A little over a decade ago, I was having, not quite a crisis of faith, but a slump. I’d spent more than seven years in the academic pursuit of Christianity. I’d read scholars who wrote about the historical Jesus. I’d dabbled in zen meditation and Sufi mysticism, and I’d found some truth and depth in those traditions. And I was disappointed with the church, the Episcopal Church to be sure, but really with Christianity as whole in this country. I felt like wasn’t quite sure what I believed about Jesus.
In the midst of the slump, one of my best friends Jack invited me up to Western North Carolina with him for a retreat. We mostly hiked the mountains, drank some craft beer, and played ukulele. It wasn’t until we were driving back to the airport that I asked him about Jesus.
Now this friend also has a Master’s in Divinity, but his is from Harvard, you know “Godless Harvard.” And I asked, “with all we know about the historical Jesus, how do you deal with the question about whether Jesus was God.” He thought for just a moment and then said, “I could take or leave the Virgin birth and all that. For me, it comes down to the teaching. If you look at how Jesus lived, how Jesus loved, and especially what he taught, I can’t source what he taught in human teachings. Jesus’ way of life, his way of love, his teachings are so far away from what the world tells us is the way to get ahead, it has to come from God.” We went on to talk about the beatitudes.
The Beatitudes
Jesus said:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
Like us, Jesus lived in a time when the wealthy were thought to be blessed. There was a quiet implicit economic theology at play. Power was believed to be a sign of God’s blessing. A big house, a fancy chariot, servants and staff were all taught to be signs of God’s blessing. Church and state weren’t separate in Jesus’ time, so official theology about who was blessed dictated policy. Caesar was God. The wealthy were the ones who had political power by so-called divine right.
And Jesus taught, “blessed are the poor.” This is radical stuff. As my friend said, it doesn’t sound human. This teaching from Jesus doesn’t say “we should allow the poor to stay poor.” But Jesus teaching as the old slogan says, helps us to learn to “fight poverty, not the poor.” The poor aren’t poor because God wills it, or because of their own sin. The poor are God’s blessed.
Miguel and the Great Reversal
The Rev. Miguel Escobar was just ordained last month. Miguel was here in this pulpit back in October. In his book “The Unjust Steward,” he calls Jesus the preacher of “A Great Reversal.” Jesus’ preaches a radically different way, a Godly way of being in the world: a great reversal.
To talk about the Great Reversal in the beatitudes, Miguel first has to deal with the world as it is. He remembers being at the bedside of his grandfather Eusebio in West Texas, sitting vigil as he died of skin cancer. His uncles and aunts sat around with his parents, telling stories of summers they spent working as migrant laborers on family farms in Wisconsin.
As his grandfather is dying, Miguel thought about the men in the planes who dropped chemical pesticides on fields full of migrant laborers. Did those pilots have any idea how many of the people below would die of skin, prostate, brain, leukemia, cervix or stomach cancer? Did it look like “poisonous snow” Miguel wondered? Did those pilots have any sense their faith might have something to say about what was happening?
Miguel has come to believe Jesus is proposing nothing less than a “Great Reversal.” In the Beatitudes, particularly in Luke’s telling, the poor are blessed and Jesus says, “woe to the rich.” Jesus wants to upturn the status quo.
But Miguel believes the Great Reversal is not simply a reversal of fortunes. Jesus doesn’t just want the poor to become rich and the rich to become poor. Just like Miguel does not wish his grandfather could have been the one dumping the chemicals. Jesus’ teaching isn’t about vengeance and power over our fellow human beings. Jesus dreams about a greater transformation. God dreams of a world where no one finds themself a victim or a victimizer. The Great Reversal is nothing less than the in-breaking of a different way of being, with justice, with equity, with enough for all.
Blessed are the poor.
To understand Jesus, you have to know that the heart of Jesus’ teaching is a place. Jesus preached about the kingdom, the reign, of God, also called the kin-dom, God’s commonwealth, or my favorite, Dr King’s translation, “the beloved community.” Jesus spoke about a place where all are welcome, the outcasts are included, the prisoners are set free. Jesus preached about a way of standing together, for freedom, for justice, for love.
