The part of Lewis-Anthony’s analysis that I’ve appreciated the most is his skewering of what he calls the “Cult of Nice,” or the expectation that what clergy are striving for is to become paragons of a certain people-pleasing, milquetoast, yet ultimately duplicitous agreeableness. As I’ve been reminded by one of my mentors this summer in the inimitable words of Stephen Sondheim, “Nice is different than good.” If there’s only one thing I’ll take home from my experience in England this summer, it’s the importance of finding a parish and rector that will offer me a place to be myself, to grow and make mistakes and take risks without undue anxiety.

General Convention 2009 leaves me sighing with relief, though I suspect our truthful stand in D025 and C056 will have consequences. Still, my heart is filled with gratitude at the gift of being profoundly seen and loved by my community of faith. I have been asked on several occasions about what the reaction has been in England. The only thing I can say for sure is that there are likely to be at least a half-dozen different reactions from the various points of view represented in the Church of England. Some folks are pleased as punch and wish the CofE would get on with it. Some think we’ve definitively broken communion. Many others are somewhere in between. The shoe that we’re all waiting to drop is whether Canterbury will in fact recognize and come into formal communion with ACNA. Will that mean a ‘disfellowshipping’ of TEC (to borrow Baptist language for an event unheard of in Anglican history–I think new Anglican bodies have come into being that have not been recognized by Canterbury but never a historic Anglican church that has been declared to be out of communion)? Or, in another unprecedented move, will +Cantuar somehow mantain communion with two separate communions that are geographically overlapping? Either way, we live in interesting times, for better or worse.

The swine flu is sweeping its way through the UK as we speak with about 55,000 cases (compared to the USA’s 40,000 or so). The Diocese of Southwark has issued guidelines for the administration of the chalice during communion, including using anti-bacterial gel at the lavabo and assuring those who are concerned about contagion that it is perfectly acceptable to receive only under one species. Also, intinction is out for the duration. We are all connected, for better or worse, aren’t we? I beg your prayers for healing for those who suffer from the flu or the fear of infection, that God’s healing presence may be very near.

My favorite time of the entire week, though, was St. Mary’s Emmaus service. Emmaus is a contemporary Holy Communion service that is deliberately aimed at kids who have recently begun receiving communion in an effort to conduct a complete but age-appropriate liturgy that encourages reflection, engagement, and simplicity of action and expression. Every portion of the usual structure of the Eucharist is there just said in simple words, often accompanied by simple actions. I was personally so nourished by this service that I wondered whether it might not be something I’d be willing to do in a future parish on a monthly basis, not just for kids but also for adults who want a contemplative Eucharist that gets back to basics. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for a richly layered, complex liturgy in which there are many ways to enter the action, that accommodates ambiguity and creativity. But this Emmaus service was an absolute gem.

General Convention 2009 has begun! I wish I were more interested in the blow-by-blow, but I have trouble figuring out what I’m seeing. For the moment, I’m just keeping up with the reflections of a few bloggers and checking out some of the streaming webcasts. Please pray for the GC to be open to the work of the Holy Spirit and fearless in their pursuit of truth, wisdom, and the love that the Cross invites each and all to risk in this part of the Body of Christ.

Here’s a picture I took as I was walking across the Putney Bridge earlier this week of St. Mary’s. Enjoy.

St. Mary's from the Putney Bridge

In the past week, I have had the pleasure of visiting several surprising places that I want to share with you. The first I might never have found had I not been directed. The friend with whom I’m staying took me in his car to his appointment with the chiropractor, very close to the shopping area at the Angel in Islington. To pass the time while he got adjusted, he directed me down a side street, telling me to follow the signs for ‘Towpath.’ At first, I couldn’t imagine what he could be talking about, but soon I found myself (like Alice having gone through the rabbit hole) on the towpath of a lazy canal with flat colorful boats moored along its banks.

Regent's Canal

The Regent’s Canal in London was built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to transport goods from the Thames north into other areas. I had walked or ridden over this canal dozens of times without ever knowing it existed! Yet, there it was, a brand new beautifully textured public space to inhabit and explore. And there are countless spaces like this tucked away, around corners and down the road. Bishops Park is another placid green space I discovered this week. It spreads west along the north bank of the Thames in one of the parishes where I’m working this summer, All Saints Fulham. As I walked through, I discovered a group of workers from British Heritage digging up the old moat that used to surround the Bishop of London’s palace in Fulham.

