“Blessed are ….” Matthew 5: 3-10
The “be-happy” attitudes was a book and sermon series by Robert Schuller during my teen years when faith was something I was eagerly exploring. What a refreshing take on Jesus’s teaching of the “beatitudes” or “blessings.” I was reading these verses during my earliest awareness of the chaos loose in the world. The Nixon scandals, the Vietnam War and POW events, and the crises in the Middle East—all were topics of current events I was newly aware of. Additionally, I was learning about my own Jewish heritage and the wideness of prejudice beyond the divisions of white and black people.
But it wasn’t Schuller’s preaching that taught me the Beatitudes as real-world changing concepts. That book came later. It was the death of my cat and my decision to pick up my Bible as a pre-teen in tears seeking the promises of help from an invisible holiness I hoped was real. I flopped open the page of the Bible and my eyes fell on the words, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
I could hardly believe that in my bedroom, praying that God would help me, crying over a pet’s death while my mom dug a grave at the back of the yard, this book spoke directly to my heartache. I had already had a number of experiences that taught me this book of books was somehow unique and alive. However, this moment was the one in which I experienced the life to which it witnessed.
It was then I learned that in the vastness of time and space there exists a wholly, holy other who knew me. This fairytale or mythic god became God, maker of heaven and earth and me. This God was not out there. This God was as close as a most vulnerable and private sorrow. This is the moment I became a believer.
Since then I have had the honor of a few other earth-shaking revelationary experiences that remind me of the personal nature of God. Like so many others, I have had vast periods of time however when I wondered if it was at all possible that God really exists or cares. The world, my own world and the whole earth, are in such constant chaos and even disaster, I cannot help but doubt.
Then I remember, “blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” The “be-happy attitudes” do not promise that our world is one in which there is nothing but happiness. Indeed, every promise is that through the sorrow, the pain, the suffering, the violence, the abuses of power, there is hope for our weary souls. None of the horrors of life can result in a permanence of despair and demise and death. The promise is that joy will come in the mourning, and in the dawn.
May it be so. May you and I be so for each other. For this is what it means to be made in the image of God. This is our purpose—and so we are blessed, we who are:
the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the activists for justice, the ones who act like Jesus. Blessed we are to be a blessing.
Peace be with you, children.
bevfriedlander 