During Lent, our church has been slowly pondering and praying through Jesus’ strange blessings, these outrageous words Jesus offers as his first salvo in that preeminent Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are you who have bone-dry bank accounts. Blessed are you who are heavy with tears. Blessed are you who have no cards left to play. Blessed are you who ache for goodness and justice in a world torn asunder. And the insanity goes on and on.
The life Jesus announces really does turn everything topsy-turvy. Jesus passes blessings (well-being) on exactly the opposite of those we consider blessed. The Beatitudes pronounce the shocking reality that the precise people we assume at the bottom of the pile are actually at the center of God’s abundance. These blessings are what God does, what Jesus makes possible in ways that were impossible before.
And while these blessings do not unravel a litmus test for “what it takes to get God’s blessing” (for example, no one’s suggesting we should go out looking for persecution), it’s subversively true that we need not fear these places of deprivation or vulnerability because when we’re most at risk, we have confidence that God is with us in that risky place. So when calamity visits us (persecution) or when we courageously obey Jesus (by being merciful, for instance, to those who we think deserve no mercy at all), we don’t need to fear.
Can you imagine what our world would be like if we didn’t fear losing our money or speaking out against wrong or extending mercy to those we assume should be cast aside? What if we didn’t have to be tough and were free to be gentle and straightforward and yes, pure in heart. Isn’t it strange that to many of us pure in heart is a description we’d use only for the naive or soft or hopefully out of touch, never for people we truly admire, the people who actually know how to get stuff done in the world. It’s a quaint idea but dangerous to think and live this way, we say. Maybe being pure in heart is dangerous, but it’s also blessed.
With God, we can let the danger come. We are free. We are blessed.