And that’s just the beginning! This week, I’ve also visited All Hallows by the Tower and seen the baptismal record of William Penn, walked across the Waterloo, Vauxhall, and Putney bridges, gazing down at the dark brown Thames at low and high tide. I’ve learned to walk home from the Tube station along a series of parks, promenades, alleys, and backstreets. What a lark! I can’t seem to exhaust the layers and layers of human habitation, spaces to visit and travel through. I wish I had a more precise language for what I’m referring to. I’m sure it’s something that’s discussed in architecture or urban planning. But I’m getting a real kick out of exploring this magnificent world city.

I have two theories about the origin of this practice and its prevalence in England. First, I think the C of E might have been influenced by proximity to the “pastoral prayer” of the more evangelical and protestant flavors of Christianity, in which the pastor extemporizes an intercessory prayer on behalf of the congregation. The C of E manages to include within it a theological and liturgical diversity that is both richer and more frought than what we have in the Episcopal Church, and has done so for almost 500 years. My second theory is that this kind of intercessory prayer is a direct expression of the kind of grounded, localized ministry that is particular to a church that was (and to a certain cultural and political extent, still is) the established church of nation. There’s a deep sense that this is part of the church’s role: to pray for the nation, the land and its people, its heritage and future, its relationships with church and world. Though we certainly have this idea in the US, it isn’t as deeply ingrained or expressed as I’ve experienced it.

Today, I got to interview a young father coming in to request baptism for his daughter. In the process of filling out the form with the required canonical information, I was able to get to know this gentleman and learn some of the story of his family, even though we’d only known each other for a few minutes. What a privilege to be able to spend my days living with people and their stories, offering welcome and care, interest and challenge, a word of hope or joy or blessing, praying for Christ’s presence to be made manifest among us and between us. Man, this is the best gig in the world!

The big picture we’ve agreed upon looks like this: I’ll be on site at my assigned parish Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays all day, assisting with various worship services, tagging along on pastoral visitations, and observing and participating in various meetings. I will likely get to preach at least once or twice at St. Mary’s in my time here. Tuesdays will be light, flexible days where I’ll come in for part of the day. I’ll be off Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. So my first full day at the parish will be this coming Sunday.

Even before beginning in earnest, I’ve already (re)learned several noteworthy things, to wit:

1. Autolocomotion can be beautiful. The Tube strike has made it quite difficult to get around London this week. It took me two hours of standing on a jam-packed double-decker bus to get to Putney on Wednesday morning. On the way home, all of the major streets were completely gridlocked with cars, buses, cyclists, pedestrians. It was foolishness and mayhem. The three and a half miles from Putney Bridge to the Victoria and Albert Museum took an hour-and-a-half to travel, all the while watching pedestrians pass us and never be seen again. By the time we got to Hyde Park Corner, I was done with the bus. I pulled out my A-to-Zed and set off on foot towards home. What an adventure! About five miles and an 1.5 hours later, I had re-acquainted myself with Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Soho, the West End, Bloomsbury, Sadler’s Wells, the Angel, Islington Town Hall, and Highbury Corner. I’d gotten some delicious exercise and listened to my iPod. And what’s more, I’d ignored the Baedeker. To celebrate my new-found sense of accomplishment, I’m considering tooling around London on a bicycle. Stay tuned!

2. Branding guides my choices to an unnerving extent. This week included a visit to the supermarket (Sainsbury’s) and drug store (Boots) to pick up various and sundry groceries and toiletries. But as soon as I start looking at the product selection, I’m at sea. Where’s my Ban roll-on? And Kraft cheese? And what are pork faggots, exactly? I am stunned by how much branding guides my consumer choices. As a shopper, I’m rarely looking for just, say, detergent or soap or razor blades. I’m looking for Gain and Dove and Gillette. There are dozens of products on the shelf at Sainsbury’s that I can’t even identify, or that are not what I think they should be (pickles are green and crunchy!). Still, this is an important lesson, both in what guides my choices (one of the key practices of ethics) and in the power of persuasive visual advertising. I suspect there’s a way to use branding for good, to communicate identity, mission, passion, and inspiration. (I’m not the only one who thinks so: check out Church Marketing Sucks.)

