Christian Pathway

At the age of 60, I started going to the opera, Carmen, Rigoletto, La Traviata etc.  I discovered I love it, and for me, these 200-year-old operas are fresh and new because I don’t know the plots, so when I hear them, they are like a day old heard in the moment. 

The Beatitudes mark the beginning of Jesus’ sermon on the mount, and they were the first words I ever heard Jesus say.  I had never read the bible or gone to church apart from weddings and funerals, I had no idea what to expect. Down in my little flat alone down in the wilds of Dorset, I picked up my little red Gideons bible and the page opened at precisely at “Blessed are the meek”.   

So looking back I probably had just a glimmer of the experience of what the people who heard him speak must have felt like. When, I like them heard those words for the very first time.
I think I became a Christian at that point because in the silence of that room, I decided that this was the way to live, this man knew what it meant to be alive, and somehow more than that.

However, I also recall I had the feeling, some of this I understand and some of this makes no sense at all?  

Why?

Because Jesus by our standards turned the way we expect the world to work, upside down.

We know that in this world, the meek are sometimes bullied, the mothers who lose their sons and daughters mourn deeply alone, that despots are often rich, and that loud and macho people climb the corporate ladder.  That warmongers cause grief, peacemakers are often ignored or killed and so on.    We live In a world where “who dares wins” and all the self help people teach you how to assert your will over your environment.

But here Jesus promises the reverse of these things Jesus says the meek own the kingdom of heaven, people who lose loved ones and suffer, find comfort, and the meek will inherit the earth.
We look around and wonder where does this happen? Where’s the evidence for this in a world of consumerism, toxic masculinity, greed, and anger?

Yet and yet, for us who love him, in some place of deep truth (deep magic as they say in lion the witch and the wardrobe) these words ring true. They are words from someone who we know who does not lie to us.  His words touched a place deep inside me. That truth awoke and became real and sentient and became something I have come to know more and more since that moment.  I became able to interact with Christ in us, by these words.


That was then, however I think to mature as a Christian is more than just to experience Jesus, the journey really begins when we reflect on them, contemplate them.  

Then of course act on them.

So its been a journey

Here’s how I make sense of them today….

Jesus in our translation today says, Blessed, some say happy.  Truth be told our modern English lets us down either way because the bible does not use the word Benedictus.  

Benedictus directly means Blessed. Benedictus comes at various points in our sermon today where Jonathan will bless the congregation, with him as a conduit of divine blessing, as a gift or form of redemption from God.  Blessing as Benediction.

This however is that and much more than that.

The word used here is Makarios and Makarios is a different word.   Makarios means benediction (so blessed )but it also means happy (which explains some other translations )  favoured and  complete as well .   A better word for salvation is hoel so salvation is being made whole– or complete.

We don’t have a direct word in Modern English that means all these things in one word.    The old English word for all these things was indeed funnily enough beatitude.

For me this is new understanding as Blessed happy, favoured and complete are for me when the words start to make sense.

One day, you will receive comfort, one day you will have the kingdom of heaven, one day the meek will reign, and so on, justice will happen, in the end all things will be made right.

These are facts because Jesus says them.  Facts in the truest sense of the word. Facts are unchangeable, these are facts.

These facts are the catalyst for hope. Once we believe them, we can never lose hope because we know all suffering is transient, it comes to an end.    Which is why we are people of hope.

This hope is borne of the knowledge that he brings all suffering to an end because he makes us whole in the end.

This enabling and giving of hope leads to gratitude. Because it is he alone that can and loves us enough to die for us to make these facts true.

Hope and gratitude are by any estimation the key to happiness.  

These things make the beatitudes true.

Blessed by god
Happy because of the
favor bestowed upon us , 

and one day complete are all those people that know Jesus words are true.

This makes Makarios, the perfect word, blessed, happy favored and complete.

Another thing about these words, that is pertinent on All Saints’ Day.

 You don’t have to be a saint to receive them. This is proven by the fact  the saints were often not saintly, Matthew who we read today was reviled as a tax collector and seen as a coconspirator with an occupier, Augustine, was born a pagan  by his own admission and man who gave into many of his more base desires.  Jesus chose fishermen, rough working men.   Ordinary people with ordinary faults and equally as broken as us.
 

But they believed in his word at some point in their lives enough to stay the course from the moment they heard them.     This then makes more sense of what they knew that made them saints despite their sins.  They heard Jesus and knew he would keep the promise of the beatitudes, he will make today easier whatever it brings, fill it with, love and one day he will fill us with joy forever.


The saints were willing to be meek, merciful, suffer hunger, to mourn etc. because they knew they would be helped today and that these discomforts these things were like the morning dew, like sunrise before they went where only Jesus could take them, where all our souls know we belong.  Just over the horizon, where we alone could never go.

 This is   why in our baptismal service the newly baptized are asked about what they believe they answer

With the help of God, I will.

And that’s why the beatitudes are true, a truth the saints knew 100% on All Saints Day. That despite theirs and ours sometimes catastrophic shortcomings


With the help of God, we will

Amen