There have been many times in my life when I thought that if I had just that one more possession, or was able to go to that place, or do that one thing, then I would never want anything again. I’ve had moments where I thought that I was only one step away from perpetual contentment, that I would always and forever be happy if only, if only, if only…
I wonder if that rings true for you. I wonder if there is something you wish for at the moment, something elusive that feels like it will make everything right, make life complete, satisfy all your desires.
For a lot of people that thing is always just a bit more money. As was famously quipped by John Rockefeller, the world’s first billionaire, when asked ‘how much is enough?’ he replied ‘Just a little bit more!’. But whether it’s money or something else, a sense of contentment often seems to elude us, hiding behind a thing, person, or experience which is just out of our grasp. We find it hard to be content.
Then Jesus comes along and preaches these strange beatitudes. His idea of what is positive plays havoc with our sense of what is good and desirable in life. The beatitudes suggest that many of the things we would probably try to avoid are in fact good, holy, blessed. Blessed are the meek, those who mourn, the poor in spirit. What is Jesus on about? It doesn’t seem to make sense.
This scene of the teaching of the beatitudes has some Old Testament echoes. Jesus is giving the disciples words from God, while sitting on a mountain, which is a parallel to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments while on Mount Sinai. And the unexpected upside downness of what Jesus is saying has similarities to a lot of the psalms. In many of the psalms we hear about how the righteous will lead happy lives, how they will be blessed abundantly and receive good things.
However, in reality, we know that that isn’t always the case. You only have to think of Job to know that righteous people have their fair share of hardship, grief, loss and pain. It isn’t always a bed of roses showered in blessings. And this seems to be the same with the beatitudes. What are the blessings Jesus is talking about? How are these things, most of which seem negative on face value, being described as blessed?
Interestingly, the translation of the Greek word makarios into our English ‘blessed’ is not quite accurate. It might be closer to the truth to translate it as ‘happy’. But not a simple happiness, like what you might feel if you found 10 dollars in your pocket, but a more profound sense of being fortunate or privileged. Or another way to describe it is as a largeness, an extending of God’s grace, the state of enjoying benefits given from God.
Perhaps a good mental image is the idea of God’s hand resting upon you. If you are one of the blessed in the beatitudes, if you are mourning or persecuted or meek or seeking righteousness, then God’s hand is resting upon you. So when Jesus says ‘blessed’, or ‘happy’, he means it in a slightly different sense to how we might automatically think of it. He is telling the larger story of the character of a faithful God.
All throughout the Bible, it is understood that even those who are suffering, those who appear to be unimportant, or weak, or forgotten, are often the ones who God is standing alongside. Faith or godliness is no safety blanket offering a cosy easy life, but it is a rock to hold onto during the storms. It is a way of finding contentment, of being at peace, of being able to face the injustice, sickness and death that fills our world with a quiet assuredness, and even a strange happiness. It’s a peculiar thing, that the holiest people we could think of have often had hard lives in all sorts of ways, and yet they have learned to let go of the desire for that one more thing. They have overcome the sense of ‘if only’, that wish for ‘just a little bit more’. They are content to rest in the knowledge of God with them amongst all that life brings.
For us today, finding that deep peace, that sense of makarios, is a spiritual practice we can work on. It never comes from trying to fill our immediate desires to keep up with the neighbour, it will never come from seeking satisfaction through things or wealth or status. It cannot be gained through working towards a carefree life. Instead we can become blessed, happy, through orienting ourselves towards God’s grace, seeking God’s presence in the small occurrences of our everyday lives, keeping our eyes open and hearts searching for signs of God at work around and within us.
A practical example of how we can train ourselves to be aware of God is through practising the Daily Examen. This is a style of prayer and reflection taught by Saint Ignatious of Loyola, where before going to sleep you prayerfully think back over your day, and notice where you were drawing closer to God, and where you were turning away. Nurturing this sort of awareness can be very grounding, and help us escape the feeling that we need that one more thing, that little bit more something, before we find contentment.
And it can’t be denied that the things that Jesus teaches are hard. It isn’t even possible to live entirely as he taught us, because we all make mistakes, and we are all limited and flawed. But the call to live a life of holiness and righteousness is a response of gratitude for God’s graceful deeds and a way of actively recognising God’s holiness. And it is in the trying, in the seeking, in the re and re and re orienting ourselves towards God and working on living in selfless love, that we find true joy. There we can find ourselves becoming one of the makarios. We are called to open ourselves to vulnerability, and to contentment, to dwelling in God’s hand in the hard times and the good.
So I invite you to find God’s grace in the everyday. To catch yourself when you notice that wish for one more thing, one more experience, ‘just a little bit more’, and to instead live into the hope of being blessed, as we experience the new covenant of Jesus’ upside down world among us.
Amen.
(Matthew 5.1-12)
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