3. A porous boundary between church and world can be envigorating. In an examen of the week, the one thing that pops out as if it’s illuminated and underlined is the architecture of St. Mary’s, Putney. In their most recent renovation, they built a full cafe not just adjacent to their worship space (separated by a wall, say) but actually contiguous. In order to get to the church office or the sanctuary, you must pass through the cafe. St. Mary’s isn’t unusual in this respect; many CofE churches have similar arrangements with food and coffee shops to bring in a bit more revenue. But more importantly, the architecture says something that I think is important: church and world are not entirely separate arenas. A church that imagines itself to be hermetically and ritually closed off from the world is both fooling itself and ignoring the tidal in-and-out pull of the Gospel. Yet neither is the worship space the same as the secular space. St. Mary’s does not have Holy Communion in the cafe. Nor do they serve coffee and full English breakfast in the nave. They preserve a defined space for worship and for education, yet the gate between the nave and the cafe is wide open. While I attended an intimate mid-day Eucharist in one of the chapels, I could hear the steamer going in the cafe, foaming milk for a latte. I’m sure the many mothers, babies, and small children gathered for fellowship, snacks, and coffee in the cafe could also hear the murmur of the church’s prayer for the whole world humming in the background. If we had sung, they would definitely have heard. Though it will take time to fully articulate the implications, I was completely enraptured by the unifying vision of this architecture. I look forward to spending time teasing out the details. Barbara Brown Taylor has a wonderful meditation on some of what I think I’m getting at in her new book, Altar in the World. There’s a free pdf download of the first chapter on Amazon, if anyone’s interested.

4. Priesthood can have a geographic rootedness, a sense of place, that is part of its charism. In my initial conversations with the priests in the CofE, I have found an interesting and attractive understanding of the parish priesthood as having a rootedness in place, a responsibility for providing pastoral presence not just to the community that gathers but to all who live nearby. In the US, it’s easy at times to think of the ordained ministry as something that only “counts” within ecclesial contexts and in the ordained person’s private life, leaving the wide swath of “secular” space unfilled. Yet the UK, with its solid tradition of geographic parish ministry, retains a notion of the vicar’s cure of souls that includes his/her visibility and availability to, and advocacy for, the whole community, not just the church.

No good tree bears rotten fruit, nor again does a rotten tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasury of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasury of his heart brings forth evil: for from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

