From now until the start of Lent the gospel will be taken each Sunday from what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus climbed up the mountain as Moses did and brought the word of God to the people. Unlike Moses, Jesus did not present Ten Commandments that had to be obeyed in the sermon. In fact, much of Jesus’ conflict during his public ministry was with those who kept the commandments but did not exhibit the kind of love and compassion that should characterize the people of God. The problem was that the commandments center on one’s external actions. Jesus was interested in a changed heart. So instead of ten commandments Jesus begins this sermon with eight beatitudes. The beatitudes are not a list of “thou shalt” and “thou shalt nots.” They are instead an approach to life, a way of being, a certain attitude. Jesus shifts the focus off of doing and onto being. One author even called these the eight BE-Attitudes. Jesus presents these eight as foundational attitudes that guide our actions.
Jesus frames the Eight Beatitudes in terms of blessing. “Blessed are the…” The word translated in English as blessing might also be translated as “Happy are the…” The blessing Jesus pronounces is, in fact, what produces happiness in the human soul — and the happiness that Jesus promises in these blessings is not a passing feeling but an ongoing condition. We might even translate the blessing in terms of an old calypso song from the 1960s. Do you remember the refrain: “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life?” If you want to be happy for the rest of your life become poor in spirit. Many religious traditions recognize that the cause of unhappiness is our desires. We grow unhappy for what we don’t have: the latest fashion, the flashy car, the nice house. We grow unhappy by wanting the perfect husband, the right children and the job that fits. No matter what we have we want something more, something else. Becoming poor in spirit requires that we learn that what we have right today is sufficient for happiness. Emptying ourselves of our desires and accepting God’s gift is the true blessing.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life don’t be afraid to mourn. We don’t usually consider mourning as producing happiness but if you think about it by mourning we are expressing our love for what we have lost. The connection that was there is still there enough to break my heart. By mourning we are living in the reality that the circle is still unbroken but has just gotten a little wider. And our mourning includes the fact that sickness, violence, neglect, abuse are not thing we are going to accept passively in our lives. Mourning becomes a blessing because of the hope that it includes.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life you should become meek. Meekness is not a word we use much nowadays so maybe a more understandable translation would be humble. Humility leads to happiness. Ultimately humility is the realization that all that I have and all that I am comes from God. God is the one who woke me up this morning and started me on my way. I have no position, no accomplishment, no achievement, no success that does not come from the gifts which God has bestowed on me in life. We simply cannot say, “I did this all on my own.” Meekness, humility, becomes a blessing because it takes the pressure off to make something of oneself and instead lets us be who we are as we are for what we are is exactly right.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life you should hunger and thirst for righteousness, for justice: you should become a peacemaker. Wait a minute. Didn’t Jesus just say that we needed poverty of Spirit, a cessation of our wanting something? Doesn’t our wanting justice, wanting peace contradict that attitude? The blessing, Jesus would answer, comes not in having justice or having peace but in the hungering for justice, in the making of peace. If we wait for peace and justice to come we will never be happy for they are elusive, something on the horizon that we can never quite reach. But the blessing comes in the striving for them, in the understanding that God’s world is meant to be more than what is currently and that we have to do our pull on the oars to move us just that much further down the road of the kingdom of God.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life you need to be merciful. Holding onto resentment and grudges will never make you happy. Yes, we have been hurt but by not extending mercy the one who harmed us still has power over us. It is only when we extend forgiveness just as we have been forgiven that we come to the blessing Jesus wants us to have.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life you need a clean of heart. A clean heart is one which is focuses its attention on having the right intention. Usually our motivations are mixed. Trying to manipulate, to control, to maneuver to get what I want from another does not lead to happiness. Only when I am able to choose what I truly think is what God wants for me and others will I experience the blessing of a clean heart.
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life you will be persecuted, you will be insulted, you will have every kind of evil spoken about you. What kind of blessing is that Jesus? Seems kind of dark! To understand the message consider how easily we are criticized for being naïve when we suggest that non-violence will cure our violent streets, that love will overcome divisive hate, that being generous toward the needy is what is required. We are blessed when insulted because we are standing up for gospel values against those of a selfish and greedy world. So, the eight BE-attitudes given to us by Jesus. As we proceed in these weeks before Lent pick one that you would like to add to your spiritual repertoire and work on it.
