved every minute of it"
Today’s scriptures underline the upside-down nature of life in God’s kingdom. The prophet Micah proclaims that the only sacrifice God wants is justice. Paul insists that God’s foolishness and weakness are more powerful than worldly wisdom and strength. In the Beatitudes, Jesus describes true happiness in a way of life that runs contrary to ordinary human expectations.
The Gospel probes contrasts with the Beatitutes. Matthew gathers the teaching of Jesus into five great discourses and balances them with narratives of Jesus’ deeds. Today’s reading is the first of a series drawn from the first discourse, the Sermon on the Mount.
The "blessed" in the Old Testament are those who receive an earthly fulfillment—of prosperity, offspring and long life. In later Jewish writing, the blessings belong to those who will enter the final age of salvation. Jesus offers these future blessings now, for the kingdom is present in him.
The first four beatitudes reflect attitudes that climax with an unceasing hunger for a right relationship with God—both personally and communally. The second four reflect the actions and lifestyles of those who hunger in this way. In verse 10, Jesus teaches that those who live the Beatitudes will face persecution, for this way is contrary to all that the world espouses.
Jesus spoke these words to a crowd of peasants, a tattered bunch, probably not even knowing what they were searching for. They lacked an understanding of their plight. Jesus offered them another view of their aching unhappiness, a hidden dimension beyond their misery.
Jesus assured them that they were holy. He corrected the misconception that salvation must be earned and that earthly prosperity was a sign of divine favor. He reversed "top down" notions of religion, where sanctity filtered from the religious hierarchy to the common folk. He praised the kind of ordinary sanctity that Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino called, "in the God of the lowly, the greater God."
Those whom the world would consider miserable are in Jesus’ eyes most happy. They have seen through the false promises of wealth and the fragility of human relationships. Knowing that all illusions must fail, they seek security in God. Those who mourn are blessed for several reasons: because they have loved deeply, and because God will comfort them.