In the carefree days before I was a homeowner
I used to daydream about the garden I might someday have.
It would be a huge English garden
a verdant carpet of wildflowers and flowering plants
with hardly any room for grass
(no mowing for me, thanks!)
foxglove and purple cosmos
a spray of pink and gold climbing roses ascending a trellis
artsy paving stones and a birdbath
and in the back, in a corner
behind a white picket fence
a compost bin and a lush vegetable garden
with tomatoes and zucchini
and little red and yellow hot peppers.
In my mind, of course,
I would only wander through all that sun-dappled green beauty
and enjoy the peace and delight it offered.
(beat) Old daydreams die hard, don’t they?
It wasn’t until my partner and I actually bought our own house
that I was faced with the incredible amount of work it took
just to keep our yard and garden looking minimally decent
instead of overgrown and abandoned.
No one ever told me about the constant watering,
the weed-eating, the mowing, the raking,
the sawing, the digging, the chopping,
the endless trips to the mulch pile
the voles and the snakes and the ants.
And the weeds. The weeds were my nemesis,
the Joker to my Batman,
the Lex Luthor to my Superman.
Happy little dandelions, hardy, prolific, and ubiquitous
springing up everywhere, their taproots deep in the soil.
The most pernicious weed was an invasive Japanese bamboo grass
called Microstegium vimineum
(I know its name like I know my enemy’s)
that grew with disconcerting speed in all conditions
without watering, full sun or no sun
and had to be ripped up in piles and bagged or burned.
See, if we didn’t control the weeds,
they would hog the sun and the water in the garden
and our impatiens and tulips and lilies wouldn’t have a chance.
Yet it often occurred to me
as I was on my knees, sweating and straining in the garden
how apt a metaphor gardening is for our spiritual and emotional lives.
What is growing in the treasury of your heart?
Our hearts require tending if we are to bear good fruit.
As I tore up bamboo grass,
it would remind me of the daily proliferation of craving,
the desire for more and better,
the insidious dissatisfaction with what is
that spreads and chokes out other growth
unless it is pulled up as soon as it sprouts.
As I dug and dug for the roots of dandelions,
it would remind me of the tenacious commonplace of vanity and selfishness
so pretty and yellow and seemingly harmless at first
then puffing into a ball of airborne seeds,
ready to take over little by little.
As I took a machete to a huge blackberry bramble,
with its wild delicious fruit and its thorns that catch and tear,
I thought of the twisted forms of lust.
There’s nothing wrong with liking blackberries,
but they cannot be allowed to take over the garden
or it will soon become impassable and dangerous.
If the garden is to bear fruit,
flowers and tomatoes and fruit trees that yield year after year,
it will only happen through constant tending,
careful watering, weeding, pruning, fertilizing,
and harvesting when the moment is right
to make room for more fruit.
What is growing in the treasury of your heart?
Jesus is using the metaphor of good and rotten fruit
not only to teach his disciples
but also to indict the religious leaders of his time.
The false prophets are those
who are only too happy to criticize others’ gardens
to hold forth smugly on the minutia of horticulture
while their own gardens become overgrown and fruitless.
While the gardener is off looking for the speck in his brother’s or sister’s eye
the pests are infesting the fruit,
the weeds and brambles are taking over,
tomatoes stay too long on the vine and turn mushy and stinky
apples and mangoes fall to the ground and rot
waiting to be eaten by someone while the time is right?
At the moment of truth,
all the talk turns to straw and rot,
for the false prophet has no good fruit to bring forth
for lack of loving attention to the heart-garden.
Thus is hypocrisy turned to cruelty,
for the hypocrite promises what he or she does not have.
Yet lest we cluck our tongues at those blind Pharisees,
it is those of us who are religious leaders, preachers and pastors,
who are the aim of Jesus’ words today.
For ultimately God is not interested in how much I know about horticulture
or how well I can write or speak about the necessity of weeding,
the quality of light, methods of watering, plant taxonomy,
increasing yields, propagation and soil fertility.
God only wants us to yield fruit
to be taken up into the mysterious economy of grace
and emulate his infinite generosity,
the Divine superabundant love
that can supply daily bread
for all of God’s creatures.
What is growing in the treasury of your heart?
Notice that neither is the point to have a perfect, manicured garden
compulsively mowed and raked and kept clean and spotless.
The point is fruitfulness,
bringing forth from our heart-work,
good things that will bring delight and nourishment
to our brothers and sisters.
And that means tending and pruning, yes,
but also, crucially,
picking and giving
when the time is right,
when the fruit is ripe and juicy.
If we wait too long or are stingy,
the fruit that looked so appetizing
will rot and be no good to anyone.
Yet the giving and sharing of fruit
is not the end of the story.
For what characterizes fruit
is that it carries seed.
Those seeds can be planted in others’ gardens
and yield more fruit.
It is also easy to get lost in the lush garden of the metaphor
forgetting that it points to reality.
What does this heart-tending look like?
How do we nurture what is fruitful
and cut back what isn’t?
We have three primary tools in heart-tending.
The first is discerning attention,
simple focused awareness of what is
and what could be.
Thich Nhat Hahn said that attention
is like water to the seeds in the heart.
The second is choosing, that bread and butter of ethics.
What kind of person do we want to be?
What is our heart’s desire?
What matters most?
Which of our thoughts and behaviors bring more love into the world?
How do we sow healing, joy, peace?
The third is practice, enacting over and over
with our lips, with our hands and feet, with our lives
what we have chosen wisely.
And each of these tools is most useful in community,
for the fruit of our lives is not ultimately a solitary labor
but work that is most joyfully and artfully done
with others and for others.
It is no accident that Jesus chose bread and wine
for his meal of remembrance and thanksgiving,
his celebration of liberation and communion.
Each is a product of the fruit of the earth,
grain and grape,
tended and harvested
broken and crushed
made into food.
In sharing in this meal,
we approach the great vine that is Jesus,
the bread of life,
who turned the cross of our shame
into a Tree of Life,
yielding the fruit of salvation for all who will come.
As we gather around the table,
to eat of the fruit of his own self,
we are not only fed,
we also receive seed in our own heart-gardens
that, if planted in fertile soil,
carefully tended and watered,
and protected from choking weeds and pests,
promises to bear much fruit
that, in its turn,
will not only feed the wandering hungry of the world
but will also plant the seeds of the kingdom far and wide.
Yes, it takes sweat and Saturdays and sun
mulch and fertilizer and sore backs
especially when it’s cold
and the seed is invisible
or the plant is young and fragile.
Y’all, that is faith.
Yet for all that toil,
it is God alone who gives the growth.
Through divine mercy,
we will one day be able to bring forth from our garden
a basket of sun-ripened tomatoes
or plump squash
or fragrant peach
to give to our brothers and sisters out of our God-given abundance.
And the joy of that feast shall be the purest form of praise.

