How do you know when you are blessed? I googled a Christian website. Some of the answers: You know you are blessed when your prayers are answered. You know you are blessed when you and your loved ones are healthy. You know you are blessed when you needs are well provided for. You know you are blessed when you are successful in everything you do. You know you are blessed when you find favor wherever you go. Although the website doesn’t go there, I presume they would say that when you experience the opposite of those things it means you are not blessed. Hey Siri, Hey Alexa, am I blessed? But what happens if, instead of going to a website or social media we went to the Bible, we went to Jesus. We find a complete reversal from what constitutes blessings as named in popular culture. Who does Jesus call blessed? You can almost picture Jesus looking around at the “great crowd of people and large number of disciples” who are hurting, who are in need, who are yearning to have a blessing in their lives. He says to them: “Blessed are you.” He doesn’t check on the bank account. He doesn’t violate HIPAA rules by asking for their health status. He doesn’t expect that everything is going swimmingly. No matter what is going on in their lives, Jesus says, “Blessed are you.” Are you poor? You can still be blessed. Are you grieving? You can still be blessed. Do you need a good meal? You can still be blessed. Are the haters gonna hate and talk about you like a dog? You can still be blessed. There isn’t anything out there, anyone out there, who can stop you from being blessed. It doesn’t matter if it is raining on your parade, if your dog won’t hunt, if the cat’s got your tongue, if the chickens are coming home to roost, if the monkey is on your back, if you get the bear or if the bear gets you. None of that changes your status as a blessed person. Blessed are you because you are a child of God, you are made in God’s image and likeness, you are precious in God’s sight. Blessed are you simply by being you. The Lord is blessing you right now.
Jesus says to us, just as he did to the great crowd of people back in the day: “Blessed are you.” That creates three challenges for us. The first challenge: all too often we don’t feel all that blessed. It doesn’t feel like a blessing to have to wear a mask all the time because of the pandemic. It doesn’t feel like a blessing to watch the news and see stories of young people being shot on the streets of Chicago. It doesn’t feel like a blessing to hear the doctor say that you need treatment for your cancer. We have to do some work in order to experience the blessing that Jesus pronounces over us. The most fundamental practice we have to adopt if we want to feel the blessing is to get over our preferences and trust in God’s plan. Your preferences are probably similar to mine: to be healthy, rather than sick; to be comfortable, rather than needy; to be well thought of, rather than criticized; to have a long life, rather than a short one. When we cling to those preferences, however, we can miss the presence and action of God because at times God’s will for us runs clean counter to our preferences. Think of Jesus in Gethsemane praying, “Father, let’s go to plan B.” But as Jesus experienced in the Garden, we know ourselves as blessed when we can pray, “not my will, but thy will be done.” Once you make your one desire and choice to always and only to live in the will of God, then you feel blessed beyond belief no matter what is going on.
That leads to the second challenge: how to live as a blessed person. Jesus says, “Blessed are you” and we must live a blessed lifestyle. Just think of people that you know who embody blessedness. I’m thinking of Sam who used to be in Bronzeville Nursing Home. Blessed are you, Sam. You might be paralyzed but you were always able to bring cheer and good humor and hope whenever anyone came to visit. He lived as a blessed person. I’m thinking of a story Brother Javier told of going to a house in Mexico, a poor house made of sticks and a tin roof with meals cooked over an open fire. The lady of the house gave the priest a peso with the instruction. “Give this to the poor.” Who are the poor, Senora, he asked. Those who do not know God, she answered. She lived as a blessed person. Or how about the teen-ager who is bullied and called anything but a child of God yet can walk away with dignity. Blessed are you when people hate you. Each one of us could multiply the examples of people who live blessed lives in what might seem to others to be, how shall we say it, less than ideal circumstances. They teach us that when you know who you are and whose you are, you can feel the blessing despite it all.
The third challenge: passing the blessing on. When Jesus says, “Blessed are you” it is not meant to be our own little teddy bear that we hold close to our chest but meant to be shared. There is a custom in the US: when someone sneezes we say, “God bless you.” The sneezer responds, Thank you. That little exchange is an almost unconscious way that we bring blessing into what might be a possible illness. Before we eat a meal we pronounce a blessing over the food. This little ritual which is done almost mechanically acknowledges the gift of God and the many hands that made the meal possible. Many people have the custom of blessing God at night before they go to bed or when they rise in the morning. The point of these customs, we instinctively know we can bring blessing into everything we touch. When we feel blessed we want to pass it on in all of the daily stuff of life. It only takes a spark to get a fire going. It only takes a blessing to experience God’s love
