Peak of Spencer Butte, looking east to the Three Sisters (Eugene OR)

Approx. read time: 3:00 min.

I thought I had a grasp on the Beatitudes, until … this morning. It’s early.

So, I consider each beatitude in an unrushed way, eyes slightly out of focus, the door to the imagination slightly ajar.

“How blest are the poor in spirit,” I read. You know, the ones who are painfully aware they have nothing to brag about. “Do not ignore them!” the Teacher says, looking directly at me. The reign of God is theirs! 

Present tense. I sit with this awhile.

“Blest too are the sorrowing,” he says. Do not ignore them! They shall be consoled. 

Learn from the sorrowing, the Teacher insists. And I think: There are so many. Daily the news is heartbreaking. Do not turn away, he insists; do not let yourself be distracted. These sorrowing ones are messengers.

The Teacher is on fire, I can tell: Blest are the lowly. You know, the global poor with no shelter, no healthcare, no safe space, no hope. Do not ignore them! They shall inherit the land!

At this point I notice: my heart is burning within me. 

The Teacher insists: Blest are they who hunger and thirst for holiness, … they who show mercy, … they who are single-hearted. Do not ignore them! They shall have their fill, receive God’s mercy. They shall see God!

He talks like he’s out of his mind. And I notice the subtle, absolute in-your-face radically nonviolent overriding of Caesar’s self-absorbed agenda. Caesar can’t promise the poor, the lowly, the no-names, anything. He’s “not giving over … one iota of his power,” I write in Gospel Vulnerability.

Jesus doesn’t rant against entrenched power; he simply points to a third way, a path of peace and generosity, which liberates us from the path of othering, self-pity, resentment.

Now the Teacher walks us a little closer to the edge. 

Blest, he says, are the peacemakers: Do not ignore them! They are of God’s lineage—not bearing the weapons of Empire but walking vulnerably, in peace and nonviolent resistance to all that betrays the beauty of Humanity, the beauty of Creation.

How will that turn out, I wonder. Still, I’m absorbed in his words, his vision.

He continues: Blest are those persecuted in the cause of costly Love: Do not ignore them! Do not run from their invitation to stand steadfast in their company.

“Oh, stop talking nonsense,” the little voice inside is quick to say. “It’s not that bad; it’s not happening on my block,” … as though I can measure how bad “that bad” actually is, here or anywhere else.

Now the Teacher switches from third-person plural to direct delivery: Blest are you, when they insult and persecute, slander and dismiss you, because of me.

The wise teachers today are the folks at the margins, the unwillingly vulnerable ones, messengers every one, ready to risk everything on the chance we’ll wake up. At some level of their being, deep in their personhood, they know that the Land of the Rightside Up is possible. The Teacher will not deceive them.

So I say to you: Do not ignore these sacred witnesses—whether unwillingly vulnerable or willingly so. These sacred witnesses are everywhere, eager for us to stand with them, walk with them. Eager for us to remember that the kin’dom of God is possible. Otherwise, Jesus would not have preached it.

Send me your thoughts. I welcome your comments.