A quick update for everyone: I was admitted to the next phase of the ordination process (Candidacy) in March. Now, my bishop has asked me to consider what kind of formation I need—in addition to seminary, that is—to prepare for ordination next year. I am actively working on a list of practices, both serious and playful, that I would like to incorporate in the next year. If anyone has any wisdom to share, I am open to suggestions!

One piece of work I hope to begin soon is sewing my own deacon’s stole. I was inspired by the way Zen Buddhists, before receiving the precepts, sew their own rakusu as part of their preparation. As I approach taking new vows that will refine and modulate my baptismal vows, expressing my particular call in the Body of Christ, I think sewing my own vestment will be an interesting analogous practice that will help me reflect and pray, sowing thought, intention and creativity. As with my formation, I will need help from others to do this as I can only sew a button onto a shirt at this point. But I have crafty friends who I am confident will be able to guide me.

At first blush, it would seem that I have learned more about the Church and the role of clergy outside the classroom than I have in it. As part of my seminary education, I have had the opportunity to participate in the many kinds of work done at General. I have been the coordinator of a clothing ministry: marshaling volunteers, soliciting donations, welcoming our homeless guests, handling problems as they arise. I have served as a sacristan in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd: greeting, problem-solving, setting the stage for all the personnel of the liturgy to take their places and, with as little anxiety as possible, enact our courtly and purposeful setting forth of God’s praise. I have served on our Community Council: attending meetings, listening, speaking, planning, asking questions, making lists, listening some more. Each of these ministries has taught me a few terribly important lessons about the nature of this mystical body called the Church.

First, the people that graciously make up the community of those called together by Christ are radically imperfect. We cannot be everywhere we want to be. We cannot be anyone we want to be. We are partly (or perhaps largely) determined by our history, our acts, our thoughts, our context. Good habits are hard to establish, and bad habits are hard to break. As individuals, we can be snarky, lazy, recalcitrant, zoned out. Our follow-through is often poor. We forget, we shut down, we are easily distracted. We misunderstand one another frequently. We have great difficulty listening. We ignore and interrupt. We are plagued by rage, need, and hunger. In our flailing, we even hurt each other, often without intending to, but sometimes cruelly. We can be hard-hearted and slow-footed in responding to our neighbor with compassion and affection. Wielding power, we can grow enamored of our own glorious vision of the world and the people in it and punish everyone for not living up to our grandiose attempt to puppeteer the universe. Events rarely turn out exactly as intended. We are a motley crew, a rag-tag band of quirky people. Clergy can be especially difficult, obstreperous, self-aggrandizing, neglectful; they are not at all immune from the flaws of our humanity.

These sub-optimal conditions make it even more astonishing that, as I reflect and look behind me, a Herculean amount of good work has been accomplished. The community has been invited to hear and respond to the Scriptures and pray earnestly for the welfare of the world. Bishops, priests, and deacons have borne their grave responsibilities with grace and faithfully communicated the joyful, liberating, paradoxical Gospel. Not infrequently, they have represented God’s abiding, tangible presence among us: seeing clearly, loving profligately, forgiving those who crucify him, walking faithfully ahead, behind, and alongside. The Word is proclaimed and preached with skill and passion. The sacraments are duly administered, sometimes with a heart-breaking beauty and poignancy that makes me want to bow my forehead to the ground. Genuine, costly love has been shared freely and brought comfort to others and new life to self. The naked have been clothed, the hungry fed, the stranger welcomed. The seed of the word continues to be sown in whatever soil will take it and nurture it. Much has been built up in the Body of Christ here, using only our willingness to show up, pay attention, and be of service.

