Symeon Shimin
It’s been interesting to read and re-read today’s gospel this week. Wednesday was All Saints’ feast day, and we’ve been looking at this in Women of Faith and in our liturgies on Wednesday with Stuart Hall and in the evening. It’s certainly one of the most familiar and often-quoted passages in the Bible – Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. It is comforting, beautiful, inspiring – and also troubling.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who are persecuted.
How are we supposed to read this?
AJ, in his Wednesday evening sermon, pointed out that some translations read, “Happy are the poor in spirit – happy are those who mourn – happy are those who are persecuted.” That makes even less sense.
Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek.
What does “blessed” mean, anyway?
Earlier this week I told the students at Stuart Hall that an online glossary at the Episcopal Church website gives us two definitions of “blessing.” One reads: “a pronouncement of God’s love and favor.” The second explains that “a blessing may also be used to consecrate or dedicate something to holy use.”
Lutheran pastor and author Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber (you may know her from her books and sermons) suggests another way of thinking about the Beatitudes. She has a book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People, and where she asks, “What if the Beatitudes aren’t about a list of conditions we should meet to be blessed?” She reminds us, rather, that we are all recipients of God’s love, no matter how saintly or unsaintly our lives seem to be. We are blessed in our very brokenness, in our mourning, our meekness, in our poverty of spirit. We are all considered worthy of “holy use,” sacred work in the world. We are all accidental saints, however imperfect and complicated our lives are.
So the Beatitudes are a profound passage to read at All Saints, when we remember not only St. Augustine and Joan of Arc and Francis of Assisi, but also all those we love who have gone on before, and their imperfect and complicated lives, when we remember that we are in communion with them always, in this holy place and as we live our lives out in the world.
Blessing is very much like baptism. Both acts tell us that we are loved, and that we are called to do holy work in this world – to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace, to respect the dignity of every human being. Be swift to love, make haste to be kind. Every blessing is also an invitation.
Nadia Bolz-Weber and her parishioners wrote their own set of Beatitudes for the 21st century. I’m going to read some of them to you:
Blessed are they who doubt – those who aren’t sure, who can still be surprised.
Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.
Blessed are those who no one else notices.
Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers.
Blessed are the merciful, for they totally get it.
Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard, for Jesus chose to surround himself with people like them.
Who are your accidental saints? Maybe someone you know, someone you miss. Maybe someone you have seen every day and never talked to. Who would you like to bless, to remind they are beloved, to give thanks for?
During the service, we invited the congregation to write their own Beatitudes, and some of them were read at the end of the sermon time. Try writing your own Beatitudes, and if you wish, email them to Rev. Cara.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
All Saints’ Sunday, November 5, 2023