I want to take a moment to address the elephant in the room, or at least the elephant on the news. Like Jesus, we are living through days when many of us would like to say, “woe to you who are powerful. Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who think you have all the answers.” I’ll tell you in Greek, the “woe” is a lot stronger. It’s like a curse word. And how many of us have been muttering a few more curse words lately?
But, but, listen the the radical reversal that Jesus is proposing today. For Jesus, it’s not as simple as those who are currently in power getting their comeuppance. The reversal is deeper. God’s vision is so much deeper than what our egos might want. The beatitudes, the great reversal, are about all of us, every one of us, being invited to the same feast. The great reversal is about everyone having a seat at the table, and no one sitting at the head while another gathers up the crumbs. Our God is a God who does not respect the categories and isms which divide people from one another.
In days like these
We are living through days when it is hard for many of us to listen to the news. It’s hard to open the newspaper. We are living through days when our neighbors fear ICE might knock on their door, or on the door of their kid’s school, their health clinic, even their church. We are living through days when politicians are trying to legislate the transgender community out of existence.
For what it is worth, here at the heart of Jesus’ teaching, there is nothing about gender. Jesus didn’t condemn anyone for sex or gender. He spoke with women he shouldn’t have, appointed them to carry his message, just like the boys. Sexuality, Gender, Race, ability, all the DEI categories, Jesus didn’t pay attention. They weren’t the focus of his ministry. He barely spoke about them. St Paul tells us in Christ there is no slave nor free, there is no woman or man, there is now Jew or Greek. The categories don’t matter, not theologically. Not to Jesus. Not to God.
The categories only matter because Jesus wanted people to know they were loved. Jesus wanted people to know they are valued. And we live in a world where some people have valued by society less than others because of race, because of gender and gender identity, because of sexuality or age or ability.
Jesus, facing other teachers who preached the first century equivalent of the prosperity Gospel, in a country that had its own version of religious nationalism, Jesus didn’t buy into any of it.
Jesus preached: blessed are the excluded, blessed are the poor, blessed are you when they persecute you. Don’t buy in to the world’s disordered systems of value. Don’t allow the hate and the rhetoric of division and exclusion, don’t allow it affect how you see yourself. Don’t allow it to affect how you treat your neighbor. Hate is not from Jesus. Exclusion is not from God. Don’t let anyone say to you that you are anything other than blessed, anything other than worthy, anything other than the beloved of God. Because to Jesus, the message that matters is the same for each and every person, each and every person, God made you. God is with you. God loves you.
Crazy Mystics
You have to wonder about this Jesus sometimes. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when they exclude you revile you and defame you…blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” And we have to wonder, just exactly how crazy was Jesus? Jesus was a little crazy, but I imagine he was the kind of crazy that happens when you fall deeply in love. Jesus was the kind of crazy you want to be around. Jesus’ crazy was more than a bit mystic.
Barbara Holmes’, the contemplative teacher, wrote that
mysticism reminds us that the boundaries between this life and the life beyond are permeable, and that power is not…what is bestowed by politicians and society, but [is seeded] to everyone willing and ready to recognize the moves of an active Holy Spirit. Mysticism helps people under siege to transcend hatred and sustain hope, to meet devastating violence with communal resilience and peaceful resistance.
-Barbara Holmes in “Crisis Contemplation”
Over ten years back, as my friend Jack and I drove through Appalachia, away from our retreat, he spoke new life into my faith in the way only a good faithful friend can do. His faith helped me remember, this way of Jesus, this way of love is radical, so radical it seems to be sewn into our very souls. St. Paul talks about a law that is written on our hearts, deeper than the laws written by men. I think Jesus’ beatitudes name some of the very fabric of who we are meant to be, in a world too often deaf to that call. Jesus calls us to the Great Reversal.
To live the beatitudes, to join Jesus’ crazy movement, you have to be a bit of mystic. You have to be willing to go beneath your doubts and to look for signs of a world that has not yet arrived, a world that is on her way. You have to listen for the sound of God’s Spirit breathing still in Jesus’ radical teaching. You have to be a bit of a mystic. To be a follower of Jesus is to be willing to dare to believe Jesus’ promise: blessed are the poor.
Mike Angell 