How shall we explain this mystery? Perhaps the classroom is helpful, after all, to give us careful thinking, faithful conversation, and precise, poetic language to describe the Church and our place in it. She is already and not yet. She is fallen, yet redeemed. She is broken, yet given for the life of the world. She is water turned into wine. She is common bread and sweet, unpretentious wine, the fruit of our labor and the work of human hands, become for us the bread of life and cup of salvation. In the offering of our selves, our souls and bodies, just as we are—lumps and snarkiness and droopy eyelids and proverbial warts and all—Christ fulfills his promise to be with us, to make of us a blessing to all nations, to bring all people within the reach of his saving embrace. The evidence of our redemption is hidden in these fragile and rebellious body-minds. As I enter my last year in seminary and look ahead in hope, I am called more than ever to give my all to this most worthy calling, taking my place in the Body, wherever God should see fit to put me. And from the midst of the confusion and wreckage of this world, by the grace of Christ’s Lordship, the Body shall continue to live and give life, singing the testimony of the redeeming power of God.

All Saints, Year A

Revelation 7:9-17
Matthew 5:1-12

***

The Gospel doesn’t make any sense.

I came to this gospel text
thinking I knew what it meant.

After all,
this opening text
of the Sermon on the Mount
from Matthew’s Gospel
brings to mind nothing
so much
as a coin that
has passed through so many hands
been carried faithfully in so many pockets
that its inscription is worn smooth.

We need to weigh its heft
in our own hands
look closely
perhaps with a magnifying glass
at the shadow of its engraving,
test the hardness or softness of the metal
to discover its true value.

But the more I looked
the more shocked I became.
The more I turned it over and over
in my hands
the less sure I became
of just what I held.

My brothers and sisters,
I proclaim to you
in all humility
but with all the sincerity I can
from this venerable pulpit
that:

The Gospel doesn’t make any sense.

Let me give you an image
of what Jesus is proclaiming here.

Does everyone remember
those Publisher’s Clearinghouse commercials

in which an excited-looking well-dressed Ed McMahon
is driving around with a team of cameras
a bunch of balloons
and a huge check that represents more money
than most of us will ever see in our entire lives

to the front door of the person
that lucky person!
who has won the Sweepstakes?

What does that person look like when they open that door?

They look like they are completely devastated
by the sheer force
of their good fortune.

Invariably, they light up
they scream
they cry
they babble
they hug Ed McMahon
they jump up and down

at this improbable turn of fate
that has brought
unmerited riches
right to their front door.

This is what the word makarios means in this text
it is not the word for blessing
as Isaac blessed Jacob

It is the word for blissful chance!
Oh-man-you-just-won-the-lotto Lucky!
as Sarah was when she conceived and bore a son in her old age
as Leah was when she bore her child Asher
whose name means ‘happiness’
because that is what everyone would call her.

That I get!

The many-throated voice
of the culture that surrounds us
has been nursing us
with its own beatitudes.

Every day
we are exposed to dozens of images
of what it means to be lucky
to be at the pinnacle of bliss
to be joyful.

Lucky are those who
against uncountable odds
win the lottery,
for they shall never have to fret over bills and mortgages again.

Lucky are those who have clout,
for they shall be heard and make things happen.

Lucky are those who are beautiful and slim,
for they shall never go unnoticed or unloved.

Lucky are those who invest little and reap much
for they shall build their fortunes out of nothing.

Lucky are those whose talent is discovered,
for they shall be rescued from the indignity of ordinary obscurity.

Lucky are those who vanquish their enemies,
for their will and posterity shall prevail.

Lucky are those who strategize and scheme with careful cunning,
for they shall win every battle.

Lucky are those who are born with a silver spoon in their mouths,
for they have a head start in the merciless race of life.

Lucky are those who marry well and have perfect children
in a perfect house with a white picket fence,
for they will be the envy of all the Joneses.

Though I offer these with some light-hearted irony,
I am amazed by how much they constitute
a layer of my personal operating system
that is impossible to ignore.

But, come on!

those who mourn,
weeping and keening
until there are no tears left
just a sore throat
and the taste of dust
in their mouths?

I spent time in that desperate place
after the deaths of my mother and brother
my closest family
where the grief was a physical pain
squeezing the center of my chest
like a vise.

How are mourners lucky?

What about the poor in spirit,
never sure of where they stand,
where their next nourishment will come from,
trying to piece together a warm quilt
out of too-few strips and patches of thin cloth
while the cold wind whips through their bones?

It seems a terrible joke
these sayings.

It’s shocking.
It turns the world upside down.

The Gospel doesn’t make any sense.

Imagine, for a moment,
the Publisher’s Clearinghouse commercial
with all its balloons and rejoicing and giddiness
camera crews and Johnny Carson’s sidekick
arriving…

in the Coliseum in Rome when the hungry lions are released

or at a house where a family has just learned
that their son or daughter was killed in Iraq

or under a bridge in the cardboard box shelter of a very dirty woman

or at the hidden headquarters of the terrorist group
where the Christian Peacemaker team was being held
where Tom Fox was killed

or at the shallow grave of Ita Ford and Jean Donovan in El Salvador
missionaries who were raped and killed by death squads
for their advocacy for the poor and forgotten
in that country’s bloody civil war

or in the streets of Birmingham
dogs snarling and attacking
fire hoses with terrible force
pummeling protestors
asking only for equality and respect

or in a hearing room in Johannesburg
where a “colored” family is hearing the account
of how their son was murdered
by the one who pulled the trigger?

The only way this can possibly be good news
is by look carefully at the second half of each beatitude
where an eschatological promise is made
by the One whom we have come to know
as Faithful.

The reign of God belongs to them.
They will be comforted.
They will inherit the promised land.
They will be satisfied.
They will receive mercy.
They will see God.
They will be called the children of God.

Each beatitude is only credible good news
if we place the saying
against the backdrop of
the certain hope
that God is making all things new.

That’s why this reading is paired with
the reading from Revelation

in which dominion and honor and might and blessing
rest like a mantle upon the Lamb on the throne
who bears the wounds of his passion
for our sake.

It is those scarred hands
that we trust to labor
in the hidden places of the world
to make his victory plain,

to spread his tent of blessing
over all the blessed.

Yet, lest this well-worn coin
be tossed in the pile of
“pie in the sky, bye and bye”
that has condemned thousands of human beings
to needless misery

we can’t forget that the promise of the harvest
at the end of time
has already begun to yield fruit
in the vindication of the empty tomb
in the living presence of the Risen Christ
not only in the church
but also in the world abroad.

even now!
even today!

I confess that my own egotistical inclination
upon reading these paradoxical declarations of luck
is to take them as models for my own behavior
as qualities I should work towards.

But I think this misses the point.

Even though Jesus is addressing his disciples
The beatitudes are all in the third person: “Blessed are they…”

I believe he is giving them homework
asking them to turn their gaze from their own navels
out into the world in which
God is already at work,
where the first-fruits of God’s redemption are already ripening on the vine.

If we want to know what God is doing in the world
If we want to understand the salvation of God
the way you understand
how to tie your shoe or
what silk feels like against your skin,

Let’s go find these people
whom the entire world
despises and avoids,
ridicules and smirks at.

Your journey may be next door, around the corner,
or around the world to a place you had never even imagined.
These people need not even have confessed faith in Christ
or ever heard of baptism.

Yet in their company,
weaned from the arrogant and fearful promises of the world,
you may catch a glimpse
of the mysterious growth of the reign of God
and the subversive happiness of the saints.

Only at the end does the final beatitude turn to the second person
to the disciples
to us
to warn us of the trouble that we are likely to encounter
as we learn the cost of the reign of God
at the feet and elbows of those whom God has favored.

No, the Gospel doesn’t make any sense.
It is paradoxical and counter-intuitive.
It leads us where we might rather not go.

Yet I pray that each of us
will have the perseverance
to hold tightly to
this worn-out coin
that is more valuable than
all the riches of the ages.

So, just for today, maybe we can practice having patience and compassion for ourselves and those around us. In that “beginner’s mind,” we may be given a new vision of where we are and how to do our work and grow into fruitful people.